The morning after the evening that I learned about the death of my best friend, Nick, something very weird is happening. You see, despite him living in Canada and me in Bristol, we would frequently message each other with thoughts and ideas about vast swathes of subjects. Politics, sport, what’s on TV, something that one of us saw that reminded us of something we once did or somewhere we might have been. Today, things are happening around the world and my first reaction is, I must message Nick. Several times, I have had to stop myself messaging.
I know it’s a habit, a rather enjoyable habit, too, one that has been broken forever by Nick’s death. Have I felt like this before when other friends and indeed family members have died? Honest answer? It’s complicated.
When my mum and stepdad died in their care home the only habits to break were to call them to see if they wanted anything at my next visit and the visit itself. Given the levels of pain and suffering they were going through, these were not hard habits to break. The decline in their health and in the case of my stepdad his mental and physical faculties were heartbreaking to observe. In some ways, their passing was a kind of deliverance, almost a blessing. No one, least of all my mum and stepdad, both thoroughly decent people, deserved to live what was barely any kind of life, with little or no quality. My life with, or for recent times without Nick in my life makes my loss very different to those.
That’s what friends are for, I suppose. We shared private and confidential, sometimes intimate, matters when there was no one else to talk to and maybe no one else I could trust. He was wise, he could be a reliable guide, a source of good advice and thanks to the miracle of the internet he was accessible to me more in recent times than he ever was before.
I’ve been playing music today that reminds me of Nick. When we visited my dad in Canada in 1975, we noticed that my dad had a copy of the great Joe Walsh album Barnstorm. We played it as we gazed out from his living room, with the Kennebecasis River and several million trees just down the hill. I was quite surprised to learn that my old dad – he was 46 at the time: ancient – loved that album because Nick and I loved and owned it too. I became immersed in the music and I had an urge to message Nick to say, “Remember that afternoon at Gondola Point?” Oh, wait.
1975 was the year we toured Canada and 2025 would have been our 50th anniversary of an epic holiday. Nick had already prepared mentally and was planning to celebrate with a bottle of blueberry wine and some steak, just like we did at a lakeside cottage in Hubbards Nova Scotia, owned by my dad’s friend that we stayed in after completing the Cabot Trail. He remembered the anniversary every year and I suspect there will be some poignancy when the dates come round again.
I think I am in some kind of shock, negated though it probably is by my antidepressants working in a way I rather wish they wouldn’t and I am definitely tired to the point of exhaustion. When I think about him, I have a half-written email swirling around that will never be sent. I sense that I am not quite at the point of accepting that he’s gone forever. On a more conscious level, I know, really.
The desire to continue to communicate will soon be replaced by memories, mostly happy ones. It’s a kind of evolutionary process that will occur without me noticing. Nothing will ever be the same again, as it never can be when a loved one dies.
Finally, it’s mortality, baby, and we all know, even if we’d rather not think about it, that one day it will be us people are talking about. Nick followed his dreams when he emigrated to Canada and more than ever I need to fulfil mine while I still can.
The final words from Joe Walsh and ‘Mother Says’ from Barnstorm:
We all know how the rules are
Changin’ from day to day
That’s the breaks, and I’m sorry
Some of us must be going
Some of us have to stay
Some of us may be showing
Some just fade away
POSTSCRIPT. I will also miss Nick’s sparky comments in reply to this blog. I expect to be waiting for those to arrive later on.
