A message has come up on my Facebook page: “Today is Ben Hiscox’s birthday”. I knew it was today because the week before last I had spoken with Ben’s dad, Clive, so I didn’t really need reminding, but nonetheless I was grateful to read it.
We have all long run out of words when speaking of Ben’s premature passing. I know I have, hence the lack of blogposts about Ben in recent weeks. We are all working to ensure Ben’s spirit remains strong and that his legacy lives on and that must be part of our aims in future. Clive and I are in the early stages of preparing a book documenting Ben’s life, a life that was as well-lived as it was cruelly taken away. Stories aplenty are emerging and in the next week or so we will be planning how to ensure we produce something that does him and the family justice. We are under no illusions about just how tough this will be. We do not want a random collection of anecdotes: we are putting together a narrative, a story, a biography. Neither of us have ever done anything like this before, but don’t fret: we will certainly produce something substantial, readable and well befitting of a village legend.
The word that springs to mind today is emotion. I doubt that anyone will be feeling full of the joys of spring today in their eagerness to ‘celebrate’ a birthday of someone who left us far too soon and the main emotions will be a combination of loss, of sadness, of what was and what might have been. The latter is the hardest to grasp. We none of us know what might have happened next because life really is like that. So when we think about a future, we are guessing, it is wishful thinking. Tomorrow could have been the best day ever. It is, once again, proof if proof were needed that the saddest words in the world are “what if?’. I would be lying if I said I had never had a ‘what if?’ moment. What if I had had a dad living with me as a child? What if I had done better at school? What if, what if and then what if? But then I think: what if I had never been born at all? You can get quite deep when you get to think that way and it is largely pointless speculation. Something often happens along the way that derails your plans. You are here solely because of the accident of your birth, you navigate often blindly through the only life you have and, more often than not, you make it all up as you go along.
Not only have I all but run out of words, I have pretty well run out of what ifs, too. You can mess your head up completely if you spend too much time going down that road and believe me, I know. And looking for answers, looking for reasons and explanations, why did it happen to such a lovely man with such a lovely life? Well, we’ve been down this road before, too, and it makes no more sense than it did back in the days of spring.
I understand some people may be getting together sometime today to mark Ben’s birthday, probably in his local pub, the Beaufort Arms. I hope that’s right because I want to be there to share the pain and to celebrate his life. I understand that the passage of time, and the fact that life goes on for everyone else, means that the initial mourning phase gradually fades. People go to work, bring up their kids, pay the bills, do all the things they did before the accident. It’s the next step. For those closest to Ben, it’s that much harder and it will be for a long time to come. And because he was such an incredible person, a one in a million character, the pain cuts that much deeper.
Happy birthday today, you crazy, lovely, loud, loving, funny, talented human being. We are all lucky that at some time we occupied a part of your life. It is hard to celebrate today but I feel very fortunate indeed to have met and known Ben Hiscox and I promise to raise a glass or two later on to a truly great man.
