A friend of mine

a friend of mine has gone, he has died and he has gone.  its hard to believe. i feel sick - not sad - but sick in my guts. it was horrible and it still is.

i have a vivid memory of his handshake and his smile on the 28th of december 2011, and a chat about the state of the world and the music that night and the dancing and the overcrowding. we laughed, we were wise and slightly patrician. we were having a good time....

and then someone took me away to dance and so that's the last we spoke, me and Rob. i saw him leave and i waved and i think he waved back and i think he was wearing a hat and i said bye....now you know..... i'm not sure. the mind is cruel like that. like dozens of his friends i didn't get the chance to say goodbye properly. how could i? i didn't know he was going and I don't know if he knew.

once a few years before i sat down on the deck of hms president, permanently moored on the side of the thames in london and a man who later i came to know as a friend, was sat there in his cool shades.  i said hello Rob - he seemed surprised. i was surprised i'd said it too because he had a reputation for candour. we chatted for about an hour in the sun, his shades came off and he toyed with them as we discussed dancing and dance venues.  this was a pattern we were later to follow.  seldom did we stretch to the personal - though he once said something funny about my father's birthplace near his birthplace as it happened.  they are both "yellowbellies" except Rob has gone.

Rob in sunshine - in london and southport - I will remember.  I will remember him practicing moves with C in a corner of the blues room in southport 'til sun up with a teacher of sorts putting them through their paces again and again and again. i found it hard to tell if he was devoted to the dance, devoted to the woman or devoted to the success.

He was engrossed: Rob was engrossed

i am fully prepared that there will never be an answer to why he's gone and why he chose to go.  we seek these things as though there is always a reason, always an action and an equal and opposite reaction. this isn't physics. over time i may forget to ask even if people know i may not know. i won't know what happened.

and how will i remember him - the shades, the smile, the laughter as pure as a child's delight, that smooth dance style and the quiet confidence (or at least its appearance)?  all of those but how will i bury the recounted story, the end of that smiling friend who shook my hand and always always chatted for a while?  i don't know - maybe with a wince, a quickened pulse, a look aghast in a corner of a room where i used to see him. he's gone from there.  Rob's gone.

His candour, his humour, his wit, his sarcasm - memorable.  His words could be cutting, to the bone, to the quick or to the nub of pomposity, self-aggrandisement and cant. He was held at a distance by some.  He was always polite to me, funny and never cruel.

a group of my friends knew him far better than me - they are suffering terribly now.  time will heal their wounded hearts. tomorrow they will see him off.  that ceremony is not for me - he's gone - gone already by my reckoning.  i recall when in a death-filled house a dog barked at a spirit as it tarried. they should go. the native americans have a saying - pertinent sadly "do not go where you are not invited" - it works both ways.  the dog knew that.

i stand by for my friends - if they need me.

Rob was always very friendly towards me, he was not a close friend but he was a good friend and i will miss his laughter his grace and his concern to get the best out of the thing we both enjoyed. His constancy will remain as smiling memory.

i cannot conceive of how sad his family will be and how confused by the loss and sickening at the needless lack of reason. The shock will always be with them.  to lose a child is, they say, the worst thing. Their pain will be numbing, unutterable and eternal and my thoughts - useless as they are - will be with them.

And i believe there is another victim in this - another person i know - i am not sure if i will ever see her again. and when i do she will not be the same woman i knew before. whatever the circumstances i am sorry for what happened and the violence of it. She will live with that - i send her all the strength i can muster.

And for me - well - Rob has gone.  But if he were here, he'd say we'd better go and dance. So i will.

195 views to May 2015