Family Matters: Painless

I was just rereading the first entry in these family matters blogs and something has occurred to me. The whole reason I started writing them was to address an issue that I had been avoiding, but that led me to start talking about the family, and the more I talked the more I was able to push that initial subject further away.

The family history is very interesting, especially the older stuff, and I will write one last one to tie everything together but the main reason I started this run of blogs was to explain why I get run down in January (on top of the normal new year blues).

So no more procrastination.

My mum's oldest brother was quite a bit older than her, he was married and had kids before their dad died, and was the one that everyone in the family went to when they had problems. One of my earliest memories is of him, a cold Christmas night when he took me home to his house because an emergency meant that my parents and grandparents (who we were staying with) could not look after me. I was probably just about two and the events of the night are traumatic enough that it must have seared it into my memory, but it is a good one.

I must have been scared and all I wanted was comfort and that comfort came in the form of a small stuffed chick. I left it in the car, and was desolate. Despite the fact it was a freezing night in December my uncle went outside to the car in his pyjamas and brought him to me.

When my mum and dad took the plunge and tried to buy a house he, being a financial adviser bent over backwards to help them arrange a mortgage; when my mum had a nervous breakdown he helped as much as he could. Truth be told, he was a solid figure, even though he lived at the other end of the country he was just someone who was always there.

In the winter of 1982, I was twelve, and I had started secondary school, going from a class of 12 children to a year of 250 kids, from countless villages. One of the most exciting parts of this new school life was the fact that we were put in new 'adult' positions and that January we most certainly did.

The history department arranged a school trip to London, taking us to The British Museum. It was a four hour journey there, a four hour journey back. It snowed (in London), it was cold, I had my first ever McDonalds (and hated it). We got home late at night and true to form had to be in school the next day.

That Tuesday night my grandparents came around for dinner as they always did, and there was one very excited 12 year old who wanted to tell them all about his trip. Which he did. In detail.

Just as I was getting to the Egyptian mummies, the back door was pushed open and a close relation of ours stood in the doorway; we had lived with him for six months, so we were really close, in some ways he was almost a second dad, so I just flew out with the old, "And speaking of the mummies..."

He just skewered me with a glance and said, "Shut up boy." There was something in his tone that froze a 12 year old in his tracks.

He did not close the door, just stood there, this big farmer looking half his size, "Uncle's dead." he said in a tombstone voice, "He committed suicide last night."

I saw a sight no twelve year old should see; my grandmother just crumpled in on herself, moaning in disbelief, my grandfather trying to comfort her as she began to wail and not knowing what to say or do. Who would? My mum just sinking back into her chair muttering denial as my dad just sat there his mouth open in shock.

As the night closed in around us, my 9 year old brother and I huddled on cushion next to each other while Meatloaf and Cher sang 'Deadringer for Love' on the TV.

No one ever really knew why he did it, although we all have our suspicions. There was no note; he just drove up into the Pennines in the night, pulled off the road, ran a hose from the exhaust into his car and ran away from whatever it was that had tormented him.

He left a wife, two teenage sons, one of which, at 19 years old had to identify him, a mother, a brother and a sister, not to mention cousins, step siblings, aunts and uncles. It scarred me, my school work went from top of the class to bottom and never really recovered; it damaged my mum in more ways than I can say; my grandmother has a scrapbook of all the newspaper clippings from the papers when he died with letters from my cousin and used to read them again and again, trying to hold onto him; it destroyed marriages, ruined lives and left far too many people wondering why? Could they have done anything that might have changed things? Even my dad surprised me a few weeks ago by saying that he thinks back to the last time he saw him and wonders if there might have been something he could have said or done.

He was 42 years old. The same age that I am now, so it's no wonder that it hit me hard this year, suddenly realising that I am older now than he was when he died. Everyone says I look like him, a lot. And I sometimes see a shadow pass over my 96 year old grandmother's face when she sees me, as though she has seen a ghost.

The song says Suicide is Painless, and for the dead I guess it is.

But for those left living it hurts like hell.