This Is This

I had some difficult news last week from an old friend. We went to a small boarding school together as part of a group who were, and in many cases still are, a close-knit bunch. That bond was made faster over the years by the deaths of several of us, the first of which started while we were still there, and continues with a fifth, who died last week.

School friends aren’t meant to die. When my dad was at school in Liverpool in the 1940’s, desk spaces became gaping holes created by the Luftwaffe’s indiscriminate raids on the city. But in peacetime late 80’s Surrey, that shit’s just not right.

Hearing of losing another last week winded me, especially as it brings the total dead to a quarter of us, give or take a life. I let a few of old classmates know - Facebook has made the spread of bad news a lot easier - and the reactions ranged from worry, anger and sadness rather than disbelief.

I’ll miss the person. I’m not entitled to give any more details here just in case the family want to keep it quiet, or if some mutual friend doesn’t know yet and finds out on my blog. This is not the place.

I want to tell stories about the stuff we used to do together because there were lots of firsts and formative experiences and things I admired, but I can’t. This is not the place to discover that someone you know has died. I can’t imagine friends sending round links of this page with the subject field: “Oh my god, have you read this?”

I’m OK with it - we had lost touch in the last few years and they were very sick last time I saw them. I was disgusted with myself for not talking to them longer on that occasion because they seemed so different. I saw the illness and not the individual, I admit it. Friends reassured me that my reaction was understandable, but I still felt a heavy shame and braved a sadness like a battery of violas.

We go on. The rest of us, I mean, although who knows about the dead? The living I can speak for, and among the school friends is a sense of humour and acceptance we didn’t have before our thirties. I wrote to one to tell him the news and I signed off the letter with “PS. You’re next.”

He would have got it, but I thougt it was too early to cross the line, so I deleted that part before I sent it. But if you can’t laugh, right?

It’s important to look forward, see what matters and be grateful for it.

I’m not a Christian by any stretch and although I don’t question why my friends died, I find myself in quiet moments thanking God that they lived.

Class of 1990 - carry on.

Also on This Is This
At the station there was a stack of baggage trollies under a sign saying “Self Help Trollies”. Did they also provide pyschoanalysis? I wondered if, when you put your luggage on them, they said: “I’m more interested in how you are going to get your suitcase to move forward.”
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 12:15 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.