I receive two voice notes.
.
The first is from your old friend T.
The second is from your new friend B.
.
They are origin stories.
.
T. tells me he first met you in a bar in Cardiff in 1998.
B. tells me she first met you in a clinic in Mexico in 2023.
.
In Cardiff, a newly-arrived student, you’re working behind the bar.
Already secured yourself a job whilst your peers are still putting up posters.
T. comes in for a pint and you get chatting.
There is a connection.
.
In Mexico, where you went to recover, you’re joining morning worship.
Rebuilding your body, your spirit, your faith; one infusion, one song, one Pacific Ocean sunrise at a time.
B is singing at your side and you get chatting.
There is a connection.
.
They each go on to share the story of your relationships.
.
One built over two and a half decades.
The other built over two and a half weeks.
.
The conversations you would have.
The songs you would listen to or sing.
The way you shared in each others’ lives.
.
And it strikes me
that of course
this is the same story.
.
Wherever you went
there you were.
.
The common connection between two hearts
continents and decades apart.
.
And not connection by happenstance
but by virtue of you.
.
You saw us all
sometimes better than we saw ourselves.
And in your eyes
we saw reflected
parts of ourselves we never knew we had
but so sorely wanted
and needed.
.
I met her and I knew straight away I wanted her to be my friend.
She made me believe in myself.
She told me to give love a second chance.
.
All the ways
small or mighty
you rendered the world
a place more meaningful.
.
And maybe
more selfishly than we’d perhaps like to admit
this is that we mourn the most:
the piece of ourselves we lost sight of
when we lost you.
.
There is the light that dazzles.
And there is the light that illuminates.
.
Somehow
you manage to be both.
.
Out there
and in here
how much darker
it is now.
Previous > On Coping #44: These useless words | Next > On Coping #46: In the wake
On Coping is my story of surviving on the sidelines of cancer.
It begins in March 2022 with On Coping #1, written the day after my 41st birthday. The day my wife Imogen, the mother of my three children, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
On Coping is the story of what happened next.
This is a beautiful; and so clear and true. Everyone that knew her felt this, and now will realise (“alles klar”) if they did not know already - I bet they wondered, and now it’s crystallised … mine was when it struck me that “we were all going to be okay having these babies” as Imogen was determined to walk and walk until Arthur was ready to join us, albeit he was overdue and the doctors wanted him out on their watch - Imogen was tenacious and persistent in her believe that he would come when he was ready, and that helped us all to reconcile that all would be well with ours too ..