22/3/56

If he had lived, my younger brother Simon would have been seventy years old today - but he died on July 19th 2022 at the age of 67. I wrote a poem in his memory on the evening of his passing. Let me share it with you again...

⦿

Song for Simon

No more

Wood pigeons cooing

Morse coded messages

From the ridge tiles

Nor painted ladies

Shimmying through open windows -

Fluttering like tiny Bhutanese prayer flags.

No more the dark two a.m.

Wondering who I am

Recalling paths unfollowed,

Regrets twinkling

Like distant stars.

No more struggling for breath

Or cowering in the shade of death.

It’s over.

No more plans

And no more schemes,

No more

Elusive butterfly dreams.

Your words are destined to stay unsaid

Now that you have joined the dead.

    No more…

No more.

⦿

Looking back almost four years now... His was not the happiest of lives. He lived in the shadows of who he might have been.  His mind was significantly affected by smoking weed and cannabis resin. Always a cigarette smoker. at times he also drank too much and his attitude to the world and people  beyond his door was filled with scorn because Simon always knew best. I was often the convenient recipient of his venom.

He made my mother's life a misery. He kept returning to her like a bad penny. She was often afraid of him and his weird moods. He could be very aggressive and said horrible things to her. Sometimes she barricaded her bedroom door - wedging a chair against the door handle in case he came into her bedroom in the middle of the night. But she was his mother and in spite of everything she was there for him. She considered it her maternal duty.

For about seven years - between the ages of 28 and 35, Simon had a relationship with a local woman called Linda. Shirley and I liked her a lot. Linda was the best thing that ever happened to Simon. They bought a little house together in Hornsea on the North Sea coast and for a while he seemed like a changed man. I might even dare to say that he was happy... briefly.

But then the nastiness started up again. This time targeted not  at my mother but at Linda. She also became afraid of him and very sadly, they split up. The little house was  sold and despite my protestations, Simon moved back in with my mother. 

She should have been living out her days as a merry widow but instead my monstrous brother was back to torment her, belittle her, criticise her cooking, yell at her, steal her money. It was awful and during that time she would often come over to Sheffield to stay with us. We gave her sanctuary and she could sleep peacefully in her bed before the inevitable journeys back home.

In spite of undiagnosed mental health issues and to his credit, Simon managed to earn wages throughout his troubled life. He was rarely out of work and eight months before his death through cancer, he was still working with a contractor who serviced the water infrastructure - maintaining small underground reservoirs and associated piping for example.

Sadly, he had already offloaded his cherished guitars. In his prime he was a great guitar player. Much better and more dedicated than me. He had real talent and patience when it came to strumming or picking but typically he cut away the rope that connected him with that joy.

Though I stopped loving him decades before he became a human skeleton, I am proud to say that I was there for him at the end. It is what my parents would have wanted.

As folk will often say tritely when death occurs... he is at peace now.