Memories
Losing my Memories
The loss of shared memories is the thing they never tell you about bereavement.
We are all, I think, aware of the five stages of grief: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance.
When my best friend of nearly 40 years was killed in a motorcycle accident almost seven years ago, I experienced all of these; some more than others. Denial hung around for a bit; the anger was fleeting but severe; the depression more than outstayed its welcome. In fact, while I am still working on acceptance, it remains a regular though less frequent visitor.
But there is another stage that no-one talks about. An element of bereavement that is surely not unique to me. A stage that grows more intense with each passing day.
Inseperable
I met Bruce when we were both nine years old. We did two years of primary school together. We did another five years at high school together. We took our first foreign holiday together. He was there the day I got married; and he was there for the birth of all of my children. For one reason or another, he lived at every house I have ever owned.
He was my stabilising influence, bringing me back down to Earth whenever I got a bit too full of myself. He was my destabilising influence too. I have been drunk countless times over the years — it is the journalist’s prerogative — but never more so than when Bruce was in attendance. He made me laugh more and harder than anyone I have ever met. He made me cry more too.
We watched the movie Jaws together so many times that, not only could we recite the script verbatim (much to the annoyance of anyone else watching with us) we would even take on specific roles. In my head, the line “farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies” is in Bruce’s voice, not Robert Shaw’s.
He was the ying to my yang. The Laurel to my Hardy. The rhubarb to my custard. I am less — considerably less — without him.
Recollections
It’s a cliché, I know. But I miss him every day. I miss him at times of crisis and times of stress. I miss him at times of happiness. I miss not being able to share my latest news or gossip with him. I miss looking forward with him. Most of all and worst of all, I miss looking back with him. Looking back to the places we went, the things we saw, and the people we met along the way.
You know when you share what you believe to be a hilarious anecdote and you’re met with blank expressions and you say “well, you had to be there”? Bruce WAS there.
Together we shared preposterous hairstyles and made ludicrous fashion choices. He was there for the fish skin incident. The chest of drawers incident. The night-fishing lesbians. That weird girl in Spain. The even weirder guy in Germany. The attempted mugging. The Burns’ Nights. The New Year’s Eves. The time he watched Michael Jackson’s Thriller video for the first time through his fingers. The time I returned from the toilet in a restaurant in France covered in my own blood when he thought I had been attacked when I had just walked head-first into a swing door.
I can recount all of these (and many more) of course; each of them gilded and embellished by the passage of time. But they all fall short as a monologue. They each worked best performed by a double-act. When one of us found ourselves recounting these tales, the other would get a sparkle in their eye; they would begin to flesh out the tale with detail, context and hyperbole. Our combined laughter would become contagious, drawing in those around us, and allowing them to see the scene through our eyes.
All of that is gone now; snuffed out prematurely in an instant. I am the once great band with the replacement singer. I am Eric without Ernie.
Loss
When someone dies, we always talk about what they left behind. In Bruce’s case, that was three daughters. It was a grandson that he met, a grand-daughter and another grandson that he didn’t. It was both his parents, his brother and his sister. And it was countless friends and old flames.
There is so much that he left behind. Yet my personal pain — inconsequential and trivial by comparison — now lies in what he took with him.
There is the obvious, of course. His company, his laughter, his advice, his support, and his inability to say words of more than three syllables without practice. But there is also the intangible; the loss of those shared memories like the fading of beloved photographs.
It is worse than amnesia. With memory loss, you have no inkling of that which you have lost; you are blissfully unaware of the gaps in your recollection.
I am deeply and painfully aware — increasingly so — of the gaps in my recollections. They are the Bruce-shaped gaps; his sprinkles of spice to make my bland anecdotes a dish worth savouring; his daubs of colour elevating a monochrome memory to a vibrant tableau.
I have no ending for this story. Perhaps Bruce took that with him too. He was not a writer by any means; but he always seemed to have the right words at the right time.
So I shall sign off with the phrase “here’s to swimmin’ with bowlegged women”.
You see? That means nothing to you, does it? Bruce would have found that hilarious.
Mark Anthony is editor of DemolitionNews.com
