...the inevitable look back...

I spent today trying to keep busy. Trying to pretend it was any normal day off, I bought the paper, I did some shopping, I played guitar, I sketched and doodled, I fed and coaxed our new (and still slightly wild) cat into the house for a while. Yet still, when I'd note the time, my mind would wander back to where I was this day three years ago. Today, I've been awake since just before 6am. 3 years ago at that time, I was just after leaving his room to make a cuppa with my friends. We sat and talked on the couches in the hospice, took turns sleeping in armchairs and on the bedcouch in there, and listened to the world coming alive outside our window as our friend greeted his final morning.

Some moments spoke louder than others, his parents insisting we all get to spend a few minutes alone with him throughout the day....a drizzly dreary Thursday around the town....Stephen & I having a meal in the garavogue just to get out of the hospice for a little while and being amazed at the normality of the world around us....being in the room with him less than 1/2hr before he passed, as the Foo Fighters played quietly on his ipod....his raspy gasping stuttered breathing....Cathy's slow headshaking walk towards us as the Cathedral bells tolled the Angelus and we knew he was gone...and his amazing Uncle Tommy coming out to us a few minutes later to tell us everything about his final moments.
It's tough. And even though I've told myself it's getting easier as the years pass, it's not. I still miss him. I miss the way life used to be for all of us, especially Ger. I miss the knowledge that someone could crack the sickest joke, and McGarry would manage to top it off with something worse. I miss the random sincerity and beauty that would suddenly fly into rage and then back to quietly beautiful in his songs, I miss the effortless quips he'd make, and I miss him.

This night three years ago, I was sitting in Fureys, sipping a mug of tea whilst my friends sipped their pints. We could barely speak, all we could do was catch each other's eyes as Aoife Grennan sang every fucking sad song it was possible to sing. And yet, the one song that ran through my mind, from the moment I'd reached the hospice the night before was one that had comforted me when another friend passed away 12 years before that.

"time...is never time at all, you can never ever leave, without leaving a piece of youth....
and our lives are forever changed, we will never be the same...."

and the final verse...

"We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight...The indescribable moments of your life tonight...The impossible is possible tonight....
Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight "

We all believed he'd somehow beat the odds once he was diagnosed, and even in those final few hours, we hoped for the impossible. He was 6 hours short of his 30th birthday when he took his last breaths, and so tonight, I raise a cuppa in honour of him, his anniversary, his birthday and his general awesomeness. I miss my buddy.

 

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