DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

How hard to break is the line of life? That very thing that separates us from eternity?

I’ve often wondered how close I have come to death since, well, since I first found out about death when my aunty died in 1977. I was 9, or 10. I was very young. To suddenly have someone disappear from your life at such an early age is not unusual. The circle of life and death is announced to us all at various stages of our lives and mine first  happened at 9, or 10.

Parents do a great job of shielding you from the outside world. They do such a good job that sometimes the outside world cannot get a look-in. But try as they may sometimes it peers into your world and shatters it in an instant. This was the case when my Aunt Lilly died of cancer in 1977. I had no idea what cancer was. I don’t even think I was told her cause of death, just that she was gone. It wasn’t spoken about. One minute she was there. The next minute she wasn’t.  I must have been told that she had gone to heaven, and that heaven was great and everything, but if it was so great why was everyone crying? I didn’t go to the funeral. It wasn’t ‘done’.

Around the same time that my Aunt Lilly died I remember that we had a girl at school called Claire. I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember her surname. Ashamed because she killed herself over the school holidays and she was my age, 9 or 10,  and I can’t even remember her surname. I do remember a school assembly after the holidays where we were all told that she had died but then nothing. I found out years later that she had killed herself. I suppose now we would all have had counselling or at least a group discussion about the effects. But it was announced in assembly as if it were a forthcoming jumble sale, though to be honest, we would have talked more about a jumble sale. I never found out the reason why she killed herself at such a young age. I still wonder.

My next brush with death was a little later, I must have been about 11. I was still at middle school so it would have been about 1978, or 1979. 

I was crossing the road at lunchtime in the days when kids used to come and go as they pleased through schools with no alarms, fences or security light. I was nipping down to the chip shop about 200 yards away. As I crossed the road I saw a lad from the year below me, a brother of one of my classmates. His name was Kevin. He was standing in the middle of the road and this confused me. He started to sway and stagger and I thought that he may have been hit by a car. I hadn’t seen him get hit by a car but why would he sway and stagger ? I walked towards him to see if he was alright. He collapsed to the floor. I now ran towards him and tried to speak to him. He was lying face up on the road. His eyes were open but he didn’t respond. I ran the twenty yards to the staff room and blurted out something about Kevin being hit by a car and then the grown-ups took charge. I remember blurs of bodies running towards Kevin, all the traffic stopping, and then an ambulance taking Kevin away. Kevin died of a brain hemorrhage I was later told by his sister. And then nothing. I don’t even recall telling my parents what had happened. I’m certain the school didn’t. Different times.

The next year. 1980. I was walking to school down the hill with a couple of pals. We always walked the same way there and the same way back. We chatted about football, Pannini stickers, TV and music. We were very ordinary. As we reached the bottom of the hill we looked up a side street. We saw an ambulance at the top of this street outside a house. It was too far away to see whose house it was and we did have a few friends who lived up there. We tried to guess why it was there and then went back to swapping football stickers and trying to guess next weeks number one. We were told a day or two later in school assembly that our friend, Robert, a ginger-haired lad who we used to play football with, had died of a heart attack in his sleep. Again, just a quick announcement at school and no further discussion. I really don’t think I told my parents. Such different times.

We used to go hunting for golf balls over a local wood. It was attached to a golf course and we used to wait for errant golfers to hit their wayward balls into the woods. We’d help them look for their ball, of course, before selling them one of ours we had found earlier, and always keeping the one they’d just hit stuffed right down our wellngton boot! This was something we used to do most evenings and weekends and there was a small gang of us involved in the fun.

One day in 1981 we were all prodding our sticks in the mud and dirt looking for golf balls when all of a sudden about 6 large men jumped out from behind the trees. We all dropped our sticks. It was very frightening. Although they weren’t wearing uniforms they informed us that they were police officers. We thought we were all going to be arrested for stealing golf balls! As it sadly turned out, we were in the woods at exactly the same time that a lady had been murdered whilst walking her dog. We later found out that it was the mother of one of our casual friends, Tina. Again, I don’t think the police even told our parents after they took our names and addresses. 

Four deaths in four years and nobody spoke about them. I often wonder what affect these tragic deaths had on me at such a young and transformative age? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

Not long after the death in the woods I was sitting at the dinner table in my parents house. I remember having, now, what I know to be a panic attack. I was taken out into the back garden but at the time none of us, my parents included, knew what was up with me. I continued to have panic attacks through 1981 up until 1986. They didn’t stop in 1986 it was just that this was when they stopped on a daily basis as I finally left school and didn’t have to endure the daily assembly where I honestly thought I was going to die every single time I attended. They were heartbreaking times to look back on. I had no one to talk to and no one could understand what was up with me. I didn’t know and I know my parents didn’t. Different times. I never even saw a doctor.

My panic attacks didn’t stop when I started work in 1986 but I managed to control them with alcohol. That is an entirely different story and one that deserves some time to process. Different times, again.