He was cremated at 9am this morning. That's the slot in the
crematorium that nobody wants. So, he had no mourners to recount tall stories
and no high praise for his charitable acts or simple acts of kindness to
strangers. But in truth there couldn't be any stories or praise as he was a self-absorbed
recluse. A man who lived apart. A man who was and will be easily forgotten. In
his past, he had loved and she had tragically died. They said he never
recovered. He then blamed his parents for imagined sins and found solace in
alcohol. He lost years of his life to this self-abuse and finally ended up in a
flat in Brixton. Alone and surrounded by music that he never listened to and
books that he never read.
This morning they slid him into the cremation chamber, locked the door and at the flick of a switch,
incinerated his flesh to ash. He is no more. His evil, for there was some,
lives on. His good is lost and unrecorded. But he was no Caesar. He was just a
man. Troubled by a life that never caught a dream or found a love. Yet he was a
story that is often told and a life that is duplicated by millions. I didn't
know him and I never met him. I can only wade through the detritus of his life
and bear witness to the squalor in the rooms he inhabited. I can only formulate
a theory as to how he lived and know with absolute certainty that he died alone
in a park.
But he was an artist. He had an eye for capturing the essence of a skyline or the gentle curve of a woman's lower
back. And he was also a writer haunted by deep black depressive thoughts which
were wrapped within a desperately lost soul. Yet he was still someone's son and
he was loved by a woman he called, Mum. So, in my heart I put aside the sins and
the crimes he visited upon others and instead imagine a newly born child in his
mother's arms. Then in that one perfect moment I whisper a
silent prayer for them both.
(For Sue and Malcolm)
