Fucking hell, got shiny eyes reading this lot. Rest In Peace all you lost souls.
Family wise I've got my Uncle Steve, who died from meningitis back in 89 - it was the year when there was one of those MASSIVE flu epidemics going round, and so of course to start with the doc just said "Flu" and gave him the brush off. 3 or 4 days later he was dead.
He was my favourite Uncle by a long shot, when I was 7 or 8 he used to let me steer his Mercedes down the driveway back to his house, and then he'd say "C'mon gang" and me and my cousins would all jump out. The softest sweetest guy you'd ever meet, warm personable and pretty much my hero as a kid.
Then there's my Aunt, our Alma was a pocket battleship - 4'10" of Scouse powerhouse. I remember on her 60th birthday we'd hired this place out for her do in the back room of a pub, blues band in and all that malarkey, and come the end of the night she was in tears remonstrating with the owner to let us stay until 3. As a kid, when I went round hers, there was no way you weren't finishing you food - if your plate wasn't clean she'd come over and say "C'mon Daniel, down the red lane" and she's not the sort of woman you say no to - she lived in Bootle, and one night there was this lad taking a proper fucking pasting off a few blokes in the middle of the night - Alma leaned out of her window and shouted "Hey you! You leave him alone, don't make me come down there!" and you know what - they fucking scarpered.
I like to think that even as the reaper came to collect she gave him a look and he gave her a wide berth. She was a strong woman, in every sense of the word, but the fucking cancer got her. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (which basically means if they've figured out you've got it, it's already too late - very aggressive strain) but she fought it all the way. I don't think I've seen a sadder thing than seeing her in the hospital, just a couple of weeks before she passed, skin hanging from her bones like hand me down clothes, and no fight left in her. Love you Al
Next up is the Nan, cancer again, bowel this time I think. Hers was a lot more drawn out, she was in the hospital for what seemed like an age, and in some respects I think it's almost easier in a way to lose someone suddenly than to have to watch them gradually fall apart over time.
I remember visiting her after she'd had some of the chemo (or was it chemo, it might have been radiotherapy actually) anyways, she was in there and they had her hooked up to this morphine drip that she could administer herself, and though she was smiling at us and seeming in reasonable sorts, you could tell she was just sort of nodding and not really taking anything in. Her little morphine drip made a small 'beep' everytime she pushed the button, and she was fucking caning it like a trooper. Every couple of minutes or so there'd be this little 'beep', and it'd be like an "Ahem" into the conversation, there'd be this pause before we went on.
I think wherever possible, you should always try and take the positive from whatever you can, and if one good thing came of my Nan's death, it was that it helped her and my Mum reconcile their differences before it was too late. My Mum had a pretty shitty childhood at the hands of her Mum, and she fucking hated her. The only reason she got back in contact with her was because she wanted my and my bro to know who our Nan was, but she still fucking hated her. When Nan got cancer and Mum realised she could and probably would lose her, I think it forced her to deal with all of those emotions and come to terms with them, and even after all the shit that went on - she finally realised she still loved her mother. What cancer gave, a few months later it took away again.
Okay, next up (sorry, this is taking a while, isn't it?) Yeh Yeh, my paternal grandfather, one of the most decent and honourable men there ever was. As an example of the kind of man he was, when my grandmother's father was caught for fraud, Yeh Yeh took the fall for it so that my great grandfather (who had a very important role in the business community) would not lose face. When my other great grandfather (his Dad) passed on, my Dad (as eldest son of the eldest son) was due a portion of the inheritance, which would have amounted to £400K. Yeh Yeh decided that instead of giving it to his son, as was expected by tradition, he would give it to his sister, who had severe disabilities and required constant medical attention (it was just a shame her fucking playboy kids went and blew it all on themselves instead).
Around 2000/2001 he had a stroke, but survived. He'd already had emphysema for a few years from smoking 60 a day, so when the doctors put him on drugs (to recover from the stroke) that caused respiratory problems as the contraindications, it was hardly the smartest fucking move in the book. Y'see, the thing is with the Chinese is that they're a bunch of sly money grabbing cunts, and if you go to hospital you have a choice over the level of healthcare you get - let's call it A, B or C for arguments sake. Now if you choose B, everything is twice as expensive as C and ditto A to B - and I mean *everything* is twice as expensive, even the drugs, even the same fucking drugs that only cost you x will now cost you 2x or 4x. So that people can't just go out and buy their own shit, they peel the labels off the bottles so that you don't know what they are, but my Dad managed to get a mate of his who's a pharmacist to check out what they had him on, and basically he didn't need any of it - the doctors just thought "Oh, he's had a stroke, we'll put on this, this and this".
Not only did he not need it, some of it was actually fucking him up. He was taking so many pills and shit that he was starting to trip out, he'd wake up in the night screaming with night terrors, and because the pills were affecting his respiratory system he found it hard to breathe and had to have oxygen. Had he listened to my Dad instead of the doctors and not take anything at all, he probably would have recovered, but he placed his faith in them and was rewarded with an early grave. I blame those cunts for taking him away from us, and I'm still bitter as fuck about it to day, they fucking killed him just so they could make a buck the pricks.
Last of the family now (although arguably so). When I was 17 we had my Stepdad's little bro come over and stay with us who was only a couple of years older than me. He stayed for a few months and was a really sweet guy, really sensitive and caring, funny and cool, and one of the few people from Mike's family that actually made the time for Mum and tried to make her feel welcome. While he was over we'd had some good chats and he'd talked a bit about how he hated his job and how he felt his life wasn't really on track. At the time I guess we were both going through that sort of late-teenage angst thing where you're still trying to come to terms with your emotions and feelings, which can be a terribly lonely time - you feel like no-one else is going through what you're going through (which is *so* far from the truth, but hey) - so when you meet a kindred spirit it's kinda nice to be able to relate in that sense. He stayed until January so that he could be the best man at My Mum and Stepdad's wedding.
The week after he went home to Australia. The first Monday he was supposed to be back at work his folks got a phoncall asking if he was coming in, which they thought was weird because he'd left for work that morning. They got people out looking for him, eventually there was a state-wide search. He'd driven about 100km up the coast and stuck a hosepipe in the exhaust, and by he time they'd found him the fumes combined with the baking heat had vastly accelerated the decomposing process and . . . well, lets just leave it at eh?
Okay, finally, Mad John who I went to college with in Wales. What can I say, he was a total buzzer - I think most people have probably known a Mad John at some point in their lives, and some live up to it and some don't. This one definitely did, he was from North Wales, and firmly out of the hippy trippy psychedelic trance/mushies/bonging crew. He smoke bongs like I smoked spliffs (and I used to smoke A LOT back then) but was never monged out or slack, he was full of beans all the time constantly "on one" and just one of those irrepressible personalities that kind of rubs off on you - in some senses he was almost childlike in his outlook on life, but in a good way. He was never cynical about anything or snide or moany, just bursting with enthusiasm and good feeling. It made me happy to be around him.
I didn't keep as much contact as I would have liked when I moved down to Brighton, but I saw him when I went back. The last time I'd seen him he was in a bit of a state - just had a huge barney with his girlfriend and ended up headbutting the front door and cracking both panes of the double glazing, so we didn't really get to chat or nothing. Later that year (in fact it must have been around September, as I remember missing the first week of college because of it) I went on holiday with me Mum, me cousins, and my Auntie June down in Devon. When I got back, and returned to somewhere that had mobile phone signals, I'd got a voicemail from my mate from college saying "Dan, you really need to ring me, it's important"
I phoned him up and he said "Mad John's gone" - I'm thinking he's meaning he's gone travelling or something, so I say "Oh yeah, gone where? Anywhere nice?" - so he has to spell it out to me and it's like a punch in the guts. Things had all been going a bit wrong for him, and he'd been back in North Wales seeing his mates and talking funny - apparently he was saying how he was gonna cath up with all of these people, but all of the people he was mentioning were dead. They put it down to him being a bit pissed and random (and he always was a bit random anyway) so they though nothing of it. When he went home he'd missed his train, so he decided to walk home along the tracks, but while there were still trains on it.
The driver said that he saw him standing in the middle of the tracks, he blared his horn but all he did was pull his hood up and cross his arms.
Shine on you crazy diamond. On and on and on and on, Oi Oi! Thatsaboy!
I loved you all in your own ways, RIP
Shocking to think he only found out he had cancer less than 2 weeks ago.
