We discovered on 18th January, via his daughter – one of the few remaining offspring still in contact with him – that he had died, nine days earlier on 6th January. That is nine days before she told anyone.
I always stated my intention to open up a good bottle of champagne the moment I heard the news of “M”’s death. “M” because I could no longer bring myself to mention him by his name. Then again my opinion was that this type of character would last forever – the bitterness within seething away for years to come. In the end it was cancer of the lung. A prolific smoker, having destroyed all his relationships, he concluded by destroying himself.
In typical fashion the last few months were chronicled by him via social media – photographic uploads of deathly selfies and still-lifes of medication piled upon trays next to his single bed in his solitary premises. Typical because it was still all about him. Besides the posts about God being his saviour and his aches, pains and chills through the winter, there was little remorse and certainly no sorrow for what he did to us. His followers appeared kind to him. It is not clear whether he had met any of them in person or not. They offered him sympathy, wishing him well for the Christmas period. That was his last post, dated 13th December.
I do feel sorry for the man, sorry that an intelligent and, frankly, interesting person could descend to such levels of despair. All those years when he dominated us, and yet now he was to end his final days in a tiny flat on a Leeds council estate, or in fact perhaps in hospital with no visitors. I wonder if he realised that as he breathed his last. Was he still so consumed with himself that he did not finally notice that no-one actually cared?
The other strange thought I am struggling with is that on 3rd January, three days before his death, I returned to his website, with morbid fascination during a lull in my working day, to spy on his profile. I presumed he had probably moved to France. He always dreamed of this and it was only his marriage to my mother at the time that prevented it. Again, there was something I had in common with the man, being a love of Europe and otherness, whereas my mother was transfixed by a Brexit obsession that I had recently come to despise. However, what I saw were the gruesome details of his above mentioned affliction, his pallid face staring ahead, other-worldly, thin and broken. His profile was set to public mode for all to see. My paranoia kicked in as I moused-over the details, terrified that I might inadvertently like a selfie or a post of religious supplication.
The problem I faced was whether the information I had acquired should be shared with the rest of the family before it was too late. They had all stopped contact with him following on from the divorce proceedings of 2010 to 2013. Yet did they have a right to know what I knew? I mulled over this knowledge for a further two weeks, not knowing that his life had already expired. In the end it was a text message from my mother that advised me that he was no more.
Actually he still is, in that his mortal remains are still with us. His “devoted” daughter, the one who secretly knew of his illness, the “trained psychiatrist” who was the only one to understand him (even though she left school with barely any A Levels and had been living the alternative life for years in a sub-prime existence in Bristol), according to a text from my mother, has passed on all responsibility to her sibling. The message I hear is that he will be cremated “eventually” – in other words at their convenience. I am currently pouring over these details like a soap opera, enjoying the pathos of this demised tyrant.
One of the possible advantages of these goings on, is that I’ve exchanged a number of text messages with my estranged mother. Estranged over Europe and the goings on around the 23rd June referendum. My family takes opinions to the extreme and we haven’t spoken in over a year. Neither have I with my half-brother, son of the aforementioned parents, who hadn’t spoken with his father since the Non-Molestation Order of 2010 where we first formally cut him out of our lives. He has been working for a high profile politician for a couple of years and we have fallen out over my insistence to correct his political views posted onto my timeline. The bitterness ensued by the demised-one had settled into other family relationships and was proving hard to shift.
I will be opening the champagne – at my convenience this weekend. I’m not going to let him have one last victory of giving me a hangover on a work day. The celebration is that the chapter can be closed finally, although I have a feeling that he has left behind some delights, whether in his will or in other documentation that might be found in his flat, whenever anybody bothers to look.
I always stated my intention to open up a good bottle of champagne the moment I heard the news of “M”’s death. “M” because I could no longer bring myself to mention him by his name. Then again my opinion was that this type of character would last forever – the bitterness within seething away for years to come. In the end it was cancer of the lung. A prolific smoker, having destroyed all his relationships, he concluded by destroying himself.
In typical fashion the last few months were chronicled by him via social media – photographic uploads of deathly selfies and still-lifes of medication piled upon trays next to his single bed in his solitary premises. Typical because it was still all about him. Besides the posts about God being his saviour and his aches, pains and chills through the winter, there was little remorse and certainly no sorrow for what he did to us. His followers appeared kind to him. It is not clear whether he had met any of them in person or not. They offered him sympathy, wishing him well for the Christmas period. That was his last post, dated 13th December.
I do feel sorry for the man, sorry that an intelligent and, frankly, interesting person could descend to such levels of despair. All those years when he dominated us, and yet now he was to end his final days in a tiny flat on a Leeds council estate, or in fact perhaps in hospital with no visitors. I wonder if he realised that as he breathed his last. Was he still so consumed with himself that he did not finally notice that no-one actually cared?
The other strange thought I am struggling with is that on 3rd January, three days before his death, I returned to his website, with morbid fascination during a lull in my working day, to spy on his profile. I presumed he had probably moved to France. He always dreamed of this and it was only his marriage to my mother at the time that prevented it. Again, there was something I had in common with the man, being a love of Europe and otherness, whereas my mother was transfixed by a Brexit obsession that I had recently come to despise. However, what I saw were the gruesome details of his above mentioned affliction, his pallid face staring ahead, other-worldly, thin and broken. His profile was set to public mode for all to see. My paranoia kicked in as I moused-over the details, terrified that I might inadvertently like a selfie or a post of religious supplication.
The problem I faced was whether the information I had acquired should be shared with the rest of the family before it was too late. They had all stopped contact with him following on from the divorce proceedings of 2010 to 2013. Yet did they have a right to know what I knew? I mulled over this knowledge for a further two weeks, not knowing that his life had already expired. In the end it was a text message from my mother that advised me that he was no more.
Actually he still is, in that his mortal remains are still with us. His “devoted” daughter, the one who secretly knew of his illness, the “trained psychiatrist” who was the only one to understand him (even though she left school with barely any A Levels and had been living the alternative life for years in a sub-prime existence in Bristol), according to a text from my mother, has passed on all responsibility to her sibling. The message I hear is that he will be cremated “eventually” – in other words at their convenience. I am currently pouring over these details like a soap opera, enjoying the pathos of this demised tyrant.
One of the possible advantages of these goings on, is that I’ve exchanged a number of text messages with my estranged mother. Estranged over Europe and the goings on around the 23rd June referendum. My family takes opinions to the extreme and we haven’t spoken in over a year. Neither have I with my half-brother, son of the aforementioned parents, who hadn’t spoken with his father since the Non-Molestation Order of 2010 where we first formally cut him out of our lives. He has been working for a high profile politician for a couple of years and we have fallen out over my insistence to correct his political views posted onto my timeline. The bitterness ensued by the demised-one had settled into other family relationships and was proving hard to shift.
I will be opening the champagne – at my convenience this weekend. I’m not going to let him have one last victory of giving me a hangover on a work day. The celebration is that the chapter can be closed finally, although I have a feeling that he has left behind some delights, whether in his will or in other documentation that might be found in his flat, whenever anybody bothers to look.
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