After losing your way across the star-riddled skies
To carry you home.
I cherish my loss,
To remind me
That life is unkind at the best of times...
Brace yourself, 'cause I think I'm coming for you. Look up to the sky.
Home could be anywhere, when I'm holding you...
-"Adieu" - Enter Shikari
They cremated you today, in the West Chapel at Daldowie Crematorium in Uddingston. I watched from a few rows behind as your parents, two blood siblings and the ex-girlfriend who later became your sister wept in the messiest mixuture of heartache, grief and sorrow that I've ever come to witness. I've witnessed it a couple of times in the last two and a half weeks...the longest two and a half weeks of their lives...and they still have the rest to go.
They cremated you today.
I won't pretend that we were best friends. I won't pretend that we were close. I won't pretend that despire that, despite my various failed attempts to keep in contact with you as we are the generation of social media...the thought that the last time I saw you alive was 2009 has blurred my keyboard. The tears have started again. The young man that I was once close to...who I would play with, fight with, love unconditionally and - more than anything - wanted to be your friend...he's not here. It's days like this where I wish I still held even the smallest shred of religious belief. Today, I just wanted to look at the cross above your coffin and hope the man in the sky they hold it for existed in my head and heart. It doesn't. I can't change that. Just...today, I suppose it would have been a small comfort.
They cremated you today.
Your dad's accident didn't stop him. Your grandfather's poor health didn't stop him either. Your brother, your uncle (my father), and two of your friends carried you into the little hall, laying you on the...I don't even know what it's called. The thing that would later take you through a little metal door to be cremated and your ashes placed in an urn. That's how much you meant to those two men. You remember your dad's accident in the high winds, right? He got his back brace off last week. Your brother's girlfriend says the scar on his head reminds her of the Pepsi logo. She's also scared of it. How did a member of our family get a partner with a weak stomach?! I'm sorry, I keep sidetracking when I'm trying to talk to you. But your dad was told he shouldn't carry you when his brace was removed...he did it anyway. He is part of the reason you ever came into the world, and though it is not the order of things, he wanted to see you out of it...be there for you as he had always been. Your - our - grandfather...well, we both know how his health has been for at least six years. That's...that's how much you mean to them. Their health wasn't a contributing factor to their wishes. You would probably have told your father where to go and I wouldn't have blamed you...but you know what dads are like. Your father mightn't be my blood. but his temperament certainly makes him just like my father. Though I must admit, your father and brother...somewhere around the 5'5-8 mark(?) allowing for one's loss of inch after the accident carrying you with granddad and my father and your two friends, all at least 5'11, was quite the sight to see. It amused us all, and would have done to you too.
They cremated you today.
Only one person talked about the tragic loss of life; the priest. I don't know if you knew him, ever met him...I don't know what your beliefs were like, if you went to chapel on a Sunday or if you believed in a God at all. It was a strange affair. This man, speaking matter of factly about the youbg man who loved his life and all within it, who mentioned stories but never really said anything about them. He mentioned you once fought off someone who was bullying your sister and your efforts saw you get a black eye. How you ran into a wall playing basketball and broke your toe in two places. But that was all he said...there was nothing about the valiant young boy that you were, who did what any big brother would do for his younger siblings. There was nothing about the young boy, later young man, who didn't complain about any injury unless it was important. I know your parents and siblings would have been unable...I doubt our shared grandparents or your father's parents would have been up to it either...I guess it's just the selfish part of me wanting something more personal for you, a one of a kind that I will miss so much.
You would have laughed at your parents' choice to play "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift. You would have laughed with your siblings, cousins and friends. I doubt you would have hid from the shame of that being made public, as Taylor Swift is no longer considered a "guilty pleasure", though I cannot see the appeal personally. Even if she were...it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you would do. You never hid who you were, what you liked, what you didn't like. I know you would have laughed as we all did, simply because it doesn't seem like something particularly appropriate for a funeral.
We went to a little place near the M74 for the wake. I sat with your blood siblings. Talked and laughed with them. I don't even remember what we talked about. I remember the older sister walked away to speak to others while your brother and his girlfriend spoke to my siblings and I. Largely, other than being reminded of something that sets us all apart from many families in that we do not call our father "dad" and honestly, I don't think we ever have, I don't remember what we talked about. I remember much laughter though. It felt good to be around them again. It's a pity that it was your death that brought it about. We would have loved your company for the conversation.
They cremated you today.
Typing that sentence over and over again...it's almost as if I'm trying to convince myself that it's real. For almost three weeks, I've been living in this denial that you are still here...that I can go to that little house in the east end of Glasgow, ring the bell with my own son in arm and see you. Something I'd never done before...that I'd been meaning to do. That now, I'll never get to. And that is going to eat at me for the rest of my life.
It's a little like how I'm writing this. Why am I writing it? You're never going to see it, and it's addressed to you. The only logic I can think of is that it's some kind of therapy, though if you can tell me what kind of therapy causes you to cry at least six times you're doing better than I am!
I should close this. I don't know how. There's so much I want to say to you. So much I want to tell you. Like I want to know how we were in similar social groups as teenagers but never saw each other. I showed a picture of you to a friend who then told me she'd kissed you in the Cathouse unders. A story I always took with a pinch of salt, though, considering she liked to kiss people. The number of teenage boys with fringes like yours was alarming in 2006!
That and more. So much more that I'll never be able to tell you. I know you had a good life, and that's what's important. It's not about me, though it would seem that it is from this letter. Though it is my letter to you. So if I'm wrong, and there is an afterlife...have a ball up there.
Sleep well, Michael.
I love you.
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