When we were young.

A letter to my brother, Peter.

When we were young.

We were funny, we were quirky, we didn't conform. You were so handsome and gentle, so artistic.

I remember dancing the Blitz dance with you in those dark London clubs.

We came from Irish immigrant genes, and were born into 'Sixtie's London. The Sixties and Seventies were the backdrop to our childhood.

 Extreme but sparse, coarse but splendid in its lack.

Childhood days spent in the schools of Nuns and church. Dark energy swirled through those early years that affected us deeply. You never ever complained. We experienced such sadness but you always allowed for those who inflicted the blows.

Such tragedy in our little young lives but we knew of nothing else.

We grew within that kind of  fertiliser.  Still shining diamonds. Still hoping and expectant.

As teenagers we were furrowing inroads in the mud of those fields that lay open to us.

Not great, but we found humour and diversity. We both found that we both loved art. We could draw in ways that allowed us express the uncertainty in our souls.

Punks and drunk, laughing, sunshine fell in through loose tiles overhead. Funny and quirky.

We were fine.



Then you became ill with the intrusive abusive crushing diagnosis that gives no hope. But hope we did, right up till the end.

The 'illness' took you away from me.

As if you had died.

That day, I held you when the light went out from your eyes, and the light in my heart left me too.  God knows It was the beginning of  oblivion for you.

You were seventeen and I was eighteen.

You lived on, we both lived on, the harshness that never died, lived on.

We each trod our own path, the sun didn't shine much on either of us. The shadows stretched deep into the pockets of our souls and stayed there.

I grew into a maturity hewn by grief.

I stepped into the roles that I thought I should, but that never fulfilled me.

I morphed into motherhood and watched you from afar.

I shifted into and out of life's patterns, and kept calling your name.

Did you hear me tell you that I love you?

Did you hear me tell you that It will be alright?

Did you hear me try to soothe you?

As time dragged you on into the relentless oblivion, I tried to make sense of it, but I could not. My heart was completely broken, the 'illness' overshadowed both of our lives.

Grief was sitting like an infant on my hip and I could not grieve because you were still alive.

As I write I can feel the teardrops squeeze themselves over and out of my eye lids. Big and splendid, bruising my cheek as they fall like rocks into a quarry.

When you died, I cried.

I still cry now, 7 months later. I cannot visit your grave because you are not there.

I don't know where you are.

 I chat to you sometimes, before the grief kicks in and rapidly hollows me out like a stricken Yew.

I listen to your radio, the one which was your life's window to the outside world.

A world away from you, across a chasm.

The music that rattles through my kitchen now, once rattled through your kitchen. The place where you lived and the place I emptied of your things.

I still hold you in my mind, and feel your tired bones,  when you did not know that cancer was also gripping you.

Years and years of one kind of illness, to finally let cancer nurse you to death.

It came so silently that it lived with you long before we knew. You were so estranged from life that we could not guess.

We could not know, that cancer was taking what was left of you, and bit by bit, you were disappearing from us.



I listen to your radio, the one which played while I cooked for you.

I want to tell you about all the things I know now, about how magnificent it all is, then I think of us as little kids, and the strangeness of how it was.

I am so calm, so detached, so tired of it all now.

Sometimes I see the sunshine in your smile that stretches years into my soul. Sometimes we chat and

sometimes I just cry......

I remember dancing the Blitz dance in those dark London clubs. You were seventeen and I was eighteen.


Hear me say, I love you

Michaela.

My daughter at Peters grave .


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Note.  I wanted to reminisce about Peter dancing before he became ill. At that time the treatment of Psychotic drugs were just as destructive as the illness itself. Diagnosed schizophrenic, but a true gentleman.  He was dignified and never, ever, ever complained, about life and the harsh deal he was sent. He was gentle, kind, funny and loved music.

We danced the  Blitz dance  to most of the music that was iconic to the 80's New Romantic movement. We were punk versions of New romantics.

❚ As a decade the 70s spelt doom. British youth culture had been discredited by punk. A monumental recession followed the Labour government’s “winter of discontent”, threatening the prospect of no jobs for years ahead.+++
Yet from this black hole burst an optimistic movement the press dubbed the New Romantics, based on a London club called the Blitz. Its soundtrack was a pounding synthesised electro-pop created for the dancefloor by a studio seven-piece called Visage, fronted by the ultimate poser, Steve Strange. But the live band who broke all the rules were five dandies with a preposterous name: Spandau Ballet.
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As the last of the Baby Boomers, the so-called Blitz Kids were concerned with much more than music. In 1980 they shook off teenage doubt to express all those talents the later Generation X would have to live up to — leadership, adaptability, negotiating skills, focus. Children of the age of mass TV, these can-doers excelled especially in visual awareness. They were the vanguard for a self-confident new class who were ready to enjoy the personal liberty and social mobility heralded by their parents in the 60s.
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For Britain, the Swinging 80s were a tumultuous period of social change when the young wrested many levers of power away from the over-40s. London became a creative powerhouse and its pop and street fashion the toast of world capitals. All because a vast dance underground had been gagging for a very sociable revolution.
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“From now on, this will become the official history” — verdict of  a former Blitz Kid.
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Joy Division -See the following post for a video of joy Division's  Love Will Tear Us Apart (Video)       

We Danced to this track, its not really New Romantic but the techno sound was perfect for the dance. 

We were much younger,  our group of friends, at sixteen, seventeen and eighteen years  than the usual crowd at these clubs. But we always managed to pass through the doors, so we must have looked the part! We were often photographed as we travelled through the London Underground to get to the various clubs.

I loved joy Division then, now I have strange unease when I hear their music.        

                   

This is my tribute to my brother Peter who died, 12th January 2013, aged 46 years. His body finally gave in.