Bye for now, John Joseph Walker

Social media...it's funny isn't it. Different things to different people. For me it's a place to share trivial goings on...funny things kids say, minor frustrations, silly photos, the odd vaguely sentimental comment. Then something awful happens...and you're faced with a choice. Share your pain with an odd community - of real friends, real family, some people you haven't seen for years but who you think you'd still feel exactly the same about, some people who you haven't seen for years and who you're not sure you would actually recognise if you clonked trolleys with them in Asda. So what do you do? Post an untypically sad status and face interrogation? Carry on as normal but feel uneasy that you're adding to the sense that life is going on when actually you feel like it should stop. At least for a while?

A week ago today we lost our lovely John. I keep describing him as "our best friends' dad (and yes the apostrophe is in the right place because there are two lovely brothers that are our friends). But that doesn't entirely do him justice. He was our close friend too, and neighbour, and surrogate dad. Today would have been John's 64th birthday. How odd that a year ago he never would have imagined the next birthday would have been spent surrounded by quite so many friends, so many family, so many cars parked in the ditches, blocking each other in, end to end, side to side. Nobody needing to go anywhere in a hurry, because everyone they cared about was in the same place.

The service was lovely. The tissues were insufficient. Maybe he would have been more likely to have imagined the latter part of the day - people laughing and drinking in the Valley...playing darts, talking about the fact that they should probably be on their way home, whilst ordering just one more pint...

Oh John. We will all miss you so much. Your beautiful eyes, your snow-attracting 'tash, your humming, strumming, dozing...all the over-spilling milky coffees, the perpetual patience and contentedness with life. We are all so sad.

----
After glow
I'd like the memory of me
to be a happy one.
I'd like to leave an after glow
of smiles when life is done.
I'd like to leave an echo
whispering softly down the ways,
of happy times and laughing times
and bright and sunny days.
I'd like the tears of those who grieve,
to dry before the sun,
of happy memories
that I leave when life is done.