UNSPOKEN NO MORE

At the weekend, I was among a large group that came together to celebrate the life of a close friend who passed ten years ago. I’d first met Ian when we were both 18, and we were both freshly-minted students at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. He was one of those people that fully embraced his quirkiness, and we all loved him for it.

Yesterday, I spent much of the day reflecting on the weekend, and this poem decided to make an appearance. While it was always clear just how much we all loved each other, the actual words would go unspoken. That has changed now, and I like to think of that as a gift that we all received from Ian.

When I sent this to those of us who stayed with Ann Marie, here’s the note that I sent with it.

I’ve spent much of the day thinking about the weekend, and about how much each and every one of you mean to me. The lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ have been playing in my head, in particular the line “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”. The thing is that I used to think that I did know what we had in Ian, and that we’d always have him. It turns out that I didn’t know what a big hole his passing would leave in my life, nor how each and every one of us would come together to hold each other up. I keep getting this image of Ian with that faux-indignation of his, saying “you bastards” for us having so much fun together without him, except he truly was so very much there with us.