Maybe They're Not Gone,

Once a year, I get a little bit emotional. Okay, maybe a couple of times.

There are specific days within a year that I kind of forget how to cope with my life. There are three bigs ones, and two of them are really close together, which means I have a week of dark moods. Those days are the anniversaries of my nana and grandpa dying and the birthday of a friend who is no longer around.

I get quite badly affected by some things that happen in the world, and sometimes it doesn't make sense. Yesterday I woke up, as did most people, to the news that Bowie was dead. Bowie is dead, and it was more than a shock.

It's really strange because it feels like the first time my generation has experienced such a loss. I was born a couple of years after the world lost Freddie and almost a couple of decades after the death of Elvis. The only person that as a generation we lost on this scale was Princess Diana, and most of us were still just little people then. 

Chris Moyles reaction, most noticeable his statement that people like Bowie should not die, was the thing that got me. The thing is, they do, and they don't. 

Seeing the reactions of people across social media, speaking to people, everything yesterday proved that David Bowie is not dead. Everything that he created still exists, he can still be an inspiration as he has been, just as Freddie and Elvis still are. It's not the same, it can't be, but they are not gone. Not really. Not in the way that matters. They're still here like Salinger and Austen and Dickens. They will always matter.

Eddie,

Am I going to end up posting this? Probably. I tend to find that I write these little rambles and then post them on the internet because there are things I found a few years ago that helped me through some of the not-so-fun parts of my life. 

Some of my older friends have this label for me that I think they reckon is a bit of a joke, but to be perfectly honest, I think it's kind of completely true. I get the label of a 'sensitive soul', and I used to hate it, but now I realise that it just comes out of the fact that I invest a lot of emotion in people. 

Just over two years ago, I lost a friend I went to college with. These things are never easy, of course, but he was the last person I spoke to from my college and he kept telling me how great things were going to be when I moved to London. I loved him so much for it, because I had had a crap day and he knew it and I hated that when he needed someone, I couldn't be there for him. 

This boy This man was loved a lot more than I think even he knew. So much has been done in his memory by so many people, and it makes a lot of sense, because he deserved it. He was a really great guy, and a few weeks after I learnt what happened to him, I searched out the recordings I had made of my lessons which we were in together, but I wasn't ready for what I found. 

He quite honestly got so over excited about a sandwich that I remember thinking, it's just bread with a filling down the middle, calm down kiddo, but the words that skipped out of his mouth were "You're a lovey person, and I love ya." I heard his voice say those words, and my brain got confused, so I was crying because of missing him, but I had this beaming smile across my face, because I wasn't scared anymore.

When you lose someone so many things fly through your head, and it's very easy to let them attack your memories of that person. It's very easy to lose sight of a person, and I did that, but that voice, those few words, they brought him back to me. Those words let me have my memories back and not question them, and now I don't have to play it from my computer to hear your voice, because it's in my memory, and it's staying there.

So to you Eddy, I hope that you know, you are a lovely person, and I love you. Oh, and Happy Birthday.