David

& fuck Valentine's Day

I think about David near constantly, it seems. I’m in touch with his Dad - an amazing man with exactly David’s sense of humour - who I never would have met but for the death of his son, my friend. I think it would be too much if I let him know every time David comes into my mind, because it’s about 40 - 50 times per day. I try to let him know sometimes. I don’t know if it helps him, but it helps me.

Just now, I was correcting a typo in my last post. I was skim reading and my eyes fell on “Jeff Buckley’s ‘Last Goodbye’”. Instantly I remembered David and I lounging in my living room, taking turns on Spotify, playing it, and shouting over the excessive volume to tell David “I want this at my funeral”. He didn’t know the song. He didn’t do contemporary music (so weird) and was unimpressed with my selection.

A few months later, I was at David’s funeral. A day I can’t think of without physical hurt. Like a punch in the chest.

We didn’t have any friends in common, so I had grieved him alone for the few weeks since I’d received the text.

Him: Have you seen the news?

Me: No why?

Him: David Knowles died of a heart attack

Me: What

Me: David?

Me: My David?

Him: Yep

I arrived at the church alone, wearing a hat I had hastily stitched together myself, because I didn’t want anyone to be able to see my face. I wanted to wear a shroud. Or at least a veil, like Jackie at JFK’s funeral. I wanted to cover my hair.

I can’t explain these feelings. I couldn’t in September and I can’t now.

I also couldn’t - and can’t - explain that I wanted to look beautiful. It was the same when I read that David’s photograph had been added to the journalist’s altar at St Bride’s. I did my best hair and make up, like I was getting ready for a date, drove there, and sat alone in the echoing, empty church, staring at his picture. I suppose I wanted, somehow, in whatever ridiculous way, to represent him well. To be a good reflection of him.

David was so beautiful. I know he thought I was attractive, but I thought he was beautiful. So beautiful.

He was a wally, too. Very impressive, with deep integrity, but a wally. Absent-minded, disorganised, self-diagnosed with ADHD. When he tried to break up with me kindly, he fumbled it. When he tried to chat me up again, he fumbled it. But whenever else we talked, we understood each other perfectly.

I find it difficult to imagine ever feeling about someone else the way I felt about David. And with Valentine’s being shoved down our throats at every moment for a full month, I have had plenty of time to reflect on it. Sometime I’ll tell you about how we met, and why I knew that instant that he was a good’un. And how I got a thrill every time he sent me a text or responded to an Instagram story, even after we agreed to ‘just’ be friends.

‘Just’. A word that tastes like poison. As if friendship is the consolation prize, when in fact, friendship is all there is. There are friendships with sex and cohabitation. There are friendships with co-parenting and shared bank accounts. But there is a bitter taste in my mouth to even think that we were ‘just friends’, to even think that romantic love is a greater goal than friendship.

When I left David’s funeral, I wasn’t alone. Arriving (and trying to be inconspicuous despite being the only person present wearing a hat and we’re not talking fascinator) I squeezed on to the end of a pew, surrounded by strangers, hiding behind my hat. Before the service had even begun, I was visibly and audibly sobbing such that the two women sitting to my left offered me a tissue.

HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN TISSUES? IT’S NOT LIKE THIS WAS MY FIRST FUNERAL.

As David’s coffin was carried out of the church, it was all I could do to stop myself screaming, “Please, please don’t take him away. Please don’t take him away. PLEASE DON’T TAKE HIM AWAY” I could barely stay on my feet and one of the women put their arm around me to hold me up.

As we walked out of the church and down to the after party (‘reception'? ‘wake’?), one of the two women said “I love your bracelets”. I had made four of those dumb, Eras tour friendship bracelets. One said ‘David’, the others were ‘peace’, ‘slava Ukraini’ and ‘fuck Putin’.

Both women, I learned, had worked with David. They knew him as a colleague and friend. They were the kindest, best two people - I think - in the history of the world because they held me up that day, not only in the church but for however long we were at the after party . They made me laugh hysterically, let me cry almost constantly, let me talk and talk, and each gave me their phone number so that we could keep in touch.

Fuck romantic love. This year, I will be that ‘bitter single woman’ who hates Valentine’s Day. Because at the moment, I hate anything that adds to the cacophony of nonsense that tells us all that romantic love is the pinnacle of human relationships.

Do you know how I know it isn’t? Not because I spent ten years working with unravelling families. Not because the biological reality is that romantic love is an aberrant spike of brain chemicals. Not because of that study that came out recently about how men abandon their wives if the wife becomes ill. Not because my father watched his wife die at age 40 and was left a widow with three pre-teens. Not because my father’s fiancé watched her future plans die with him when a ferocious brain tumour killed him, aged 45. Not because romantic love can walk away without warning.

But because when any of those things happen, it is your friends who hold you up.

The fact that our romance was short lived has no bearing on the deep, deep love I have for David. When it was clear that we were romantically incompatible, and he offered me friendship, I said “I would love to be your friend”. And I meant it sincerely. And I would not trade a moment of that friendship for anything, even if it has made me feel at times that I would not survive the pain of losing it.