Richard

I was asked to say a ntew words at Richards funeral. I spent nights in the days before, writing stuff down, I was usually tired or a little drunk and passionate and grief stricken as he has left me like no one else ever has. Death came to me quite young, a few grandparents dropped from old age or working class stuff, poor diet, alcohol, tobacco. Then when I was 9 my mother asked me if I thought we could get along without her. I didnt really know. Cancer ripped through her like a stuhl saw and she was dead and I was 12. My dad couldnt cope with three kids, our clothes didnt get washed, the electric got cut off, we ran wild and my dad slumped off in an alcoholic blur. Total freedom to fuck up. He loved my mum , had three kids, found paradise and had it ripped from under his feet. He never recovered or returned to his class routes, I dont know. I dont think I have. I have inherritted his pattern of work hard all day then drink your evening in to unconsciousness, sometimes, when the drink gets too much I replace it with a period of heroin t6o let my body have a rest, backed up with a benzo support. I stopped the rock but the odd treat dont go amiss, but money and availabillity protect me.
So I rolled in to my teens, linking up with other disfunctional kids from broken homes. I got to know Richard when I was mid teens and something clicked. He had middle class downwardly mobile parents who were deeply politically aware. I came from working class, upwardlly searching broken dreams and somewhere in the middle we could see the sparkle in each others eyes. Richard suffered from cerebral palsy, like Ian Dury, half his body was sound, the other half withered but most people only noticed his good side, he often just saw his weak side. .I suppose he must have developed body language to disguise his difference. I never saw it or rather never thought about it as much as I should have. He got girls. His charm carried him through but he couldnt see that we saw the charm and not the disabillity.
I stayed up with him when my dad was ill for ten months. My dad fell and bled in his skull. Doctors thgought it was a stroke and only after pressurising them for days as I watched him dieing did they scan his head, see the truth, drill two holes in his skull and drain the blood out. the bruising was bad and I hasd to move back to my hiome town, Leeds, to keep an eye on things. I got work up there and Richard put me up. He just drank special brew and took lots of heroin, he was selling it so the house was always busy. Plenty of pipes got me through. I saw him meet a girl, an enchanting prostitute who he through his life aay for. The toxicology report said he had loads of methadone in him but when I knew him he rarely touched the stuff. I think he suicided. Just did all his drugs in hoping never to wake up.
He had been beaten and abused for two years because he loved the wrong girl.
At his funeral I couldnt get my words out but promised to make a piece for his grave. He had a green burial where only a tree is allowed. So I carved a block of oak and left it where the green graves drift off in to the undergrowth. I went to put it there in the night with Claire, poured a 4 pack of special brew on to the ground under which his body lays, took an abundance of licks and layed the piece in place.

A year later, his father, John died and was buried in the same area of Lawnswood cemetry in leeds . I arrived early to see if the gardeners had moved my piece for Richard but it is still there for those who are careful enough to look