An extract from Wise Traveller: Loss

The last time I saw you, I wish we'd talked about the day of the picnic. It had been a glorious day and we'd spent all morning preparing the food. It made quite a spread when it was laid out. Then, as if it had been deliberately waiting for maximum effect, the heavens opened. Our food and our clothes were soaked in seconds. You just began laughing and soon I started laughing too, both of us sitting there in the rain with our sodden banquet laughing and laughing.

It was so good to see you laugh; you rarely found much to laugh about. Often, instead, you would tell me once more how ashamed you were of me, or how I should've worked at school. I would then respond as always by blaming you for ruining my life; telling you how it had felt to grow up with parents who were always fighting, and how impossible you were when you got drunk. And so we would argue. There was no laughter the last time I saw you.

The last time I saw you I wish I'd told you I loved you, and holding you close that I'd forgiven you. I knew how hurt inside you were too. I wish that had happened instead of the shouting, the stamped feet and the slamming door. But I didn't know it was the last time I'd see you, we didn't know how ill you were. Did you? If only I'd known the last time I saw you. So I'm saying now the things I wish I'd told you. I don't know if where you have gone you can hear me, but I hope it's a place in which you are laughing again. If you can hear me, hear what I really feel, forgive me for what I said the last time I saw you. And if there is a place where we will meet again and be able to say all the things face to face we didn't say before, then the next time I see you will be so much better than the last time I saw you.

Steve Hollinghurst

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