Paul (1949 - 2008)
A Family Photo
Of the four people in this photograph, taken in Uganda in the early 1950s, two [2023: three] are now dead.
My mother died in September 2005. My brother Paul, who is the curly-haired toddler sitting on her lap, died in January this year (2008), just four days after his 59th birthday.
The dark-haired boy is me; the little blonde girl is my sister Theresa. (My sister Elizabeth was not born for several years after this.)
Saying Goodbye
The three living siblings were all able to attend Paul's funeral. I came up from Calpe, with Theresa, who happened to be staying with me (with her friend Pat) on a trip from Australia. Elizabeth and her husband Rod flew from Australia especially to be there.
We were joined from England by my son Piers, my daughter Imogen, my grandson Bradley and my cousins Peter and Linda, and from Madrid by at least a hundred friends and colleagues of Paul's.
Another Family Photo
This photo was taken in 2005, just after my mother's eighty-fifth birthday. As in the older photograph, my mother is in the centre, but with many more people about her—in fact, all her children, all her grandchildren, and all her (then) great-grandchildren.
Paul is immediately to my mother's right, clasping a can of beer.
“I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day”
(Hopkins: My own heart let me more have pity on)
February 2008