foxonthego

The news arrived in a text message… it wasn’t a surprise but it hit hard. I wrote about my friend Ian in an earlier post and the news was about his passing… before we made peace and I will forever regret that I did not contact him sooner. Grief is a terrible thing, a powerful thing. Something private and yet something to unite and share. I spent the day yesterday talking to many of the women he’d loved over the years… now in Germany, Australia, Canada, Mexico…

So many tears… so much sadness at the years lost past and future…

I wrote on the memorial site:

this morning i got news that one of my oldest and dearest friends passed away. for almost 3 decades we fought and loved, cried until we laughed and laughed until we cried together. nobody could make me laugh like ian. nobody could make me madder than ian. nobody could make it more real than ian… When he was on fire he was ferocious… the old stallion, brother i never had… no words for how much i will miss him.

His mother sent me a message after my post. We’d met at uni so I never knew his mother. Strange that I knew so much about him, considered him to be like a brother and yet there were so many parts of his life that were not part of my experience of him. His mother asked me how I knew him. Strange in a way that although we’d been  such close friends all these years his mother didn’t know who I was either. She wrote: I  laughed, cried and fought with Ian but loved him with all my heart.  I do not know how to carry on. I wrote her a long warm note and sent some pictures of his last visit with me, of the two of us laughing. I can only imagine how devastating it must be to lose your child…

His ex’s are similarly devastated and we’ve shared laughter through the tears at his many antics over the years, remembering the good times. He could be hysterically funny at times. Just never knew when to stop… He was his own worst enemy when it came to love. His relationships were always intense and intensely volatile and for the most part with highly intelligent and, often, highly strung women. He pushed everything to the limit, provoked and taunted. He somehow always managed to destroy what was good and then couldn’t bring himself to make amends. A certain fatalism. Sadly, over the past few days of reflecting on him and his life, I’ve begun to realise, to suspect, that he didn’t feel he deserved to be loved somehow. I know he deeply regretted the hurt he caused but didn’t know how to undo it.

It’s fascinating reading the posts from others in his life. The comments of colleagues and his students and friends I don’t know from his daily life in another part of the world. As with his mother, so many aspects of him that were not part of my experience of him. Intimate friends for years and yet so much missing in our understanding of each other… It’s given me a new appreciation for him and an even deeper sadness that we haven’t got more time together. What struck me most was the many comments about his sophisticated musical tastes. Seems he was a classical music lover. I have no musical associations with him. Not even a genre. I can’t even imagine him listening to music. One of his ex’s posted a Bob Dylan song in memory of him… really? would never have guessed! she said he loved it and sang the lyrics a thousand time…they are somehow fitting now…

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune, bird fly high by the light of the moon…