(The title is a song by Heavenly)
Tuesday 21st February 2017. I need to restart this diary. I deliberately took a break in the New Year because a couple of college tasks were getting on top of me: an MA essay and a proposal for a PhD. Then I had to revise the proposal for a PhD funding bid, so that went on even longer. But both tasks are over now. The essay won a First Class / Distinction – my third out of three so far. I’ll hear back about the funding soon.
Of the last few weeks, one event eclipses everything else. I have to get that – I want to say ‘out of the way’, but that sounds wrong. I’ve tried writing this entry so many times, then giving up. Death is hard enough to write about when the person is older and ill, as was the case with Dad three years ago. A much younger death is harder; a sudden death is harder still. Whatever I write, I will almost certainly make a mess of it. But I have to start.
Doing so on a birthday has an aptness to it. A new start.
So my younger brother Tom would have been 42 today. Born 21st February 1975. Died 25th January 2017. He was my only sibling.
This time last year, I took him for a Sunday lunch at the Crown and Two Chairmen in Soho. It was just the two of us, talking about music and TV comedy and life, passing the time, enjoying each other’s company.
He died very suddenly and very unexpectedly. He was working as a guitarist and musical director for Adam Ant’s band, and they had just begun a tour of North America. The person who called Mum from the New Jersey hospital was kind enough to wait a few hours until it was morning in the UK. Â Mum got the call in Suffolk soon after 7am on Thursday 26th. Then she called me. I got on the next train from Liverpool Street to Ipswich, then took a cab from the station to the village.
I spent the next two days staying with Mum, hardly leaving the house. I vetted the constant phone calls, and did my utmost to protect Mum’s nerves. I figured that a certain throttling back of the calls would be helpful: many callers simply wanted to leave a message of condolence, rather than have a conversation. So I answered the phone and tried not to pass every single call on to Mum, like a gatekeeper. As it was, some of her friends could barely speak with grief themselves.
When there were no phone calls, Mum and I just sat in the front room together, in silence.
Mum: I don’t know what to say.
Me: Well, there’s no manual.
But there was a little moment of black comedy. In the taxi on the way to Mum’s that first morning, I realised I didn’t have the cash for it – it was £30. I stopped the taxi at a service station on the bypass outside Hadleigh, the nearest town, where there was an ATM. Oone easily forgets about such rural rarities. As I came back out of the shop, I walked over to where the cab had stopped by the pumps and tugged repeatedly at the door handle. It seemed to be locked. I glanced in the windows to see that the cabbie had been replaced by a small terrified woman, who was doing a lot of head-shaking and finger-pointing. The wrong car. I seemed not to have registered the lack of a massive white ‘TAXI’ sign on the roof.
Looking around, I spotted the cab, parked further on in the forecourt. The cabbie was out of the car, waving to me. He’d moved to let others use the pumps, of course. Not that this occurred to me.
My own solipsism aside, I think there’s an element of (understandable) self-centredness with grief. Grief is the thing with blinkers.
***
Some thoughts about Tom.
Being a sibling is a predicament. Some are better at it than others. Like all younger siblings, Tom found himself thrust into a competition for attention, against someone who’d already had a head start. Indeed someone who might not be keen on sharing. But we shared our parents’ attention without too much conflict – I can’t recall any actual fights. When Tom was small we also shared a green metal bunk bed. I can’t recall if there were any arguments over who got which bunk; we just got on with it.
But I now realise how good Tom was at sharing. He could ascertain what other people wanted, and how strongly they felt about it, and work around that. It was a talent that not only won him many friends, but also served him well when playing in bands. Musical ability is not enough on its own. When a group splits up, it’s often due to the lack of another skill, one which Tom had in abundance: diplomacy. So in Tom’s case, a good brother made for an excellent band member.
And if music is territorial, then Tom was a skilled crosser of borders. There can surely be few guitarists who can move between playing for a daytime radio-friendly artist like Andrea Corr, and the rather more divisive Fields of the Nephilim. In fact, when Tom and I were growing up, we tended to divide up music like our bunk beds: I had the introspective indie bands, he had more outgoing acts like the Beastie Boys, Prince, and (usefully as it turned out) Adam Ant.
I have a very clear memory of Tom when he was aged about 6. It was at the Butlin’s holiday camp in Clacton in the early 80s. Like many small boys, Tom found himself dressed as a pirate at the slightest opportunity, complete with a cardboard cutlass. Butlin’s ran a children’s disco, and this included a chart hit of the time that managed to be compatible with both pirate costumes and child-friendly dance routines. It was ‘Prince Charming’ by Adam Ant. I can see Tom now, a tiny boy dressed as a pirate, throwing up his arms in perfect time, committing fully, taking it seriously.
When I think about Tom, I also have in mind the title of a recent film about the band The National. It’s really about the relationships between brothers, especially brothers who play music. The title is Mistaken for Strangers. That was often the case with Tom and me, perhaps because we had divided up our respective worlds so neatly.
But despite our differences, when I sometimes needed a guitarist for my own band Fosca, Tom would help out. We played concerts together in Sweden and Britain, and he played most of the instruments on the third Fosca album. I know the music wasn’t to his taste, but that didn’t stop him. It was the brotherly thing to do.
***
On the 2nd of February, Mum told me that Tom’s death had left all kinds of financial loose ends and costs to be paid, not least his funeral. It would be wrong to go into a list, but when one points out that he was a freelance concert musician paying rent on a London flat, people tend to understand.
Mum wondered if we could do the internet equivalent of passing round a hat. So I launched a fundraiser page. People had been asking us if there was anything they could do, and now we had an answer. What I especially like about the fundraiser is that it also lets people leave a little tribute message.
Online fundraising for funerals and memorials is quite a common thing to do these days. It’s a nice thing to do, too. It helps stop the salt of money worries being quite so rubbed into the wound of bereavement. People have been incredibly generous so far, and I’m very grateful. I’m especially touched to see the names of some old friends whom I thought I’d fallen out with, and would never hear from again.
It’s been a painful time, but, without intending a pun on an Adam Ant song (a 90s one I rather like), a lot of people have been rather wonderful. My thanks to them. And happy birthday, Tom.
The fundaiser is at: youcaring.com/tomedwards
3rd July 2008. Me, Mum, Dad, Tom.
Tags: Tom Edwards
