From the urgency with which my son passed on the message to contact him immediately, I knew my brother’s news could only be bad.  Death swooping down from a clear sky without so much as a wingbeat to alert its unsuspecting prey.  The unmistakeable tremble in the voice.  We had just finished a three-course late lunch and were foraging in different shops to ease the pain of the inevitable eviction at the end of the holiday.

I did not even hear the phone ring before he picked up the receiver.

“Is Dad dead?” in place of a greeting, the logical question, although my mind rejected such a proposition as we had only just seen him and he had seemed in perfect health.

“No, Wayne”.

“A car accident?”

“No, suicide”.

When I plunged the kitchen knife into my stomach, it had been an act of protest, the wine-ignited fury of a spurned lover, a spontaneous act of self-immolation intended to punish another, my left hand permanently bearing the trace of where he retrieved the blade I stubbornly clasped.  He bundled me into a taxi at my request, and I shivered uncontrollably in my hotel room all night.  My cousin was possessed of a dreadful calm, stripping his bed, washing and ironing the linen, folding it neatly, dusting his room, leaving it immaculately tidy, preparing notes, wrapping a birthday present for his brother, feeding the cat and eating lunch before retreating into the recesses of the garden.

My handsome cousin, always carefree, face never clouded with grief, at least in public, warm, friendly, uncomplaining, yet latterly refusing to leave even the confines of his room.  I am familiar with that heaviness in the chest, that immobilising apathy, draining colour from the brightest sky so that its very cheerfulness taunts you with its indifference towards your numbness, the brutal knowledge of the overwhelming futility of our every thought and feeling leeching the taste from each morsel.  I understand.  That loneliness, which the presence of others only serves to exacerbate, which gnaws at the living marrow, the disjointedness of watching them laugh and turn up for work punctually, mouthing the occasional resentment, yet perhaps finding some comfort in the sheer repetitiveness of the routine, the detachment from the gaudy parade of their bickering, conformity and ambition.  Now that I am older, still not reconciled, I know that oblivion will seek me out.  Better to emulate the butterfly in its erratic flight, sipping nectar and spreading its wings in the sunshine as it rests on brick or stone.  Driving through the golden fields of ripe wheat with the mountains spread before me, I could draw on their healing powers and nothing could persuade me to exchange the sound of the wind in the branches and the melancholy hoot of the owl from the opposite shore for the unrelenting silence.  If only we could have reached him, hauled him back.

Here the branches are groaning with pears, purple damsons, blushing apples and ripening peaches.  I had never tasted sweetness to compare with the grapes I picked from the vines entwined around the fence.  So very incongruous when they will soon be gathering to pay their respects in subdued tones over tea and sandwiches, sombre-suited with traditional Scottish dignity and restraint.  The brave faces concealing to perfection the aching hearts.

And still I cannot be with you, my presence symbolically marked by a wreath ordered online with all the trite convenience modern consumer society can offer.  I will enter an alien and sanctified space for you, all of human ingenuity and artifice directed towards the unfeeling heavens in the yearning for something more, creative effort desperately concentrated to propitiate, an act of supplication against the restlessly grinding teeth of time, sandstone depictions of praying hands crumble, even granite cannot withstand the onslaught forever.  I will light a candle, a tiny, guttering flame in the cool vaulted interior alongside so many other offerings and unheeded pleas.

Sleep well, my darling boy, untroubled by regret-tinged dreams or the demons that lurked in your shadow.  Sleep well and know that you will always reside in the hearts of those you left behind.