Five Years

Five years ago today I tragically lost a very good friend. How strange that time has been.

I often find myself thinking of him, wondering what he would make of the world as it is today.

There is no doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t have been happy with the ending of Peep Show or the way things have changed at work, or in the wider world, but I hope that in some way I am carrying the torch for him. Losing a friend when they are just twenty-seven years old is fucking gutting. Realising that you have passed the age they will always be is a weird thing to comprehend. All of us are changing so much. We are having kids and getting ourselves wrapped up in mortgages. The jobs we had for a laugh so we could spend our Friday and Saturday nights pissing it up the wall are slowly turning into careers and we are losing sight of those teenage daydreams and becoming functioning adults who talk about politics and cavity wall insulation.
There will always be a little part of whatever I get myself wrapped up in that will be intrinsically linked to what he would have made of it and that cannot be helped. I’m glad of it in fact. In many ways I think we are pushed to perform and to achieve because life really is too fucking short. I miss Danny every day. I see him in the faces of strangers. I hear him at the end of corridors that I can’t get far enough down in time. His influence echoes in the best possible way.

As a result of knowing him I have so many friends. I will always be thankful to him for that. I will always be thankful to them for sticking around. He had an ability to throw people together and expect them to stick, and for the most part, it had to work.

At his funeral, Sam read from Perks Of Being A Wallflower, Danny’s favourite contemporary book. I would like to paraphrase from it here:
“I was suddenly very aware of the fact it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my face. Not caring if I saw downtown. Not even thinking about it. Because I was standing in the tunnel. And I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite.”

Please look after yourselves and cultivate relationships with those you truly care about. You never know when that time could be over and it will always be too soon.