When my daughter Lara was ten years old she went away on a five day long school trip to Wales and while she was there she got herself her first 'boyfriend'. His name was Jamie and he was a quiet, shy and somewhat awkward young boy with a mass of often rather unruly blonde hair. He and Lara had known each other since they started school together at the age of four and had been in the same class ever since. She remembers how they would sit and hold hands and how their teacher teased them when she caught them doing so. These are the kinds of happy, sweet and innocent memories of childhood that we look back upon with a smile on our faces and the people who are a part of these memories always have a special place in our hearts, for the rest of our lives. For Lara though, that distant memory of a precious time in her life when she began to imagine a time beyond her childhood, where she began on the first tentative steps towards adolescence, has suddenly come to the forefront of her mind in a way that will change it forever. Because a couple of days ago Jamie, the sweet little boy with the shock of blonde hair, hung himself. Gone. Forever.
Of course, the shy blonde boy had long grown up into a twenty year old young man but I'm sure that, for us all and his family, it is hard not to think back to that little boy and what on earth could have made him take such a drastic, devastating path so early in his life. I lay awake most of last night wondering about the tortures that must have gone through his mind before he tied whatever it was around his neck and decided that enough was enough. Whatever they were, those tortures have gone for Jamie now but obviously they will never, ever end for his family. His mum and I chatted at the school gate for many, many years and became quite good friends but I don't have a single clue what to say to her now. I want to send her an email but I know that anything I could possibly say will not even begin to scratch the surface of the pain that she and the rest of her family are in. I know that I will eventually find the words but not just yet. Maybe in a few days when the dreadful shock has begun to wear off just a little bit for them. As if it ever will....
I heard this morning that Jamie was found still alive and that he eventually died in hospital a day or so later. I felt comforted to know that he had his family around him at the end, rather than dying alone on the end of a rope, but that must raise even more questions for his family. Did he really want to die? Did he hope to be found? Did he just need help that he was unable to ask for in any other way?
I guess that the questions will largely remain unanswered and that the pain for those who loved him will go on forever. I hope though that Jamie will have found some kind of rest and peace though, for I can't imagine what a totrured soul he must have been those last days, hours and minutes before he took that terrible decision.
So Jamie...top angel on the right...I have no idea if you knew how special you were to so, so many people or how memories of you are interwoven into the memories of so many of your friends but know one thing...to the bottom angel on the left, you will always be an integral and treasured part of her life story...
