I dreamt about Lyn’s house last night, empty and deserted. In the dream I remember wanting Lyn to come back but knowing she couldn’t. I woke up and almost burst into tears.
I just came back from a nice long stroll along the Thames and up through Greenwich. I now love this city, it’s culture, and how it feels different from place to place. Yet it hurts to know the person who introduced me to this wonderful metropolis is no longer here. I keep thinking about that bungalow in Charlton where I lived for almost ten years with the most wonderful person I’ll ever meet, now empty and waiting for it’s next tenant. I’m not pretending we hadn’t spit up, but part of me feels that Lyn should still be there, still getting up late, still making music and DJing her radio station. I thought I’d be popping over to visit her for years. The knowledge that she isn’t there any more feels utterly wrong; it feels like an era has ended permanently and with a devastating, heartbreaking finality. No more music, no more slurping coffee through straws; no more watching Dom, Mitch or Paulo slowly feed Lyn her dinner, before she expertly pilots her wheelchair backwards with one foot into her studio. No more marvelling as Lyn controls her Ipad with her nose better than most people can with their fingers. No more watching the most patient, incredible. remarkable person I’ll ever know live her life on her own terms, overcoming barriers many others would have thought impenetrable.
A new person will soon move in, and in a way that bungalow will become somewhere different, as if all the memories which happened there will be erased. Or that’s how it feels to me, and that hurts. That feeling frankly hurts more – far, far more – than anything I have ever felt before. That’s what I dreamt of last night: the thought of that empty house utterly haunts me, and I think it will for a very, very long time.