It's my brother Alan's birthday tomorrow. He was born in 1966, 3 years 11 months and 17 days before me!! Being a mathematical prodigee, as a child I always quoted these figures!
Sadly I am now older than him. Alan died in September 2008. He died in Darwin Australia, I hadn't seen him in several years. He fell and ruptured his spleen, severely damaged because he was an alcoholic for many many years. He died from internal bleeding.
Alan and I went into care in 1975, we had suffered a very abusive and mixed up childhood. I was 5 and he was 8. We had been through several years with a lack of parental attachment and with parents who were immature, selfish and incapable. We went through a children's home and a short term foster home before being fostered by a very middle class and educated couple in Barnes. Their plan was to mould us into middle class successful individuals. We were both very intelligent, but unfortunately there was no awareness in those days of the emotional harm and attachment issues caused by such an erratic early years experience.
Alan always claimed he never had a childhood. He was so severely damaged by being taken from the parents he loved , albeit completely awful and abusive, that he failed to have any normal adult relationships. Looking at my own autistic spectrum children, and my dad who was obviously on that spectrum, and Alan and my half brothers who are also probably that way inclined, I am not surprised he couldn't manage in society and cope with a normal lifestyle.
Alan was my superhero, my only constant in an erratic and awful childhood... he was my north, my south (as the poem goes) ...
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Alan's life was destroyed by poor parenting and appalling Social Services care in the 1970s and 1980s. He never managed to live a normal life. He was an alcoholic and had such an addictive personality that everything was a struggle
Alan, I love you. xxx
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