Origins of the Artist

Find the Right Suit

#He wasn't conscious of John suddenly disappearing, a ghost who said, "It's a fair cop, guv," and vanished now he'd been fingered, so to speak. But the John of his dreams was there one minute, gone the next. Kippy didn't wake up and relive his partner's death over and over again.

It didn't stop him from crying most mornings. He was forty-seven years old, far too young for widower status. Granted, John had been fifteen years older than him, but even so. A man dying at sixty-one was rotten, rotten luck. Especially when that man was so fit and healthy your average insurer would be hard-pressed to quote over-the-top premiums for life insurance.

Take his lifestyle. Some years ago, John announced he was giving up the sauce as a fiftieth birthday present to himself. He'd never been a big drinker, anyway. Brought up in a small town and having spent many years hiding his sexuality, Kippy was the one who put away the pints and downed the whiskies.

John, though, decided he didn't like the after-effects anymore. He'd been a nice, non-nagging teetotaller too, never minding Kippy having a pint too many and becoming maudlin and soppy, in your typical West Coast of Scotland man's way.

John exercised regularly, and his diet had been exemplary post a high-cholesterol scare. It was he who'd introduced Kippy to the joy of salads and vegetables, foods that Kippy always regarded suspiciously. Rabbit food, right? John's Italian momma and her Scottish husband were exceptionally good cooks, and their talent rubbed off on their son. He believed in home-made food made with passion and garnished with love.

And yet bowel cancer struck anyway, its diagnosis so late John was beyond saving. At the hospital, they made him as comfortable as they could, agreeing reluctantly in the end that he could go home to die.

Kippy found the world's kindest and most compassionate palliative cancer care nurse who split her support equally between the two of them, helping prepare Kippy for those last few moments when your partner finally leaves you.

The peace of it was what he remembered. Pain takes everything from you, even a kind and wonderful man like John ends up with little reserves of love and patience left. Kippy needed something from him—a dramatic statement or gesture that raised them from the everyday mundanity of death.

"Bereavement is ordinary and extraordinary at the same time," the nurse told him. "We all go through it, but we experience it quite differently, which is why it's so hard to explain to anyone else."

He'd willed John to use his gift with words. His partner was the man who'd spent years using his rapier wit to persuade judges and juries that the wee nef stood in front of them deserved a second chance. He'd torn apart police statements, making juries laugh at the same time as everyone loved the public putting down of authority figures.

A man of such talent should be able to summon forth words that Kippy could store in his mind's vault, taking them out from time to time to polish and cherish their beauty. But there was nothing left in John. He muttered that he loved Kippy and those dark eyes welled up. And then one morning, Kippy woke and took in the deafening silence that told him his life partner was dead. He walked into the room and felt the stillness of it. There were no ragged breaths, no creaks from the bed of a man shuffling in a vain attempt to get comfortable.

Oh, the relief.

They'd celebrated their 25th anniversary six months before John died, an occasion that later became known as one of the BC events. Before cancer, everything seemed careless and overly optimistic. An anniversary almost always prompts the words, and here's to the next ten, fifteen and even twenty-five years.