Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Camless.


I can hear Rocco humming himself to sleep, not a care in the world.

"Mum, WHY did Uncle Cam kill himself?"

He must have overheard somebody because I didn't tell him and I don't even care because it's the goddamn truth and last time I checked, nobody died from the truth. I told Rocco what Cam told me to tell the kids if he ever killed himself ... that Uncle Cam was just too too sad.

Yes. Cam and I have been talking about this for quite some time now. He lived with a depression so deep and wide - he refused to get medication or help. So in the end this is how it went. So many, countless times I have listened to him talk of his pain. He told me because he knew I understood. I carried him, gave him soothing words, validations, everything I could think of. He was SO down and determined this month, I knew it was bad. But I kept thinking, maybe he's spending so much time talking about suicide to me that that means he's not actually committing suicide.

This is all very blunt, really, isn't it. But judging by the comments, tweets, and emails that have been sent lately .... my family is not alone.

Cam told me he was dangerously teetering on the decision of taking his own life. I'd absolutely come at him with all the love, all the support possible. He made me promise certain things, things I'm carrying out now. I was his next-of-kin and his beneficiary and the last thing I can do for him in this world is carry out his wishes. We understand why he did it. Still earth-shattering. Cam had NO idea how much love so many different people had for him. I did everything I could. Kept apologising to mum and Linda and Leigh ... because there was still a part of me that thought he'd get through it like he always did.

Months previously, I was the one in distress. He and I are very similar. I sat in my bed once late at night absolutely fucked and scared about what to do. I rang the only person in the world I knew who'd understand. Cam was my person. I now have no person. Cam was so much to so many. I don't want to live in a Camless world.

Went to see him twice this week. The first time I couldn't touch him but the second time I loved on him and hugged him and told him how much I adored him. I wiped his face with a tissue and felt his arms and legs and feet, knowing it was the last time I would ever see him again. SO handsome. Such a strapping man. I kept waiting for him to meet someone special and have babies. That's what I thought would save him, keep him here. He gets cremated tomorrow .... strict instructions for a non-attendance cremation. It's at 9.30am and it's all I'll be thinking about because then he'll be gone.

Cam begged me to make sure there would be no funeral. I promised. So on Friday there will be a wake, a friends get-together which me and the girls and mum will go to. We need to be with his friends. We need to hear happy, outrageous stories. We need to find a little bit more about who he was.

On Saturday is a family get-together. We'll scatter his ashes. He told me on the phone to throw his ashes in the bin. Then in his suicide note he asked me to carry his "clinking bones and ash to the sea."

This is a shit post. It's a shit time. I'll never be the same again. Wish I could press rewind.

Let me know if you're a friend of Cams and want to come on Friday.


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Write to be understood, speak to be heard. - Lawrence Powell

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