How do you say goodbye to a friend not long for this world? Writer Mark Dapin chooses words – and humour. | GoodWeekendMag
Automatically. Unthinkingly.“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”
Sober now for nearly 13 years, Graham had been working on his fitness, jogging around a lake in a park, clutching a kettlebell in each hand. His new workout was an instant success: weight loss was sudden and spectacular. It was as if Graham had finally cracked the exercise riddle. about Graham’s re-emergence as a writer for this magazine in 2017. On the phone, Graham “joked” that I was probably already planning to write a follow-up piece about his death: “Remember that abused kid, well …”doctors had told him that he might live 14 months if he opted for chemotherapy, but he had decided against it, as he would have to waste what little time he had left in the world with his head in a bucket, vomiting.He laughed dutifully. He had given me the opening and I had taken it.
I had been worried that I might not recognise Graham but he arrived dressed up as me – or, at least, me 40 years ago – in jeans and boots, a Fred Perry cardigan and a pork-pie hat. What does “agoraphobia” even mean? A psychiatrist once asked Graham how he might teach a course on becoming agoraphobic. Graham wrote:Start to suspect there are two things only: indoors or outdoors.Think of the windowpane as a movie screen.And watch them disappear.I ignored Graham’s psychic pain. Because I get toey sitting in a house, and I like to be outside, with people.
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