Today, I had to make a terrible decision. I’ve been agonising over it all weekend and it’s been tearing me in two. I think I’m doing the right thing, but I wish I’d never had to make the decision in the first place.

Ten days ago, on Friday 11th, I went out to a friend’s birthday party. Despite not finishing work until 7pm, after a really crap working week, and feeling like I’d rather lie down on the settee and watch TV all night, I went to the party because I had said I would weeks ago, and I like to keep my word. Especially when the friend having the party is Birmingham’s fiercest (and most creative) drag queen. You just don’t do that. I also fancied drowning my sorrows after the death in the family earlier in the week, and the central heating was playing up, only staying on for ten minutes at a time before the pressure dropped, so the night in front of the telly didn’t seem such a comfortable option anyway. Might as well go out and enjoy myself.

So, I walked down to DV8 as it was an exceptionally mild night for November and went to the private party. Our host introduced me to someone who I was getting on very well with, so all was looking good as we chatted. He bought me a drink, we chatted some more and then I decided to visit the toilet and told him I’d get us both a drink when I came back. As I was leaving the toilets, I overheard someone I only know by name say to someone else, “Are you going to Pat’s funeral?” I turned back and looked at him, knowing that he knew the Pat that I knew, but I thought no, don’t be stupid, you misheard, it’s just coincidence and anyway they were deep in conversation. I went out and stood at the bar. Must find the birthday boy. Nowhere to be seen. I stood at the bar, surveying the dancefloor, getting more and more agitated. I got served, took the drink to my new friend, told him what I’d heard and said “I’m sure it’s not, but I just have to go and find…” “Yes, of course you do,” he said, very understandingly and pushed me off. To cut a long story short, I then had it confirmed by our host, while standing on the dancefloor, that our mutual friend had died. I can’t think of a good way to find out how a friend has died, but overhearing it in the toilets was pretty horrendous. There were lots of mutual friends at the party, so I spoke to a few, blubbed in front of the man I was trying to chat up, and generally felt numb. It seemed like everyone knew already, and I was cursing the gay grapevine for failing miserably on this occasion, when it turned out Pat had died eleven days before the party. Thankfully, the funeral hadn’t been held, so there was still chance to pay my respects.

The birthday party ended with me discovering that my favourite jacket, which contained my favourite baseball cap in the pocket, was stolen from under my nose, even though I had kept my eye on it until about fifteen minutes from the end. There are some nasty bastards out clubbing, and this was a private party as well (which was the reason there was no cloakroom option). We staggered back, me wearing just a shirt, to birthday boy's flat, where I got slaughtered on his vodka and passed out eventually on an airbed with some complete strangers. In the morning, I got the bus back home, still quite drunk, discovered that the central heating had completely given up, and went to bed, depressed as could be, where I slept for five hours through Saturday afternoon.

Over the weekend, I had to break the news to two other friends who knew Pat. Back at work last Monday, I warned my manager that I would be going to a second funeral, but no date was set. ‘Knowing my luck,’ I e-mailed him, ‘they’ll both be on the same day’. No word for the whole week, and then, on Saturday, it was confirmed. Patrick’s funeral is tomorrow at 12.30 at Birmingham Crematorium. My Great Aunt’s was already scheduled for tomorrow, at 12.00, in Coventry. I have spent the rest of the weekend absolutely despondent. I want to rip myself in half and go to both, but it’s impossible. Family, or friends? What a bloody awful decision to have to make. I haven’t had to go to a funeral for over a year. Then two people die within five days of each other, both funerals are unusually delayed, but they both happen within half an hour of each other, ten miles apart. How can this be happening? It’s torture.

I distracted my thoughts on Saturday by seeing the Harry Potter film and then went out on Saturday night, mainly to see Richard, but it also gave me chance to chat to other friends of Pat, where at least I was able to tell them about the funeral and confirm that they would be going. It was some help.

I’ve spoken to my manager and stayed off work today. I was in no mood to concentrate on work. I feel angry – without having a target for my anger, and deeply sad. I had an emotional phone call with my Mum this afternoon and I’ve made a decision. To my surprise, when I’ve actually explained my morbid dilemma to four of five people, none of them have said, ‘the decision’s up to you – I can’t really say’. They all said I should go to the person’s to whom I felt the closest. So, tomorrow, I’m going to Pat’s funeral, because, when it boils down to it, he was the closest of the two. I’d known him since 1989, I think. ‘You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your relatives,’ people say, but that sounds cruel, as if there’s some implied criticism of my Great Aunt, and there isn’t. I wanted to be at what may be the last family funeral of its kind. The end of an era. The last of her generation. Our family is so spread around the country that we’ll probably never all be together again, but I’m going to miss it.

I’m aware that there are friends and family who are closer than I was to both of the people who have died, and that this isn’t about me, it’s about them. There’s a danger of creating my own little melodrama here which will seem ridiculous, given time. But this is currently painful and I’ve shed so many tears over the last few days. There is no right answer over what to do tomorrow. Either way, I’ll feel like I’ve let someone down, but I’m going with the option that seems less wrong. Does that make sense?

If nothing else, it has helped to write this. Please excuse my introspection.




Pat with Graham Norton, February 2005 and outside Prague bar, May 2005.
· link