Tin
Everyone remembers where they were
when they got married. I know I do: I was at the altar of the Holy Ghost Church
in Basingstoke, grinning with dry teeth at my best friend who was dressed in
white. The priest did a bit of Biblical shtick about my age; I was a boyish 37
at the time, so the Methuselah gags kept coming.
It was the culmination of a long
journey: rings and dresses were bought, pumpkins carved, green carnations
cultivated, invitations hand-drawn and sent. I tried my suit on the week before
the wedding, confident in those days of being consistently slim, only to find
that my waist had begun it’s quiet but relentless expansion. A panicked
gallop around North London found a tailor in Crouch End who could make the
appropriate adjustments for a price. And then my sister rocked up with a suit
she’d found for a tenner in a Letchworth charity shop and it could have been
made for me. I got married in a brown dead man’s suit. It went beautifully with
my brogues and my green carnation and it still fits. Though it fits slightly
differently now.
Kelly looked stunning in her dress
and silvery witch shoes and dosed herself liberally with Rescue Remedy on the Wedding
morning to keep the nerves at bay. Did we see each other on the morning of the
Wedding? I can’t remember, but in a house full of superstitious Irish people –
her included – it seems unlikely. We could have done without the bad luck.
And then we got married.
The day is a blur: a big green route
master, its suspension shot to shit, carried us to the reception. I was unable
to get the first line of my carefully written speech out because, initially, I
didn’t have the breath in my body. Kelly knocked it out of the park with a
hilarious improvised speech of her own. The first dance was to a song that I
put on the first mix-tape I ever made her, a song I can no longer listen to.
The building was evacuated mid-evening as my mate Mike, also the DJ, set off
the fire alarm. It was a wonderful day. A dream wedding – it was very us. We then
spent a week in rainy, autumnal Paris in a Silent Movie themed hotel in Le
Marais, opposite the Museum of Magic. Again, very us.
I haven’t opened the photo album. I
probably haven’t opened it in a decade. It’s difficult. There are a lot of
unresolved things. There are things that may never be resolved. Perhaps there
are things that you shouldn’t try to resolve. You live with them and let them
become part of you, the way a scar does. You can be proud of a scar.
We had only six months until her
diagnosis. It was a short honeymoon period.
I was the lucky one. I got to live.
I got to get better. I get to have a second go at life. I got to fall in love
again. Two remarkable women in one life time – it doesn’t really seem fair. I
don’t deserve it.
It wasn’t fair, but cancer isn’t
fair. The disaster of it all is that Kelly isn’t in the world. The world isn’t
complete without her; it is wanting. I don’t even mean for my benefit: I mean
that the whole world is poorer for her absence. It’s crying out for her.
It’s our tenth wedding anniversary
today.
Tin.
I checked: it’s a tin anniversary
and it’s very apt. I feel like the Tin Man: hollow chested and heartless, often
well oiled.
Of course, we learn at the end of “The
Wizard of Oz” that the Tin Man’s empty chest is no impediment to his being able
to love. He ventures off on other adventures, unencumbered, his vascular system
fizzing with unknown agents, an oily tear in his eye as he softly rusts, his
veneer peeling like autumn leaves. Tin doesn’t rust, of course. That’s why
there’s all manner of conjecture about the “Wizard of Oz” books – it seems
probable that the Tin Man is tin-plated but iron beneath. I’m not sure that
analogy is all that suitable here – the only iron man competition I would ever win
would result in neat piles of crisply pressed laundry.
But I am like him in other ways:
silver, barrel-chested, sad; in desperate need of lubrication.
Well I won’t be too well oiled for
the month of October – I’m doing a sponsored sobriety for Macmillan nurses, who
do such fantastic work with cancer patients. As challenges go it is perhaps
next to nothing, but it is not
nothing – I do, very much, like my booze. But I hate cancer more.
If you have any spare money please donate
to my “GoSober” page. That would be money well spent.
Happy anniversary, Kelly x
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