Ben Died

Ben died.

He wasn’t in a car crash. He didn’t have cancer. He wasn’t old. He didn’t get murdered, or fall off a cliff, or have an anvil dropped on him by a wily roadrunner, do any of the other things that people are supposed to do before they die. He just went to the pub, had a pint, went to bed at an uncharacteristically civilised hour because he had work in the morning, and died. I don’t know if there’s more to it than that. I suspect there isn’t. Would it make any difference if there was? Probably not.

I found out from a Facebook post. Yep, that website that Mark Zuckerberg built so he and his friends could lech over their classmates, and twenty years later, among the relentless feed of promoted posts and AI slop and who knows what, there’s a post from Yan saying Ben died in his sleep last night. Clare gets a message from Lizzie at the same moment I see the post, which is just as well ‘cos otherwise I would have assumed it was a prank, or somebody’s account got hacked. Those things are normal. Pranks happen. People leave phones unlocked and their mates post stupid shit online for a laugh. Accounts get taken over. Those are things which actually happen. But Ben going to the pub and then going home and dying? That doesn’t happen.

That was all a few weeks ago, and, if you’ll forgive the indelicate phrasing, life didn’t stop; apart from a few evenings in the pub that I should really have spent preparing for conferences, I did all the things, delivered all the talks, played all the gigs, saw all the people… then yesterday was Ben’s funeral. Redruth. Cornwall. Well, actually in Treswithian, on the outskirts of Camborne, but at first all we had to go on was “Redruth” so we sorted train tickets and hotel rooms accordingly and figured we could work the rest out later… so Thursday I’m travelling home from Stockholm, Friday I’m at home supposedly catching up on work and chores but none of those things happen, Saturday I’m in Bristol to celebrate my brother’s 40th birthday, which is great fun other than the logistics of catching up with family who all have different assumptions about each other’s travel plans, and then it’s Sunday and I’m on another train - not my train, because my train is cancelled, but a different train; for a while it looks like I won’t make my connection in Taunton, but the connecting train is delayed enough that it all works out, and Clare’s already on the train, and then we’re at Redruth, standing outside the station in the kind of rainstorm that would have Noah wondering if his ark is still on Mount Ararat and whether it might be made to float again, and then we’re in a taxi, and then we’re at the hotel, and Chris and Yan and Lizzie are there and Ben isn’t and it’s just… not right.

I’ve been to funerals before. Not many, and they weren’t unexpected - one of them the deceased wasn’t even deceased yet; they threw a big farewell party before choosing euthanasia a few months later, because in Belgium that’s a thing you can do when the chemotherapy isn’t working any more and it’s only a matter of time.

But this was the first time I’ve ever felt like the gang’s all got together but somebody’s missing and never coming back and the conversation’s like riding a bike with a wonky gear and it takes a while to work out why every so often there’s a metaphorical ‘clunk’ in the conversation ‘cos that’s the point when Ben would have said something hilarious - and let’s face it, quite probably obscene.

I’ve no idea what his family and friends made of the motley entourage of black-clad weirdos who showed up on Monday nursing various grades of hangover, but I hope us all being there maybe helped them understand the kind, funny, patient man that their boy had become. There were words, and songs, and music, and tears, and lots of hugs, and then beers and beige food and another rainy taxi ride and a very long train ride back to London, and what was supposed to be a proper night’s sleep in my own bed.

And now it’s a cold, rainy Tuesday in February and my calendar says I’m ‘back at work’, which, when you’re independent and self-employed, is a nebulous concept at the best of times, but I am so mentally far away from anything that might constitute actual work that I have no idea how I’m going to find my way back there; my bike’s had its fifth puncture in two weeks and my phone seems to be constantly on 5% battery and I’m supposed to be rehearsing songs for the gig next week but I’ve chewed all my fingernails down to the quick and I can’t sing a note without my voice cracking and everything feels like a metaphor for everything else and frankly it’s all just shit.

Life is weird. Friendship is weird. Friendship as an adult in the age of social media is especially weird. I’d never been to Ben’s flat. I don’t think he ever came to my house. I knew he’d grown up in Cornwall. I didn’t know he had a sister, until this week none of the London gang had ever met his parents, and I suspect he had only the vaguest idea what I did when I wasn’t in the pub – but I’ll never forget those strange months after lockdown, when things were open but not open and everybody was desperate to go out and see people and do things but nobody was getting on a train unless they had to, we’d get on our bikes and cycle up to Little Faith in Deptford Creek and the gang would come along - Ben in shorts, regardless of the weather - and we’d sit outside and eat and drink and talk about Warhammer and movies and weird snacks, and we’d roar with laughter and wobble home feeling for the first time in a long while like maybe it was all going to be alright. If you’d told me in those strange, frightening days that one day we’d be looking back on them with nostalgia, even fondness, I’m not sure I’d have believed you, but like I said: life is weird.

Rest in peace, my friend.

We’re gonna miss you.