Edges Issue 19: He didn't make his 21st birthday.

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 19

October 1999

HE DIDN'T MAKE HIS 21ST BIRTHDAY.
Stuart was recently found dead, three days before his 21st birthday. A friend pays tribute to his life.

Stuart was a person with whom I had spent plenty of time. At points he was the closest friend on earth, and at others he was the farthest away. I’m partly to blame for the distance that was between us, but I’m glad to say I had offered all I had to him, and he knew it before he died. We grew up together, from the beginning of high school through our teenage years, and after he came back from the army, we had the same friendship, it hadn’t altered. We just didn’t see as much of each other. I was on gear, in a mess.

You know, I won’t ever again have a friendship like that. We could hold a conversation without talking, we did everything together. We knew each other inside out. Stu had always liked to get wrecked, the same as me. We did weed together, acid, then ecstasy. The night we took out first E was amazing, round at our friend’s house, well wrecked. After a while though, he got into the script. I never held with that stuff, peach path, math, an’ all that. I saw what it did to him, an’ I didn’t like it. But then he sorted it out before me.

At 18, I found my father hanging. It totally did my head in. Took me years to accept, I still don’t think I have. More or less two years on, maybe a month or two out, his father was found hung. Different circumstances, but still uncanny. Till then he was doing loads better than me, I had a habit, he didn’t. I felt like I could be there for him while he got over his dad, I wish I had been there more, but gear got in the way. I let it. I still went down and saw him, but there were a few things I did which I wish I hadn’t now. He was OK about it, but I felt awful. He started drinking loads, he had Valium on prescription. He overdosed a few times on me, I had to bring him round after he’d gone blue. He couldn’t help it, he just wanted to get smashed out of his head.

It wasn’t safe for him to get wrecked on his own, he was having real difficulty coping. Then, I was out at the local club, and his auntie came up to me and told me he’d tried to do himself in, first with temazepan, then he slashed up. I went to see him in hospital, apparently he’d been talking about me. I told him it wasn’t an option. It was my birthday when I went to see him, an’ I said “Look, I’m 21 today, what would I have done if you were dead ? ”. He just said that he didn’t have an answer for me. He was really sad. When I left him, I made him promise to come and stay with me on this campsite when he got out of hospital so we could have been together. He would have been OK if he’d have been with me.

He got sectioned for about two weeks then they put him in a hostel in Tad. I saw him on the Wednesday evening, he said he’d nearly rung me, an’ I stressed, told him he had to, I had the number for where he’d been for the last week, I should’ve rung. At least I told him I wanted him to be with me that night. He knew.

The next morning, I found out he’d died. Apparently it was an accident, he’d decided not to kill himself, and to make a go of it. That just makes it all so tragic. I went to the funeral, with all his family, which was the hardest thing for me. I didn’t know what to say or do, I just felt so bad. People say that something good has got to come out of this, that I’ve got to sort myself out for him. I just feel so sick.