Gone

(Edited 3/2/14 - I realised how much more belongs here)

The weather on Friday follows the theme of the previous 6 weeks.  It's chucking down with rain.  I work from home, and annoyingly don't take the opportunity of a relatively dry morning to get in a run.  By lunchtime the rain is well and truly in, and by the time Emma arrives home I'm contemplating having to run in a downpour.

At 6.15, Nanny returns with the children. All three come tumbling through the door excitedly, three separate streams of chatter shattering the peace which has gone before.  At the same time, Emma's phone rings, and she disappears into the kitchen to answer it.  Two minutes later, she comes barging through the noise, grabs the car keys and heads for the door.  "Scott's gone," she says.  "To the hospital?," I ask. "No. Gone."

I first met Scott when I first met Emma, both as new inductees into the graduate programme at JPMorgan.  Even in that short time they had known each other, they'd clearly formed a friendship, probably grounded in the fact that they'd both come to the graduate programme from other careers, and as such were both a little older than those fresh out of university.  Emma had a degree and career in nursing, having already completed a geography degree earlier. Scott, well read and fiercely intelligent, had studied Law at Cambridge before decided the legal profession wasn't for him. That was Scott all over, he didn't do anything he didn't want to.  Sometimes it could be construed as stubborn or curmudgeonly, but it was never anything less than 100% honest.  He had no time for liars and bullshitters.  Working at a place like JPM gave him ample fodder for vitriol.

From the point that we all met, our lives were inextricably linked.  Scott and Emma worked on the same team, I was responsible for testing the systems they built.  They bought flats next to each other.  Emma and I got together, and I moved in; Scott met his future wife and she moved in with him.  We got married; they got married. We moved out to a bigger home; a year later they did the same.  We had children, a girl and a boy; they had children, a boy and a girl.

Our friendship wasn't a selfies-at-3am-on-the-beach-in-Magaluf friendship.   It was that standoffish respect that blokes have, the recognition of someone with shared values and similar tastes. It was barbecues on warm summer evenings, the occasional pub quiz or 5-a-side, the trips to the cinema or theatre, walks with our families.  It was a shamelessly working middle class relationship that involved stiff handshakes and tutting about chavs; laughing about Parks and Recreation, and reminiscing about the music of our university days.

Scott's sense of humour was one that defied the intellectual in him.  No witty wordplay or scathing satire. He enjoyed getting a laugh by simply tilting his glasses to one side, Eric Morecambe style.  I knew him for 6 years before I got a photo of him without either a silly gurn or a thumbs up.  The last evening out we had with him was to a comedy gig - our biggest laugh was reserved for his dramatic recreation, in a crowded restaurant, of his son going for a poo.

It was last March that we went to see Marcus Brigstocke at Wimborne Tivoli.  Scott apologised for coughing throughout the performance.  It was a cough that stayed with him for the next couple of months, and he went back and forth to the doctor looking for a cure.  In June we walked at Hengistbury Head, and he quietly mused about the possibility that it wasn't just a cough.  We all rolled our eyes and assured him that it was just a cough.  After all, people like us don't get cancer.

Two weeks later, I received a solemn phone call from Emma. "It's in his lungs, his liver, and his bones," she said, "it's not if but when."

There's a large part of the grief that isn't for Scott, or even his family, it's for the part of Scott that was me.  The man hitting his middle age with a young family, a good job and a mortgage.  The spectre of cancer isn't new to me - I lost my dad and my granddad to it.  But they were at least at an age where death is not surprising, if still disappointingly keen.  But the idea that someone just like me can go from having a cough to being dead in 10 months is almost incomprehensible.  We all know we have to go someday, but at any given point in time we're immortal, in our own heads.  We at least take it for granted that we'll see our kids grow up.  Have that chat with them about the birds and the bees.  Take them to their first day at university.  Embarrass them at their wedding.

Turns out that's not the case.  I want a refund.

Scott died peacefully at home with his family.  He is loved, and missed.