Trajectories

I just read that Whitney Houston was found dead in a hotel bathtub yesterday aged 48. Obviously I didn't know her, but that doesn't stop me thinking how sad it is. 

When I was in my early teens I used to go round to my friend Sylvia's house and watch MTV. I remember us watching her bounce around singing 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' and she was all bright eyes and bushy tailed. She was very young, clean and fresh - my friend and I thought she was absolutely beautiful.

I've never bought one of her records, nor have I particularly followed her career but it was clear to see that she turned into a very troubled woman, supposedly led astray by her husband. Her descent from bright young thing into deluded haggard mess did appear to correlate with her marriage but who knows.

The reason her death also resounds with me is that my step-cousin Sean was found last week frozen to death in a church doorway. I remember him from when we were little - his Dad married my aunt and he and his younger brother and sister came into our family. He was only 2 days older than me so we were in some of the same classes at school. He was very lively but we all used to pay together very happily.

Sean was always very troubled though looking back; all 3 of them were I guess. Their Mum was unfit and their Dad eventually became an alcoholic and my aunt divorced him. Sean was naughty at school and by the time I left my home town aged 23 I had no idea where he was. He had gotten into drugs (rife in our area) and once Sean became an adult, my aunt had to start thinking more about damage-limitation to her younger children.

To be honest, I rarely thought about him. We weren't close, he was a liability and he wouldn't accept any help or advice from his family. They loved him very much but over time he ostracised them all, burnt every bridge (or thought he had), and put his family through hell. I hadn't heard his name mentioned for many years until one of my cousins called my last Wednesday to say he was dead.

He'd moved to another city and had been working for the homeless charity Emmaus. He had a place to stay, a job with them, and had started to work as a counsellor for other homeless people. I hear he had been clean of drugs for a couple of years, but that he still drank. Apparently he has been described as an 'all round nice guy', which I remember was never really the problem.

There hasn't been an inquest yet, but I'm guessing he was drunkenly making his way home in the snow, sat for a while in the church doorway and hypothermia got the better of him. Not a bad way to go in terms of dying I guess, but not a good way to go in terms of living. 

So sad and needless all round really. I'm not devastated by either of their deaths, I just feel that it's all a bit of a shame when you remember how they used to be all those years ago. I know we all have to go at some point, but there's no sense in playing on the motorway.