Beyond the High Blue Air (27 page)

We stand still for a moment, bracing ourselves, taking it in. The lighting is subdued, the atmosphere hushed, reverent, ecclesiastical. Two great vases of white lilies are set on gilded wooden pedestals, their scent filling the room, obscuring faint echoes of something more clinical. Above them hangs a painting of a sun setting over a darkened ocean in a rapturous splash of greens and gold and pinks, the well-intentioned metaphor ghastly in its sentimentality. Heavy purple curtains are suspended from rails that cross the ceiling, which I see can be pulled for further privacy. In the centre of the space stands a table, the top and sides draped in the same purple velvet as the curtains. A wooden coffin lies on the table, pale grained ash with brass handles; I recognise it as the one I chose from the brochure for Miles.

The absolute shock of seeing him. I had thought I was braced for this, but I am not. He lies on his back in the coffin, dressed in the dark green shirt and sweater I had given the undertaker. He looks so
present
, so strong, his face perfectly composed. Realigned in death to what it had been, there is no single indication or sign of the past five years, all the damage, the tension gone. Erased in death, no trace of it remains. Such strange beauty, a body without breath. His face freshly shaved. So cold when I kiss it, freezer cold.

I think, here he is on display again, as he was in Innsbruck that first day all those years ago, a magnificent specimen of young manhood. His presence is palpable, a field of energy that emanates from his stilled body. There is a sense of something distinct and contained, as it had been in the hospital room, though this time there is no conflict. In the first instance death was defeated but now it is his choice; he desired this end.

What word is there to describe Miles as he is in death? Awe, above all. Awe for him, for the grace that resides in his tangible, residual power; awe for death, its omnipotence. Its unequivocal magnificence. And with this comes a sudden and unexpected sense of deep calm and comfort: we are alive and then we die and all of it is magnificent and
right
. Grief will resume, but for now, standing here in this alien underground room, I am suffused with reverence for the life that Miles was given to live and lived so intensely.

Marina takes my hand as we leave. He loved us too, she says. That is ours to keep.

A week later and Miles's funeral, the day as beautiful as Ron's, a sky the texture of watercolour blue. The crematorium chapel is local to Gael Lodge but none of us has noticed it before, hidden away from the high street behind what appears to be a lush private park but is in fact a tree-lined cemetery. It rained last night and as we drive up the long driveway towards the chapel everything looks newly washed, the clean grey of the old chapel at the end and the surrounding headstones set against a verdant green of massed sycamores and flowering chestnuts. How can it be, that Miles is dead and yet the world renews itself, quivers with fresh life.

Madeleine, a friend and interfaith minister who has known Miles since he was a small boy, takes the service. We are a small group, the children, David and his two brothers, Amelia and Belinda, my nephew Sean and a few close friends of Miles's; we want this funeral to be private. Later we'll hold a big memorial at home and celebrate Miles with all his friends and the carers and medical staff who know him so well.

The coffin stands alone in front of us, draped in the same cream and lime roses I chose for Ron, their velvety lusciousness comforting. It is a strange thing, knowing how Miles looks now, lying there under the plain ash and roses; I know what he is wearing, the precise unearthly coldness of him. I can see that expression on his face, imagine him listening intently the way he does as he hears Will and Marina read from his book and registers the ringing, defiant ending Claudia gives to e. e. cummings's ‘Buffalo Bill':

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blue-eyed boy

Mister Death

Madeleine talks about Miles with tenderness and a deep understanding of his and our predicament throughout the past five years. Intimate, personal and loving, this is a profound validation of Miles. He really
was
exceptional, extraordinary, she says. Miles was so richly gifted in every sense, his crystal-sharp mind, his joy-filled physicality. She describes his moments of deep connection with what he called the ‘nameless One', how he transformed them into poetry, music, right into the way he lived; she talks of his joyful seriousness and his clear, honest, searching enquiry, always stripping away nonsense, claptrap, mumbo jumbo. And then, she says, there's Miles the hilarious spontaneous rapper: who else would rhyme Chaucer with flying saucer? She has been listening to his electronic music, not the sort of music she normally listens to, but she is absorbed by it, sees the connection with his writing that marries mysticism with quantum physics and language.
A Quantum Leap!
She names the composition we are about to hear and then a recording of the music begins to play. Hesitant and tender at first, the hauntingly eerie electronic sounds start to merge and rise and unfurl themselves until Miles's wit and wild exuberance are filling this old grey chapel, his energy ricocheting against the walls in bursts of colour that defy the final silence he endured for so long.

Southwark Coroner's Court, weeks later. Though Miles's death was the result of his initial brain injury compromising his health, it was nevertheless sudden and unexpected, a situation which requires a coroner's inquest. His assistant explains to me over the phone that it is a formality and that I don't have to attend; the coroner dealt with the matter at the time and released Miles's body for the funeral. Perhaps she is concerned to protect me, but of course I must go, I tell her. I can't endure the idea of Miles's end being discussed by strangers in an anonymous court without anyone present for him.

Walking from London Bridge station to the court I think she may have been right. The pain I have been carrying with me since Miles died is melting, rising, forcing itself to the surface and I can't quell it, my face contorted and running with tears as I scrabble in my handbag for tissues and sunglasses and then must stand still to take a deep breath and hold onto myself. An elderly woman passing by looks at me with concern and then distaste; I suppose I appear mad or drunk or both, a woman hunched crying in the middle of the pavement. You're right, I think, I must pull myself together, I cannot let Miles down and I am due at the court in five minutes. What you don't realise, you old bat, is that everything is coming to a head; the horror of the past five years and now this, this final thing, yet another claim on Miles's life. For five years his life has been other people's business. I just want him to be left in peace at last. Anger helps, as it always does; the tears stop coming and I arrive at the court more or less intact.

My anger is entirely misjudged. From the moment I arrive at the court everybody I deal with is unfailingly kind and considerate. When the coroner's assistant comes out of her office to greet me her kindness disarms me completely and now the tears really come; I can barely breathe. I'm so sorry, I keep saying hopelessly, I'm so sorry, I don't know why this should happen now, I seem to have managed so far. I completely understand, she says, as she hands me a box of tissues from her desk, this is very normal. You have lost your son. Her kindness is matched by the young man whose job it is to show me to the courtroom and the counsellor I am surprised to discover has been assigned to accompany me. The coroner himself is exceptional; both a lawyer and a doctor, he reads out Miles's history, deals with the formalities of the inquest, asks me to go into the witness box to answer questions and does it all with great authority but with such sensitivity and respect for Miles that, far from an intrusion, the process feels like the proper and dignified end to Miles's years of suffering. He talks of Miles's youth, of his career so far and the loss of his potential and he imagines the distress his plight must have caused the family. His recognition of Miles and of us all is an unexpected validation I will cherish.

The formalities of death have been dealt with, the legal paperwork, the letters, certificates, notifications and the coroner's report, all the para­phernalia of closing down a life. The distractions of organising the funeral and then, six weeks later, the memorial party, are also over, the latter held at home with more than a hundred of Miles's friends arriving and much food and wine and music. All these things, in retrospect, have carried us through the first turbulent, raw months of grief.

There is nothing left to do, and now with his death there comes a silence that is the depth of oceans. Even surrounded by loving family and friends, I feel alone, submerged in my grief. The full impact of Ron's death was muffled by Miles's continuing situation; now as I mourn Miles I am freshly, vividly aware of the loss of Ron. How time passes, how I manage the mundane daily acts of living, I have no idea. Trying to retrieve those memories now there is nothing, only a void.

It is summer and I go out to the house in France and for the first time in over five years I stay longer than a week. I am a double amputee, carrying the constant pain of phantom limbs, convalescing in the sunshine. The children come out to join me and together we reconvene, slowly consolidate our depleted group and we reminisce. For what we do have are our memories of Miles and Ron. We share them, watch Miles running across the grass to leap off the dangerously high garden wall into the pool, or we see him arriving back from the morning bread run, glowing with sweat from having run up the steep hill that leads to the house, his rucksack full of baguettes and flattened croissants. We remember Ron lying in the sun with his Discman, in his element, eyes closed and unconsciously and adorably conducting the music as he listens. We see them both coming back from the supermarket with a box of fresh squid to barbecue, neither having ever cooked them before. Or Miles, in the boiling heat of a summer's night, pulling his mattress into the windowless laundry room and sleeping there so as to shut out the noise of a neighbour's party.

In death Miles returned to his former self, five years receding into bleached-out images of a dream-like other world. Our foremost memories now become those of the vital, powerful Miles, embracing his future, regaling us, enlivening our lives. More vivid than ever, we have those memories back and we indulge ourselves, luxuriate in them. But our mourning is a doubled thing, for the double loss of Miles both as he was and as he became. We have lost the powerful Miles; we have also lost the vulnerable, hurt, sweet Miles that we loved in a different way but quite as much.

The memories do not overlap; they remain separate, distinct. Remembering Miles as he was is accompanied by the fierce agony of knowing how young and
alive
he was at the moment he was cut down, the terrible waste of his vibrant potential; remembering him as he became is to relive the poignancy of his helpless, unalleviated suffering. In the months before Miles died Claudia had described her fear that she was losing the memories of Miles as he had been before the accident. It's distressing, she said, I'm finding them difficult to retrieve. They're being submerged by the Miles we see now. I can't bear the thought of not remembering him active and vital, the old Miles. I don't know what to do to stop it. What she did do was to order ten large photograph albums to be delivered to the house and then spent the following weekends sitting at the kitchen table sorting out thirty years of pictures into chronological order and pasting them into the albums. Only weeks before Miles died my hopeless mess of photos in the old copper trunk was transformed into a coherent memory bank, just in time.

Looking through the later books I'm aware there are no photos of Miles taken after his accident. None of us could bring ourselves to photograph him, just another small way of saving ourselves from confronting his reality. Nothing concrete remains of that time. And suddenly that seems to me a gross and cowardly misrepresentation of Miles's life. We should, we need to honour his years of suffering and not allow them to be forgotten or pushed into the background.

Today I read in the paper that the Court of Protection has refused an application by the family of ‘M', a severely brain-damaged woman in a minimally conscious state, to withdraw her feeding tube and allow her to die.

This must be the case that Dr Lazard had told me about. I discover that eight years ago the woman referred to as ‘M' suffered viral encephalitis, which put her in a coma. Her mother, sister and partner made the application; they were unanimous in their view that she wished to die. Before her illness she had expressed the view that she would not want to remain alive in such a situation, but they had no proof. She had not taken out an Advance Directive.

When refusing the application the judge said: ‘“M” does experience pain and discomfort, and her disability severely restricts what she can do. However, I find she does have some positive experiences.' Apparently he had formed this opinion as a result of the care home assistant's claim that ‘M' cried when she heard Elvis Presley and appeared upset when she heard a Lionel Ritchie love song.

Will and I are sorting through Miles's belongings. For three years, since the flat he and Will shared was sold, they have lain untouched in his old room here at home, the door closed; sorting through them remained on my To Do list, the job undone. The pile of books, CDs, personal files, notebooks, music-making paraphernalia, boxing gloves, snowboard and snowboarding gear, motorbike helmet and biking gear, his laptop, speakers, ornaments, wallet, rucksacks, suitcases, briefcase, all an inventory of his former life, and even though I knew he would never use any of these things again, clearing them out remained impossibly final, an admission of the end of hope.