Joel...

The world stopped today, or it should have, because Joel isn't in it anymore. The guy with the filthiest sense of humour, the biggest heart, the loudest quickest laugh, the cheekiest smile, the most alive person I know, is no longer, and it kills me to write that, because it still doesn't seem real. No car crash could wipe out that life, surely? And now the wine bottle isn't deep enough because I'm here, and he's not.

He's not in America, which he has been for the past year or so; he's not back in Melbourne, watching the football, or flying a plane; he's nowhere. It's too soon for me to know details - apparently even his family don't know for sure what happened yet - but I know enough. Joel has died and an enormous gaping hole has opened in the world where he used to be. There will be no more emails filled with innuendo and jokes. He will never make the flight he had booked to go home in a couple of weeks. I will never get to be hown the sights in America by him - no more night of debauchery like we had planned for a weekend in New York come February. There is, in short, no more Joel, and I am desolate, and alone with nobody here who knows him who can tell me about the way his mouth would quiver and twitch when he was telling some story that he knew would make us giggle like school girls. There will be no more great parties thrown by Joel, no more hilarious speeches that have been havily edited by various friends wot make sure that he doesn't embarass anyone - most of all himself - too much. The world must surely stop now that Joel has gone from it.

I've only just heard, it's true. Most of this is an effort to convince myself that it's true, that he won't be popping over the Atlantic and lobbing on my doorstep like he was threatening to do in his last email. His mother, who had planned a party for his trip home in a couple of weeks, is left to contact the friends on the guest list and tell them what has happened while we, his firends, the people who grew up - at least in height - with him, the biggest kid of them all, try to come to grips with the idea that what she tells us is most certainly true. And somewhere out there, his American wife, married in a whirlwind romance so typical of Joel who always fell hard and fast for any girl, has to fill in the details for his far too distant famly and friends while dealing with her own grief. My heart goes out to anyone who knew him, whose life will always be that little sadder now he's gone, but that lot brighter for having knon him in the first place.

I've run out of my own words. I'm sure Joel, the king of the paraphrasers, won't mind if I resort to a quote to fill the emotions that threaten once more to swamp me with tears. Because whilst he wasn't my north my south, my east or my west, he was a whole chunk of my life that is now gone. And given that he was a pilot, it's only right that the planes should circle in the sky and proclaim the news, he is dead, however long he will live in memory. In the mean time I'll just keep hoping that, somewhere, someone has made a terrible mistake and I'll be getting a phonecall any minute from him, laughing at the commotion he's caused, for all that he would never play such a cruel joke on any of us.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

. . . . . . . . .

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

-W. H. Auden

RIP Joel Parkinson, 1980-2006