I remember the first time I met him when my future wife took me to a rough pub in Gorton. Until then I'd never in my life been in a place quite like that, containing people like that, and so it was a relief to escape home to the foothills of the Pennines at the end of the day.
He and I were never remotely close. He carried with him throughout his adult life the burden of having to move out of the family home before he was ready because his mother was remarrying and due to past misdemeanours he was excluded from the package and had to go live on his own. He was sixteen then.
Uneducated, lost, he began to drift. Some bad experiences with drugs eventually drove him to devout religion. He could (and usually did) drone on endlessly about The Lord. When bro-in-law's phone number popped up on our caller display I'd make myself scarce in order to avoid his latest sermon.
One day he arrived at our house to collect an old car we no longer wanted. Tying an extremely long tow rope to the front of the car, he jumped into the driver's seat and gave his mate in the towing car the thumbs up. This was a really long tow rope. His mate's car disappeared out of our street while a sizeable length of rope remained coiled in front of our old car. Eventually the slack was taken up, our car jerked forward and slipped silently out of sight. You can probably guess what happened at the first junction they came to. He just shrugged it off; one more failure added to a long list.
His health wasn't great. He'd take time off work. As a result of his "unreliability" jobs came and went. Eventually he qualified as a cabbie, working the city centre taxi ranks because they were busiest. They were also the roughest. He saw killings. He had a gun held to his head. And of course he had the occasional drunk shitting on his car seat.
Coping mechanisms, we all need them. Bro-in-law would go back to his bedsit at the end of his shift and drink super strength lager.
We can feel like an orphan at any age. When his mother died, having never managed to heal the wounds of his abandonment, bro-in-law quit his taxiing and simply retreated further into himself. Eventually his sister coaxed him out of his despair and he attempted to return to taxiing. But there was a problem with his licence application. Apparently alcoholic taxi drivers aren't in high demand in Manchester.
And that seemed to be that. He continued living a modest, withdrawn life. But it appears that around this time even his Faith began to show signs of strain.
A couple of months ago he tried to kill himself. As macabre as it sounds this felt almost inevitable. Upon release from hospital he tried a second time and was sectioned. He should be released to an uncertain future later this week.
It's so hard to see a happy ending for the bloke. His life, at least for the thirty years I've known (of) him, seems shrouded in doom. He's tried and so far failed to find purpose. We wait with consternation to see whether a month in a psychiatric ward has given him back his appetite for life.
He and I were never remotely close. He carried with him throughout his adult life the burden of having to move out of the family home before he was ready because his mother was remarrying and due to past misdemeanours he was excluded from the package and had to go live on his own. He was sixteen then.
Uneducated, lost, he began to drift. Some bad experiences with drugs eventually drove him to devout religion. He could (and usually did) drone on endlessly about The Lord. When bro-in-law's phone number popped up on our caller display I'd make myself scarce in order to avoid his latest sermon.
One day he arrived at our house to collect an old car we no longer wanted. Tying an extremely long tow rope to the front of the car, he jumped into the driver's seat and gave his mate in the towing car the thumbs up. This was a really long tow rope. His mate's car disappeared out of our street while a sizeable length of rope remained coiled in front of our old car. Eventually the slack was taken up, our car jerked forward and slipped silently out of sight. You can probably guess what happened at the first junction they came to. He just shrugged it off; one more failure added to a long list.
His health wasn't great. He'd take time off work. As a result of his "unreliability" jobs came and went. Eventually he qualified as a cabbie, working the city centre taxi ranks because they were busiest. They were also the roughest. He saw killings. He had a gun held to his head. And of course he had the occasional drunk shitting on his car seat.
Coping mechanisms, we all need them. Bro-in-law would go back to his bedsit at the end of his shift and drink super strength lager.
We can feel like an orphan at any age. When his mother died, having never managed to heal the wounds of his abandonment, bro-in-law quit his taxiing and simply retreated further into himself. Eventually his sister coaxed him out of his despair and he attempted to return to taxiing. But there was a problem with his licence application. Apparently alcoholic taxi drivers aren't in high demand in Manchester.
And that seemed to be that. He continued living a modest, withdrawn life. But it appears that around this time even his Faith began to show signs of strain.
A couple of months ago he tried to kill himself. As macabre as it sounds this felt almost inevitable. Upon release from hospital he tried a second time and was sectioned. He should be released to an uncertain future later this week.
It's so hard to see a happy ending for the bloke. His life, at least for the thirty years I've known (of) him, seems shrouded in doom. He's tried and so far failed to find purpose. We wait with consternation to see whether a month in a psychiatric ward has given him back his appetite for life.
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