More Remembering

4 Ramadhan, 1443

Spent some time on a busy day remembering John. There's a lot to remember, a fair amount of which cannot be recounted here, I'm afraid. He was very much a 'character'. Over the last couple of years I told a few stories about him to Peter at work, and Pete was sometimes genuinely shocked, I think - as well as amused.

My earliest memories of him, dating as best as I can recall from my late teenage years, involve a tall, extremely confident, rather intimidating figure. Not someone you would want to mess with. Fortunately he seemed to like and sort of respect our family; those he didn't warm to usually found out that such was the case even on a brief acquaintance. More recent memories involve a diminished version of the man. His voice, on the phone, became frail and uncertain, that of a very old man. Which is what he was. Yet the elderly John was far more impressive than the younger version. He had much to deal with and did so with a cranky good humour that became strangely wise - strangely, I say, because wisdom was the last quality you could accuse him of.

I'll miss him, and I worry that the same, but very much multiplied, will be true of my sister.