Ten years ago today my brother, Ady, passed away.

It remains the single most important and gut wrenching period of my life – of my family’s life; something which I think about every day, an unwanted millstone hanging around my neck.

Losing someone so close so early just wasn’t in the script. Most of us are brought up with the belief that life takes a linear route from birth to death – with life’s milestones: birthdays, graduation, marriage, children – scattered throughout. At no point, as you make that leap from childhood into adolescence are you prepared for that to change. Death, for me, was an incredibly confusing concept to grasp – it still is. I’ve always hated goodbyes. Ady’s passing, and the slow development of grief over a long period of time, only compounded that.

I’ve never written about his death before – although I have tried. My way of writing is to sit on the train and write unthinkingly into my iPhone. It’s uncomfortable and is probably destroying my eyesight, but it works for me – I managed to do it all around the world on rickety busses for a year whilst travelling. Now though, as I scroll down through the thousands of notes – most of them incoherent rambles – amongst them are about fifty attempts at writing about that period of time. I can usually write about most things, I find it cathartic – an important part of a process to relieve the pressure within. However, writing about what happened is to relive a period of my life that I’ve tried hard to move on from. A set of feelings almost impossible to comprehend.

For me, Ady’s eventual death – 11 months after we learned of his diagnosis – isn’t filled with much. All I remember is the phone call from my dad at 8.32am on the morning of December 4th 2006 – a Sunday. Shell and I were staying in a hotel in Oxford – courtesy of my mum and dad who, I think, just wanted to remove me from what was about to come. I remember the exact time because like most important phone calls I seem to receive (job offers, death, the BBC) I was sat on the toilet having a poo.

However, what I always imagined to be an earth shattering moment with screams, sobs and tears was instead filled with a void of numbness, senses unable or unwilling to take in the gravity of the moment. Sat on the train on the way back to Portsmouth I remember actually forcing myself to cry. I was a heartless bastard if I didn’t at least show something.

Rewind 11 months from that day in early December and it would be very different. The phone call that still makes my chest tight thinking about it also came from my dad – but struck me like a bolt of lightning through the heart. A world decimated in an instant.

I was at university at the time, scrabbling through my final year of a Politics degree. I had returned home to Bolsover for Christmas to find Ady off work due due to illness. Apparently he was suffering from headaches and sickness but in all honesty I thought he was faking it. He hated his job as a scaffolder and I thought he was trying to put it off – the fact I thought that back then still haunts me.

I remember after a few days my parents receiving a letter from the hospital which spoke of ‘abnormal cells’. My mum was instantly panicking, fearing the worst. I dismissed it out of hand and told her off for flapping; she loved a good flap growing up so I cracked on with the rest of the Christmas break. Its funny what memories you remember. I was dubious about the letter they had received but I can still remember sat in the living room one night during that Christmas break watching Ady out of the corner of my eye whilst he watched TV eating a bowl of ice-cream. I remember thinking that I didn’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him. It was the first time I’d really thought about it, the darkness slowly starting to appear.

And so it was until the 6th of January and sat in our flat in Portsmouth. I remember everything about the day. It is so clear in my mind that it’s almost been etched into my consciousness with a hammer and chisel. I remember Shell walking in from the pub barely an hour after leaving, a nervous energy clung to her like smoke (I’d later find out she had been pre-warned and had rushed home to be with me) asking whether anyone had rung. Outside it was grey and cold, a typically bleak winter’s day by the seaside. I remember the smell of the desk in front of me and the sound of the air conditioning unit outside on the adjacent rooftops. The world predictable and uneventful – a slow day in early January.

Then my phone rang.

What followed will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life. The words that no one wants to hear. The start of a nightmare.

It was my dad, in a quiet voice and with obvious distress, he said the words now deeply etched into my conciousness: “I’m afraid your brother won’t be with us much longer, tosh”. Even sat here typing it, in a café with the warm sun shining through the window onto my face over a decade later, it brings on the old familiar feelings – the tight chest, the shaky legs – the now familiar and ultimately permanent features of PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Life had changed in an instant. I was inconsolable. What is fascinating though- thinking back to that evening – are the small things. I was raw – unable to stop crying or think straight but I still managed to make myself a fried egg sandwich. You see these scenes played out in soaps or in films and you come to get used to the drama – the sequence of events that follow awful news: the desperation, the banging of the fists on the table, being held by a loved one – all apparent here. But what’s never focused upon in those moments are the small details: eating, having a wee, washing the pots – normality amongst the madness. The juxtaposition between the monumental and the mundane in close quarters. You soon realise that the world doesn’t stop, life goes on – whether you want it to or not.

Ady was a lovely bloke, but as two brothers go we couldn’t be any different. I was loud and craved attention. He was the opposite. He favoured the background, the escape, the ability to shut himself away.

Thinking about who we were and what we would have become I know with absolute certainty that we would have grown closer as we came to understand our places in the world. He was bloody annoying though. I remember him constantly watching crap TV – eating an entire packet of biscuits in about 10 minutes sprawled across the sofa, dropping crumbs everywhere. He was the thinnest person I knew but he could eat biscuits all day long. How is that even possible??

I also know – many years later – that if he was my mate I would have loved him – like so many of them did. He was unassuming, straight as a dime, without a bad word to say about anyone – the very opposite of arrogant, the trait I hate most in people. Above all, he lived for his friends and the weekend. More than anything it is the repetitive beats of techno and trance which bring back the most vivid memories. I remember his room – always a mess – covered in CD’s, absolutely hundreds of them. Most of the songs popular during those clubbing days are now old and forgotten but every now again I hear them somewhere, in a bar or as a soundtrack to some film or documentary and it stops me in my tracks. Nothing draws me closer to his memory than the sounds I’ve got etched deep into conscience. Hearing Energy 52’s Café Del Mar, Carl Cox or DJ Tiesto absolutely breaks me.

Even in the face of terminal illness he lived his life without fear – or at least that what he showed. I remember some days after that phone call from my dad when I spoke to him for the first time. Naturally I didn’t know what to say. Eventually I asked him how he was and with predictable belligerence he said he was ‘just going to give it some Bruce Lee mind shit”. That was him through and through. I would have locked myself away in a dark room but for him it was if it was just an annoying occurrence rather than something deeply frightening and permanent.

That year, 2006, was tough, but I know now from looking back that I hadn’t matured sufficiently to be able to even start dealing with what was happening. I just couldn’t comprehend any of it. My mum and dad paid for us to go to Kenya in the March, a final holiday with my brother. It was an amazing place to visit but by this point nothing had started to sink in. I mean, how do you even start to comprehend it being the last time you’ll be together for any length of time? We did fight though – how could we not? It’s what we’d done growing up so it wasn’t going to stop then just because he was, you know, dying. I do think back now, in times when I really feel like punishing myself and think, did I really punch my dying brother? I’m sure he’ll be laughing about it by now. He punched me first though. He was a wily bugger. Although I did probably deserve it.

Over the course of the year his condition progressively worsened until by the start of July he had slipped into a coma after going on a ride at Alton Towers. For the next three weeks he battled his way towards consciousness from a bed in a hospital in Stoke. I remember genuinely praying for him to wake up – with a good percentage of the reason because I couldn’t bare the thought of him dying in Stoke, anywhere but Stoke. It was around this time that a song by Snow Patrol called Chasing Cars was playing almost constantly on the radio.

Like I’ve already mentioned, it is amazing what sounds can do. For me it is the strongest of the senses. When I hear that song even now I have to escape. I cannot handle a memory like that. It’s as if I’m back on that ward, the bleeping of the monitors, the worried relatives. I remember talking to a father in the waiting room whose son had been severely injured in a motorbike accident. I remember talking to him for ages about his son until he burst into tears and put his arms around me telling me everything was going to be alright. He didn’t know that Ady had terminal cancer. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him.

It was the first time I’d ever experienced intensive care, surrounded by people who were teetering on the brink and it would be the second time in a few months that the wiring inside me just seemed to change. I just remember thinking – however selfish it might sound – that things would really be different. No more laughs. It was going to be really shit for a very long time and I had just better get used to it. It was genuinely at the forefront of my mind and something which, in the years to come, I would hate myself for thinking. Ady was ill – really ill – but all I could think of was myself and how it would affect my life. I know I shouldn’t punish myself but aged 21 I just wasn’t in a position to understand. I should have been.

The following week it was my graduation. Both my parents were there on a boiling hot day in mid-July in sunny Portsmouth. I look back at the photos and I’m speechless at how they did it – how we all did it. 250 miles away my brother was still in a coma but we were there, celebrating my achievements. I didn’t feel upset or joyous – the numbness continued. Sometimes you just get through things on autopilot. I mean, toasting success in such desperate circumstances is just utterly bizarre. Like the band playing as the Titanic sank or the Nazi commanders partying in their Berlin bunker as the Red Army approached.

In the months that followed Ady recovered from his coma but it was apparent his brain had been damaged and with it, a lot of what made Ady, well… Ady. It’s hard to find solace in heartbreaking situations but if we could find any silver lining in those final months it would be the innocence which seemed to envelope him; it seemed to protect him from the worst of the illness. There was no hair loss, no tears, no visible distress. It was if Ady was dying in the only way he knew how: fading without fuss or fanfare into the background. At his funeral, Mark Rushin, essentially our second dad growing up, would talk about Ady’s ‘childlike naivety’ and how it had protected him from the worst. I’ll always remember those words. They were so true.

I was reading a book about ex Labour Spin-Doctor not so long ago who also battled with terminal illness, in it he said something simple but deeply moving: “If you accept death, fear disappears.” Despite the changes to Ady’s senses and personality through those final months, it is something I sensed in him. He wouldn’t have had it any other way but whether it was spiritual or just testament to the human spirit in shit situations, he showed no fear. His death was heartbreaking, but I think for everyone concerned it was as peaceful a death as we could have wished for. If we are to take anything positive from those final weeks, it would be that.

I know it’s shit. The death of someone so close so young is devastating. I know its something that we’ll all continue to think about: the what ifs, the missed opportunities. I look at Archie, my son, and sometimes I see Ady looking back at me. It’s not obvious, he certainly isn’t a double for my brother, but it is in certain moments, the mannerisms, the smirk. I see him in him and its comforting. In a few years’ time I’ll sit down with him and tell him all about his uncle. Archie would have loved him.

As a brother, Ady’s death was hard. It was me and him growing up and however different we were, he was my only brother, so we were close. However, I can’t even comprehend what my parents have gone through. It’s impossible to even start to understand. Now I’m a father the thought of losing my child fills me with paralyzing fear. I know how hard it hit my parents but the courage they have shown is truly inspiring. It has taken them a long time and no, life will never be the same again, but it is testament to the love they have for each other to get them through the bleak days. Life goes on, but it is a different life.

Since Ady’s death, life has taught me some painful but wholly important lessons. I have suffered, but the onset of grief was slow, it manifested itself in ways that I didn’t understand, like a pathogen in a zombie attacking its host – sucking away at personality, confidence and self-assurance.

However, despite the cliché, it has taught me the importance of life – and of living it well. It has made me impatient, never fully-satisfied but determined to succeed. I’ve managed to do things with my life that I know wouldn’t have been possible if Ady hadn’t died. It gave me motivation that I didn’t even know existed. Seeing the world, pushing myself to the limits of endurance, putting everything into my family and my work. I used to be so lazy. Ady’s death was a wake up call.

I miss him, we all miss him. But despite his passing and the darkness that followed my memories of Ady are filled with smiles: of him hitting me with my guitar when I was 9, of him punching me in the nose in the backseat of the car on the way to Cornwall – back in the days when my dad used to break up a 300-mile journey into 3 days – “Let’s have an overnighter in Exeter”, he used to say.

I remember Ady walking into the living room and practicing his karate kicks in front of the mirror and then moving into the kitchen to eat three bowls of Super Noodles. I remember the hypnotic thud of trance music, the midweek comedowns that I never used to understand until, well, one day I did. I remember the the amazingly skinny legs, the ability to sleep until 4pm in the afternoon and the fact he never washed the pots, ever. But most of all I remember a beautiful smile, a kind heart, him coming home pissed the night before I left for uni, scared and upset at the changes to come, and him putting £50 in my pocket.

You might think I’m crazy for writing this; you wouldn’t be the only one. I’m sat here and I’m still in two minds whether to let other people read it. Will you find it boring? Self-indulgent? Not necessary? I’m not so sure. It is, however, for me, part of a process for me that started a decade ago and carries on today. I needed to do it.

Ten years, it’s gone by in the blink of an eye.

To Ady. Cheers.