5th October Rick Carter said he was sorry to hear about Philip "it is some (a long?) time now". He has four sons. It is no time to Pam and me. That's the first time anyone has said 'it's a long time'. 6th October I very seldom put the radio on in the car. I used it for a few days in August but usually it's unbearable. Pam started to look at cookery books again in September. 14th October The letter that arrived from the de Millevilles made me cry at breakfast when I arrived at "pray for his salvation and for your consolation". Not many people in England would write like that. It was very quiet in the cemetery today. Pam was visiting elderly Miss Howard who wishes she could be permitted to die, and I retrieved the geraniums from my parents grave for the winter and trimmed the grass around Philip's. Pam collected me from the cemetery, sat on the bench close to Philip's grave and cried. Yesterday, Tom and Diana's father was buried in a beautiful little cemetery in Haselmere. As we stood at the top of a slope overlooking the grave I said "it's the first funeral I've been to since Philip's. It's very hard." 15th October Pam has had only little cries today. I want to double the size of my company to please Philip. As I went to bed this Sunday evening I passed Philip's photograph on the table by the door in the sitting room; just two inches by three inches. Every night I say the same prayer. 'Lord, guard, protect, watch over the soul of my son Philip. Send the light of your countenance to shine upon him. Let light perpetual shine upon him. Take his hand in yours and lead him to wisdom and full stature. Lord let us one day see and recognise each other again and permit us to live for ever in your presence, re-united in amity, harmony, joy and love. Oh God in the infinite width of your compassion, grant me this prayer.' 16th October The Telegraph had a front page article about students dead in Africa. One had been to Birmingham. It made us cry. Ray Holmes has just telephoned. "How are you? Oh, coming along. Oh, have you been ill? No, its the bereavement actually" Another thing to make Philip laugh. 17th October Natasha came for a meal. We didn't talk much about Philip at first and then we did. 19th October If I had written to Philip every day in Lent, as I thought about doing, would he be alive now? 20th October It's 31 weeks, 217 days since Philip died. 21st October Sally's friend Jane Baker's wedding today at Pinner Parish Church and the service for me was suffused with Philip. We gave Philip a funeral, not a wedding. I have not appreciated the 1928 service before. It's full of love and it has taken Philip's death for me to properly understand that there is nothing else. It hurt when Jane Baker's husband's parents mentioned their five children but as Sai Baba says, that is just possessiveness. The article in the Birmingham Evening Mail has arrived. Andrew Green sent it. I must show Natasha. Some quotes are wrong as is his age. 23rd October A bad night last night. It's probably the taking of compost to the grave to fill the hollows that appear and the imminent removal of summer flowers to be replaced by winter flowering pansies. My world is wrecked because Philip is dead. But nothing is really changed. We are all going to die, it is simply the order of death which has altered and I believe, or at least fervently hope, that our world here is just an ante room. If the manner of Philip's death increases my pain, that is selfish of me. Do we think that the way he died reflects adversely on us? If he had died in a car crash would it have been less painful? Outrageous, when my love for him is absolute, to consider such a proposition. I hate him having no children. Selfish to regret the children he has not had. Jonathan says that our genes are quickly absorbed in the gene pool and his and his sisters are the same as Philip's. But when I see attractive, fair young people I think "that might have been Philip's child." And he did have a child; aborted, and I knew nothing of it. I am not now so sure I prefer burials to cremations. I do not like the grave settling. I have a picture of the chipboard coffin collapsing. The man with three dead children said "you have to top up with compost as the grave settles and the coffin collapses". Taking the four sacks of B & Q compost today is not going to be easy. Every night when I bolt the front door, I say, "We are not locking you out Philip, because you live in our hearts for ever". I'm pleased he knew he could father children. It was not so bad at the cemetery. I must remember to tell Natasha that we have left room in the grave near the cross at the head for her to plant anything she wants. The tough moment was when Pam had the cross out to varnish it and I, holding it, said, "wipe its bottom" and looked at the warping wood and above all saw the rust around the screws holding the little, brass coloured nameplate. We cried then. Back at work, about to go home, Natasha rang to say she would come round this evening. Pam, when I rang to warn her, said it was becoming too much to cope with. 24th October This morning in bed, Pam admitted she sometimes had slight feelings of anger, directed at Philip; very slight and very occasional. I don't find that. If I die and wake and experience Philip's presence there would be no recriminations, only joy. Joy so intense that one might die. Natasha said as we ate last night that Philip had been "different" on her twenty first Birthday. Pam wonders if this is a) true? b) due to the stress of his relationship with her? c) drug induced? Pam and I went with Pamela Lee and Jonathan Turner to the Tate. Pam Lee talks now about her daughter Sharon, dead thirty three years, and her other daughter, Allison. How smug we must have seemed before our disaster. Pam Lee remembers how she told Allison, "I'm your mother, not your friend," and wonders if that was misguided. I remember often telling my children that I had lots of children in case one of them died and replying, when one asked how I would feel if one did, "gleeful." 25th October An odd thought, "I have to lead a satisfactory life for Philip". Pam spoke to Joanna on the telephone about the letter Joanna was writing to a couple who had lost their child a few days after birth. What could she say? If they had been offered twenty one years of the child's life they would have jumped at it (would they?). Pam feels Joanna is suffering in that she has fewer people to talk to. Her friends no longer want to talk about Philip. Pamela wants to write down everything that has happened. 26th October Yesterday we drove to Charlbury and saw Pam's relatives who are getting old. George Rutherford has been retired twenty five years: longer than Philip lived. This morning in bed Pam and I talked of how we could forget details about Philip. They would come into one's head and be lost in a minute or two. Pam writes them down but doesn't like to be seen doing so. I remember less pleasant bits about Phil. How he wouldn't get up, wouldn't come for walks with the dog, wouldn't come for runs. I wish I had spent more time with Philip. It's better to blame oneself. Otherwise it's possible to think that Philip who we love, was an ass who preferred drugs to worthwhile pursuits. Pam remembers that he wouldn't join the O.T.C or the sailing/sail boarding group at Birmingham. And why did he refuse help from Pam over his French A level? 27th October Pam went to Natasha's today. Natasha was on the telephone to Nick when Pam arrived. Pam didn't like that. She says "when Natasha is at home she's ours, but at her home she's not." Pam recognises that one day Natasha will have another boy friend and hopes that it won't be a friend of Philip's, although I think I might prefer that. 6th November Professor Feldman rang me. He couldn't see us Thursday except before ten or after seven o'clock. I told him there was no urgency. He apologised for the delay and said that Professor Holmes hadn't replied to the copy of the letter I had sent Professor Feldman. 7th November Joanna said she went ten minutes not thinking of Philip today. Pam said she found herself momentarily looking forward to the next day. I suppose we have to accept these moments of relief and be grateful instead of guilty and expectant of misery to follow. November - Undated Pam has written a poem: Part of me is dead My inside feels wrenched out Part of my future and my past Is snatched away In one moment lost forever All those years of caring, teaching, worrying, helping him grow, loving exchanges, humour and arguments, planning, pride and hope, buried in his beautiful body which now lies decaying in the earth. No joys of fatherhood for him. No family gatherings in which to share the happiness of togetherness. No chance to put the foolishness of youth behind him No chance to know maturity and manhood No chance to fill the potential that was within No chance to meet all those he would have met and loved No chance to know the many joys and wonders yet unknown No chance to make his contribution to the world No chance to live No chance to say goodbye. No chance. 15th November I awoke in the night feeling better. I woke in the morning feeling much worse. Phyllis at work told me she "had Philip on her church's dead list". Pam says how Mrs Grant, who has helped with cleaning for many years, finds it difficult to go in Philip's room. She has had an intimate insight into his life over many years, closer than many friends and even family. Natasha dreamt she went into Philip's room and found him just awakened from a coma. He said, he hadn't been certain whether he was going to die and just wanted us to get on with our lives. Natasha said there were lots of things she wanted to tell him and he said he had been watching us. She asked "aren't you angry that I've been driving your car" and he replied "no". 16th November Natasha and Pam went to the cemetery. She told Pam that she had dreamt that her mother had another baby and wouldn't let her hold it, saying, "No, you got rid of your baby". Natasha said Philip had enjoyed work experience at Gouldens, the solicitors, but on returning to Birmingham had been told "You've missed a fine summer. You could have sold drugs and not worked". 14th December I hate clearing out from the files at work the orders we got before Philip was born and calculating "this is 1977, Philip must have been four". I wish I had spent more time with him. Next February/March there will be a re-union for those that left Habs five years ago. Pam hates the idea that Philip did not survive five years from the end of his schooldays. 15th December I once sent a letter to Philip addressed simply by name and post code. It came back with a note saying many houses in Bournbrook Road had the same code and the letter was undeliverable. December- undated Philip died sometime after midnight on Friday 17th March and before four o'clock, Saturday afternoon. His housemate John unsuccessfully telephoned Alex Johnson at 3.55am on the Saturday morning. He forgot to tell the police about this when he gave them his statement but on production of the phone bill explained that he thought 'Phil was drunk and would have liked Alex there'. Another housemate Bryn called Alex, unsuccessfully, at 2.26pm on Saturday, 'to see where everybody was'. Finally, at 4.06pm, he was successfully contacted by Mark and immediately came round to the house to be shown the body. Only then was an ambulance called, by the time it arrived Alex had already gone. 20th December When my mother was in the Clacton convalescent home and I arrived unexpectedly, she said it was just like a boy friend arriving without warning. My love for Philip is beginning to develop the same sort of pain as unrequited love. 25th December It is exhausting. Pam's crying as we go to bed. The Xmas wrapping was the trigger. Much of the time it's like living in an orderly nightmare. 26th December There was an empty place laid at my brothers' Boxing Day family meal. It was for Philipe, Lise's brother, who was unable to come. I did not really notice but Pam did. 31st December Back from our three nights in Forfar with Sally's finance's parents, I realise that they did not like us talking about Philip. Perhaps they were just embarrassed. Perhaps they thought we are embarrassed. Perhaps they think that to die from heroin is shameful. Last night, in dreams, we were in what, I later realised, was a safari park, somewhere in East Africa. Then, just Philip and I were alone in a narrow alley that was full of people, a cross between Pinner Fair and an Indian/African township. Philip wanted to join a queue going up a very tight stairway. I didn't want him to. He did and I realised they would reach the top and emerge through a small hole into bright sunlight, one by one, where blinking, blinded by the sun, someone would pretend to hit them. I took over this job. But I missed Philip coming out of the hole (if he ever did) and I could not find him. Oh God, look after my son Philip.