Returning from my usual pre-work stroll alongside the Rochdale canal, on September 15th, I was struck by the presence of a moaning figure prostrate on a ledge next to an office building in a dank, foul-smelling area of the walkway. The figure was unmistakeably that of a middle-aged man, not small, casually dressed and, apparently, under the influence of something which contained him in his location.
As I walked towards him, his moans and murmurings prompted me to take a second glance. His jogging bottoms were grey, his trainers nondescript. His jacket commonplace and his face red and somewhat contorted.
The lanyard around his neck caught my attention – he was a student.
As commuters marched to work, minds and thoughts visibly focussed sensibly and responsibly on the day ahead and “doing” life, I stopped and spoke to the “invisible man” and, interestingly, became instantly invisible as I did so…
Time led to the revelation that the moaning “invisible” figure who mimicked, perfectly, every human object we see discarded on our pavements and in the doorways of our buildings – homeless, drunken, drug-dependent, mentally ill, cast aside – whom we judge, ignore, despise, blame and fear was, in fact, many of those things and yet so much more.
He had issues with alcohol. He had issues with drugs. He maintained a personal lifestyle which was unorthodox.
He was not drunk. He was not high. He could not explain his presence canal-side. He could not remember the previous week of his life. He had suffered yet another fit in an ongoing series which was being investigated.
He was forty six. He lived with his mother. His mother was a vet. He was a student.
He was a medically-retired Major from the British army who repeated in a never-ending diary of remembrance, over and over again during the hour or so that we were together waiting for an ambulance (and being encouraged throughout by an incredible Emergency Call Handler), that he had been in Iraq and that he had “watched a man die in [his] arms”.
This brave invisible man, busily working on his Master’s degree to make him more employable, who suffers from PTSD because he was prepared to die for me (and for everyone who passed him by en-route to work) was the broken hero who was uppermost in my mind as I stood at the cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. This “mother’s child”.
Not, this year, only the sacrifices of my grandfather, my great-uncle and all of those other forgotten Service folk of the Commonwealth nations. This year – and from now onwards – my remembrance will be different.
Jamie (and all the broken heroes who become “the invisible ones”), I thank you. I will not forget…
Peace to you.
