Matt

It reminded me of the time that I got knocked over by a wave. With rising panic, I found the surface and came up gasping for air, only to breathe in nothingness. My wet hair, plastered across my face, stopped the air from filling my lungs and the next wave forced me back under water with a sense of fear and helplessness.

That’s what the news of Matt’s death felt like.

I’d almost got used to those frequent moments of anxious paralysis. Every time I turned a corner and saw the ghost of Grenfell. Every time I passed the crematorium on the way to work. Every time I was caught off guard by a bittersweet memory of mum as I walked down a street that we’d often walked down together. In a neighbourhood where good memories now intertwine themselves daily with a deep-seated sense of loss, I’d been learning to pause; to breathe; to keep walking; to live in hope.

And now this?

How can Matt be dead?

How can someone who was so alive, so lovely, so young, suddenly be gone? Just like that.

In the office we shared, at least we could hug each other through our disbelief and cry together when the reality pierced our numbness and our tears flowed.

As the week drifted on, I read a few clinical news reports about the crash which killed two men, aged 31. They seemed so insufficient, not only in capturing the immensity of the tragedy but in summing up the entirety of two existences which made such a difference to the world.

The days of shock were punctuated by memories of Matt. His kindness, patience and good humour. The drinks we shared on bad days and on good ones. The times we laughed together about things and the knack he had for raising his eyes at me and getting me to laugh at myself. You can’t spend years in the same office with someone like Matt without being thankful for the blessing that friends can be.

Finally a news report with pictures of Matt and his friend James who was also killed. Still inadequate, but at least starting to paint a picture of real people, who had jobs, homes, relationships and lives. People who did things, thought things, lived somewhere. People who loved and were loved. People who were profoundly known.

I’d forgotten that Matt was into rock climbing. And then, at the very moment I found myself smiling at the memory of him telling me I should at least try it given how close I lived to his climbing wall, I looked up and found myself passing it.

I wouldn’t have normally passed it but I was on a bus because the tube was shut after that morning’s bomb at the station I went to every day for seven years on my way to and from school (…but that sense of yet another of ‘my places’ being attacked is probably for another day’s reflection). And suddenly there was the climbing wall.

The perimeter fence of the leisure complex was covered in messages of remembrance for the victims of Grenfell which is just over the road.

My eyes pricked with tears at the sight of all those messages: messages from people who wanted their friends and loved ones to be remembered. The words themselves feel insufficient yet their articulation somehow matters, and not only to the people whose lives have been irrevocably changed by the loss of those who were so much more than names. Those who were there one day and ripped away from us the next.

My heart is breaking for Lauren and for Matt’s family. At least when mum died I had the chance to say goodbye. This just seems so sudden, so inexplicable, so cruel. This time last week he was alive, and now he is dead. Everything feels precarious.

Through my tears and bewilderment, all I can do is hold onto all that I know to be true, expressed in part in the post-Grenfell graffiti over the road: blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.