Remembering Paul Collier on his 41st Birthday
“The Sands of Time” Music composed & created by Gary Collier
We all have our very favourite or auspicious months.
Mine is September.
It is the month when the earth regenerates and the air is full of sweet scent and it is also the month when my 2 oldest children were born.
Allissa on the 15th and Paul on the 19th.
We seemed to pull off being half decent parents when they were small kids but who knows.
I never asked Allissa until recently and I wasn’t courageous enough to ask Paul.
I got my answer too late. Somebody found a section on his Facebook page called “The Man Who Made Me”.
It was his dedication to me.
There were so many things that I looked at from my own viewpoint back in the 80s and 90s and as such thought what I was doing was OK.
I now wish I had of asked others more often how my actions were impacting them.
I wonder if at the end of this life I went before Anubis’s “scales of justice” whether my heart would be able to balance equitably with his feather and allow me to choose my own eternal destiny.
Birthdays are a bit like Facebook likes.
You pretend you don’t place too much importance on them but really what you want is a reminder that others remember that you exist and that you have a place in their hearts.
There is a lot to be said for good communication.
If we all could just listen and respect what others had to say without defensively interjecting and cutting off their words the world would be a far better place.
Could just listening and understanding be enough?
Yes, I believe it could if the understanding was full, complete and unfettered.
But that sort of understanding is hard to give constantly.
I suppose you could call that unconditional love.
I recall on Paul’s 30th birthday in 2009 he and I visited Siem Reap in Cambodia. A few wonderful days full of adventure and discovery but also peppered with emotional landmines.
But there again we were in Cambodia where landmines are commonplace.
Soon after we arrived we found Kim who was to become our driver and friend for the next 4 days or so. He had grown up during the Khmer Rouge horror years but somehow retained a sense of optimism and hope for a good life.
We had some tough times asv well. I tried so hard to be tolerant and even though at times I had to temper my anguish we got through all the barriers and over the hurdles and did more together emotionally and physically than we had done for many years.
Kim would arrive at our hotel to pick us up and drive us to our planned destination for the day but Paul would still be in his room with the door locked. Kim waited patiently, sometimes for several hours until we set off.
Dawn visits to Angkor Wat, Paul and I road tiny bicycles through the pre-dawn darkness to arrive at Angkor Was as the sun started to rise.
That was a very special morning.
Boat trips on Tonlé Sap Lake, meals in Siem Reap and visiting all the amazing Khmer temples in the area over 3-4 days.
The hardest moments were when Paul was having a Diabetic hypo.
I felt helpless. Always a synchronous need to help and his rejection of help.
Many times I had to stand desperate and alone and watch him drown in what looked like despair, fear, murky emotions and confusion.
I really don’t know what his innermost thoughts were like when that happened. I think I was caught up in my own panic, my own despair, my own moment of desperation where I would call on an invisible, non existent God to help me to help him and for both of us to return to some sort of normality
The hypos were like missiles shot from a drone that was hovering just out of sight.
They were unpredictable yet volatile, explosive and heaped emotional and physical destruction onto both of us.
They held us both captive and submissive to the destruction they wielded.
Once the “shooting” started there was no certainty about what would happen next, where the next barrage of destruction would come from.
But we found a way through this chaos.
He loved me and acknowledged my sacrifices. We never spoke openly about this part of our relationship but I had some intangible idea that he was eternally grateful to me for the love and care I gave him.
Back to Siem Reap …. It was our second last day before our return to Bangkok. I’m pretty certain that it happened at a temple called Phnom Bakheng which was built in the 9th century, 200 years before Angkor Wat. We were with our driver Kim who waited in his car while we roamed around what was left of the ancient temples. I lost Paul and went searching for him. When I did finally find him he was standing very still inside a small temple racked with grief.
Paul just stood there sobbing, he said “Go away! I need to be on my own.”
I wasn’t certain whether he was having a hypo or not.
He was.
My heart broke. It just felt like complete hopelessness.
This may have been the moment when Paul fully realised that his life wasn’t going to work out.
There was absolutely nothing I could do to help Paul without pissing him off completely. Eventually I withdrew. I felt deflated, useless and defeated.
I went back to the car and asked Kim to help. He understood that Paul had Type 1 Diabetes and what the unpredictable consequences were.
After a what seemed like an eternity the two of them came back to the car and we got in. There were no words spoken, no reflection on what had just happened.
This was the point that I fully realized and understood how hopeless we both were to combat this monstrous illness. We were both held to ransom by it.
Paul and I spent a lot of time together.
We had lots of good times, some not so good but we loved each other. Love is a funny thing. When you love someone all the social veneer falls away and without these buffers the relationship can become even more intense.
Enough reflection.
Paul passed in March 2012. He would have turned 41 today, September 19th 2020.
Happy Birthday to the memory of my son.
