I can't say that my schooling was exceptional, over and above some reasonable exam results I did OK and wasn't in too much shit with either teachers or other pupils. I had a couple of girlfriends, none of which went past the making out in the park after school.
I went to college, on the basis of those results I got a good job in Engineering which would sponsor me through University and after a few years was looking for the right girl, or at least the wrong girl in the right place.
Don't get me wrong, I was no stud but I'd had a fantastic introduction to sex. Like all the best porn films I'd been led astray by an older woman. During my second year at University I couldn't get a place in the halls of residence and hadn't been able to get cheap rooms on campus and had to go out and rent a room. I was put on to a family member that lived on the outskirts of town, some way off from my University but my landlady worked in town and would drop me off as often as possible.
My landlady Amy was in late forties, extremely attractive, positive and vivacious and was nursing her husband Tom who was in the last stages of Parkinson's. Her husband was ten or more years older than her, and had been a high level non-medical manager in the health service who'd gradually succumbed to his illness. I'd met them a couple of times at family parties and weddings and the like but didn't know them that well.
Husband Tom was a 'work-hard play hard' type of guy that 'lived life in top gear' or at least gave that impression and liked to show off about his latest golf club, new running shoes and male menopause car, and my Dad confessed that he'd never liked him that much and he'd always seemed a bit 'up himself considering he was just a pushy clerk' but we were all saddened to learn of his illness.
Working with medics and knowing that his prognosis for Parkinson's was not good, when he reached a certain point in his condition he'd requested that he could stop eating and drinking, . While his doctors had said that he probably had a couple of years of 'quite reasonable' health he wanted none of it and could not, would not be 'a healthy brain trapped in a twitching, twisted, helpless, dribbling, doubly incontinent body slowly shutting down'.
And so with a wildly twitching head and hand he searched the internet on his laptop computer and impressed with what he found, he concentrated as hard as he could to read what was on the screen. It was simple, he decided he would decline food and drink.
He asked Amy for his favourite meal that he could still manage and she went to their regular Indian restaurant and remembering him and his sad decline they cooked him a special chicken biryani along with all of his favourite sides.
She propped him up in his bed and gave him his tablets, and he took them with his beer. They laughed and joked and he reminded her of their life together. She shed a few tears and he said that with her support, this was to be his final meal and his final drink, and that by his best guess his life should end in a week to ten days.
Having watched her wonderful, bright, active husband become this bed-bound twitching wreck had broken her heart and she wasn't sure that she could watch him undertake this final journey and said so.
Huge tears slipped down his face and that was enough. When the nurse came to help with his bed time routine he announced his decision. The nurse said that she would have to tell the doctor, but they helped him upstairs and into his own bed where he'd asked that he could spend his final days. His doctor called around the next morning and he knew his patient well; after some pointless discussion he agreed and contacted his staff to that effect.
That was that; when the dehydration began to cause him pain, the district nurses put him on to morphine and after 15 long days he finally slipped away.
I arrived ten days after his death and a week before his funeral. Amy was a first or second cousin of my Mum - extended family - and much as my Mum had said that I should give everyone time to get over the death and not move in until after, perhaps sleep on a mate's floor or a local B&B. Amy said that I was most welcome and would help to take everyone's minds off of the next few days so I moved in.
Amy was curvy and sexy but amazingly sad. I made myself as useful as I could, loading the washing machine, packing the dishwasher, vacuuming etc. I made tea and coffee and tried to help seeing as both of her children were due back from University for their father's funeral, both Tom and Amy had insisted that they should continue studying.
They came home the night before and I offered to move out of the spare room to give everyone time to grieve, but none of them would have it. On the day of the funeral I got up at six and threw myself into whatever needed doing, including making breakfast toast, gallons of tea and coffee, greeting the caterers, the funeral directors, mourners and generally making myself indispensable. Being close but not too close the funeral director kind of used me as the sensible family member that could be relied on not to break down in tears.
"You're a treasure Terry," Amy said on that and so many other occasions.
The funeral was one of those 'celebrations of life' and I saw many of my relatives, including my Mum and Dad attending the crematorium and listening to the funnies that Tom's brother Hugh told of his older brother. It was upbeat, sweet but dreadful to the point of cringingly painful and Hugh was trying just too hard. It made the final closing of the curtain all the worse and Amy, the two grown up children, Tom's widowed mother and even comedian Hugh lost it as they slid shut.
There was a large wake afterwards in a local pub, and being the only sober one, I drove my landlady and her two children home, all three the worse for the booze they'd put away on that happy, awful day.
Amy's children went back to their universities and life carried on; never for one moment was there a suggestion anything at all 'naughty', sorry. We never passed on the upstairs landing with her in a filmy, flimsy see-through negligee, I never saw her in her underwear in the kitchen, had my own bathroom so there was none of that bumping into each other in the mornings.
However, she had phone calls from both of her children and seemed very upset one evening during my third month there. It turned out it was his birthday and then a few days after, her silver wedding anniversary and she was of course very upset. I was supportive and despite homework just stayed with her the whole evening.
At a little after ten she said I should go to bed, as I had to be up early and I kissed her hand and left. I woke up at about one o'clock to Amy getting into bed with me.
"I just... I just want... need to hold your hand Terry," she stumbled in her tears, "can I sleep in your bed tonight?"
