The Lost Boy - Chapter 7 – part four - The Last Call, The Last Goodbye

The final phone call with my brother was the evening before life was about to change in ways I couldn’t imagine and had never thought about.

He was on his way back from the shop with his haul of alcohol for a party at a friend’s house. We had irregular but often phone calls, checking in with each other. Same with most of the family at that point — we were certainly all closer then.

That’s not to say we aren’t close now, but life gets busy. And this turn of events didn’t pull us in closer. If anything, it created more distance. I think we all had our own ways of dealing with grief, and with those differences came a little space between us that never really closed.

I remember him saying he’d got two crates of beer for him and a mate. Back then there were always deals on crates of either 20 or 24 cans. I don’t remember the exact price, but I know it wasn’t much.

The lads he was meeting up with were the same group I’d fallen into when I moved back from Ireland, so I knew most of them. He sounded excited to let his hair down.

Munch — that was my brother’s nickname — had his shit together for the most part. He always smoked a bit of weed, but it didn’t make him lazy or unmotivated from what I saw. I’m pretty sure he had a job in care at the time, though I can’t say for sure. I vaguely remember him talking once about wanting to be an architect. Another time he joked about something easy, like being a hospital orderly — one of the guys who pushes patients around from ward to ward. It probably was a joke, but to be honest, he would have made a good one. Munch was a friendly young man. Relatively happy, chilled, easy-going. Sure, he could be a cranky shit like the rest of us, but mostly he was laid-back.

In that phone call I remember asking if the crates were for the weekend. He laughed, “No, they’re just for tonight!” I should’ve known without asking. I’m pretty sure his best mate was there too, chiming in just to say hi and bye.

And that was it. That was the last time we ever spoke.

You’d think I’d remember every detail of it, but I don’t. Just scraps. What I do remember, clear as day, is the call the following morning.

My eldest brother. His voice. Just three words.

“Munch is dead!”

I remember not believing it, saying, “What?”

And then again, the same three words:

“Munch is dead!”

Those must have been the hardest words he ever had to say. And to think, he had to repeat them. Not just for me, so it could sink in, but again and again as he rang around the family.

My legs gave way. I remember that. I was in my bedroom and I just folded, collapsed into a heap on the floor. Crying but not really able to grasp what had been said.

And yet, at the same time, I knew.

That’s the strange part. I knew he was gone, but the gravity of it didn’t run through my head. It wasn’t thoughts. It wasn’t analysis. It was just the knowing.

Munch was dead.

From there it’s blurry.

I remember that segment of the phone call crystal clear — but after that, it’s only flashes. Snapshots.

Being with my brother, maybe at his in-laws’ place, though I can’t say for sure. It’s hazy.

I remember a shot or two of vodka. Just something to take the edge off whatever the fuck was happening. To take the edge off the fact that one of my brothers was dead.

Even now, writing those words still cuts like it’s happening all over again. It still hurts like he’s just been taken. The only difference now is that I can remind myself: I’ve grieved. It was fifteen years ago. The pain still comes — sharp, deep — but it doesn’t hold on as long anymore.

I don’t even know how I got to my eldest brother.

Before writing this, I always thought it was him who came to get me. But now, as I sit here trying to put it into words, I think maybe it was my friend — the one I lived with at the time.

I’m pretty sure the phone call came early in the morning, just as my friend was leaving for work. And now I want to say he came straight back and took me to my brother and his wife. But honestly… I can’t be sure.

It’s like a jigsaw puzzle I’m piecing together with broken edges and missing parts. Some pieces look like they might fit, but then I look again and they don’t. And I feel like I’ll never really know.

The next clear memory is being in the back of a car. My brother and his wife in the front. And the feeling. The pain in my chest. The sound coming out of me — a wailing, there’s no other word for it. I was crying so hard I couldn’t bear what I was feeling.

It was in that moment the gravity of it hit me. and it seemed to do that in waves from this point on!

I’d never see him again.

Never hear him.

Never laugh with him.

Never party together.

Never kick a ball.

Never watch TV together.

Never sit side by side taking the piss out of something.

I’d never laugh with him again.

I’d never laugh with him again.

I’ve been dreading writing this part — and now I know why.

I’d have done anything in that moment to change what was happening.

Anything to bring him back.

And even now… even now a part of me still would.

Time has softened the edge, but it’s never taken it away. The pain doesn’t crush me like it did that day in the car, but the longing is still there — tucked into the corners of my heart.

It doesn’t take much to bring it back. A memory. A photo. Someone saying his name. Sometimes even nothing at all. Just silence, and suddenly he’s there — and gone — all over again.

Grief is like that. It doesn’t leave. It changes shape, it changes weight, but it never disappears.

I’ve learned to live alongside it. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t still give anything to hear his laugh just once more.

The next section of memory — the next random slice of this very surreal but also very real event — was being outside my mum’s house. The house where my brother lived. The place where, apparently, my brother had died.

I’m pretty sure some of his friends were there. But again, who knows? Everything is so blurry.

And now what comes to mind is what actually happened to him. I wasn’t there, so all of this comes from the stories I’ve been told. But this is what was supposed to have happened.

They were all at a friend’s house, drinking, of course. At some point, one of the friend’s girlfriends made an accusation — that Munch had tried it on with her.

That friend confronted him. Words were exchanged. Munch was upset that it was even happening. He went to leave, but he’d forgotten his phone and his tobacco, so he went back to get them.

That’s when everything escalated.

There was an altercation. One punch thrown. His friend hit him. Munch went down, hit his head on a parked car, and was knocked unconscious.

Instead of calling for help, a decision was made. They put him in a car, assuming he was just drunk, and decided to take him home.

But from all accounts, he died on that journey. People have spoken about hearing his last breath. The death rattle.

When they pulled up outside my mum’s, they took him from the car and tried CPR. But he was already gone.

And my mum was woken in the early hours of the morning to that scene outside her own home.

It was four months before we would bury him.

This all happened on December 20th. The day before my mum’s birthday. Just before Christmas.

I remember thinking how cruel that was. I still think so now.

Because of how everything happened — the drunken haze of that night, the confusion, the lies told to try to protect his friend — nobody really knew what was what. And because of the injury, his brain had to be removed so they could work out exactly how he died.

That one punch, and the blow of his head hitting the car, had severed a vein in his brain, or something like that. Either way, there was never going to be any coming back from it, no matter when or where help might have come. From the moment it happened, it was already too late.

I’ve never really blamed anyone. In my mind, it was one of those things that could have happened to anyone in that situation. I hold no anger towards the lad that hit him. Never have, never will.

There was anger, yes, at the lies that were told. But even then, I tried to hold some understanding. One of the lads admitted later, at the inquest, that his version of events hadn’t been true. But by then it was too late for any outcome to change. Too many lies had been told, too much drink had been involved. Nobody’s word could be trusted from that night.

And so the case was never reopened.

And I’m glad.

I don’t think Munch would have wanted to see someone locked up for years over a drunken incident between friends. Not that I’ll ever really know — but I choose to believe that.

This next segment of memory haunted me for years. I couldn’t think about it in detail. I wouldn’t allow myself to — the feeling was too painful.

But now I’ve revisited it. It’s hard, but I can go back there knowing I’m still here.

Saying goodbye.

I don’t know where exactly. I just remember going into a room and seeing him. It was cold in there. He was lying on a bed with a white sheet pulled up to his shoulders. There was a towel, I think, wrapped around his head in some attempt to cover the cuts running from behind each ear. The cuts made when they’d removed his brain.

I can’t remember who I was in there with. But I do remember that I was there — and so was his body.

People always say “it doesn’t look like them.”

For you maybe. Not for me.

For me it did.

He looked like he might just wake up and say hi.

I went over, crying of course, and said my goodbyes. I put my arm around him and held him one last time. He was so cold. And colder still was the kiss I gave him on his forehead.

That was the moment of realisation, I think. The final knowing. He was definitely gone.

And that’s as much as I have to share about that.

And that is where this part draws to a close.

This was my first real experience of loss through death.

I’d known loss before, but never anything this close to home. And it changed me. It shaped me in ways I still don’t fully understand.

I can’t tell you exactly how, but I know this: I was never the same after losing Munch.

I don’t know when or how, but this led to me moving back to Southampton.

I don’t know the order of things. It’s all mixed up in my head. No real clear memories of moving. There’s even a chance I ended up back with my ex in Northampton and some of the memories I’ve written might be muddled with that. Maybe. Maybe not. I just don’t know.

What I do know is my mum was in pieces. I remember hearing her sobbing, broken apart, and feeling that pain just from the sound of it.

And I knew I had to go back and be there for her as best as I could.

And that’s what happened.

In the early days after Munch passed, several of his friends — and maybe some family too — all had the same kind of dream.

Munch was there, screaming to be seen and heard, but no one could see him.

I dreamt it more than once myself. In those dreams he was so upset — desperate, in fact — desperate for someone to notice him, to reach him, to see him. It was horrible to experience, over and over.

Looking back now, I believe it was because of the way he was taken. So sudden, so brutal, so unexpected. Like he hadn’t realised himself that he had slipped away. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t pass over easily at first — caught between here and there, still fighting to be seen.

But over time, the dreams changed. They shifted from the desperation of him screaming to be seen, to something gentler.

I’ve had a few dreams since where Munch has visited me, and my sister has told me of hers too — of him coming back to see her. In those dreams he isn’t frantic or lost. He’s calm, at peace.There’s a quiet comfort in those dreams, even if it always comes mixed with the sting of waking up and remembering he’s still gone.

And then there was the funeral.

It was a good turnout, a nice send-off for him, even if it came four months late. We could have buried him sooner, but it would have been without his brain, and the family made the decision to wait.

I remember him coming to Mum’s one last time — his casket placed in the living room. I remember carrying that casket, and I remember watching it lowered into the ground. He was huge by the way — 6 foot 5, give or take — so even the box that held him carried that presence.

One of his best friends played Swing Life Away on his acoustic guitar, and we all sang the words to one of Munch’s favourite songs, from one of his favourite bands. After that came the wake — a few beers, and a ceremonial spliff or two.

And that was goodbye to Munch.

But it wasn’t the only goodbye. The same friend who played the guitar also organised a music event in his memory — Munchfest. He did it to help raise money for the cost of the funeral. Bless him for that. It was a good turnout too, and it wasn’t the only one. There were a couple of those events under the same name, each one a gathering of people who loved him, keeping his memory alive with music.

And that’s where this chapter ends.

Next, we revisit the return to Southampton and all that it held — another move, another chapter.

Some people say things get worse before they get better. But for me, looking back, it feels very much the other way around.