Looking out over Petra
Independent travel,  Travel Blog

Things That Shape Our Lives

November 11, 2022 /

So how exactly do you end up like us, retired but always content to be away from home, still always looking for new places and new experiences. Well, there’s **MICHAELA’S STORY** and there’s **PHIL’S STORY** but there’s probably other factors too.

You become reflective as you get older, it’s one of life’s great truths. A different perspective starts to descend, one which enables us to look more objectively at the moments and events which shaped our lives and forged our character. Some such moments seemed immaterial at the time yet had an impact which reverberated through the years; others were more blatantly influential.

September 1975. My brother, seven years older than me, had always been a bit of a hero to me – if he liked something then it was good enough for me. By now I was 18 and he was 25, I was two years into my working life whereas Mark was starting to forge ahead in his chosen career.

After a string of girlfriends, Mark brought Pam into the family and the whole family fell in love with her, so full of life and fun and one of those faces which was always on the verge of laughter. Sporty, fun loving, happy. Working life had taken them to Birmingham, and in August 1974 Mark and Pam were married and set up home in the Midlands town of Halesowen. Young career minded people, this was almost a society wedding, and one which seemed to have been made in heaven, as the saying goes.

In September 1975, Mark was 25, Pam 22. Sunday morning and they headed down to play tennis at a local park, just the two of them. During the second set, Pam went to play a return shot, got her legs tangled up and fell heavily on to the tarmac. Pam being Pam, she saw the funny side despite the pain and laughed at her misfortune as they packed the equipment back into the car and set off home.

Next morning and dressing for work, Mark hears Pam cry out in shock from the bathroom. The tennis fall has brought some horrifically weird bruising, she is completely black from armpit to knee down one side of her body, her face now horror struck rather than smiling. They drive together to the doctor’s surgery, where the GP takes one look at her, makes a phone call, and tells Pam to pack a bag and get to the hospital where there is now a bed waiting.

It all accelerates out of control, like a runaway train. One minute it’s a sports injury, the next she’s on IV drips and hooked to a heart monitor, undergoing test after test. Phone calls buzz round the two families on hot lines.

Leukaemia. The word hit us like a brick wall. 

Pam didn’t survive long, and never left that hospital bed. She died from a brain haemorrhage less than two weeks later. Her funeral, just fifteen months after that glorious wedding day, was an ocean of tears.

In our memory she is that smiling 22-year old and always will be – those that die young stay young in our mind’s eye for ever.

But if anyone ever wonders why I don’t worry too much about tomorrow…..

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