Badger had died. As sure as life meets death he had left the blue planet and I was quite alone in the world. Bereft of the man I had loved and cherished for nigh on a decade.
It was hard, it was sad, sure it was and nothing that had ever happened to me before had hit so hard. All the time I was thinking just how wonderful it was to share, not just a deep meaningful relationship, but all the that went with it; the feel of him there beside me, the smell of his pipe and his shaggy tobacco, the touch of his hands fondling and exploring the way only Badger could do, the absoluteness of his fuck warming and gratifying and forever fresh every time we bonded.
Now -all gone forever. All those feelings, the loving and the good times we shared together, an infinite paradise which I thought would go on and on forever and ever.
But Badger was gone. He was gone for good and for all time. No more Badger, no more...?
I kept telling myself; 'life moves on, think of the joy and happiness Badger emitted to you, and vice versa, you made an old man very happy and you know when you found him, in the allotment shed, the secret place where you shared your intimacies. He was just sat there, on his old chair, quite dead but with a smile on his face and a note in his clutched hand."
The old timer knew he was going, sure he did but in the note he apologized in not having brought himself to tell me. But it concluded; "I will be with you very shortly and cherish me, I want that. The delivery man will bring you something very special after I am interred, after I am cremated. We shall be together for always, I promise Peter."
The old guy was nigh on 74 when he died but had the stamina of a guy much younger and was richly gifted with the needs -be that made our intimacies so very warm and wonderful.
A didn't go to the funeral. I don't think I could have faced that. I wanted to remember him as he was, when I found him with that warm smile on his face. He didn't look at all like I thought a dead person might look and when the paramedics turned up they too could not believe he was gone, until they felt for his pulse.
I cried, sure I did. The Para's asked if I was his son and to save a long explanation I said I was.