Because that's the way I've decided to think of it. He's still in his armchair watching TV or shouting at Facebook for not sending a message to a long lost cousin somewhere in the depths of the highlands. It's just that his armchair is still in the bungalow, but in a different 'place'. And he's probably already off his face on Gkenfidicks, looking down (or up, you never really knew with him) at us all and thinking 'stupid bastards, I get all this stuff for free up here'.
And he wasn't taken 'before his time', either. Because it's not about the length of time we're graced with, it's about all the stuff we manage to ram into it. And, oh, did he manage. The self-proclaimed computer sensation, the world traveller the Indian prince. He did far more in his life than I'll ever manage to do in mine, I'll tell you that for free. He was chock-full of stories and images of people and countries and other worlds. You could sit and listen to the man for hours, and still, I swear he never once repeated a story. Somehow, there was always something new he had to tell you, but that 'something new' was a story about some dodgy tradesman he met in Australia in 1964 who told him he was selling him a car and he turned up with a camel with a monkey strapped to its back or something.
The only way I managed to compute all of this, was creating some really over-elaborate metaphor. I said it was like somebody collecting hundreds of antique discontinued vinyls over 76 years and keeping them in a huge box in their wardrobe. And, one day, they go to open their wardrobe and the box is just gone. Poof. Disappeared. With no explanation, so you just sit there and think about all those songs that you'll never hear again. Every ounce of time and space that went into crafting every line, every word, just gone.
Of course, you're sad. They were yours. And you're angry, because you'd spent close to a century collecting all those vinyls. But then you realise, you loved those songs with everything you had. You know every line, every word, every chord of every song on every single one of those albums. They live within you. When you're sat at work, tapping on the desk, that's the tune you're tapping. Whatever song you're humming when you're making breakfast on a morning, that's what you're humming.
So, whether we like it or not, he's sticking with us. We used him up and squeezed him dry, we loved him until it was his time. So there must be no 'I regret's, only 'I remember's. Because every time you drink whisky, every time Liverpool scores, every time The Beatles play, you won't be able to help seeing that smug bastard, winking at you, and raising his glass.
