4 years on

Yesterday marked the forth year since Jamie left his feeble and battered body and his spirit/soul/presence rushed out to be free; free from the cancer; free from his bed; free from the his mad hair which changed his appearance into a twin of ‘Shaggy’ from ‘Scooby Doo’ when he sprouted his fluorescent ginger beard, exaggerated by the jaundice in last few weeks of his life; free from the meds that made him sick and exhausted; free from dependancy on others ; In all, free from a lifeless life.

Recently, someone asked me…
“Why do you ‘celebrate’ the day he died? I understand celebrating his birthday, as that celebrates his life. But why his death? It only makes everyone sad, cry and miss him even more?”

At first I didn’t know what to answer as it just always seemed natural to raise a glass and wipe the tears every year on the day he was born and on the day he died. However, although many of us grieved each day, I also asked for pictures and anecdotes and video for Facebook & for his website, asking people to contribute each year on the days of birth and death. Have I, unconsciously dragged both my family and friends through twice the days of sadnesses too?

I thought my reasons to remember the day James died, were a) to stick my finger up in an unladylike way at death and b) to show James, wherever he was, that he was still loved, still missed and still alive in our lives. c) it an excuse to get together as friends and family, to tell the incredible amount of “do you remember when…” Stories to prove that, though his body was gone his life carried on in the stories and tears. Plus, well – let’s be honest, Jamie would have liked to be an official excuse for as many people he knew to be ‘wasted’ in his name.

All I could think to say in the end was, yes, his Birthday does celebrate his life and is happier than the day of his death. Yet, i also feel the sharp loss, sadness and tearful giggles produced by our memories we tend to remember only on the days we think about his death. Both tears and smiles are vital. For example, It’s crucial to know that Jamie was ONLY forty to appreciate how much he achieved (and how much trouble he caused). Yet, I am his little sister and I am 43. Am I now his big sister???!.

It is very strange, but the knowledge of me and all of his friends and family that survive him, getting older while he stays cheeky, difficult, handsome, sometimes deep and sometimes very funny ( try to read some of his entries in his work books/diaries available on his website) would be something he would wickedly enjoy. i can almost hear him laughing at us in a across time. A free and easy sound ( somewhere between Mutley and Scooby) and I know why I mark his death as well as his birth.
Like all good big brothers he made me cry as much as he made me laugh.
It’s just how it goes.
…….

A sister without a brother…

A sister without a brother

 It’s  another year since you left.
Another year we have thought about you…
Another year we walked and wondered about you…
Another year we mourned  plans we had made for this year…
Another year we questioned  where you would have been this year…
Another year to wonder if you would still be under Thai skies this year…
Another year to wonder if we’d might have seen small hazel orbs in a Thai babies eyes this year…
Another year to wonder why…
Another year, still tears to cry…
Another year to dance on a beach…
To dream of a life led out of reach.

We all miss you xxxx

Goodbye and More Goodbyes…

The year is marked again by June 1st, the day my brother, at 40 years old, died

There are still people who call or I meet in the street, their diaries full of gigs to and from Spain, China or Australia, who had heard a rumor but whose faces still crumble at the truth of their unrealised loss.

It is still that close? I wonder when there is no-one to left to be shocked anymore. 5 years? 10?. I hope somewhere in the creative buzz of the Thai studio that I will never see, that there is a plaque or picture that remembers his role in its creation and life. I start now to long for something more to do. His clothes have gone to friends and charity, his small treasures to his nieces and nephews, his MacBook has been copied into files, it’s system wiped to factory settings, Shells he picked up on an unknown Thai beach are now in the front of my fish tank, cleaned each night by shrimp and catfish. His backpack has been repacked, diaries and sound maps organized, bic working and the mini Tabasco bottle as he could no longer stand the bland English food is still in date. The bag sits in the corner he used to throw when he turned up on his dodgy motorbike, demanding bacon butties or trifle. The mini-dv’s are next, I will file them between London, Equador and Thailand. Yet, what then?

There will always be a June 1st but when will it stop being the day my brother, the Late, Great James Eade, died.

The Late Great James Eade

The year is marked again by June 1st, the day my brother, at 40 years old, died

There are still people who call or I meet in the street, their  diaries full of gigs to and from Spain, China or Australia, who had heard a rumor but whose faces still crumble at the truth of their  unrealised loss.

 It is still that close? I wonder when there is no-one to left to be shocked anymore. 5 years? 10?. I hope somewhere in the creative buzz of the Thai studio that  I will never see, that there is a plaque or picture that remembers his role in its creation and life. I start now to long for something more to do. His clothes have gone to friends and charity, his small treasures to his  nieces and nephews, his  MacBook has been copied into files, it’s system wiped to factory settings, Shells he picked up on an unknown Thai beach are now in the front of my fish tank, cleaned each night by shrimp and catfish. His backpack has been repacked, diaries and sound maps organized, bic working and the mini Tabasco bottle as he could no longer stand the bland English food is still in date.  The bag sits in the corner he used to throw when he turned up on his dodgy motorbike, demanding bacon butties or trifle. The mini-dv’s are next, I will file them between London, Equador and Thailand. Yet, what then? 

There will always be a June 1st but when will it stop being the day my brother, the Late, Great James Eade, died.

Happy Birthday

Today Jamie would have been 42.

Consequently, although he remains rarely distant from my thoughts most days, today I have allowed myself to think much more.
Whist I was thinking a picture came into my head; Jamie has since been joined in heaven/the afterlife/the next dimensional universe that makes up whatever comes next [delete to taste] by our father, John – but most of you may have never known that tragically, our little brother was lost at full term, stillborn. His name was Jacob. So when I think of my lost brother and father I now think of three.

In this place that came into my daydreams today, I can see a white painted iron garden set:a perfect round table and high backed chairs with a weaved pattern twisting the metal so it looks almost soft.
Strangely (perhaps in strange and magical mixture that happens in dreams, of houses from my brother and I’s childhood) there garden set sits on a green lawn at what seems the very end of a walled garden. Some tall iron gates, with large holes created by their pattern, allow you to see through to a long white beach beyond with very, very blue water. The almost white sun is in the process of hitting the water, creating a perspective-perfect path of light over the waves . Its over-brightness is like something Dali might gave imagined – hyper real colours and overtly smooth perfections.

On the garden table is a old chess set, a slightly overflowing ash tray (obviously) and some glasses green liquid – possibly Absinthe.
Jamie liked the connotations but I don’t remember if he liked the drink itself. It might just be my strange visual-based brain giving me another vibrant colour to this dream-scape.

In one chair, his back to the gate, my father sits, well lolls, magically transformed back to his thirties with only a slight rise of a beer belly under his polo shirt. His arms are tanned and crossed and he is obviously deeply asleep, a white panama hat, placed completely over his face. I am betting the half burned-out cigarette in the ashtray is his, although one of the two young men sitting to his right and left soon pick it up with a ‘waste-not-want-not’ attitude.

Jamie is in the chair facing me (in a way that is both painful and wonderful to my dreaming heart) is slightly plump in the face, his messy, sun-kissed hair would make Harry Potter’s look tidy. Perhaps they had been swimming earlier, the way the salt used to turn his hair to straw in the summer as children? The sun is highlighting his features. He has a half smile of a man who know he is going to win.
If the man opposite is my younger brother, Jamie will certainly win.
Because James will have cheated outrageously.
Take it from the younger sister.

James wears a short-sleeved, slight loved-worn shirt worn almost as a jacket over the T-shirt below. The hand not clutching some kind of smoke or other, is playing absently with what looks like a mobile phone. (They must have these, wherever he is, or he would have had his -“this isn’t good enough” face on within 30 seconds of arriving) His eyes twinkle, echoing the sea beyond but brighter. There is no sound in my dream but he appears to be slightly nodding his head. He likes the music. He probably chose it.

I am unable to see the man sitting with his back to me but I expect is the brother I never knew, though I am guessing. Some clues are the that back of his auburn-tinged is distracted by a mad ‘cows-lick’ parting. He has long body that suggest he is much taller than her really is, as Jamie did. His head also seems to be moving. Is he singing? Talking? I wish this dream was at night  and not during the afternoon so I can turn the sound to 5:1 surround.

Its just a picture, but it helps.
When I see things like that it feels again like Jamie is just away in another country, having a well-earned break after a gig, gathering his thoughts before he moves on to his next project.
In that daydream I can forget for a while that flights back are cancelled and the price to visit is one I can’t afford to pay – not yet.

If you have a memory or a daydream like mine, please on what was his birthday, the start of my family and the celebration of the first child, take a few minutes off and stay there for a while.
Raise a glass. Blow smoke rings to the heaven whether under a wet September sky or a bright Thai sunbeam.
We miss you James – John – Jacob.
Happy Birthday, big brother.

One Year One…

One year has now passed since James left us. Those you that don’t know will have mixed feelings on learning that his dad, John, joined Jamie this year after dying suddenly in January. Those that loved them try and dream about them on the “white shores” of the other side…although they are certain to be causing trouble. Rumor has it that not all the recent ash in the clouds is down to the Icelandic volcano but simply Jamie & his dad throwing a party after finding some particularly flourishing plants in Eden.
Most people that know and loved Jamie have found it extraordinarily hard continuing without him, but the days pass and here we are. Over the last year this website has grown as his writings, music and thoughts have been added although there is still more to be put up.  For those who have missed his voice and his laugh, check out some of his messages on his Dictaphone. Most are funny, thoughtful but too short. Please sign the guestbook and say how you knew him if you can or spend some time just listening to the tacks that he loved.

Please follow this link to see images that have not been seen before, gathered from his laptop. The track is by Peter Gabriel who I will say is not someone who would have been James’ first choice. He did listen to him as a teenager but although he loved the ‘real world’ vibe but there was never a enough groove in there for him. Still, his music leaks of everyone page of this website. Perhaps he wouldn’t begrudge one page of sentimentality – providing a drink and a smoke followed to provoke laughter, arguments and joy.

So, one year on we raise a glass again to our lost son, brother, lover, uncle, friend, work mate, school friend, tamer of sounds, acoustic dreamer, argumentative bugger, visionary of studios and collaborative harmonies. Have a drink. Have a smoke. Shout over the person talking. Laugh until you can’t breathe. Close your eyes look for truth in drum rhythms, dancing bodies or the lights on a sound desk. Another year passes and more will follow but Jamie lived for the moment and you are in one. Now.

Play tune here

Birthday Lightning…

Today Jamie would be been 41.

It is hard to think that this time last year we were laughing, drinking and playing mad percussion in my living room.

Jamie was thin – had got quickly thin but none of us really worried.

He had puched his body to the edge all his life – his body was bound to protest wasn’t it?

A few weeks rest, some vitamins, some good green veggies and the odd can of condensed milk (the vice he kept far more secret that the drug he tool!) and he would be fine.

Shows how wrong we were.

Many people have asked me why Jamie had to leave us? Was it his time? Was it Karma? Was it his lifestyle?

Yes, it is true that Jamie chose to life his life by balancing risk with pleasure, coped with fear by anger and joyously trampled on what he saw was the safe and the boring.

Yet, in the end. no-one knows why his life was cut so terribly short.

We all have seen at time in our lives,  in dark nights or stormy grey days, the  sharp bolt of lighting that suddenly reaches down and connects, scorching and final,  with ground.

Most of the time, in spite of its terrifying suggestion of things beyond our control  it actually means very little;  some tiles of a roof, a blown phone line or  something else innocuous.

These consequences hide the power that passed us by.

Yet, sometime time we stare in awe and fear when we see a lighting struck oak tree

Even with its deep thick roots that have dug deep and intertwined into the deep  ground, even with  its solid bark and its vibrant green leaves,  it has been suddenly cut down, sometimes even cut along its very centre!

We don’t understand why this time was different.

Why this solid, seemly everlasting life-force is now broken, the essence of it ebbing away.

There seems no reason why today was any different than yesterday but still it was today the lightning struck and all the world, from microcosm to passing stranger, knows that something significant has been lost.

*********************************************************************

Raise a glass or three  (see Jamie’s page on Facebook) and say Happy Birthday to James Eade.

We are still left shocked and wondering but life, it seems, carries on.

Goodbye – The now Late Great James Eade

June 2nd 2.45pm.

Yesterday, my spiritual, difficult, charismatic brother, James Eade died, aged 40.

As many of you know, his wish for many years has been to gather together his thoughts, beliefs and ideas and write his book. Sadly, Jamies life, as we all know , never ran either smoothly or slowly and although many attempts were made to pull all these things together, it never became possible.
Read more »

Goodbye

James A Eade

Sept 6th 1968- 1st June 2009

Some dream and dare to dream whist others only hesitate, even when awake…

Pen and paper

7-5-09
About an hour ago I was looking for a pen and paper do I could start to write the first part of an epic into… KINDA GAVE UP AS REALIZED THAT THERE WAS NO PAPER TO BE FOUND.
Then realized tht I DID’NT NEED ANY PAPER,WELL NOT REl pPER
SO BACK TO FORGETTING..