My sister died yesterday. She was 51. She was clever, loving, terrible at the trumpet, and the whole world to my brother-in-law and my little nieces. Caroline was ill for a long time. She had cancer and lived with it for seven years. In that time, she tried everything. She faced chemo, invasive surgery, laser knifing, wild drugs, and continual uncertainty. I always thought I was the tough sibling. I was thicker skinned than her, less forgiving of minor irritants and, when I was a kid, much more ready to get in scraps. But that’s all bollocks. Caroline had a mastectomy, she had repeated brain surgery, she had chemo again and again. She got back up every time. She took the kids to shows and on holidays. She took the dog for long walks. She got through shielding without cake ambushes. She sent presents and funny text messages. She was as hard as nails and, in the end, that’s how I’ll think of her.
I’ve never lost anyone close to me in this way before. I thought it would be more visceral and savage than this. I thought I would be screaming. I’m not. I’m confused, tired, and lost. My friends, my wife and my therapist all tell me there’s no way to organise grief and no way to predict its tides. I’ve got to just go with it they say. What I wasn’t ready for is how physical it is. Sometimes I can’t get off the couch. Sometimes I’m hyper. Sometimes I want to stuff my face. Sometimes I want to hit the bottle. All the time I want to smoke. The sadness feels heavy. It sits on me and pushes into the front of my head. It’s a cloud but also a muddy lump. It’s awful.
I know making sense isn’t possible. Cancer defies logic. It’s a shit like that. What I can do though is talk about how we connected over music. I like telling music stories. They help me work through most things. They won’t help this time but I’m going to tell them anyway.
Caroline was five years older than me. Her musical epiphanies happened in the 1980s. She had a tiny record player in her room. It had foldable legs and a brown veneer finish. She inherited it from my mum and dad. It was my first record player too, given to me when Caroline bought her first hi-fi with her Boots staff discount when she was fifteen. She bought seven-inch singles in Woolworths. I was often with her when she did this. She bought ‘Green Door’ by Shakin’ Stevens with a record token and quickly grew to hate it. She bought everything by Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Spandeau Ballet and Erasure. Her copy of ‘Gold’ came with a scratch that made the ‘prison wall’ line repeat. It became a running joke in our house. My mum still calls it the ‘prison wall’ song.
None of these bands came close to her one true love though. George Michael and Andrew Ridgely were everything to her. Wham organised her life. Being the awkward bugger she was, she always preferred Andrew. She listened to them endlessly. She carried this on with George’s solo stuff. ‘Careless Whisper’ still makes me think of her. We both used to laugh at the idea of ‘guilty feet’ having to face a judge and jury.
We didn’t have much musical common ground. Pre-teen me liked Madonna, Five Star and Kylie. Teen me saw the start of life as a music snob. This sort of thing was something Caroline never tolerated. She hated judgement of any kind. She liked what she liked and wore it with pride. We both liked Depeche Mode I suppose. Bon Jovi too, although her joyously and me secretly. Our musical differences came to the fore in my mum’s car on the way to school. I wanted my tapes to play, she wanted hers. I wanted Happy Mondays, she did not. (This was never an issue in the longer holiday drives in my dad’s car as the choice there was ‘Movie War Themes’ or silence). My mum used to put up with this for so long. If it got out of hand she would intervene and make sure that Terry Wogan soundtracked the morning.
Despite all these differences, and against her better judgement I’m sure, Caroline took me to my first proper gig. She was at university in Nottingham by then, becoming the amazing doctor she would be. I went to see her there a few times. What a different world. Bars, cool older kids, halls, my sister’s pretty friends. I loved it and it made me certain I wanted to go on to uni when it was my turn. About the fourth time I went she had a surprise for me. She’d bought us tickets to see Transvision Vamp. Like so many boys my age, Wendy James was a big deal for me. I had Pop Art and Velveteen and played them endlessly. They were my first choice in the car tape battles. I was in love with Wendy of course but I also loved the band. Aside from the radio friendly singles, they made filthy punk pop that referenced Blondie, the Velvet Underground, the Primitives and the Stooges. The lyrics were grandiose and chock full of mid-twentieth century pop culture. The sleeve art for Velveteen had pictures of icons like Marilyn and Jimmy Dean scattered around and old Dylan LPs piled up next to well-chosen bits of cult literature.
Seeing them live, or anyone live for that matter, was a far-off fantasy for me at 14. But Caroline took me, her spotty little twat of a brother, to see Transvision Vamp in the Nottingham Royal Court. They were marvellous. It was marvellous. I never stopped going to gigs.
Thanks, Sis.
When we got older, we talked about music less and laughed about how funny our dogs are instead. We agreed on that much more.