Rewriting, reposting, remembering.

When it finally happened there was no Hollywood moment and no string section accompaniment. In the end, it came down to a group of us gathered around his bed, in a private room removed from the ward he had occupied for the last four days of his life. This new room was too big for him, for us. The ward had been intimate and we had milled around him to talk, to sit close and to spend time with him. This room was one that we could not fill with conversation or bodies, silence or tears. It dwarfed us, made him look even less substantial than previously. The distance had become all too great, all too quickly.

His decline when it came had been rapid. Four days ago he had left the High Dependency Unit and moved onto a shared ward, seemingly on the road to recovery. He looked different, more sallow and his features more defined - and when he smiled it was an old man's smile, frail and fragile. Even his eyes had changed, as though some unspoken fear had finally been allowed to rise from where he had kept it hidden all these months, been permitted to take up residence in his face. Despite everything, he still joked and alluded to the life he would have when he finally returned home. He even found himself at loggerheads with his wife once more - a sure sign that he was feeling better. We still recognised him, hidden in this new sinewy, skinny body covered with a voluminous blue nightgown – and we recognised him more with every visit that passed; convinced ourselves that we had more time, that he had more time. We booked to go on holiday for a week, sure that he would be there to hear all about it when we returned.

One night he went to sleep and when he woke, things had begun to change, to deteriorate. His concentration fell away and his speech began to fail, become slurred. Words which had always come so readily to him became lost in an effort to breathe, to concentrate. Under that nightgown and that thin, bruised skin which now broke and bled so easily, his body began to shut down. There had been too many years of abuse, too much trauma from the surgery he had endured for it to renew itself. Within 24 hours he was on oxygen and reduced to writing his thoughts, instructions and observations on a notepad; reduced to pointing at letters hastily scribbled on a piece of A4 paper - a rudimentary ouija board designed to speak with those who were not yet dead, yet no longer fully alive. Conversations were torturous, filled with mistakes and misinterpretations but they were still conversations, still a chance to connect and communicate. Even at the end he was correcting his English; ensuring that we did not just understand the basics of his point but that we fully grasped every single word – correctly and exactly as he intended his thoughts to be heard. This man was the reason that my stepson always referred to 'X and I' as opposed to 'me and X'. I had tried my best to educate my stepson for months with no lasting success, yet this man had managed it instantly, effortlessly. Words were important to him and if he had to leave us now, he was doing so using the appropriate phraseology - and if we didn't like that, if it made conversations last longer than they needed to, well that was just too bad.

The medical staff were honest with us - the next twenty four hours would be crucial. His body would either find the reserves it needed or his body would not. It was that straightforward in the end, that simple - and we cancelled our holiday that night, made plans to be nowhere but here, nothing but available. Whichever way it went, this was not the week to be leaving town.

So we did not leave. He did though - at around two o'clock the next afternoon, in that large room that was just too large. We had been in the corridor waiting for him to be moved and we all knew the significance; knew that this was his final move and final stop, separated now from the prying eyes of the ward, from the other patients still focused on surviving. His focus had gone now; he was still and wax-like, his skin a strange yellow hue and if there was breathing, I could not see it. The nun came to baptise him, said that she felt a weak heartbeat as she performed the short ceremony - and at the time, it angered me, for he was no catholic, had no time for religion. I thought he would not have agreed to it, but now I know better. He would have have understood, as I do now, that these moments are as much about the people who survive you, who are left behind when you depart. His wife will spend her life with a multitude of questions, a plethora of what-if's running through her mind. His baptism, whether in time or not, gave her one less thing to worry about. He would have understood that, accepted that - and I often wonder what took me so long to see it.

The nun offered some words of comfort and left us. He had gone too. Looking at his body, I recognised aspects of the man I had known for a short five years but, as always when a life departs, something personal departs with it. The man who lay motionless in the bed before me was almost a stranger; a vessel which no longer carred the essence of the man I had known, the man who had given me a hard, hard time until he trusted that I loved his daughter as much as he did. He had been a man had I looked at, recognised parts of myself in over the years - but today he had gone, leaving just a thin, still shell behind. Even though I knew this was the last time I would ever see him, it made leaving the room just a bit easier.

Having said that, we have seen him since then. Every so often we will be walking down a street, walking through the club and, out of the corner of the eye, there he will be. We will look back to say hello but the moment will have passed and somebody else will be stood in his place. It turns out that there are a lot of old men walking around in polo shirts, short shorts and gnarled old sandals; many more than I ever realised when he was still with us. I know – I have very nearly said hello to them all over these past twelve months.

Twelve months, Bill - how quickly the time has passed and how vivid your memory remains. Twelve whole months ago I wrote a farewell message to you and this is not meant to be another. No; this is just a chance to pay my respects again, another opportunity to say again that you are remembered, missed. I guess when you boil it down, this is just my way of saying hello again twelve months after I said goodbye; of thanking you for the enduring memories and letting you know once more, one final time that you are missed and remembered and talked about still. And that is it - that is all I came to say.