"I’ve just watched the film
‘Quartet’ on BBC two. I was in the middle of writing on a different theme, but
as this is loosely based upon or around my 54th birthday it seemed
germane to share some of my thoughts about ageing.
I’m not sure that I know what it is
to grow older. I’m not saying that I don’t understand the process because I do,
but it’s so hard for us to see it in ourselves and yet we watch as our friends
grow old around us. My experience of ageing is just the same as it is for
everyone else I’m friends with. The reason I know we’re growing older is that
we’ve started talking about it a lot more during the last three of four years
of discussions—in our thirties we never did.
As with the subjects we talk about
here, there has to be a point to it that feels significant enough for someone
to read it. So often friends and supporters write to me saying how sad it is
that I’ve now spent almost thirty years wrongfully imprisoned—this will be my
thirtieth birthday behind bars—or they feel I’ve been so unlucky in life.
Of course my life would have been
different in every way had this tragedy not befallen my family and me, but in
what ways it would have been different is completely unknown. Would I have even
made it to my 54th birthday?
For the most part, the last thirty
years have been kind to me on many levels. The film ‘Quartet’ that I’ve just
watched underlined for me what I and many others believe to be the true font of
happiness—to be loved by someone who you
love equally in return. If you are lucky, that situation happens when you
are young and lasts a lifetime, as it has with two of my closest friends. It
may be, as you are reading this, that it hasn’t yet happened and the person who
will love you as you love them is still but a dream for the future.
I don’t want to ruin the film
‘Quartet’ for you but it’s a love story that takes place between two residents
in a retirement home. The point being that we simply don’t know when true love
might strike. For the characters it’s quite late in life, but the joy of true
love salves emotional pain like nothing else and more to the point brings a
state of happiness beyond anything else known to man. I believe that makes
living almost blissful and utterly complete. If it’s not happened to you yet,
it will do, maybe tomorrow, maybe next year. There is no telling when cupid’s
arrow may strike.
Going back to why life has been
kind to me, it’s because I feel loved by so many people in all kinds of
different ways—people who allow me to love them equally in return. What would
be perfect for me right now is for Justice to prevail so that I can enjoy true
love as a free man.
The good news is that Justice may
indeed be on its way."
Jeremy
