My own funeral

MY ALARM shrilled me awake at 7am; I was up by 7:20. Did all the bits I had to e.g. picking up methadone.
At 10:30 my dealer rang me but I ignored him. At 11:00 I rang the dealer using my harshest voice to demand "a decent one, coz they've been getting smaller and smaller" (dealers like to try it on ~ they wanna see how much they can get away with. I had been punishing him by going elsewhere.)
He said yeah yeah and he would be "fifteen minutes" (ie ages), so I took my time getting to the place. At 11:15 I was at da place. Then I sat on a lawn reading my 1943 Kathleen Speight edition Teach Yourself Italian, which I so wasn't in the mood for, but I'd left my German book at home. (I can actually enjoy this German book without constant recourse to a dictionary (though I'm not claiming to know every word) ~ what a wonder that is! I was knocking back white cyder and puffing on cigarettes as I learned to conjugate my verbs. At about 11:45 the dealer showed.
Home by midday. I had one hour clear.
I checked on my clothes, hanging dry from my windows on coathangers (I've nowhere else to dry them). Then I rushed to cook up my hit.
The my first attempt was far too pale in my opinion, though a goodly chunk of "brown" had gone in. The dealer had made good on his promise and sold about six or seven "points", as we say, for £20. (Those are points of a gram ~ five points being half a gram.) Well as I say it looked too pale, so I added more and re-fried. I'd put about a third of a gram into the spoon. With vitamin C it dissolved into half a millilitre of tapwater. The resulting hit was midnight black.
I took this half-millilitre of death-black liquid, dropped my clothes (which also gave relief from the oppressive heat ~ only 31, 32 degrees C but this morning so humid, I looked like I'd showered with my clothes on.)
Afterwards I was trying to remember where I'd banged the hit in, but I couldn't. But it went in directly...
... and knocked me out cold.
Next thing I knew it was 1:45 hours. FIFTEEN MINUTES TO GO. There was absolutely no way I was gonna make this event on time, and crematoria will not put funerals on hold just because some stupid junkie took too much gear to get there on time.
I rushed to the shower and washed my hair. This only took three minutes but when I next checked the clock it was two o'clock.
Knowing I'd missed it I slumped back in my chair of living death and was instantly unconscious. I woke up at 2am.
Y'all can have a go at me if you like. I feel the weight of your disappointment already.
My second thought, after "what the hell have I done to Pinky?" was "what will I say on my blog?"! You see your opinions matter very much.
As I saw it I could:
1: obfuscate ~ give an oblique account of the day. Not lying, but making it seem to the uninformed reader that I'd actually been, even though I hadn't.
2: lie. But the day I start telling lies on my blog is the day I should give up blogging
3: tell the stark truth
So I'm sorry, but this is the truth.
I missed the funeral because I was too stoned on heroin to get there. And there you have it.
Trust me, you won't be any more disappointed in me than I am in myself.

I CALLED up my friend who's unofficially organizing Perky's funeral tomorrow, I was stressing about where it was, who I was going with, how I would get there and what the hell to wear. I do have a suit, but it stinks of 10,000 cigarettes having hung on the back of a door for three years. Also I don't have a shirt to go with it. Or a tie. Except for a bloodstained old school tie I found on the street and have used as nothing other than a heroin tourniquet...

I was told: just come as you are, wear normal clothes, that's the type of date it's going to be. And I was saying, Yeah but I don't want to turn up as my regular scuffy self and show everyone up. And I was told: You'll be fine, you'll be fine. Then I said: Well shouldn't I dress as if I'm going to the doctor's?~ and she said: Yes! That's exactly right!

So my sartorial stressings are sorted, at least. I presently have a huge bucket of clothes soaking in the corner. (I hand-wash.)

I said I'd Google the address and bus-routes for the crematorium, so I'll have to ping off and do that in a sec.

O man I how am I going to get through tomorrow. All the drugs in Burma wouldn't do it for me. What am I going to do? What will happen? How will I cope?

I've never been to a funeral before. Not a friend's funeral.

The only ones I've attended were my Grandad's and my old Aunt Dot's.

How I'll handle seeing a coffin that I know contins a body that used to be inhabited by the most marvellous, wonderful woman who brought so much (and the most classic Turnip accent you've ever heard) to so many ... How I can look on this coffin and think of her laid out inside so lifeless and still, staring blankly into the dark; this person who was so full of life and is now about to be chucked into the furnace and burnt to ashes ~ how can I possibly do this?

I don't know how.

I don't know.

Of course I will survive. But what about poor Pinky, so cruelly left alone? A woman who, despite the most gruesome, grotesque, horrendous life you could possibly imagine ~ in childhood and in adulthood ~ has survived and lived as best she could. A woman who has endured years of psychotic illness. Nobody can comfort her. For there is no comfort. And no hope. (At least none to be seen.) To pretend otherwise would be to descend into clichés and platitudes and I'm not into them.

I cried this morning. I actually cried. And I never cry over suicide or drug deaths. These are personal decisions or inevitable consequences of life ill-lived. So how can I cry over the inevitable?

Perky's death was far from inevitable. It is wrong, so wrong. And that's the difference.