Not Dead Enough

40

I have read that devastating news has a strange impact on the human brain. It freezes time and place together, indelibly. Perhaps it is part of the way we humans are wired, to give us a warning signal marking a dangerous place in our lives or in the world.

I wasn’t born then, so I cannot vouch for this, but people say they can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news, on 22 November 1963, that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated by a gunman in Dallas.

I can remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news, on 8 December 1980, that John Lennon had been shot dead. I can also remember, very clearly, that I was sitting at my desk in my den, searching on the internet for the wiring loom for a 1962 Mark II Jaguar 3.8 saloon, on the morning of Sunday 31 August 1997, when I heard the news that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been killed in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris.

Above all I can remember where I was and exactly what I was doing on that July morning, eleven months later, when I received the letter that ruined my life.