Dear all,

This is probably the strangest email I will ever write. It is being written with the intention of being read at my funeral in front of my friends and family for whom I care so much and I will not be there to see its impact. My apologies go to whoever is reading this out as I suspect it may not be easy for you, and I hope I don’t go on for too long.

By the time you hear this I will no longer be with you. I have no idea how long from now that will be but that is not for me to ever know. I really wanted to just say my bit and let me know what you all meant to me.

When I think about dying it doesn’t scare me too much. I think you are not really aware of it until it has happened or that if you choose not to resist death and accept its inevitability there is nothing to fear. I believe that when the time comes it is most powerful to choose death as what is happening to you to have it be a peaceful event.

Much as the comfort would have been a real boost, I have not been a religious man throughout my life. My scientific mind has put paid to belief of bible stories and the like, although it is clear the meaning is in the metaphor. I believe the great power in the sacred texts such as the bible and the Koran is their openness to interpretation of the meaning of stories. If you need support because you are having difficulty with a colleague at work simply read a passage about the teachings of Jesus on forgiveness and you will be comforted.

Likewise, facing death and having the feeling there is a man in the sky looking out for you at all times is akin to starting secondary school when your big brother is the hardest kid in year ten. It must lead to increased feelings of confidence and reduced feelings of vulnerability, loneliness and uncertainty. If people choose to have a belief for these benefits it can be well understood.

I believe the biggest mistake one can make is to practice any religion in an orthodox manner ie. To hold a scripture to be a 100% truth to be followed to the letter. Whilst this must lend great comfort to the believer regarding what path to follow in their lives, it leads to a narrowness of thinking and feeling of superiority. I cannot condone orthodox Christians who say that the bible states homosexuality is wrong and therefore leads them to advocate the persecution of homosexuals throughout society when a key message of the bible is also to “Love thy neighbour…”. Both cannot be true under any form of logic. Love (L) = All Neighbours (X). All Homosexuals (y) are a subset of X. Therefore L = All X cannot be true. But if it were, as it must be, then L = All y cannot be true either. A crude analysis but you see my problem with orthodox interpretations.

Anyway, rant over. There is a distinction between faith and religion that is none too clear cut. Many people declare themselves to have a faith but to follow no religion. Faith never caused any conflicts but the misuse of belonging to a certain religion as an excuse for persecution e.g. Israel vs Palestine.

Having spoken to vicars and practising church-goers it seems the core concept of their belief is love. That is to say the core of everything they practise, has the aim of making people become more present to love. This can be no bad thing.

People often state that they have felt the presence of God, which has lead to their leap of faith. I believe we all experience a certain feeling at great high points in our life which many people choose to label as the presence of God whilst some others would call it a spiritual experience. My personal name for this momentary state of euphoria is the Sublime. When we experience the sublime nothing else in the world exists except for what we are focusing on and the mind is in an eternally peaceful state. I believe this is much the same kind of state Buddhists aim to achieve through high-level meditation.

A prime example of when I have experienced this is when I was in Polzeath, Cornwall. I had been bodyboarding late into the evening and it was virtually dark. The sun had been setting behind the rocks at the north end of the bay and it had been mesmerising, turning the sea more and more orange as it sank below the horizon. I eventually got out and sat in the shallows taking off my fins and getting ready for the long walk back up the cliffs. The angle of the light was such that the shallows turned an irridescent purple-pink and the sand became the same colour. The sight was so breathtaking I sat there for a full fifteen minutes until it was dark, unable to think about moving, unable to blink or take my eyes off my surroundings. It was the most moving experience of my life up to that point and I could well have explained it as the presence of God.

I think all religions are ultimately looking at moments like these that can come at any point and be interpreted as God’s work. Anyway I am no theologian so will stop there before my argument holds any more glaring untruths. I am not saying religion is good or bad, it is just not something that ever happened for me. As I began to contemplate death, cynically some might say, I began trying to speak to God through prayer but to no avail. My beliefs remained unchanged and I expect this to remain the same until I depart (I’ll let you know on the other side if I was right about the whole life after death thing!!!).

Ah yes. Life after death. Again, it turns out many non-religious types do believe we carry on existing in some form or another after death. Scientists have weighed bodies before and after death and found there to be a consistent weight loss of twenty-one grams (2/3 an ounce in ‘old money’). This was the name of a fairly recent film if it sounds familiar, a film that studies grief of several different families. It is very dark and depressing as well as not being particularly good, not one to recommend. Anyway, I digress; something physical happens that Cartesian Dualists, those who believe the mind and body to be separate entities, say is the departure of the soul from the body.

It is very comforting for people I have left behind to believe in the after life and that I have gone to a better place, much as a thirsty man draws strength from praying for water whilst walking through the desert. There is a certain lack of finality afforded by such a stance. My personal opinion is that we just don’t know. I am not one to write off such things when there is simply not enough evidence either way to make a decision. I’ll know by now though. What I do believe is that my presence will continue to be kept alive by all of you here through your collective memories, sharing anecdotes and looking at photos etc.

Anyway, thank you all for coming! I have no idea how many made it to this little gathering though from a purely egotistical perspective I hope lots came. That would make me smile. The main point I have been trying to make is that despite whatever you believe, death comes to us all. It has been a risk for me not to believe in God as I have missed out on his/her guidance throughout these last few months. Instead I have had to face death alone from a strictly speaking point of view. Choosing this path however has meant that I have been far from alone at any point in recent memory due to the massive level of support I have received.

The level of support from friends abroad, school, family friends, University or even recent friends has been simply astonishing. I can honestly say that the biggest cause of stress in my life at the moment is that of visitor-management. Despite resting up in Dorchester, the number of people willing to make the journey, sometimes to see me for only twenty minutes, has been astounding. Suffice to say it takes my mind off things but also leads to a high level of exhaustion. I need my quiet time too to reflect and write letters like this.

Traditionally a lot of people think “I don’t know what to say, what if I say the wrong thing, I don’t want to upset him/her”. Thankfully it seems that you have all pulled together and found the strength to ignore this barrier and see me anyway. Many people have just been honest and visited me saying “Look I’m really sorry but I don’t know what to say” to which I usually replied “There is nothing to say so lets talk about something else…”. Then conversations flowed quite naturally.

I really want to thank all of you for staying so strong for me and supporting me over a considerable period of time that I call my life. I know it was not always the easiest choice and you wanted to run away and hide a lot of the time. Still, none of you did which I appreciated because I never had that option.

My family too as well as those immediately peripheral such as Tim and Paul, you have all been amazing. I have never experienced so much love and support and hope my death brings you all closer together. Endless foot massages whilst I was lying in bed (Sian gets a medal for this too!) as well as bringing me up food from home to stop hospital-food induced illness and keep my appetite alive and my Nan’s surrogate mother role without which life would have been a lot harder.

I know I only ever got to see a façade or veneer of you all when I was visited. I know you cried outside the hospital doors or whilst lying in bed as long as I didn’t see because you didn’t want to upset me. I appreciate that. The way you have all supported each other has also supported me in more ways than you can imagine and now is the time to really use each other.

So we have established that death is not the most frightening thing I faced before my departure. If not then what is? The most upsetting thing is not that I will die but what I will leave behind. The number of friendships I have built up and the amazing family I have who I will never get to speak to again. That is what I find hardest to come to terms with.

• I will never see any of my close friends get married
• I will never get to hold any of Jo’s children
• I will never get to be a father
• I will never see Paul finish the house
• My Mum and Dad become parents of one not of two
• The unbreakable bond between my twin sister and I will be broken

This list could go on for a hundred pages but my point is made I think. I will miss all the things we take for granted and hate not being able to support all of you in your loss and what that will mean to you. I never had a close friend die during my lifetime but can only imagine it to be a truly upsetting event. What you all still have is each other, a massive network of support. I can honestly say I would wish my friends and family on anybody who was about to go through what I have been through.

It’s not very cheerful this letter is it? I wanted this to be a light-hearted thing though a person dying young is a pretty poor place to start. Well in case you didn’t know, I had a lot fun during my lifetime, maybe I just used up all my rations. Hell I used to go windsurfing whilst everyone was studying in the library for their finals and handed in my final-year project four days early so I could go surfing and hiking in Cornwall. I graduated the most relaxed man on the planet, maybe that’s what blew it?!?

If all has gone to plan my photo albums from the start of university onwards are available to look at. Definitely more good times than bad, and you can’t have good times without good friends.

I had loads of adventures. Highlights included:

• Being chased by three prostitutes in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
• Running aground half an hour after high tide in my friend’s boat caused by my dear mother who was steering towards the wrong set of lights, under the direction of the marvellous Nick Fleming
• Surfing with three twenty foot basking sharks on Sennen beach, Cornwall
• Stumbling along a secret beach in Cornwall only visible at low tide that took us out of the wind and was deserted, looking like something from Thailand. Walking back to the campervan we picked mussels and cooked them in wine that evening as the sun set
• Losing our host family’s dog in the mountains in West Cork only to have her reappear a few days of guilt-ridden grovelling later, unharmed
• Getting lost off-piste with a friend in Chamonix Valley and having to hike down a mountain for two hours on icy roads in full kit with no money or phone between us only to find we were twenty two kilometres from where I was supposed to start my second day of work in half an hour
• Missing my train in Zagreb only to return to the old part of the town and watch the most spectacular sunrise I have ever seen

Yeah I have had lots of good times and I can honestly say I don’t regret anything I have done. All decisions I made were the best ones at the time, even my ill-fated season and sticking with my terrible job for as long as I did.

Thanks all of you, you all form the biggest part of my good times and have been there for most of the bad. All I can ask is that what you learn from my death is that we really don’t know when life will be taken from us. On paper with my health and fitness, low alcohol consumption and my choice not to smoke, I was probably the last candidate for cancer out of my friends – some of whom have awful diets and smoke with relish. To ask Why me? is futile and can only be suitably answered with Why not me? I just wish you to all try and live life from the perspective that you don’t know when your time is up. Don’t sit in a job you hate and moan about it rather than actively looking to change what you do. Don’t stay in a relationship because it is ‘okay’ when you know you would be far happier not in that relationship.

A good start is to appreciate what you have got already. I look at my friends and see the most fantastic, attractive, intelligent bunch of people with incredible potential. What I will miss is spending time with you all but now I am gone you all still have that. Don’t forget it, I’m envious!

That’s about it really. I have said my bit. You are all wonderful and I love you all dearly. Please look after my sister, who is I should mention totally fantastic. Being my twin, and she will always be my twin, she will feel the loss in a different way from the rest of you as I know I would do if roles were reversed.

Don’t be sad, celebrate having known me when I was alive and the fact you still have each other.

For the last time take care,

Love Dave XXX

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