So, here I am, on a flight to London.  Never thought I would be thinking of my Sunshine at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic.  But then life was never boring with my Sunshine in it!

I remember when we said goodbye. I really thought it was temporary, that we would see each other in the not too distant future.  Stupid me I guess, as that was 2 years ago.

When he first went to New York, we were in and out of each others lives all the time.  It was great that we could see each other so much.  I put in a lot of time in NY, drumming up business with various clients and watching my Sunshine shine in the art world and wow it! But then in the summer of 2007 Chris Hobbs was charged with assault of a gay man in a bar just off Liberty Avenue.  Everyone assumed this time he wouldn’t get off, second violent offence right?  Wrong!!

As usual all the homophobes came out in great force.  ‘ He was pushed to the edge by being propositioned’ ‘ He was led astray by ‘perverted’ friends’ ‘ He would never do something so against his nature as a good upstanding businessman and father (yes it seems he was allowed to breed).  As his current victim was, yet again, in a coma, it fell to my beautiful Sunshine to give a victim impact statement.  The judge in this case wasn’t a homophobe but a really understanding woman.  Unfortunately, the jury was less so and they decreed he was guilty of the lesser charge, again, of simple assault.  However, as much as his legal team tried, he could not escape jail this time.  He was sentenced to 5 years and with good behaviour, and time served, he could be out in three.  Two months after the verdict his latest victim was taken off life support and died.

Somewhere along the way my beautiful boy lost his sunshine smile and his love of life and when the opportunity to go to Europe came up, he jumped so fast I thought his head would spin.  I remember taking him to the airport and seeing in his face and his eyes how broken he was.  But I didn’t know how to mend it.   

The phone calls and emails lessened over the next six months until there was nothing there to hang on to.  The last email was simple and to the point:

Brian,

I will always love you, but I can’t give you the love you deserve at this time. I just don’t have it in me anymore.  Please try to understand that I have to find my own way in this world we live in, even if it is without you.

Forever your Sunshine.

I never thought in all my years, with all my walls carefully in place, that I would ever feel this desolate.

Of course they all ‘rallied round’, the ‘family’.  Deb told me I needed to give it time.  Ted said I needed to throw myself into the business and in no time I would be back with him again.  Em said he was worried cos this was not like ‘his baby’.   My ‘best friend’ Mikey was so full of himself with Justin gone that I just wanted to choke the useless little fucker.  We were never the same again after the shit he spouted.

I contacted Jen and Daphne, to try to find out what was going on with Justin.  Jen asked that I leave it alone ‘it’s for the best Brian’.  At least Daph was as worried as I was. ‘ I don’t know how to get through to him Brian, I have tried talking some sense into him but now he’s changed his number and his email address just pings back’.

And then after all the lost calls, lost emails, lost communications, even the PI I hired, I got this email 2 years later;

‘Okay, you don’t know me and I’m sure that I will regret this but, I have run out of ideas to help Jus, he is in a really bad place right now and no matter how much I would like to wear your balls as earrings, I think you could be the one to get through to him.  I have booked you a ticket to London, first class of course!, for 2 days time to allow you to get your life in order.  

Don’t make me regret this!’

And so here I am and we are coming in to land………………..