R.I.P. Dawn

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, we were losers.  There was me, Dawn, Rookin, and the variety pack of geeks, neurotics and drunkards that we called friends.  We hung out every day and every night, doing not very much but being glad to do it together.

When we felt the call to form a sucky garage-punk band, there was no hesitation: the three of us would join up to conquer the back yard.  We argued more about the band’s name than any other aspect of the whole affair.  (We passed over “Wasted Angels” – too L.A. glam metal – and “[Something-or-other] Babies” – too grrl-grungy – and finally settled on “LizardSkin”. If I didn’t have other things on my mind right now, I’d feel shame.)

See Scott Pilgrim‘s band, Sex Bob-omb?  That was, essentially, us.  Or, to put it more correctly, we were that.  Dawn played drums, Rookin made Sonic Youth noises on his guitar through a home-made amp that occasionally picked up Russian radio.  I twanged a bass guitar and droned/yelled/whispered/screamed in the style of the day.   We played support slots at a handful of bars and charity shows, taking our friends with us in lieu of any real fans, but really we were more of a gang than a band.

Dawn (drums) and Rookin (guitar)

Dawn’s parents let us practice at their house, where Rookin and I had to stand on the landing because her drum kit filled her entire bedroom.  It was 1993, and I used to carry my bass on my back through the woods to Dawn’s place, until a little girl was found dead in those woods under worryingly unclear circumstances.  The whole town was shocked by the reminder that death could come unexpectedly, at any time, to any of us.  After that, we didn’t take those shortcuts so much anymore.

Dawn was the first of us to settle down.  We had sworn to one another that we would never succumb to The Three ‘M’s: Marriage, Mortgage and Motherhood.  By the time I was leaving town to seek my fortune, Dawn was a mum in a house in the suburbs.  She seemed happy there, having a second child soon after the first.  Gods, how she loved her children (and the Land Rover).  She looked so together, fulfilled, managing to unite responsibility and immaturity in some unfathomably Dawnlike balance.

By the time I got married a few years later, with Rookin as my best man, Dawn and her husband were cheerfully abstinent from the worst excesses of my wedding reception.  She seemed to represent the happy family life I wanted for myself.  Unfortunately, I’d taken a different path and was about to spend the next few years struggling with drug addiction and bipolar disorder.  I lost touch with almost everyone, one way or another, and Dawn was among the friends I failed.  She still lived not far away from me, but I didn’t visit or call.  I was too tied up in my own life to catch up with anyone else’s.

Years later, having cleaned up my act and moved to a nice house in the suburbs myself, I bumped into Dawn outside the train station. Her children were with her, looking much older than I would have expected – I hadn’t realised how much time had passed.  Soon after that I separated from my husband, which (though I was incapable of realising it at the time) marked the peak of a year-long manic episode. I moved back to my mother’s house, drank lots of rum, and did only half my job with only half my brain for a while.

When I regained some clarity a few months later, I was glad to find Dawn on Facebook.  She, just like me, used Tank Girl as her profile picture and status updates as her stress release system.  We chatted occasionally, but more often simply commented on each other’s posts. I don’t think we ever even exchanged phone numbers.

It was a dialogue en passant; rarely directly addressing one another, we nevertheless kept a sense of friendship, support and mutual admiration. When I found out I was pregnant, she was among the first to congratulate and mock me.  When she posted enigmatically pissed-off status updates, I would commiserate and offer help she always refused.  I suspect that without Facebook, we might never have communicated at all.  We were busy doing all the busy things that busy people do.

On Monday 15th November 2010 Dawn was killed in her home, where she had returned to collect some belongings after separating from her husband.  She died due to asphyxiation and head injuries; her husband is now awaiting trial.  The news trickled through the town’s networks, triggering cascading phone calls between people who hadn’t bothered to speak to each other for years.  Armchair vigilantes ranted about justice, capital punishment, and the current barter value of eyes and teeth.  We were stunned, appalled, bewildered.  We loved her, admired her, lamented her.

Some of us were doing so from a greater distance than others; Rookin and I talked about the weirdness of grieving for someone with whom we hadn’t kept up a full friendship.  I suppose we’re grieving for the loss of that potential, like a security blanket we didn’t need to use but still wanted to hold onto.  It always seemed as though we three remained connected, no matter how much time passed or where our lives took us.  Our rare chats had a sense of picking up right where we left off.  But I feel hypocritical, guilty, like we don’t have any right to be distressed because there are so many people feeling more intense grief than ours.

We left it too late and she’s already gone.

On her Facebook profile, she wrote:

“I will skid broadside into Hell, thoroughly used up and worn out, with a fag* in one hand and a coffee in the other screaming ‘Whoa, what a ride’!”

That was Dawn in a nutshell. She was a wonderful woman – a loud, aggressive, rude, immature, caring, funny, maternal, vulnerable whirlwind, burning past in a Land Rover while texting and throwing a cigarette butt out the window.  Unforgettable.

[*If you think in American English, for "fag" read "cigarette".]

*****  It may be too late for Dawn, but it’s not too late for other victims of domestic violence.  If you’d like to make a donation to Women’s Aid, text ACT to 84424 and a £3 donation will be made from your phone credit. Or you can see other ways to donate at the Women’s Aid website.

November 19, 2010 | Categories: All psychology is amateur | Tags: depression, Facebook, music, social media | Leave A Comment »