Day 105. When all the lights. (15/4/19)

I don't want to write this today. I don't feel the right. But it's the only thing there is to write about.

Thirty years.

It's incomprehensible, isn't it? So long ago and at the same time always present. A moment that will be with us forever.

I remember very little of the day now. I'm one of the lucky ones. It's not with me every waking moment. I don't have the experience. I wasn't there. I have no idea what those who experienced went through. Not really. I've spoken to people who were in the pens, I've heard some of their stories. What they experienced is unfathomable. I can't repeat their stories, they belong to them.

I have no idea what the families go through every single day, I have no idea how they cope, how they've coped for thirty very long years. Grief destroys you at any point. This is grief with everything else added. This is grief with the knowledge that it should never  have happened.

I have no idea what my brothers went through. I have no idea what they carry with them. They were in the end pen, they saw this unfold. We've spoken about it, Keith's written about it. But speaking about it and reading about it aren't carrying it with you.

I can tell you what I remember.

I remember Pete McGrath passing me on the floor in HMV Lord Street, saying "See your lot have kicked off again." A United supporter from Bury, he had no idea what was happening. At that point nobody had any idea what was happening.

I don't remember what happened in the afternoon. I remember the emotions. Thinking 'at least my mum won't know about it, she's out for the afternoon'. Obviously she knew.

I remember not thinking about leaving work. I don't know why I didn't think about it.

I remember leaving, going home, J already being there. Finding out that Keith and Kev were okay, that they'd phoned.

I remember phoning a couple of mates I'd not spoken to in a while. Just to make sure they were okay.

I remember going to the ground the day after, as the flowers started to fill the Kop goalmouth. And going again a few days later to see that they had reached the halfway line.

Yesterday as I stood in my seat (the seat that used to be my dad's, I made sure I kept that) looking across the stadium that's changed so much in the time since, looking at the display that read '30 years' in the Kenny Dalglish stand, the eternal flame across the kop, I could see the flowers and I could see Kev sat on the Kop in the space he would usually stand.

We were lucky.

Every single one of us that didn't lose somebody that day, that hasn't lost anyone through the years as a consequence of that day, knows how lucky we are. We know how easily this could have been us.

And every one of us knows the pictures of the 96, knows the names.

It's the pictures and the names that got me again this year.

Every year we get further away from them, the younger they become. There are now only two of the 96 whose ages are above mine. It becomes more and more shocking how young so many of those lost were.

And we know that. We know how young they were, they were our generation. They were the ages we were. We are the generation that had the chance to have the lives they were denied. Our families are the families that didn't have to carry the grief every single day.

For that reason, among many, many others, we will never forget them.

RIP. YNWA.