I did not realise at the time....

It seems that a lot of my time is spent here in the present, reflecting about the past and wondering what would have been different if I had done something in a different way and how things may have turned out or how people would have been affected.

I've called the process "unproductive nostalgia" and that's mostly what it is, and perhaps in ten years time I will look back at this blog and think along similar lines, that perhaps my time spent doing this could have been used in a more productive manner.

That being said, I regret not writing down what was happening in 1992 and '93 and I did not realise at the time how important it all was.

I had flown back from the UK, following the funeral of my young brother. It had been an odd flight, because I was using his ticket, and ironically it was the exact flight that would have been the start of his two week holiday in Canada, a period of time for the pair of us to find out about each other.

We had talked on the phone a few weeks before and Paul had mentioned that he would borrow my Ford Mustang to do some exploring while he was here, I'd talked to mum afterwards and she had told me in no uncertain terms not to let him drive while in Canada.

That was fine, as I never intended for him to get behind the wheel on the wrong side of the road, especially in my beloved Mustang.

The details of the events of the night of his death were vague, but it had been rumoured that Paul and his girlfriend, Barbara, had been arguing on the Saturday night, that they were separated and yards away from each other when he was clipped by the car.

During the flight, I wondered if it was all because I lived in Canada that he had been killed.

That sounds insane I know, but it was my thought process, that the butterfly effect of my actions five years prior, when I emigrated to Canada, had led to Paul planning his visit and subesequently resulted in tension and an argument about the holiday on the Saturday a week before his flight.

That it was somehow my fault.

It was a secret I kept from the nice lady who sat next to me on the plane, during the flight we had chatted about this and that, but not really about that. I had told her that I had been visiting my family in the UK, and all was well.

I wonder what Paul would have said to her as they approached Toronto.