Wie geht's?
The recent passing of acting great Sir Patrick Stewart prompted Keegan to ask about my earliest hero who had passed away and caused a shock.
That's an interesting question and I'm trying not to overthink it, but it necessitates some consideration around when the concept of death enters the consciousness.
I know when it did for me. I was eight and I can remember asking about it and my dad sitting me down to explain it in terms I could grasp. He did a good job.
Technically, my first hero was my Uncle Jack - one of mum's brothers (she had three and all passed away earlier than was fair). His full name was Albert Henry Adsett, but everyone called him Jack.
It was June 12, 1967. I was asleep and heard the phone ringing in the next room (my room at 18 Korma Avenue was next to my parents). The lights went on. Mum came into my room and told me the news. I was almost ten, and glad that I had the concept of death in my young brain.
However, I think Keegan meant the first hero outside of the family and that one is a tad harder to explain.
Between Uncle Jack in 1967 and 1980 there is only one sort-of-hero that springs to mind. I say sort-of-hero because the details of my reaction to his passing are not indelibly printed in my memory. Keegan will no doubt remember for years to come where he was and what he was doing when he heard the news about Patrick Stewart.
Legendary American actor John Wayne passed away on 11 June 1979. I can remember being sad at his passing because I'd loved many of his films and his whole impressive persona had been a constant during my childhood. But I didn't idolise him from affair, and, as I say, I don't recall how I heard that news.
Instead, it was the shock of 1980 that immediately came to mind when Keegan asked his question.
I'd been working at Marbecks Records during my university holidays for a few years and had just finished the first year of my master's degree at Auckland University. It was early December, the holiday period leading up to Christmas, 1980.
The phone in my parent's bedroom began to ring shortly after I'd returned home to 4 Ramelton Road. It was Greg Knowles on the phone, and he was explaining that John Lennon had been killed in New York, but my brain couldn't grasp what he was actually saying.
I put the phone back and sat numb beside my mum's bed - my brain trying hard to process this deeply distressing news. It was a traumatic experience, just like that night in June 1967. These were two people I idolised and loved. My child brain and my adult brain coped with the news of a hero's passing, but it took a while.
Those brief moments in time are like my near-death car crash of a few years ago - events that are deeply seared into my sub-consciousness. They are always there. Somewhere.
For good or ill, compartmentalism is a skill I possess. So, I can file those experiences away, until something like Keegan's question triggers their release. The sharpness of the trauma isn't there anymore, but those moments are part of who I am.
Love and peace - dad
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