Tributes to Adam from the Family

This is something I never, ever expected to be doing and it is the hardest thing I have ever done.

Putting into words a celebration of Adam’s life and achievements when all I want to be doing is to be grieving in some private place. It is not easy but I want to do it for Adam and in his memory it is important for all of us to take away the positives of a happy and wonderful life to set against the overwhelming sense of loss.

Adam was a very special young man – as his Father I would say that. He’s always been special to us – his family, but what has amazed us over the past few weeks is the number of people who knew him and whose lives had been touched by him. He seems to have had an impact on the lives of everyone he’s met and the messages and tributes to him are simply overwhelming. It seems as his friend Olly told us “You only had to meet him once and you knew him.”

How did this work? Largely I think because he was sure of who he was and didn’t feel the need to hide large parts of himself away. There was no brittle ego to protect. What you saw was what you got. With Adam the smile came first. He trusted people with who he was and found that they responded.

We all recognise that laughter is important in our lives and Adam could make people laugh. Not because he was a comedian – he wasn’t. Not because he could tell jokes – like his father, he couldn’t but he did have a sharp wit and a wonderful sense of the ridiculous and by being himself he could create and respond to situations in a way people found funny. He was not afraid to be laughed at by his friends because he could laugh at himself and so laugh with them. His friends talk fondly of “Podge Moments” where his offbeat sense of humour created such an impression. These began at primary school and continued throughout his life. He even turned his inability to tell jokes into a way of making his friends laugh and I’m sure if you talk to any of them today they will be able to tell you about the Pie Joke. Adam and the pie joke have become inextricably linked. His footballing friends are planning to hold an annual 5-a-side Tournament in Adam’s memory and the winning team will receive the Golden Pie Award.

Among the hundreds of pictures of Adam we’ve been looking through over the past weeks there are many showing his sense of humour – impish grins, cheeky smiles, funny faces, wearing daft hats and a surprising number of fancy dress outfits ranging from Indiana Jones to a scarlet devil complete with a 3 pronged fork. The outfit he is best remembered for is when he turned up to Danny Barton’s 21st dressed as a leprechaun. For someone of Adam’s height the whole idea was incongruous but of course this was the point and what made it funny. But he wasn’t just funny at party times or on special occasions. Casey who he worked with a few years ago at the St Mary’s College Gym said in her card “I’ve got so many great memories of Adam – he made me laugh every day.”

No portrait of Adam would be complete without mentioning sport and the outdoors. He loved all kinds of sport and was never happier than when he could participate – anything from football to cycling, mountain biking, golf, sea kayaking, swimming, running and hill walking. The football, in terms of time, had come to be very important to him, whether playing, watching, coaching or just talking about it.

He was really passionate about his coaching and like with everything else he did, he was dedicated, thorough and totally committed. He first tried his hand at coaching giving training sessions for his team mates but was given his first real opportunity when he started coaching Padiham Ladies 2 years ago. After the first year he moved to Ulverston and to continue with his coaching commitments it meant travelling twice a week for the training sessions and the matches a round 150 mile round trip each time. I remember asking him if he was sure that this was what he really wanted to do and pointed out the time and expense involved. But he’d made up is mind “It’s what I want to do and besides I promised I‘d do 2 years and I will”. And he did. He was a good coach and took it very seriously. He was studying for his coaching badges and would have liked nothing better than to have become a full time coach.

Gary and the team rated him very highly both as a coach and a man and are organising a memorial friendly match with Blackburn Rovers Ladies team towards the end of the season at Padiham. The team will be wearing their special shirts with Adam’s name on.

He couldn’t wait for the new season to begin – not only to get back to his coaching but also to start playing for the new St Mary’s College Old Boys Team that he and some of his friends had recently formed. We found a photo on his phone, with Adam proudly showing off his new kit. The team have decided to retire his number 14 from the squad so it will be forever Adam’s. He has a box full of trophies for football collected over the years since he was a junior. The three most significant to me are the two he was awarded in successive years at Darwen Rangers for most improved footballer and the one he won with West View in 2007 – 2008 for the Players Player of the year which tells you all you need to know about how he played the game. Totally committed , never missed a practice, a team player who would give 100% for the full 90 minutes.

I’m not going to go on about the Man city connection as Pat has already said in her letter to Adam how much it meant to us both. I know it was the source of much friendly banter between him and his Rovers supporting friends and he would have really appreciated that “just this once” as Olly said they have turned up with city scarves today in his memory. They also bought a special XXL City shirt with No 1 Podge” on the back and got friends to write farewell messages on it. There’s still a little space left on the right sleeve if anyone wants to add to it.

He could have been equally committed to cycling in fact for a short time he was. This was another sport he had a real talent for. One summer holiday we stayed in the French Alps where the previous summer it had been on the alpine stage of the tour de France. He’d got interested in road racing when he started watching the Tour de France on TV but although a keen mountain biker, he’d never been on a road bike before. He wanted to try the climb. I wasn’t so sure so I took him round in the car. It was along steep climb with many hairpin bends and dizzying drops. It was bad enough in a car and going down the other side to Morzine was even worse. Adam was really excited by now and wanted to give it a go and I was even less sure than I had been before. However I agreed to let him do it. He hired a bike for the day and set off after breakfast leaving Pat and I trying not to be too anxious. We didn’t expect him back until late afternoon. He came back elated and triumphant soon after lunch! I was staggered how easily he’d coped and taken it in his stride. He continued with his cycling for a year and really enjoyed it but it cut him off from his friends and he couldn’t easily keep up with the football and the cycling so in the end the football won.

Adam was also a keen walker. This started very early in his life as it was a family activity and happily all of our sons have kept a real love of the outdoors and mountain walking. Adam and Jamie were 4 and 6 when they first went up the Langdales with me. We had planned to do the Coast to Coast walk in September as part of Pat’s retirement celebrations, and Adam and our other sons were all going to join us for parts of it. Sadly, that was not to be and now we are going to do it for Adam. About 30 of Adams friends are going to join us to walk for a weekend in Grasmere and Patterdale and are going to get sponsorship to raise money for the Consequences Campaign.

Adam did have, as his Mum mentioned in he letter, an unusual relationship with time. And yes, whatever he was doing Adam was very slow. I admit I used to see these things as problems for which Adam needed help but the more I reflect on Adam and how he lived his life the more I’ve learned about him from his friends and others who knew him, the more I’ve come to realise that these so called problems were nothing of the kind. His slowness didn’t matter, it didn’t inconvenience anyone else, it didn’t seem to bother Adam and the end result was always a job well done. When he cleaned his football boots for example, he would disappear outside with his bowl of soapy water, cloths and brushes for what seemed an eternity but the result would be a gleaming pair of boots that looked as though they’d just come out of the shop window. It was the same with any other task. He never cut corners. I think, in fact I’m sure his employers recognised this quality in him. He would do a good job, he would be thorough and would be totally reliable and dependable.

The other aspect of his relationship with time – his lack of any natural sense of time passing similarly didn’t seem to cause too many problems. He was usually in the right place at the right time and again as far as work was concerned none of his employers had any problem with his timekeeping. In fact all of his jobs have involved working shifts of one kind or another and with Fraser Eagle he worked all over the country often having to leave in the early hours of the morning to get there. None of this caused him any real difficulties in fact despite seeming to be in a different time warp he coped very effectively. But perhaps what is even more important was that this also meant that he always had time for people whatever the circumstances, whoever you were Adam had time to smile, to chat, to listen. A couple who had met Adam at the Cascades Health Club where they were members, wrote to us shortly after Adam’s death “We are elderly and, unlike some young people, Adam would always have time for us, with a smile, a joke or a conversation” and only the other night when I was looking through some of comments posted by his friends I came across a former Fraser Eagle bus driver who knew Adam as a work colleague. “No matter which station, what time, whatever the weather, no matter how busy, Adam always had a smile on his face, always professional and always found time for a chat. An absolute joy!

If the capacity to make time for others was one of Adam’s great strengths then another equally important one was his positivity. He was positive about the world around. Like everyone else he had his ups and downs but when things went wrong he didn’t stay down very long because he just knew things were going to get better. He didn’t waste time on regrets he simply turned the page and moved forwards. As one of the Padiham team says “we will remember how positive an outlook he had towards everything and everyone even with the odds stacked against you.”

Everything and everyone. the everyone is important because he was indeed positive about people. He had a trust in the goodness of people in general. He always expected the best of some one. This is how he managed to present his real self to perfect strangers without worrying about making himself vulnerable because he not only had confidence in who he was but also confidence that others would respond to that. That is why people who had only met him briefly felt that they knew him, because right from the beginning you really did.

I began by saying how overwhelmed we have been by the response to Adam’s death and the number of tributes we have received but by the unanimity. They all say the same or very similar and are a testimony to how positive an effect Adam has had on people’s lives.

So how do we react to this cruel and unnecessary loss and how can we best honour his memory? Perhaps by recognising the good he touched us with and trying to spread this goodness a little by behaving towards others in the way Adam did. In that way we would be adding just a little to the sum total of human happiness and kindness and making our small corner of the world a better place to be. That would indeed be a fitting tribute to the Adam we knew and loved.

I never ever thought I would be doing this Adam but it is time to say a final goodbye. The last day we had together is so fresh that it will have a special place in all our many memories. While we were packing upstairs you busied yourself downstairs, washing up, tidying and putting stuff away. You even vacuumed the stairs and just generally made yourself useful. When we came down for lunch you were very skittish and chased your mum round the kitchen trying to give her hugs and kissing her arms. Then you went off to play football – a pre-season practice with your mates – and returned home to take us to the airport. You were so happy that day. You were looking forward to a great night out with your friends and had a date with your new friend Emma to look forward to on the Sunday – you even pointed out where she lived as we were driving to the airport. Life was definitely looking good. You were enjoying your new job and an exciting new football season was not far away. At the airport we said our goodbyes. I can so clearly feel you in my arms as we had a goodbye hug. “Drive carefully” I said – as I always did, “and have a good night out”. “I will” you said “and you have a great holiday”. You got back in the car and we went off to get the flight to Malta.

The next day, after our world had stopped, we said another goodbye at the hospital where you seemed merely to be asleep and were still warm and smelling of you. This really is the last goodbye and I say it not only for myself but on behalf of your grieving family and all your friends and colleagues and all those who knew you.

So goodbye Adam, you will be missed by so many people. For your Mum and I, and your three brothers, there is a tear in the fabric of our lives which at present seems irreparable. We have to hope that over time we can pull our lives together again. You wouldn’t have wanted anything less and we have to believe that with the help of our fond memories of you and the legacy of love you’ve left behind we ca n achieve this. We are so proud of you Adam and I can promise you that you will be remembered with love and a few smiles and laughter, for the rest of our lives. We can only hope that the pain of your leaving will, over time, be eased by the joy and happiness of those memories.

Finally Adam I would like to leave you with an epitaph to remember you by. It’s not original – it comes from a book I read many years ago when I was a young man ‘the Woodlanders’ a novel by Thomas Hardy. There is a scene at the end of the book at the graveside of the hero and a young village girl sitting by the grave says to him “You was a good man and did good things”.

All those years ago when I read those words, I thought that if at the end of your life people could say that about you then you hadn’t gone far wrong. And Adam my beautiful son, if anyone deserves to be remembered for the good they’ve done it is you. You were a good man and did good things. Goodbye my sweet boy.