I need to talk about Terry...

I've been a freelance writer (amongst other things) for just over a year now.  In that time, I have written and publsihed several things for various people, and I take a great deal of pride in the fact that in some small way, I am beginning to live a dream that I held for many years before actually getting off my backside and doing something about it. 

However, the thing about writing is that it is something that you need to do constantly.  And the thing about the modern world is that it is full of things that are designed to make actually doing any writing a very difficult thing.  Spend ten hours or more of your day sat at a PC with an internet connection and a creative brain and it's all too easy to get distracted, to lose your focus and go off on a series of ever increasingly vague tangents, until you suddenly realise that it's 7:30 pm and you have wasted a good chunk of your day looking at what amounts to nonsense.

I have had two or three blogs the last five years, and I have maintained (haha!) them with varying degrees of commitment.  I tended to find that I would blog about stuff that truly exercised me, and that meant that the content was inconsistent, both in tone and frequency.  Some of it was loud and ranty.  Some of it was sensible.  Some of it was vaguely amusing.  I flatter myself that most of it was reasonably good, but it isn't representative of me, Greg D Smith, freelance writer and general wordsmith of fortune (thanks David Guymer for that one).  So I decided that a new blog was in order - one to refect this new, handsomer, older and wiser version of me.

However.  None of that, dear reader, is what I especially wish to tell you about today.  What I want to talk about (as anyone paying attention to the title may have noticed) is Terry.  Specifically, my cousin, Terry Benbow.

Terry was family, so I will forgive a certain amount of cynicism on the part of the reader when I say that he was a truly brilliant young man.  He grew up in a generation told it was entitled to go to university, yet decided against this, instead opting for the practicality of a trade and taking on an apprenticeship in carpentry.  During that apprenticeship, he lived at home, paying his way as best he could with what little he earned, always keenly aware of his duty to his family and loved ones.  Later, he established his own business, and traded successfully for some years.  He then decided to go into business with his father, my uncle.  Through their contacts in the motorpsort world, and their own hard-won experience and knowledge, they established a successful business working in composite repairs and design, servicing all levels of the motorsport industry around the world.  In his personal life, Terry met and fell in love with his future wife, an American lady to whom he was utterly devoted.  When they did marry, they faced a battle that lasted an age, just to get the UK establishment to accept that their marriage was genuine.  They fought right to the bitter end, and won the right to be recognised, and to live together in the UK as man and wife, at the last possible moment.  Standing in front of a tribunal at the end of so many endless months of maddening bureaucracy, they finally got the one thing they had fought so long for, and were able to begin the process of happily married life.

Terry travelled the world, both professionally and personally.  He went to the states, all over Europe and even across Asia.  He was an accomplished sailor.  He worked with a team at the Le Mans 24 hour race.  He worked in the short-lived A1 GP series, and he worked alongside my uncle in many other motorsport disciplines.  For a young man of 31 years, he had seen and done three or four times what men twice his ever will.

And he was a practical man.  He was never one to feel sorry for himself, or to sit and procrastinate over things.  Life would throw challenges at him, and he would simply meet them.  There was always a solution, and that solution usually involved bloody hard work - a thing which Terry was never afraid of.

You have no doubt noticed that I am using 'was' a lot to talk about Terry.  It isn't difficult to work out why that might be.  Terry was taken from his wife, family and friends by a vicious condition, felled so swiftly by the merciless and silent killer that there was simply nothing that could be done.  Bacterial meningitis took a fit, active and healthy young man and snatched him from us all in 24 hours.  To say that it was a shock is the understatement to end all understatement.  Bad enough that a young husband, brother, son, grandson, cousin, nephew and friend was gone so suddenly.  Worse still when that individual touched quite so many lives, was so well-loved by so many people, and left such a gaping void in the world behind him.

Even in death, Terry has continued to surpass any expectation one might have of an 'ordinary' person.  Brief examination of his records showed that he had registered as an organ donor no less than three times.  Flying around the world so often, and working in so many different countries routinely, he had wanted to be absolutely sure that should the worst happen, he could still give more.  Thanks to that amazing foresight, that wisdom so unusual in a man so young, six lives were saved by donation of his healthy organs, the disease that killed him having confined itself solely to his brain.  Six more human beings get to live, and love, and wake up each new day thanks to one amazing young man.  But Terry wasn't quite finished yet.

It turned out, on his last full day alive Terry had been at Silverstone, watching a race.  Also there was one of his good friends, and their young daughter.  The day after Terry passed, his friend's daughter came down with all-too-familiar symptoms - a sore throat, a headache, nausea.  The two and half year old was rushed to hospital by anxious parents, who insisted that she be checked for bacterial meningitis.  Checked she was, and bacterial meningitis she had.  Because they had acted so swiftly, the hospital were able to treat accordingly, and the little girl will make a full recovery.  Another life saved.  Another family spared.

I didn't see Terry all that often, but that never really mattered.  He was the kind of easygoing personality that was always happy to see you, and would measure you by your deeds and words.  He wasn't a softie - those who earned his ire would know about it - but he was never vindictive or petty.  He just...was.  He and I shared a passion for motorsport - though his was deeper and more long-held than my own - and one of my lasting memories will always be of him accompanying my wife and I to the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed.  It was a superb day, made all the better by sharing it with a man who worked and lived and breathed motorsport (and was even able to point out a scetion of a contemporary race car that his own company had manufactured) and I am glad that we took that chance.  Others, like the often-mooted road trip to Le Mans, will never come to be, though I hope that one day soon I will attend myself and raise a glass in his memory.

Terry lived life with passion in everything that he did.  Not the most gifted dancer, but definitely the most enthusiastic.  Keen on Hawaiian shirts (the brighter and more ludicrous the better, and worn with no sense of irony whatsoever).  A committed and loving husband.  A hardworking professional.  A devoted brother and son.  A good man.

It shouldn't be this way.  Men like Terry should not be taken away from us all so soon, when they have so much more to give to the world.  If I can take anything from this senseless event, it is only that were Terry here with me now, he would be giving me a friendly but firm kick up the backside and telling me to get on with it.  He'd agree that it was very sad, and that it shouldn't have happened.  But he wouldn't dwell, and he'd encourage others not to as well.  He'd sit there and say 'don't think about what you want to do - just get on and do it'. 

And that's why I needed to open this blog with a post talking about Terry, because it's thanks to him that it's opened.  This is Terry, telling me 'stop sitting there telling people you're a writer and keep bloody writing.  Don't wish that you had a blog, set one up and bloody write it.'

I'm not given to grand promises or sweeping statements generally.  I can't promise that this will be a blog that is updated daily, and that the content that does come will always be wise and fascinating, or even of any import.  But I can say that it will act as a reminder to me that sitting around and wishing that you could do a thing isn't going to get that thing done.  Only doing it is.

So thanks Terry - even now, you're showing me the way.  The world is a significantly emptier place without you in it.  I will do my best to try and live by your example, and myabe, if I'm really lucky, I will manage to fill a tiny portion of that void.  I hope that I make you proud.

Love you, cuz.