David Cox RIP

My phone rang as we sat in the restaurant tonight waiting for our main course to turn up. As I've remarked before I don't get many phone calls now and a glance at the CLI said it was my parents.

And this time, unlike that 8am call, it really was someone who had died.

My uncle David.

I come from a vast family: my father has five living brothers and sisters, all of whom have children, and my mother has a brother and two sisters. David was her brother and, unlike her sisters, he had children. Three by his wife Pat and another by a woman he met after he and Pat had divorced but apparently they've since separated too.

The Cox family at my parents' wedding in 1958
David is second from right (he would have been about 18)

I confess I'd not seen him in a long time, probably since his mother and my maternal grandmother's funeral a dozen or so years ago. Although he was 68 he was still running a café with one of his daughters somewhere around Birmingham (the original home of both my parents).

Apparently he was found dead in his arm chair on Monday morning after he'd not turned up for work. Heart attack presumably although I guess there will have to be a post mortem to confirm.

So I'm a little sad tonight.