Green eyes

They say the eyes are the gateways to the soul. It’s amazing how much you can tell about a person through their eyes, like every shimmer has its own story to tell, and mine have many to share.

I adopted my fathers deep brown eyes, and spent my life wishing I shared my mothers’ lovely green ones. I remember as a child, looking into her face and watching as her eyes danced around, so full of life, so deep, almost as if they never stopped smiling. It hurt to see how something so alive could glaze over and dim like a burning out candle.

I can’t remember how it happened. I can’t remember if I went to the funeral, or how my Mother reacted. All I can recall is waking every morning after that day, hoping, wishing that I’d woken from a nightmare, and after realizing it wasn’t, I’d slip once again into those soulless hours that would become my life.

I was different to many people when I was growing up because I knew when something was my fault. I didn’t look for excuses, or for someone else to blame, I just accepted it. But despite that, I found it very hard to admit that this was my fault, because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive myself. People seem to think I’ve had a hard life, but I haven’t. It’s true that at the age of twelve, I had suffered more than many people would in thirty years, but I had all I needed.

I guess the first major event in the years that would become my life, was the death of my father. I was two years old, and I had no idea how much I could miss someone I didn’t even know. I still try to remember him, anything about him, like the way he smelled or the way he talked. I wondered if he used to play with me, the way my friends’ fathers played with them. I’d try to remember what he looked like, anything, but I couldn’t. When I started school, my friends would come in everyday and tell stories about their fathers, having no stories myself, I would make things up. I made up so many stories, I actually started to believe I was remembering him, but I never did.

As I got older, I would search for answers, reasons, something that could explain or justify why my father wasn’t here anymore. But I never found one; that’s what hurt the most. I had this big hole in my life, a big part of me missing, and I couldn’t find a reason why; so my father’s death remained meaningless.

I have always been the type of person to search for answers, and it’s helped me in a big way, but it has also caused me a lot of pain. From all my experiences, I came to the conclusion that all things happened for a reason. I realised that we can’t change the things that have happened to us, and sometimes it’s hard to accept them, we just have to learn to deal with the fact that not everything goes our way. All the heartache and all the pain that we endure, help us learn something new, help us become stronger. I could justify the death of my Nanny; I could even accept it. Being exposed to death as a child, made it seem like such a natural thing. Also if my Nanny hadn’t have passed away, we wouldn’t have moved to England in 1995 to be closer to my Aunt Sue and Uncle Tom.

Moving for me was never saying goodbye, it was another chance, a blank slate, a new life that I could change into anything I wanted it to be; and in truth, we never really do say goodbye, we say “see you later.” In fact, it wasn’t until we moved away that I really developed a relationship with my grandfather. I guess it wasn’t until he lost his wife that he truly realized how important we were. He seemed afraid to let a week go by without calling my house and telling me and my two brothers’ how much he loved us.

He lived in a small village called Abbertysswg in South Wales. His house sat right at the bottom of the Half Way – a road that led right up the side of the mountains and straight through Abber forest. Whenever we visited, he would take my brothers’ and me for a walk up the mountains with Bonny – his German Shepard – to a place known as the Falcons. He told us a story once about why the Welsh flag had a red dragon printed on it.

“The Welsh dragon always used to be green,” he told us, “and he used to live on the top of those cliffs, where the falcons fly around. But one day, a bigger, stronger, red dragon flew over the mountains, and he got jealous when he saw how much land the green dragon owned. So one evening, when the sun had gone down, the red dragon flew to the top of the cliffs, and threw the green dragon down, burying him in rocks and rubble. Ever since that day, he was known as the Welsh dragon.”

We believed the story; every word of it.

Every time we went to visit my grandfather, we would have his famous shepherds’ pie, sit around the living room and watch as he drew pictures of horses and war planes, and then go for a walk to the falcons. Later, my brothers’ and I christened those fields, the Great Valley.

We didn’t settle in very well in Yorkshire. My brothers’ and I would be picked on for our strong Welsh accents, and because we had grown up in such a small village we weren’t very sociable. We had moved to a town on the edge of the earth called Goole; my aunt said it was one of the roughest towns she knew, and I didn’t doubt that for a second. The first person that befriended us was a boy called Sam Johnason. His family was one of the roughest I knew. They lived across the street from us on Marshclose Rd. Sam had a younger sister named Becky, who later became my best friend. We were practically inseparable for the first three years I lived in Goole, we did everything together.

My mother and Becky’s mother also became very close. Karen was a very fun-loving and sociable woman. She had a hard up-bringing, her mother didn’t care for her very much, and the result of that was Karen feeling the need to hug anyone she could get her hands on every five minutes. But we never complained.

Although our family fell in love with Karen, we despised her husband, Wade. He was a very nice man when he drank, always teasing my mother, calling her names, my mother throwing insults back about his favourite football team, they always seemed to get on in front of us kids. But I found out otherwise.

I walked into the Johnason’s house one afternoon and witnessed the end of a fistfight between Sam and Wade. From that point on, I had absolutely no respect for him. When I got older, I found out that he wasn’t just physically abusive towards Sam; he also beat Karen, and on more than one occasion, raped her. My mother also found out that when Becky was just a toddler, she was raped. She didn’t have enough evidence to prove it, but instinct told her it was Wade.

Goole was situated right at the end of the river Ouse in East Yorkshire, and I would never pass up an opportunity to go walking along the riverbank. My mother never let me go there alone; she said I was too young to be wandering around on such busy streets. For the first while I obeyed her, but of course, a child can only be obedient for a certain amount of time. I thought I was indestructible, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to go there made it seem so much more attractive. So, I would take my bike and tell her I was going to ride through the school, and I’d sneak off to the riverbank. I didn’t see the big deal; there was nothing dangerous about the river. After all, I wasn’t about to just jump in and try to swim around; the water was way to dirty for that. I just used to ride my bike along the paths, down the grass hills and around the bandstand. When Becky came with me we would play in the park, or go hang off the anchor that had been placed there in memory of all the Goolians that had died in the war.

I went there by myself one day after school. I knew my mother would be at work so I wasn’t in a hurry to get home. It was when I started walking through the long grass that grew right on the edge of the river that I spotted a pink bike wheel hiding in the grass in front of me. When I came closer, I realized that it wasn’t just a wheel, but a whole bike, just left there for the taking, so I picked it up and dragged it to the path. I set off to take it home, riding at full speed, heading straight for the ramp that lead down to the road, when I spotted something else glinting up at me from the grass. Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled hard on the breaks… but nothing happened. I was still rolling at very high speed towards the ramp. My heart started thumping against my chest, what if I couldn’t stop? What if I got run over? Without thinking, I turned the handle bars hard to the left. The bike stopped, but I was thrown off the seat and landed hard on the paved path, blood started pouring from my on cheek. I sat up and pulled my jumper over my hand so I could mop up the blood, the whole time my face screwed up in a desperate attempt not to cry. That was the last day I ever went to the riverbank alone.

I can’t say that I totally regret going there that day, because I did get one thing out of it. In the grass I found a silver necklace, and from the chain hung a little silver clown with bright green eyes. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I realised that if I hadn’t have seen this necklace glinting up at me from the grass, I could very well have been killed on the busy road.

By the time I got home, my mother had returned from work. She was very angry at me, and didn’t stop yelling for ten minutes; telling me how stupid it was to go alone, how I could have been run over, or kidnapped, or beaten up by the mean boys who lived down the street. But soon her anger had melted away and she started wiping my cuts with alcohol wipes. That didn’t make the situation much better, because the wipes stung my face even more than the cut did; but when the blood was gone, she made me a big mug of tea and ran me a warm bath.

I didn’t show her my necklace. To this day, only one person has ever seen it, but I took it everywhere with me. It was a strange piece of jewellery, something about it made me smile, every time I was sad or angry. I just had to look into its eyes and all my negative feelings would melt away. When I got picked on in school, it never affected me; and in my childish mind, I knew it was because of my clown, hanging around my neck like a guardian angel.

After three years of living on Marshclose Rd., a girl name Eli moved in with us as a lodger. She was twenty three at the time, and her girlfriend was my mothers’ boss. I liked her right from the beginning. She wasn’t like anyone I had ever met before; she had short hair, which I thought was strange for a girl. She played Nintendo like my brothers, and she was always singing and playing on her guitar. I was shy around her at first, as I was with all strangers, but soon she proved to me that there was no reason to be.

We had some great nights while she was staying with us. Whenever my mother had to work, she would stay home and look after my brothers and me. We loved those nights because she would always let us stay up past our bedtime, and eat ice-cream after we had brushed our teeth. My brother Dane liked her because she was an artist, and she would always sketch him new pictures of dragons or dinosaurs. Jake liked her because she made really good cheese toasties. I liked her because it meant there was another girl in the house.

On my birthday in 1998, she was the first person to ever give me a present. When we were younger, my brothers’ and I never got presents for our birthdays, my mother couldn’t afford to buy us each one every year, so she would celotape two pound coins to our birthday cards and we would we go spend it at Roffie’s – the local sweet shop. But this particular birthday, I had gotten up to go to the bathroom in the early hours of the morning, and as I was coming to the bottom of the stairs, Eli picked me up and carried me to her room, where she handed me a wrapped package.

“Happy birthday,” she told me, kissing my forehead. I never forgot that morning.

Unfortunately she didn’t get to stay with us for long, because later that year, my mother got a boyfriend. Eli decided it was better for everyone if she didn’t stick around, but we always stayed in touch. She stayed in Goole and moved back into her mothers’ house. I would have been sad about loosing a female companion, but it turned out that my mothers’ boyfriend, Julian, also had a daughter who was the same age as me.

After I met his daughter Anna, I didn’t see much of Becky Johnason. I enrolled in Anna’s dance classes and I did practically everything with her. We had very different personalities. Anna wasn’t shy at all, she had no problem meeting new people and had no end of friends; but despite our differences, we became best friends. She didn’t go to my school though, she lived with her mother on the opposite end of town, but we would spend every weekend together, either at her fathers’ house or mine.

Dancing became an escape for me, and a huge part of my life. I could never listen to a song after I started classes without choreographing a dance in my head. Going to competitions and having to dance in front of people built my confidence amazingly. Slowly, the shy little girl I had grown up to be disappeared. Dancing made me feel good, listening to a strong beat and allowing it to carry me around a room; but that feeling was nothing compared to the excitement and pride I felt when I was handed a trophy.

Anna and I became partners, and there couldn’t have been a better match. Our teacher commented from the start how well we were doing, our moves perfectly in sync. I guess that’s why, at my first competition, the two of us came in second place for the doubles dance. After realizing it was a natural talent of mine, I enrolled in Rock ‘n’ Roll and Latin classes. Although I didn’t get very far in those categories, I loved every minute of it.

The Christmas of that year was far different than any other I could remember, purely because there was a man in the house. Eli came to celebrate with us, but she didn’t spend the night in the kitchen drinking too much and laughing with the adults. Instead, she played with the kids on our new Super Mario game. I hadn’t met Julian very many times, but it was that night that I realized why my mother had chosen him. Before everyone went to bed, Julian came into the front room and started playing Nintendo with me. He was a lot like a kid, though his personality was influenced a lot by alcohol. While his back was turned, my mother handed me a little pot of hair dye that I had been given for Christmas. Knowing why, I squirted a big pile on Julian’s head and started rubbing it in his hair. He did nothing, but when I had finished he turned his head and gave me a big grin. At that moment, I fell in love with him. It was almost as if, after all these years, God had finally granted me a father.

We spent Boxing Day at my aunt’s and uncle’s house. Their house was always my favourite place to be, especially at Christmas. Unlike at my house, Susan always made the effort to put up trimmings, hanging big bunches of balloons on the ceiling, along with steamers and foil decorations. We also enjoyed stealing the little Christmas chocolates that Sue hung from the tree, (despite her best efforts to hide them, we always managed to find them). After Christmas, when Sue had taken down all the decorations, she would give my brothers’ and me all the balloons. The boys would try their best to pop them all, but I’d always manage to rescue a few to hide under my bed until they were nothing more than shrivelled up pieces of rubber.

I have a lot to thank Julian for. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have met my sister – although we weren’t related, we saw each other as such. I wouldn’t have started dancing, and I wouldn’t have been given yet another brother.

I can’t remember how my mother told me, as if I was in some deep sleep, and the new baby was a dream, something I’ve always wished for but never truly believed would come. But it wasn’t just a dream - my mother was having another baby.

Not long after she told me this, we started looking for a new house, one that was big enough to fit both of our family’s in, plus the new baby. Julian promised that he would never let the new baby be taken away from him, the way Anna was taken away from him. We found a house in no time at all. My mother and Julian both sold their houses, and they raised enough money to buy a house on Boothferry Rd., the street that ran right through the middle of town. Our new house was twice the size of our old one, with six bedrooms and four rooms downstairs; it was the posh end of town. It was also a very old house, and to this day I still believe that it was haunted.

I never doubted the existence of ghosts or spirits. Sometimes I think it’s because I’ve convinced myself that there is an afterlife, because I’m too afraid to admit the fact that when we’re gone, we’re gone. Or maybe it’s because I’m so desperate to meet my father, but I think it’s mainly because I believe I’ve had too many encounters to deny their existence.

Many times when I would walk past the stairs, I would see a little boy sitting on the bottom step. I knew I wasn’t going crazy when I saw him, because my mother told me she had seen him too. He was a blonde boy, no more than five years old. We figured he must have died after falling down the stairs, and just never left that spot.

Around the back of our house was a pond, and all through the summer, the boys who went to the comprehensive school would sit around it with their fishing rods and lunch boxes. Rarely did they catch a fish, but I always enjoyed sitting and watching them try. Nearly every night I would go down to the pond and watch the sunset, the last of the fishers were just packing up and returning home. I would sit at the bottom of the big oak tree that stood in the middle of the field and make daisy chains, pick the thick grass that whistled, or practice skimming rocks across the water. I would steal burs from the bushes that lined the waters edge to make little fuzzy caterpillars and chase away the birds if they ever came close enough to me. It was like a ritual of mine, and after a while I would find it almost impossible to sleep if I hadn’t had that hour down at the pond.

That summer went by very quickly. It was the summer that I realized I was growing up. After the holidays, I would be in my last year of primary school and I would soon be turning ten years old, the thought of that exited me.

As summer moved into full swing, we started our usual holiday activities. My Aunt and Uncle threw their famous barbeque parties. At these, the adults would sit around drinking too much beer, (with the exception of my mother,) while us kids played in the paddling pool. On occasion, Julian and Anna would come with us; they were now officially part of the family.

My mother soon had to quit her job, because it was too much physical stress for a woman in her condition; so Julian had to work all day every day to make enough money to support us all. Most days, me and Anna would stay inside and talk with my mother; we seemed more exited about the baby than my mother herself. Around lunch time every day, she would send us to the local sweet shop to buy her a slush puppy; which she craved for. Some days we would return home empty handed because the slushy machine hadn’t been turned on; we would enjoy those days. My mothers’ cravings made her cranky, so when she marched off to the shop herself, we would follow, and laugh to ourselves as she yelled at the shop owner. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes, and if the slushy isn’t ready, I will not be a happy woman.”

It was always ready when she came back. After a while, every time we went to the shop and the machine wasn’t on, the shop owner – whose name was John – would give us a packet of crisps for free, and tell us we could stay until it was ready. We became very good friends’ with him.

As my mothers’ belly grew, the days became colder, and soon autumn was upon us.

I loved autumn. I remember walking down by the pond one autumn morning, throwing rocks in the long reeds that peaked through the water. It was the only time of year I wouldn’t get into trouble for doing that, and I loved it. I loved how the trees looked as if they had been picked out of the ground, turned around and rammed back into their holes, leaving the roots exposed. I loved the smell of burning wood and the last barbeques of the year; I loved that my mother would finally let me pick the flowers in the garden, even though they normally died two days later. And I loved the warm nights, looking out of my bedroom window upon the silhouettes of the up-turned trees. But mostly, I love having a father, a sister, and I loved knowing that there would soon be a baby in the house.

I woke one morning at five o’clock. It was a quiet and frosty fall morning, the moon barely visible in brightening sky. I had been dreaming about nothing in particular, but I felt such a weird sensation when I opened my eyes. I felt proud, content. I assumed it was because of the dream I was having, but all I can remember is seeing a pair of beautiful green eyes, starring right at me. I wrapped my hand around my silver clown, which still hung from my neck two years later.

Before I knew it, school had started again. It was hard getting back into the routine that I had so willingly let go over the summer, but slowly I grew used to the early mornings and early nights. By the time my tenth birthday came, my mother was eight months pregnant, and the house became busier every day. Julian used up all his sick days during that last month of her pregnancy and my Grandfather had come to stay with us. Luke Powell – Hirst was brought into the world on October 19, 1999.

Her and Julian spent many days thinking about giving Luke a middle name. When he was born, his ear was folded down; they were seriously contemplating on calling him Luke Evander Powell – Hirst. When they told my aunt their idea, she scorned them.

“He’ll think you were taking the piss out of him,” she would say.

My mother and Julian would laugh, “But we are.”

My mother didn’t stay in the hospital for the five days that was recommended as she had already had three children, so Luke was brought home on the twenty first.

I can remember the first time I held him. His eyes were still closed when he was placed in my arms, his body so warm and fragile. I sat on the couch for what seemed like an eternity, looking down into his face- every second becoming more and more attached to him. I had only known him a couple of minutes, but I loved him more than I could ever explain. I never wanted to let him go.

At that moment, I made a vow to be there for him; take him everywhere I went, let him experience everything there is to experience, and always let him know he was loved. He meant so much to me, because finally that hole that had been there my whole life, that something that was missing, wasn’t missing anymore. All of a sudden, my father’s death had meaning, and there was nothing in the world that could make me more thankful than Luke did at that moment.

I had no idea that my life could change so drastically in such a short amount of time. Every morning after Luke was brought home, I woke with the same feeling of pride and contentment as I did that one autumn morning, and the day Luke opened his eyes, made it clear why.

He had the most beautiful green eyes.

The house had changed in many ways after he was brought home, including one way that my child-like mind was blind too – my mother and Julian were breaking up.

“Would you be totally gutted if Julian left?” my mother asked us one morning at breakfast.

“No,” I said truthfully, “Why, has he gone?”

I knew my mother well enough to know that whatever she chose to do was always the best thing she could have done. He had left the night before. After coming in from work, he had done nothing but complain about the house, how messy it was, about how he felt he had to do everything, so my mother told him if he wasn’t happy, he could leave. So he did. Because I like Julian so much, I wasn’t aware of the change that had come over him since we move into the new house. He had never liked Jake, and never treated him like a father should treat a son. He was very selfish when it came to his money, and he expected my mother to run around like she was his mother. I very rarely saw him after that.

He never paid child support, except for a pathetic fifteen pounds a week, which he gave about once a month. He had stuck by his word though; he didn’t let my mother take Luke away from him. Instead, he walked away from Luke.

My mother never seemed very upset about the fact he had left, but I suspected she was. The next time he came to the house was when he wanted to collect his belongings. He asked my mother to get back together with him, but she refused to go back to the way it was before, and he refused to change.

Luke was two months old when the millennium rolled around. Even though Julian had left, me and Anna remained best friends, and on weekends she would usually come to stay with us. She kept the room she had claimed when Julian was still there, and we both fussed over Luke way too much. On December 30th, 1999, we celebrated the New Year with Anna’s family. That was the night I tasted my first beer; Carling. I thought it was disgusting.

Time passed almost too quickly when Luke was with us; and before we knew it, three years had passed. I kept my vow; I spent every spare minute with Luke. I taught him to walk; I was there when he said his first word, and I never let him fall asleep without kissing his forehead and telling him quietly; “I love you.”

We were together every day, and I enjoyed teaching him the things I enjoyed most in life. I would take him to the pond at least once a week and teach him, with all the patients I had, how to make daisy chains, how to built caterpillars out of the spurs, and how to make the thick grass whistle. Sometimes, when the boys were still out fishing, they would help Luke pick the best grass to whistle with, and then scorn him for making too much noise.

Unfortunately, because Julian refused to give my mother a penny, we had to sell the house on Boothferry Rd. and move back to the other end of town. Luke and I would have to walk to the other end of town every time we felt like going to the pond, me pushing him in his pram. I had started attending Vermuyden Comprehensive School, and was now in my third year. It was hard getting used to and I hated going there at first. Not only did I have to wake up half an hour earlier every morning, but I also had to walk a mile to get there. The fact that I hated the most was that I was once again put into a situation where I had to make friends, which I wasn’t very good at. Even though I had become a confident person, I wasn’t very outgoing- and because I was still very quiet, I didn’t make many friends. The first few months in Vermuyden, I attended every class with my home room, until the teachers could become familiar with us all. It was when we were separated into classes that suited our abilities that I met my best friend Sarah Sharpe.

Sarah, like me, was a very quiet girl, but everyone seemed to like her. This benefited me in many ways because she introduced me to a lot of her friends. Once again, she and I became inseparable, and most weekends I would go to Reedness, (the village she lived in, situated right outside Goole,) and spend the night.

Luke had grown a lot, and every day he seemed to resemble my mother more and more, right down to the bright green eyes. Sarah loved Luke just as much as I did, and he saw her as a sister. Luke never failed to make me smile, he reminded me a lot of my silver angel, which I still had hanging around my neck all these years later. It was him that I decided I could share it with.

I told him it was magical, and as long as she stuck with me, nothing bad would ever happen to us.

Whenever I had any spare time, I would take Luke to the other end of town, and we would sit around the pond that sat behind Boothferry Rd., until the street lamps came one. One night, Luke and I were playing there before I took him home to go to bed. Dusk was upon us, and as the sun slowly sank behind the houses on Boothferry Rd., Luke looked up.

“It’s so pretty,” he said, looking into the reddening sky, “When we get old, we can come here and build our home. We can pick the whistling grass, and make daisy chains that we can sell for food and play every night until the sky turns purple. And we can build our own queen and king out of burs, and we can stay up every night as long as we want, and we’ll never have to eat the carrots that Mammy gives us to eat.”

I smiled and agreed. Deep down I knew that would never happen, but it was a beautiful idea.

That night, on the way home, we stopped at the Fish ‘n’ Chip shop for a drink. Luke and I were sat on the bench outside drinking our pop, when I slipped into a daydream. I imagined my life if I lived in a hut beside the pond, I would have no rules to follow, I wouldn’t have to make my bed every morning, and I would never go to school.

I reached for my necklace and played with it unconsciously as I thought, sliding the clown right to left along the chain. My surroundings were completely blurred, my mind almost blank, my eyes invisible to anything but the oak tree and daisy chains I would be selling for food. Suddenly, I felt a link come loose on the chain and I watched almost helplessly as my clown fell through the cracks in the wood of the bench, and hit the ground hard, its head separating from the body. The feeling of comfort and carelessness that I had become so accustomed to slipped away almost immediately. My little angel was broken. Feeling like I was going to cry, I turned to Luke for comfort.

A loud screeching noise echoed down the busy street, disturbing the casual humming of the car engines, and I saw as a black sports car slammed on its break in the street, causing three cars behind him to pile up. Horror grabbed at me as I realised Luke was no longer sitting next to me. I looked down to the floor at my broken angel, and almost knowing what had happened, I ran around the cars that were parked along the sidewalk.

My heart stopped as my eyes fell upon a small body, lying in the road. I ran over and knelt by his side. “No,” I whispered to myself. It was Luke. The way he laid, he could have been sleeping. I shook his limp body, calling for him to wake up. For a moment I tried to convince myself that was what he was doing, sleeping, but when I noticed the trickle of blood running from his mouth, I couldn’t convince myself any longer.

A tear ran down my face as I wiped away the blood. I felt a big mass of anger and hate exploding inside my chest, unable to control my emotions I screamed, and I never wanted to stop.

“Luke… Luke…” I cried, lost for words, “Don’t go, don’t leave me, come back… come back… come back…”

I can’t remember how it happened. I can’t remember if I went to the funeral, or how my Mother reacted. All I can recall is waking every morning after that day, hoping, wishing that I’d woken from a nightmare, and after realizing it wasn’t, I’d slip once again into those soulless hours that would become my life.

I no longer enjoyed the autumn. I would look upon the upturned trees in my garden and I saw nothing but a dead mass of sticks, pointing out aimlessly to the sky. I never visited the pond anymore to make daisy chains or build spur caterpillars, and I never chased after the birds, scaring them with the whistling grass. I never dreamed, never hoped.

My mother eyes were no longer full of life, or love. They no longer danced, or smiled. They faded. Death was no longer a natural thing in my life, but a demon, an unforgivable part of life that aims for nothing but to hurt people. It was meaningless.

I couldn’t accept or admit the fact that, not only was I responsible for Luke’s death, but I was also the reason my fathers’ death was once again pointless.