I found out today that my old Internet friend John Andrews, aka jand, died a couple of weeks ago. Apparently he was attacked and beaten outside of a pub in his town in East Anglia, England, and presumably died a few days later from it — I don’t know the exact cause of death, and there’s some extremely dodgy things about the whole situation that I’d rather not get into.
I never met jand, but we corresponded and hung out on a lot of the same design message boards back in the day. He seemed like a good guy and he was definitely a smart guy, and he’ll be missed by the community.
Rest in peace, mate.
It’s been a while since I trawled the net for any of these accounts but I post here what I have posted elsewhere. In response to your comment about the passing of John Andews, Jand, I was John’s partner for many years and friend for the last four since we spilt – although John was assaulted on the night of the 15th June (we are still not sure of the circumstances) his injuries were not severe. However, again for reasons which are not clear, he took his own life on June 20th. John was an amazing person and my soul mate, but he was also very depressed and someone whos life had spiralled out of control of late. In the end he found sticking around just too painful and took back some control. He leaves a huge gap in the world, but I am lucky to have loved and been loved by him.
Additional: I had a dream about John last night, only the second since he passed. He had come back and I was totally aware of what had happened and that he had been dead and now was not. He wasn’t a ghost, he was real, and I was so happy to be able to put my arms round him. Thing is though, he was so far away, like he didn’t want to be back, just staring into space. I know it’s just a dream, a way of my head making some sense out of the loss and grief of the last few months but it felt like he had been more content and at peace where he was. John and I had been two halves of the same person for almost two decades and I knew him from the indside out. He was intelligent enough to know that if he had chosen to overcome his problems he could have done so, the simple, painful fact for all of us left behind is that he chose instead to take the path less trodden by. I miss him so much but I am no longer afraid to die. I found him once and I’ll find him again.