My aunt Maggie definitely enjoyed life and was full of life. She was about 10 years younger than my mother, and she lived with us because she was bohemian to the point of never having anywhere to live, just a free spirit. Her philosophy was about trying to be as unique as possible. She was very exciting, at certain points a bit of a handful - she once got arrested for jumping on the bonnets of all the cars round Berkeley Square. Often I'd be going to school as she'd be coming in from a night out.

She then went to live in a commune in Carcassonne; they were all drinking a lot, maybe taking drugs too, who knows? I remember going to visit her when I was eight or nine, and it was kind of scary, and upsetting, because she had cut a huge hole out of her hand from a fall, and I remember being really upset about that, and worrying that she wasn't taking good care of herself.

But she was so anti-Establishment and such an exciting person to be around. She had all the glamour and freedom of a liberated life. You could ask her questions about anything, and it felt as if she had the answers to everything. She was just an unorthodox, brilliant character, and I thought she was completely amazing and felt very close to her.

She was beautiful in her way too: she had light brown hair, she was very slim, but she had a tall, dominating stature - she has a tall, dominating stature. It's so strange, because the inclination when I speak about her is to put things in the past tense, and she's still alive and well. That's the worst part: her body is fine, it's just her mind that is broken.

She introduced me to music. I would listen to lots of her records, a bit of the Doors, Velvet Underground, Lou Reed's Transformer... But the main one that influenced me was Ziggy Stardust. She gave me the record and didn't say anything about it: it was in her style to just present it to me and allow me to make my own conclusions. It's very upsetting to think how happy she would be for me, and how much I could share with her now, because she was so influenced by pop culture.

My parents broke up and divorced when I was 11. At that point, my mom was living abroad with my two sisters, and I split the time between my dad and my aunt, and emotionally I became very dependent upon her. Maggie had met someone, and lived in a pub called the Pepper Pot in Dock Street, east London, and I stayed there on and off in the holidays.

Two years later, when I was 13, Maggie had moved north to be with someone else, my mum was still abroad, and I was living with my dad, who had become unwell, and I begged Maggie to come down to London and spend some time with us. On the way to the station she got hit by a car, and the back of her head hit the kerb.

My father and I went up to see her, and she was just lying there with tubes coming out of everywhere: tubes to feed her, tubes to monitor her blood, tubes for hydration - she was dependent on a life-support system.

We'd go up and see her often, and talk to her, hoping that would trigger some kind of wake-up. But she was in a coma for six months. And so, cruelly for her, she wasn't given the dignity of being allowed to pass into another world. She came out of her coma - she was forced to wake up back in this world. It is a double-edged thing, because to have her awake was good, but after six months in a coma her brain had been destroyed.

She's now incapable of looking after herself; she was moved to a secure unit in a hospital in Edinburgh, where she has lived ever since. She needs 24-hour care, and there's not enough money in the NHS to provide positive therapy. It's very hard when you go to the hospital. It's so grim - decrepit entrances and locked doors. Every single person in that unit has a brain injury, a victim of some terrible accident. At one point in the day they put the patients in a large netted area, like a playpen, so they can crawl around and be active. It's awful to see her go from being the most effervescent, perfect person to this.

There's little sign of rehabilitation. She's never been interested in the other patients, so she lives an isolated, horrible existence, reliant on drugs to keep her calm.

I go and visit her when I can. I try to talk to her, but her speech isn't good, she speaks in a slurry, beaten way. She has no short-term memory, so you can see her and she'll forget within two minutes that you've been there. She likes to play cards, she plays 21 over and over. But she has pretty violent mood swings when she gets very difficult. The last time I took her out on my own, when it was time to return to the hospital, she refused to be taken back. That was really scary, as she's quite a big lady. She swore at me and told me: "Fuck off, I'm not going back in there." Pure heartbreaking stuff.

I was responsible for her being on the road, so of course I feel responsible: if I hadn't asked her to come down to see me, her life would be different. That is a tremendous burden, but you can't go over and over these things, because there's nowhere to go with it. Life is cruel and at times random. This was just a random, senseless accident. The fact that I can't be responsible for the driver allows me to live without too much painful regret, it means it's bearable. I've had to exonerate myself from that, or else I'd be emotionally crippled, and I'm emotionally difficult enough. I'd imagine the driver has had his own years of regret - it can't be easy to knock someone down and live with that.

These kinds of events have ways of destroying your childhood, because you have to deal with things that kids shouldn't have to deal with. It changed me in the sense that I lived with consistent pain at a young age, and at a time that was difficult for my family anyway. Even now, it' still quite overwhelming, and of course I've never had a chance to grieve for Maggie, because she's still alive. I could go and see her today.

If there's one good thing that has come out of this, it's that you learn to appreciate not being injured. That sounds glib, but it's the lesson I've learnt, much in the same way as death makes you appreciate life.

© 1997-2002 gishgirl@rocketmail.com