Joseph Foley Memorial Guest Comments

 5th of July 2024 Joe's would have loved this day.  After fourteen years of Tory's tyranny, some respite and a little hope. Again... With Joe, election nights were always a big event. With people coming and going all night, large amounts of psychotropic substances consumption and cheers or wails emanating at any one time, as the night results unveiled. Joe was a stalwartly Labour supporter all his life, and tonight the results would have delighted him. Well Joe, your memory in these times, is still fresh with me and those that held you dear. (Now, stop turning in your grave, for a while at least ;-)

It is incredible how easily time slips through one's fingers. 16 years have passed since Joe's departure, and they seem to have been evaporating away, flatlining from a time of excitement and hope. Joe's times were anything but boring, he was a magnet to a desperate (and often disparate) cast of unique characters that gravitated around his personality. Most of them have died or moved away, but they are inextricably linked to those times. A period when knocking at the door in the middle of the night did not mean, necessarily, a police raid, when the interconnected lives of many passed through his flats at any time, with stories, problems and joy. The memory of his time is a gift that Joe has bestowed o all that knew him and gladly so. 

15 years since. Between the fading of memories and the people that have left, little by little, all but the most rooted memory remain. Few people, family and friends still make the effort to remember: " Sic transit gloria mundi " indeed. Many things have happened in real life, but when one ponders on the bigger questions of life and death, they all pale into marginal notes. Joe, fought in very real wars, now mostly forgotten and layered upon by fresher conflicts, all reiterating the same humanity's lack of maturity. Passions that are fleeting and  superficial as our own existence, but, nonetheless, all consuming and real enough to deracinate many potentially beautiful existences; like if death was not enough fiercely besieging our world on its own already. Remembering lost friends still bring a sense of continuity and hope. A realisation of how important it is to live in harmony with the laws of nature tempered by our rationality in following what one could call " mo...

  Fourteen years have now passed, only a handful of people remember and when they will be gone, the little of Joe that remain in their memory will be gone too...but not yet. Years flow and past images fades, but forgetting is not an option for us that still live on, for existing without remembering is a dying even if ever so unnoticeably.  Joe was part of our live, of our experience of being alive and keeping him in our heart is keeping something of him with us, always. I meant to add some substantial amount of material to the site, but…still plenty of time before I sleep. Plenty time to pose and recollect. 

  Time fly, they say...and never so true for the departed ones. The world is going upside-down it seems and Joe would not have liked it, I am sure of it. I meant to do a lot of things to the website, but I could not find the time and energy, but I have not given up the project. In spite of having retired I  found myself as busy as ever I have been but maintaining his site I think is a sort of duty I feel compelled to keep. As usual, I hope to get hold of some more info and to put the load of stuff regarding the times we shared with Joe online.  Epidemics mishandling, right-wing government and intolerance come and go through the ages, but decency and remembering those that have come before are always with us. Treasure them.

  As time passes more and more memories fade away like ghosts of a distant past. I myself now getting older and older and looking back to one's life choices.  I will have to put online all the rest of my memories of the times I shared with Joe, and hope that a little of both will then linger on into future times.