I’ve just been to see a play called Barcelona, in the Duke of York’s theatre.
It was very good; a cast of just two. No moving screen behind them ( for a change ).
The interaction between 2 people only. Funny and sad in turn.

What was so striking to me though were the parallels between both of the characters and my own life.
They met on her Hen night. He happened to be In the same bar as she was, on the night.. in Barcelona. She was American, he was Spanish.

She went back ( well, followed him back ) to his flat. It transpired that he had got divorced and they had a daughter.
In the terrorist activity of 2017, his daughter had died. He’d lost what he loved most.

Over the course of the night in his flat, the American lady realised that she really was about to marry the wrong man, and called the wedding off in a phone conversation. Probably unlike most people who acknowledge that, prior to marriage, they don’t call it off.
There are many people who marry because ‘ it’s just the right thing to do in the circumstances’.
In my case, there was absolutely no way I should have married who I did. I always knew that of course. It was just ‘ the sensible thing to do at the time’. I do realise now that that that sounds a little cold, but Christ I wish I had been true to myself ( as they say on every reality television show now ) back in 1995.
For a man that’s hardly got a track record for doing anything sensible, it was definitely out of character. Yet it lasted fairly/ very well for decades.
Countless arranged marriages last the course until death do them part, which adds value to ‘proven compatibility not being necessary’ in a marriage.
Marriage is a lottery. Loads that seem destined to work, fail, and loads that seem destined to fail, work.
If you are going to get married though, you should ( in my opinion, with hindsight ) do it to someone you really love and want to be with forever, with no misgivings apparent to you, having given all consideration to all the likely consequences.
It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make, as well. It’ll influence where and how you live, how well off or how poor you are, whether you have children and how they turn out. Really you should do it in a very scientific way. We don’t though, do we? Some must do, of course. Those that marry specifically for money, for example. Wealth doesn’t guarantee happiness, of course.

The man in the play had lost his daughter, and he was In the flat that night specifically because it was destined to be demolished in the morning. No one was supposed to be inside the apartment block, but he was, and had now been followed home by his American lady.
His devastation at the loss of his daughter was total ( though he was cheerful enough around the girl… she’d chased him back to his apartment, rather than him having lured her back to a death by demolition )
He didn’t hide that he wanted her to get out, but he was staying to die, surrounded by his daughter’s possessions. He wasn’t morose about anything at all, just sanguine. I know how that is, having committed the act quite coolly and mechanically in July 2017 – though of course resuscitated 🤦‍♂️ 🙄 )

Clearly, my daughters aren’t dead – they’re alive and I imagine they are well. I’m dead to them though, that i know. The Dad that went on a bike trip on June 13th of 2013 died the following day.
The person that eventually came back, wasn’t their Dad, he was someone else. The dead guy was fit and able and capable, would chase them around the house for hours and laugh and pick them up and do all kinds of fun stuff with them. He had a job and could drive cars and go up ladders etc etc. The person who replaced him was in a wheelchair, very sad, was very thin, was changed mentally by his head injury and his coma…. and unable to do most things the other fella did. For years he was just very, very down and had frequent mind altering infections. This guy just wanted the life that the other fella had had, with the same relationship with his children… and not being able to have it, could see little or no point in being here.

Not much of a replacement then. And not worth having. Someone told me that he’d seen them quite recently and they were both reminiscing really joyfully about their childhood memories with their old Dad. Clearly they are very attached to him, yet completely DEtached from the next incarnation.
It was better for the daughters to hold onto the happy memories of the dead Dad, and move on, which is what happened.

I only understood and accepted that my daughters were gone… about 5 months ago. Once I’d got it, it was like a huge weight was lifted from me. The replacement ( wheelchair) fella stopped thinking about his daughters, other than fleetingly and objectively occasionally, and cracked on with it. Outwardly he’d been cracking on with life for some years, but inside he was very much stuck in the lost life of the first Dad. It was only last night though that I realised how my daughters see it – that their Dad died in 2013.

You didn’t see what actually became of the Spanish man and the American lady at the end.
The inference was that he had altered/ saved her life by somehow making her realise that she was marrying completely the wrong person, and that she ‘ saved ‘ the Spanish guy by coming back with him and somehow making him leave the building when she did.
I don’t even remember how I got back, whether it was by tube or on the road, and it wasn’t because I was drunk. I was deep in thought, and it seems got home on autopilot. It’s midday now, and whilst I remember leaving the theatre and saying goodbye to Kerry, and then being at home and in my flat, I don’t remember the hour in between. Kerry phoned me just now, and said that I seemed to have become really ‘ spaced out ‘ in the latter part of the play.

I’m glad I went to the play. The realisation hasn’t made me emotional, but it has been a significant thing.