How do I sum up the life of a wonderful man?
First, I put it off for days on end. This is partly because I am in the comforting state of denial that he is dead and he is gone and I will never see him again or be hugged by him and realise yet again that I only reach the height of his armpit. I will never see his floppy blond hair again or drink champagne and eat good cheese with him or walk around Paris with him or sit on an Atlantic beach with him and watch the crashing waves. I will never fall out with him again because I called him a trustafarian (this is a technically true description but morally unfair because he was so unfailingly generous). I will never be disappointed with him again, or he with me, because we have fallen short in one way or another. He was terrible at advice on matters of the heart; I could be lacking at what a good friend should do and be.
My best friend Tom is dead. He died — I don’t like the phrase “passing” because where to? — on April 16, and now my calendar on that day will always read Tom RIP. He had testicular cancer then blood cancer then pancreatic cancer then stomach cancer. He had a massive surgery called the Whipple that removed 80 percent of his stomach. This, for a man who delighted in food, was terrible. The stomach cancer recurred earlier this year and killed him within months. And I cannot ever express how much I wish that it hadn’t.
So many memories. Thirty years of friendship. His funeral was at Père Lachaise cemetery in the Salle Coupole. The chapel is serene and has a beautiful ceiling of blue mosaic.
I know that because I had to stare at it a lot so I didn’t look at the photo of Tom standing with his beloved daughter (and my goddaughter) Aiko. I couldn’t look at the photo and reconcile it with the coffin, so I looked at the ceiling instead. His wife — widow — Delphine had asked if I would like to say something. I was one of four speakers; Tom’s oldest friend Rich, who he had met at the school and who still calls Tom “Flash,” a perfect name; his brother Stephen; me; and his other old and best friend Ben. Everyone’s readings were beautiful and different; everyone held it together. But I was the only one who called Tom a nob. I was terrified I had upset people with that, but afterwards people — including his mum and dad — thanked me for making them smile amongst the crying.
Here is what I said:
In 1995, I met a young man called Tom, because we both had new jobs at Colors magazine in Paris. We didn’t like each other: I thought he was a posh nob (mostly because he had a curtain haircut with kirby grips); he thought I was a chippy Northern cow. We were both partly right: it really was a terrible haircut and I was a chippy cow. But for some reason we ended up going for a drink and became the best of friends for the next thirty years. Sometimes we fell out, but we always made up. I wasn’t sure whether to tell this story but it is one of my best Tom memories so I will. We were living in Treviso in Italy, and had flats on the opposite sides of town. One night my doorbell rang. It was about 2am. I answered and heard this voice, “Rose, can you help me?”. Tom had sleepwalked naked out of his flat, without his glasses and speaking no Italian. His apartment building was filled with elderly people and nobody answered the intercom. So he tried to climb up to his balcony, fell back onto the ground and broke his foot. He made a makeshift skirt from the supermarket coupon catalogues he found in the lobby, and walked more than a mile across town, naked and bleeding and in bare feet, to get to my apartment. It shouldn’t be funny but in time it was, and even the Syrian doctor treating him had a giggle. So one of my major memories of Tom is seeing him standing in my lobby, mostly naked, wrapped in a grass skirt of paper catalogues. Unforgettable.
My life is filled with signs of our friendship: books he gave me, emails he wrote me, Strava runs in my feed with wilfully obscure Shakespearean quotes for titles, mix-CDs of music he thought I would like or sometimes music he was trying to make me like (not successfully). The Strava run titles started as totally obscure and got slightly less opaque over time. To give you context, most runners on Strava call their efforts Evening Run, or in the woods. Not Tom.
For example, a three mile run at 8.30 minute mile pace:
Was it you that would be England’s King, was’t you that Revell’d in our Parliament? Or off with his head.
Henry VI, part 3, Act 1, scene 4.
I used to get annoyed at these titles; who wants to google Shakespeare quotes all the time? Tom did. And he never abandoned them, and I’m glad he didn’t.
Over time, the Strava titles also told the story of what he endured with chemo and infections and all the ups and down and hope and despair of the past few years.
Tis a lie I am no longer ague-proof, or returning from the latest C-bomb
The first part is from King Lear: the second is all Thomas Ridgway. I will miss those Strava updates.
What else? So much else. A glass filled dangerously to the brim with good champagne (not the cheap Cava I used to buy that made him wince and usually disappeared into a cupboard) will forever be “a Tom.” I will never know which is the best place to be on a metro train for the exit I need; Tom always did. My head is brim-full too with memories of my magnificent friend who should not have got cancer after cancer that he endured for years, as did his amazing wife Delphine and fabulous daughter Aiko.
I am a writer but my words are insufficient to express how wrong it is that Tom has died, how the world should have never let it happen, because he was the best of men. I will and do miss him profoundly. It is like a part of the sky is missing.
Goodbye my well-loved friend, writer, copy-editor, champagne-pourer, husband and extremely proud dad to Aiko and Rene, naturalised Frenchman who would never stop supporting West Bromwich Albion, all-round wonderful human being.
This is the dedication page of Every Last Fish. I showed it to Tom before he died and I’m glad he saw it and I’m glad he was touched by it.
And here is Tom. My friend. He was always my best friend but I was never his because he had too many best friends. And that was fine. Because I loved him and always will.

Xxx
Oh Rose! So sorry to hear this. I have a very poor memory of most people I meet, but I remember Tom and how fun you two were together at Colors. The best of mates. Seemed like you two had known each other forever. My deepest condolences. X