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Some on here will know of my relationship with Maurice, through assorted previous posts. I hadn't managed to speak to him for a week, and normally our phone calls were several times a day. I learnt tonight from his sister that Maurice has died. He was just 27.
He had a difficult life, born HIV+ to heroin-addict parents, who introduced him to drug use from the age of seven. He was largely brought up in care, in secure childrens homes, and by the age of 18 had over 200 convictions for petty theft and drug use. I got to know him, and he moved in with me in 2010, a few days before his 19th birthday, when it became clear he need considerable care and nursing as he had very advanced TB, after having been street-homeless for many months. When I retired and moved from London to Worcester, he moved with me. From his nineteenth birthday onwards, he had only one criminal conviction, and started to achieve a precarious and intermittent toe-hold on stability.
He started a relationship with a woman (which continued until his death), moved to Bedford to live with her, and had three children. The first two were taken into care (in my view, unnecessarily), and the third was born in January of this year and is currently in foster care.
Maurice was capable of great lows, and amazing and enthusiastic high points when his joy infected all around him. He was, in many ways, the son I never had. His life was never easy ... partly through his own actions, and partly due to circumstances over which he had no control. Nevertheless, he gave me much joy, and his passing has left me wracked with grief.
This picture - taken a few days before his 22nd birthday - sums him up.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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