No Single Sorrow

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions". - (Hamlet Quote Act IV, Scene V).

Last Sunday I wrote about my friend, Pat, who died recently. During the course of the past week, quite by chance, I discovered that another old, and dearly remembered, friend of mine and my late partner's was gone. Tommy fell ill from lung cancer and died some months ago, in January, on the day after my last birthday in fact. Perhaps this is another trick of Mercury retrograde - pointing me back, towards important news I had somehow managed to miss.

Tommy was a singer, a Londoner, who spent the last 28 years of his life singing in Tenerife, one of the (Spanish) Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa. He sang country music, with an English accent - now that might be an abomination to most Americans, but we Brits and Europeans lapped it up, due in part to Tommy's engaging charisma and sense of humour. His voice was deep and soulful, and in all those 15 years we never heard him sing a bum note. He made every song his own, wrote a few of his own too. He gathered legions of loyal fans from many countries, who, like us made annual or bi-annual pilgrimages to Tenerife. I mentioned Tommy in another blog, last year, when discussing various musical genres: Country Music.


I've often pondered that if I'd never met Tommy, back in 1988, nor become interested in country music and The Old West, I wouldn't be where I am today, in the USA. There's a peculiar progression, something akin to destiny, to that part of my life. While drafting this, a thought occurred, and I reached for the ephemeris. I still clearly remember when we first met Tommy: early October 1988. The one significant astrological link to my natal chart at that time is that Pluto lay one degree from my natal North Node of the Moon, opposite Uranus, my Sun's ruler which is conjunct South Node. The scenario doesn't really fit with any textbook interpretation of that aspect - but there it is!

Tommy was not a young man. It's one of my regrets that I can't be sure of his date of birth. I was always confident that he'd told us that his birthday was 29 July, and he was 10 years my senior. Another fan of his told me last year, via a forum, that they felt sure his birthday was 29 June and that he was 4 years older than the date I'd assumed to be correct.

Using either 29 June or 29 July with the earlier year, at his death in late January Saturn would have been exactly sextiling natal Saturn, and had transited his natal Mercury/Venus at 1 and 2 Virgo in October 2007, which was when his cancer was diagnosed.

I compiled this video last summer, using Tommy's vocal from one of his CDs, and some photographs of him from my collection and other graphics. It was made to post on a forum produced for his fans. Without explanation even to myself, after I'd posted it there I deliberately avoided visiting that forum again until the past week, when I read of his death. Very strange!

We always loved him, and he knew it.
Rest in Peace.

(UPDATE) I had to remove the video when my Photobucket account was discontinued. One day I shall replace it.