CHRISTINE GARRETT

Died February 2001

People who knew Christine will have their own memories. January of 2001 was a pretty hard time for all who knew her, especially myself. After a number of malicious attacks that were not treated seriously by Sussex Police, Christine took her own life in February. The following is the speech I made at her funeral.

 I only knew Christine for two and a half years, but over this period she would often refer back to those days. Sometimes with happy memories, these mainly involved food and her step Mother’s Sunday roasts, but more often than not with a sense of pain, anger and what I saw as a need to belong. Those of us fortunate enough to have or have had loving parents can never really fully comprehend what it must feel like to be given away after two days of your life like Christine was.

And if that isn’t bad enough, to then find your real Mother in later life, have all the emotions that that must bring build up inside, tell her how you feel and then be told that she wished she’d never had you at all must be soul destroying. This was Christine’s problem. Despite the hard image, all Christine ever needed was a shoulder to cry on and someone to be there when she needed support. In the last year or so, she would often turn to me and say that I was the nearest thing she had ever had to a Mother or a family. This was never my intention, but if my listening and trying to help where I could made things easier for her, so be it.

People here will have their different memories of Christine. The tough street person who wouldn’t take any lip, the tattooed biker, the long lost brother and somewhere out there, there is a child who, probably unbeknown to them, has lost its father. Christine never really talked a lot in public about that and I think I was one of the very few to have been shown what she called her pride and joy. A collection of photographs showing, old motorbikes, her pet dogs, her two wives and especially her child. There was certainly a sense of pride in her when she showed these off and perhaps there was something in these images that she was desperately looking for. A sense of belonging.

But throughout this there was an underlying problem that would never go away. The feeling that Christine had been born in the wrong body. This was why in 1998, she moved to Brighton, changed her name and made a concerted effort to find her true self.

I first came across Christine when she worked as a doorman at a club I used to help run. Although not immediately, we became good friends and it was over Christmas that year that he was round at my flat and broke down in tears. Initially I was somewhat stunned by this hard character crying inconsolably, but as he began to speak, and spoke of how he felt inside and that he believed that he should really have been born female, there was firstly a sense understanding, but secondly an understanding of Christine’s sense of helplessness and vulnerability. On a number of occasions over the next couple of years I would find Christine crying in my front room. Maybe he was always too embarrassed to do it in front of others, or maybe it was because other people refused to take her seriously. Being unable to go deeper than the hard facade that Christine would portray or hide behind. Other people who have suffered gender problems such as Christine, can perhaps try and understand the sense of helplessness that she felt. How many women are 6ft 9? How many women have size 14 feet? How many women have a voice deeper than the deepest coal mine in Wales? I am sure there are none of us here today who would say they have a perfect body and wouldn’t change a thing. But this is where I hope I managed to inject a sense of optimism in to the situation. Instead of wallowing in things she would actually talk about speech therapy. She would talk about doing something positive about her gender problems. Rather than hide away which she had done before. Many people believed that the tattoos that covered Christine’s body were all part of her biker past but this wasn’t the case. She would often say that the only reason she had them done was to hide the body she never wanted.

Another thing that Christine will be remembered for by those of us who knew her in Brighton, was the multi-coloured hair she had. Green, purple, red, you never knew what colour to expect next. I can now exclusively reveal that this wasn’t intentional. In fact all Christine ever wanted was to dye her hair black. She just never seemed to get the mixture right when it came to the dyes.

Whereas I became a shoulder to cry on for Christine over the last couple of years, she became one of the most loyal friends anyone could have. Very few people took the time to get to know the person inside, which is a shame. Christine would often say that if anyone laid a finger on me she would willingly do a life sentence. This never really sunk in until the last few months, when things started to go off the rails a bit. But I hope that I managed to inject enough belief into Christine, as she seemed to have in myself.

Perhaps one of the things that we will remember about Christine, more than any other, is her gung ho attitude and openness about who she was. The fact that Christine very rarely went out dressed as herself was not so much down to the fact that she didn’t have the bottle to do it, she didn’t have to. I think most people were told the way she felt as soon as they met. It is perhaps an openness that some of us could learn from.

It is not to say that Christine never dressed the way she felt. Those of us who saw it will never forget that rather large purple dress. I don’t think anyone else could have carried that one off.

The sad thing about all of this was that the last eight months had seen such a massive upturn in Christine’s life. It seemed that everybody still only saw the same old person, and by many, in fact by most she was still tarred with the same brush. The fact is she had changed markedly. Maybe I saw this change more than most, but others failure to recognise this really upset her and myself throughout. The fact is that prior to Christmas last year, Christine had not taken any hard drugs for months and was reducing her methadone. So much so that she was talking about going to a clinic to come off of it completely. This prerequisite had been set by her GP and had to be met before he would allow Christine to explore the possibilities of hormones. This was the driving force behind the change. Secondly, Christine had got a job and was exceptionally proud of it. Woe betides anyone who said to her you’re only a roadsweeper or a bin man. Christine would turn on them and state that binmen were the fifth emergency service and were far more important to this country than accountants and lawyers. And I guess if you look at it in that light she had a point.

I spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day with Christine last year and I thought to myself at the time what a marked difference there was in her. It seemed as though this year she was going to finally do something about the problems that had been with her all of her life. She had actually lost her job by this stage, but there was a definite resolve that she would be knocking on the agencies doors again as soon as they reopened. At this stage Christine was very optimistic about the future.

This perhaps makes it worse when we consider her rapid decline during January. I do not wish to go over the events from New Years Eve and the following weeks that resulted in us being here today, but there is a man out there who will have to live with this on his conscious for the rest of his life. It almost brought me to tears to see Christine, this once proud figure, who would go anywhere and shout from the rooftops about what she was, reduced to a quivering wreck. Frightened to leave my flat. Frightened to walk the street and once again turning to drugs to make the outside world go away. The truth is that the situation was only going to get worse before it improved. I know I couldn’t have gone through what Christine was subjected to in that last month. And when I heard of Christine’s death I was not upset. I was not shocked. I was just relieved that her problems had come to an end.

In fact the main reason that I am here now is that Christine asked me to speak at her funeral. It became increasingly inevitable that this was going to happen and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. Christine also chose the music that has been and will be played.

Rather than dwell on those last few weeks I would rather remember Christine as a person with a sense of humour and one of the most loyal friends a person could ever have.

A few of us here will probably always have a little chuckle when we remember some of Christine spoonerisms. She had a habit of mixing words up and there were a few classics that reduced us all to tears. Probably the most memorable being after I had bought some Maple and Pecan nut cereal. Christine came into my kitchen, took a handful and exclaimed, mmm I really love pelican nuts. Funnily enough I went right off that cereal and it was thrown out when I moved.

Perhaps one passing thought to finish off. If you are walking down St James Street in Brighton in the next few days, just pop in to Cash Converters. If you see a set of brass coffin handles on the shelf, you’ll know that Christine’s ghost got to them before the undertakers!