Tim's inquest

After 18 long months, today we finally had the inquest into T's death. It was a tough day on lots of levels, as you might expect. (Be warned, this one might be a tear-jerker. It's certainly set me off, so don't read if you don't want to know the facts.)

1) The weather was shocking. That doesn't really bother me, other than the fact it made driving on the M25 round to Kent (where the inquest was held) like an extreme sport. I don't think I've driven in worse conditions. Visibility was zero at times - you just had to point the steering wheel in the right direction and hope that you came out of the carwash-like spray from the lorry you were overtaking in the same lane you started in. One good thing about that was it meant there was no space in my brain to think about what was to come. It required 100% concentration. That was definitely a good thing in retrospect.

2) The inquest was held in Kent. The county where T was born. The county where T also died. To get there I had to drive past signs for Brands Hatch. And signs for the hospital where T was taken after the accident. It was the same journey I had to make on that night in July 2009 when I received the news. Hard hard hard.

3) We had to sit through a summary of T's accident. We heard statements from two of the paramedics that attended to T in the minutes after his accident. The same two people who also accompanied him to hospital in the ambulance while performing CPR on him (which eventually restarted his heart and enabled him to be an organ donor). One of the guys can only have been in his early twenties. I felt for him. A track marshall also provided evidence. He was visibly moved and approached me afterwards to offer his condolences. He was a retired police motorcyclist so he understood. Everything. A policewoman summarised the police evidence and finally the pathologist reported his findings. I got to ask the questions that had been bugging me since July 2009. Were T's injuries survivable? Had the fact that Kings were too busy to look at the brain scans the hospital in Kent sent them, contributed to T's death? The answer was no. On both counts. T suffered little visible injury - I can testify to that. However, the internal injuries were fatal. His poor skull was fractured, his brain was swollen and his neck was broken, which meant that the brainstem was severed. My poor T. But the good news is that the pathologist said he wouldn't have known anything about it. Even when his heart restarted in the ambulance. Hard to hear, but good too. Good that he didn't suffer. That would have been hard to bear.

On the positive side, it was good to meet some more of the amazing people who tended to T. People who were at the scene in less than a minute of the accident happening. Who did their utmost to help him. Who were there looking after my boy while I was still oblivious to the horror that was unfolding. The day my world was shattered.

A verdict of accidental death was recorded. As I'd expected. T's toxicology tests were negative, his bike was roadworthy, no-one else was involved, etc etc - we knew all that. Having seen the CCTV footage of the accident, it was clear that that's exactly what it was, a freak accident. MotoGP riders walk away from high-sides like this every day, at much faster speeds than the 40mph T was doing.

T was unlucky. Why, I'll never know. I guess it was just his time. I like to believe that it happened for a reason. I don't like to think of his death as pointless. There must have been a point to it, either for him, or for the people his death has touched. As I've said before, T's death has benefitted so many people. It does my head in to think about it sometimes. Not just the organ recipients. But the MSF recipients who have benefitted, and continue to benefit, from the £30k+ that has been raised in T's memory. And T's friends and family who now have a different understanding of life. Whose lives are richer as a result of this understanding and who have passed on some of this understanding to their friends and family. His death has generated an incomprehensible number of positives. And maybe that is the purpose of T's death. Maybe we had to lose one bright star to enrich the lives of countless others. Who knows.

What I do know is that while T was incredibly unlucky, I am incredibly lucky and blessed to have the support of such loving and considerate people in my new life. You all know who you are. And I love you all more than you will ever know. Your gestures, big and small, mean so much to me and this would be far worse without you there to help me through the shit days. But with your collective support, that's what I've just done - got through another shit day. And survived. I've got to keep moving. Life doesn't stop. It's good. Right now I feel sadder than I've felt in a long long time, but I also feel positive. I feel like my life is beginning again. Not the life I would have chosen, but the life that I've got to live. So live it I bloody well will.