Blog
360 — Honouring A Real Hero
The
Man Who Died With So Much Grace
Written 19
September 2026
This
is Dave as he looked when he blessed me by coming to live in my home. If you blow this photo up, you will see rays
of light streaming down from above all around him. Dave refused to live unless he could live morally.
* * *
In the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
movie, the astonishingly talented Tina Turner sang “We don't need another hero”.
Tina was correct, of
course. We do not need any additional
heroes.
We already have so many
heroes – and every one of them looks like a completely ordinary man, woman, boy
or girl.
Although we do not need
any additional heroes, we do need someone to help us open our eyes and look
properly at the “ordinary” people who we meet every day. Our world is full of heroes, but mostly we
fail to notice them.
We have this crazy idea
that “real” heroes look different from our neighbours. We think heroes all wear special costumes
with a big letter on their costume telling us their special hero status.
My friend Dave (full name
David Joseph Johnson) would have laughed non stop if you ever suggested he was
a hero – but he certainly was.
* * *
Dave in
the Northern Territory teasing a crocodile.
Crocodiles are stupid … and they eat people whenever they get the
chance. When this photo was taken Dave
had undergone dramatic surgery, plus chemotherapy and radiotherapy for the
oesophageal cancer that was supposedly going to kill him before the end of 2016.
Dave’s response
embodied everything that is good about the human race, and everything that was
so wonderful about Dave. After the
treatment, he went on a holiday and dared the crocodiles to try and eat
him. The crocodiles left Dave alone. They knew that if they tried eating Dave,
they would not last very long.
* * *
Dave kissing
a baby crocodile in the Northern Territory in about 2016. It was not that Dave was unafraid of
danger. He accepted danger as a part of
life, but refused to allow his life to be dominated by fear of death.
Margaret’s
“friend” Ann Ryan once told me Dave was “the most boring man she had ever met”. I wish I had known a lot more really boring
people just like Dave.
* * *
Dave grew up on a Council
estate in north London. His mum had fled
The Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
His dad was also named David. Dad
had survived a series of orphanages after Dave’s paternal grandparents had died
when Dave the dad was very young.
Both Dave’s dad and Dave “should”
have become criminals – but neither of them would contemplate that kind of
life. Becoming a criminal in London – or
anywhere else – would have been immoral.
If Dave had become a
criminal, he would have been unstoppable.
He would have been a real-life Moriarty in a country where the only
Sherlock Holmes to bring him down would have been the fictional Sherlock Holmes
of books and movies.
Instead of becoming a Master
Criminal, Dave first became a motor mechanic.
Then he became the youngest foreman ever employed by London Buses.
Then, giving a cheeky “up
yours” to his poverty riddled upbringing, Dave became a London policeman. London police are called “Bobbies”. Dave became a Bobby patrolling, on foot and
without any guns, the very tough, rough neighbourhood in which he grew up.
****
“We don’t need another
hero because Dave is already here.”
****
Dave knew how to dress up in a suit and tie if the occasion deserved it. Mostly, though, he knew dressing up was all show and zero substance.
****
When Margaret and I first
met Dave, he did not have cancer. Then
he did, and he told us fearlessly that it was oesophageal cancer. I asked Margaret 30 years as a cancer nurse)
if this was a bad cancer. Margaret told
me he would certainly be dead within 12 months.
That was in 2015.
When I was near death in
hospital in 2021, Dave visited regularly.
He insisted I walk around the ward with him. He told me I was in the exact ward where he
had been nursed after his “Commando” surgery for the oesophageal cancer. My only other visitors while I lay near death
in the hospital were Margaret and Margaret’s sister Maurine.
I recovered.
Apart from a hero called Dr
Vinod Aiyappan - who diagnosed why I was dying - the people who helped me
survive that near death experience were Margaret and Dave.
****
When Margaret died, I
could barely get out of bed. By then,
Dave’s cancer was back for the third time.
By then it was in his neck, right next to his carotid artery, meaning
surgery was impossible. Despite his own dire health, Dave made sure I knew I
would eventually resume living. As the
cancer slowly but surely started to strangle my friend, he made sure I learned
how to live again.
Dave finally died at 10.00
pm on Friday 11 September 2026.
By the time he died, cancer
had completely closed down his windpipe and wrapped itself completely around
the tube through which nutrition had been slowly dripped into his small
intestine. The tube feeding took 16
hours for one “meal” and gave him terrible diarrhoea.
Because of the diarrhoea,
Dave told the staff to stop the tube feeding.
On the Friday when he died, it had been 24 complete days since any
nourishment except water had gone into his body.
By the time Dave died, the
cancer had spread to his liver. I joked
with him that the cancer in his liver was in competition with the cancer in his
neck and with hunger to see which one could get him to see Margaret first.
****
Have a proper look at your
neighbour. It is a certainty you are
looking at a hero just like Dave.
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