I come from a family of four. My mother Margaret Isabel Young (nee Peace), my father Dr. Robert Goddard Young, my brother, six years my junior, William Robert Stuart Young nd myself, John Paul Young. My brother died tragically in July 1996 shortly before my fortieth birthday. For the next six years I was the principal caregiver of my two parents. I was the one who discovered the body of my “baby” brother in his apartment. I was in shock. The attending police officer “Bart”, said to me at the scene “If you ID your brothers body for the Coroner, you’ll spare your elderly parents from seeing their son on the slab.” So still in clinical shock, the Coroner, a woman, a very nice woman arrived amongst all the others, arrived. She understood what I didn’t: the psychological impact of identifying a loved ones body, dead town days, bloated, cyanotic and with rigour mortis. A ghoulish vestige of his former self. So I wasn’t allowed to look at my brothers body until the Coroner chose the appointe
Comments