Reflections of a Hillsborough Survivor - 15 years on

I can't stand the month of April, detest it with a passion. To me there are only 11 months in the year because April doesn't exist. But unfortunately it does and as we enter April you can't get away from it.

I can't stand seeing April as a date written on anything, like the top of newspapers or pages on teletext. It sends a cold feeling down my spine, but there is no getting away from it.

Then there are the other reminders like walking around the supermarket and sell by dates on food start getting closer to the 15th - another reminder and one which catches you off your guard.

Easter as a holiday has gone out of the window because you know what's going to follow.

April is the start of spring, where nature starts showing signs of new life and a feeling of the end of the darkness of winter and the start of something new, but April feels darker than any of the winter months.

Obviously I have never bought the scum and have never subscribed to sky sports or anything else that will line Murdochs pockets.

I always enjoyed Mayday because of political reasons but now it has added significance because it marks the end of April.

So I find that from the 8th onwards I start trying to recollect what my movements would have been leading up to the semi in 1989 (probably struggling with maths homework). But I find that I cant really recall much before the 15th but obviously everything following the match.

I can remember doing a sweepstake as I always did with mates at school for the first scorer and making sure that I got a standing ticket for Leppings Lane because in 1988 I could only get a seat in the upper Leppings Lane but not much else.

I'd never seen a dead body before the 15.4.89, not even a relative, that soon changed.

So many bodies.

As for many the Anniversary is the only day when you open that box of feelings held deep inside yourself and open the lock that keeps it all contained and allow all those feelings to come to the surface.

Personally I always used to attend the Anniversary service wherever it was held because it was a sanctuary and being amongst others who understood your feelings for that one day, a place to feel comfortable in letting your feelings show.

Until the 12th Anniversary when the addresses towards the end of the memorial seemed to change in content to something more akin to a political broadcast.

It was the last thing I wanted to hear. I don't need my guilt being added to the survivors guilt I already feel about getting out of those cages of death alive, when 96 of our friends didn't and especially don't need it adding to on the 15th when that lock on my box of feelings has been released.

I just wish that the lectures about issues like standing at football matches would be kept for another day.

So come the 13th Anniversary I just couldn't handle attending and went down the Mersey instead and just watched the river, but that just felt worse.

So the only place for me on the 15th is at the Memorial service, I've tried spending the day elsewhere but for me it doesn't work, I can't release that lock.

So now I feel that my sanctuary has been compromised and I don't know what to do?

Now I find that the only way now to attend the Memorial is to leave before the final addresses which means having to miss the singing of 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.

I would prefer not to but for my own sanity with that lock open, for a short time once a year, I have enough emotion and feelings floating around without anyone else adding to it.

Personally the 15th is a day of remembrance in a month full of shit. I just hope we are able to do just that ...

Remember.

JUSTICE FOR THE 96

Gary Burns

Gary was 17 at the time of Hillsborough. He remembers it as if it were yesterday. Gary's account of what happended in pen 4 is very graphic. He tells it how it was, including the reaction of people outside Liverpool, based upon the crap they read in the Sun.