Rosie

I'm not an enormous fan of people baring every detail of their lives online, but I'm about to. I'm getting so many lovely messages and I'm struggling to keep up with them all, I don't want them to stop, I just wanted to explain to as many people at one time why I might be a little quiet for a while, why I might not reply to you straight away and what happened to cause this.

On Monday I had three beautiful daughters, now I have two. My middle child, Rosie, took her own life on Monday night. She was 19.

Rosie was a passionate, moody, delightfully contradictory, caring, TV-show-binging, protective, gorgeous, awesome teenager. When she was happy, she bounced off the walls with it, spreading an infectious glee, when she wasn't, she didn't. Her devotion to her dog, Darcy was beautifully intense, she was an evangelically militant vegan and she was better at nearly everything then she thought she was. Like so many teens, like so many people, she battled to adequately communicate her real feelings, many of our conversations revolved around sarcasm, hugs that had lasted forever when she was little now had to be stolen, but I hope she knew I always loved to be with her. Hiding away to watch a terrible movie together when we both should have been doing more productive things was a guilty pleasure I'd now give anything to do with her again just once. I miss her so much, I generally only cry at particularly poignant episodes of Dr Who. That moment when K-9 got rebuilt gets me every time. This is obviously a lot worse. I'm struggling. I'm having to drink more water to fund all of the tears, but I'll get there.

So I want people to know I'm going to be busy for a while giving my full attention to the needs of my lovely wife and daughters. I've lost one of the most important people in the world to me, and so if you are expecting me to meet a deadline/reply to an email/act rationally in the next few weeks, please accept my apologies, but it's even more unlikely to happen than usual.

Rosie hated having her photo taken, I have hundreds of family photos with everyone else smiling and then Rosie with a menu or a hand covering her face, these are the last few photos I took of my baby, there's one nice one where she has baked a (vegan) cake for my 24^th wedding anniversary. It was lovely, as was she.

I love you Rosebud. Hugs forever x

Rosie Elouise Payne - 1997-2016

People keep asking me if they can do anything, just asking is more than enough. If you are reading this and feeling you want to do something......one thing you can do for me - If you are fortunate enough to have people you love, stop spending time looking at this and go tell them right now, in person if you can, connect with them, hold them, kiss them, treasure them and remind yourself that every single moment you can spend with them is irretrievably precious.

If you were wanting to send flowers or anything like that, then please instead consider a donation to Rosie's favourite charity - Homeless Hounds at http://www.homelesshounds.org.uk

Keith Giffen Legion of Superheroes poster

I only helped stitch this together digitally, so it's a bit of a stretch even for me having my name alongside Keith Giffen & Larry Mahlstedt, but check out the original art for this amazing Legion of Superheroes poster on the comicartfans site.