Fear

Doubt

I did a series of what I think bad things look like.  Enjoy.

FACE

I drew a face.

To be honest I find the colours etc more fun than the face itself...you can probably tell.

And the winds just howls.

There’s a chill in the air.  A frisson, a frenzy.  A tension that creeps up through your muscles until you are poised to strike at nothing there.  And the wind just howls.  There’s a drop of rain on my window.  Another, then another, like arrhythmic drums, until they blur into the white noise of a car radio between towns, between lives.  And still the wind just howls.  There’s an emptiness on the street.  Everyone retreated to safety, to warmth and comfort and psychological fortress of a locked door and curtains closed.  And the wind just keeps howling.  There’s a glint in my eye.  I worry about windows not quite closed, about a house just old enough to be a question.  I feel a feral anticipation towards the crashing and the clashing and the raucous joy of the elements.  And the wind howls and howls and howls.

Gone.

I didn’t know you.

You were a name and an illness and a family.

And then you were gone.

But still,

     I’ll never forget you,

  now-dead man.

I met you at the beginning of the week

We followed the round

The ward was a sad place, but not the worst

The doctors were cheerful, even if their humour was black

The nurses were kind, even if they were tired

And the patients, your companions, seemed as positive as anywhere

Some were confused

Some were in pain

Some were looking forward to leaving

     But you were never really awake, in your room to the side, quiet but never quite peaceful

The doctors told me your systems were failing

To fix one would too much damage another

I could see the frustration, and the resignation behind their eyes

All their experience

All their knowledge

And nothing they could do.

The rest of the week, I saw patients come and go

To nursing homes, to family, to other departments, to other hospitals

You were one of the constant few

At one point we discussed care pathways

An “end of life” plan sounds nicer than any to do with death

As though this life just happened to be coming to an end

Maybe if I believed in some sort of heaven and hell

Or in rebirth

Or in something, anything, that made death less final

Then the phrase “end of life” would offer a small comfort

As it is, I hold no such convictions

I didn’t truly believe this only to be a step on a longer journey.

Your doctors had said you had a couple of weeks left,

but still,

it shouldn’t have been such a shock.

my colleague found you,

Quiet.

Still.

Gone.

My heart goes to him.  I cannot imagine his shock, his sadness.

Because you had gone quietly into that dark night

We’d heard no raging, no final fight

Maybe that was your character

Maybe that was your disease

Were you prone to lie there and take it?

Or were you fighting, we just couldn’t see?

We saw you certified dead

Passed on.

Gone.

It was the first time I’d seen it done.

I should have been learning, taking notes.

But all the while I just marvelled at how you seemed just asleep

So much more peaceful than before

I had an abstract hope that you would just wake up, that it had all been a mistake

But I knew that it was nonsense.

Your heart stopped, never again to speed up at the sight of a lover

Your eyes stayed closed, never again would you blink at the brightness of a new day

You did not cry out in pain, to the horrible things doctors must do to be sure.

You were beyond that now.

And, with a signature on a form, it was official.  You were no more.

The next day, the last that I was there, was like any other

I smiled at the woman heading into the room where you were before

She had hope and pain and fear and trust in her eyes.

And so we go on.

Alone

I am alone.

Not lonely, just, alone.

     Sitting on the bed in my parent’s house – when did it become my parent’s and not mine? – with my mother away studying, my father out at work and me left here to mind the house, I am alone.

     Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes I don’t.  I enjoy the freedom to stand in the shower that’s turned up just a little too hot, for just a little too long, languishing in the heavy flow of the steaming water.  I enjoy my malleable time, where everything’s fine so long as it gets done by the end of the day and then whoops I forgot and I can always do it tomorrow.  I enjoy the fact that I’m in a semi-detached stronghold with the cannons of middle-class bourgeois self-importance peeking over the crenulations of my memories of this place, so that when a cold-caller calls claiming to be compensating for a car-accident, I can comfortably say with a smug smile that thank you for calling but my family doesn’t own a car and no, thank you, I think I would have known if such a calamity had come to pass.

     I don’t enjoy it when it gets dark.  When I find myself watching for movement out of the windows, from the corners of my eye.  I don’t enjoy it when there’s a silence, and then a sound, out of place, leading me to question where I am and what I’m doing.  I don’t like it when I’m caught not knowing what to do, when asking for help by phone or by email would seem like a beacon blasting out an admission of helplessness.

     All in all, I think, I can’t help but relish this.  But then, I have to stop, reconsider.  I’m not alone at all.  There’s a boy, miles and miles away who can’t help but smile whenever I kiss him, on the tip of his nose.  There’s a girl, who’s not quite so far, who confided in me recently, worries about another friend in a chain of hope and goodwill.  And there are friends that I will meet soon, who are coming for fun and larking about  but who I’m sure will hold me up when such things are farthest from  my mind.  I realise that I could write and write and write about  the  people – who I know, who I’ve met, who love me, who  hate me, and who haven’t quite decided yet, but it all boils down to this.

I’m not alone.  I’m surrounded.

OK so I know you're supposed to tell people before any sort of long break in posting...

But this one was kind of unplanned.  Forgive me?
Either way, here's something I wrote and edited at the beginning of the summer to keep you entertained until I've processed all the things I've been writing without access to computers.

I see red.

                Mottled, streaked.  The sun behind my eyelids makes a strange pattern.

                I’m leaning on my hands, sitting back on a rough picnic blanket, bathed in sunshine.  We’re in the park, it’s crowded with families and friends but we have our own island.

                Twenty metres in front of me, there are dancers in the rapture of classic 40s music.  It would nice to be them.

                Behind me, to my left, a group with drums and tambourines, weaving intricate rhythms through the hubbub of chatter and laughter.  Next to them some people with discs and pins and other circus trappings.

                Footballs and frisbees fly and roll around, the gentle thud as foot connects with ball and the ring of calls to the other players cut through the air.

                A breeze washes over me, a welcome variety to the insistent caress of the sun.

                I open my eyes.

                There are five other inhabitants of the island surrounded by grass.  Three well known, two less so.  One is learning tarot, reading the fate of another not here. Two gossip, two read, and then there’s me.

                The tarot reader talks of gains and losses, apathy and faith.  The cards are hopeful, she thinks, head deep in a book that tells their meaning.

                The gossips giggle over a friend’s folly.  Deep in discussion and intensely interested in the other’s opinions and stranger’s situations.  I don’t know them well, but their talk is a portal to a parallel world of scandals and sweetness.

                The readers are intent, silent.  They are building fortresses of imagination around themselves, another universe that they will escape and destroy as soon as they shut their books.

                And I sit, and stretch, and see.