Picture this.

 It’s 1987.

 A school bus packed with teenagers rumbles along a windy rainforest road. It is twilight and the kids are rowdy. Dressed in their best gear, they are headed out for a once a year experience.

 Movie night at the Malanda picture theatre. The theatre is huge, the seats canvas and baggy. Rows upon rows of couples sit, snuggling and smooching. One couple in particular catches your eye.

She seems a bit tough, and he’s kinda goofy.

Even now though…he loves her.

She rests her head on his shoulder as the house lights lower, and the movie begins. She feels the tears well as she watches. Her heart swells as she imagines a man that could love her like the main characters loved each other.

 In the seat beside her, the boy squeezes her hand.

 He feels the same.

 The movie ends and they make the long bus trip home, this time snuggled on the vinyl seats, whispering to each other in the dark.

Years would pass, and the girl (now a grown woman) would hear of the movie characters passing.

 Memories of that night would come flooding back.

 Memories of the boy that squeezed her hand, and the way he had held her just as tightly on their wedding day.

RIP Patrick Swayze, and know that your memory has walked with me these many married years.

 God Bless.

I saw an angel once.

From my bed, third from the left. 

An endless row that sees us lined up like cattle awaiting a bolt through the head. 

Mrs Jenkins on my left, Mrs Smith on my right.  Both shallow little hillocks under their stiff, scratchy covers. 

 The nurses tiptoe past, their rubber soles squeaking on the shiny linoleum.  

  Grey ambient light settles over us, a gloom that blends us with the surrounds.

  The staff pass us by, camouflaged they pretend not to see us

There’s a lot of snoring tonight.  Old folk exhausted by endless days of sitting, and eating and dozing. 

The ward is a bus stop.  Somewhere to sit surrounded by strangers, while we wait for our ride..

Sister Andrews passes by.  I smile at her, knowing full well that she will wake me in two hours for my sleeping pill. 

 She is my only physical contact . 

 Impersonal activities of daily living. 

 Like washing ones car.  

In my earlier years I would have raged against the injustice. 

Now I am resigned and grateful.  

I have discovered  that death is not eternal, but the waiting is. 

 Waiting passes the time.  We wait for our pills, we wait for our meals.  We wait for our loved ones. 

 We wait for Christmas, and we wait for it to be over. 

 Every day is a new waiting. 

 Ripe with waiting potential.

Eventually my lids betray me.  Closing to open again tomorrow.  Through blurry slits, I see my lashes.

 My bed is like a coffin, and I am tucked in tight, like a child.

I rest for a time, feeling the rise and fall of my bird like chest. 

 I lay stiff and straight, a stranger in my bed, and eventually the sounds of commercialised care fade around me.

In a rush of heat, I am awake. 

  Through the murkiness of sleep a glow, incandescent  fills the room like a sunset

 An incredible pounding pushes forth from my chest,  and a sound comes at me like  a wind tunnel throbbing.

 Above me  like a full, ripe moon hangs beauty and terror.

Rising up with monolithic reverence, the air swirls and eddies, thick with angel dust

I gasp, sucking for escape, and feel  my body might burst apart.

The air is warm and sweet, and as I breath it in I taste buttterscotch

I feel the whoosh of blood pulse through me, and as she reaches ivory fingertips towards my salty tears, I am gone.

Fainting and floating.

In her embrace, I am limp

I feel her lips press against my tired brow

Sobbing,

Mother has returned to take me home

 

 

So, what’s with all the death stuff?  My last post, and the one before clearly delved into some very sad and dark places.  Every creative juice that flowed was in the form of tears.  And while I felt a sense of achievement by tapping into some real, raw emotion, it was becoming clear to me that I’d have to re title this blog…”Grown up girl’s lost her Prozac”

  In my real life, I never wear my heart on my sleeve.  Even in the most stressful, and unpleasant of circumstances, my expression is as flat as a  non stick frypan.  However, in my writing world, it seems my heart holds an enormous grey lead pencil, happy to blab all my angst out into  virtual space.  Not that I’m complaining.  A blog is a fantastic means of expression.  I did start to worry though that the writing that people were expecting to find here was becoming a bit bleak.  Maybe you’d stop coming back.  That a blog mutiny was afoot.   Perhaps I was about the walk the cyber plank, plunged into a virtual sea of oblivion. To drown amongst an ocean of unread blogs.   OK, stopping with the pirate metaphors (unless Captain Jack comes swashbuckling up the street, and then you guys are on your own!), but you get my (a)drift (sorry, that seriously was the last one!). 

So, what’s really been going on?  Well for a change, nothing drastic.  No hideous health diagnoses or marital upheaval.  There has however been a shift in my own sense of worth.  All my kids are off at school, and the MOTH, well he got a kick ass job, and moved away.  So now I’m left to wonder what my role in the world is gonna be?  Mum’s mother, and wifes are wifely and for the most part of my day I’m not required for either.  I’ve always craved my own time, and now it seems that my own company is not as stimulating as I thought it would be.

 A life of lunches and chatting with friends would be OK, but what have I got to offer?  Conversations about how I sat and didn’t move for three hours?  Enthralling stuff!   True a writers dream is to be left to write, but somehow it all seems more substantial and more of an achievement when you’re trying to squeeze creative moments into a lifetime of  playdates and committee meetings. 

So, it seems my nest is empty, which doesn’t bode well for the future, considering I’m only 36!  I don’t feel a part of anything anymore.  A tiny little atoll slowing being submerged as the polar ice caps melt.   Taking this  amateur phsychoanalysis  to its most obvious conclusion my writing is more about the death of self and less about the loss of a loved one.  To be more precise, I have lost a loved one…..me!,

Sounds a bit melodramatic I know, but hopefully now that it’s here, spilled across the page, I’ll be shamed into getting over myself and getting on with it!

Oh God, I wish I wasn’t writing all this now……………

 

 

In the falling snow, I hold your hand.   The chill bites at my fingertips.

 We walk, headed for the taxi across the street.  The cold rises up through my soles as I look at you, your overcoat swallowing your frail frame.  I see you now, as you see yourself, as someone else.  As something else.   Your face is tight like  balloon skin, teeth jutting, once a perfect size, now hideous against thin lips.  Eyes set deep in their sockets look back at me as I reach up to trace  the pattern of your skull.  Hard and finite it brags of inevitability.  Short stubby lashes blink me away.  From under your hat, I see the smatterings of new hair, darker than before.  Like baby roots under the loam. 

 Occasionally the wind blusters past us, flapping your coat open.  I can sense the weight in you pocket, and imagine the bottle inside.   The yellow label and the words Nembutal inscribed on the outside, exactly as you had showed me on the website. 

Silence walks between us as we cross the road.   Cars passing , their headlights dull against the gloom.  The fumes from the exhaust taste like poison.  I imagined this would be different.  That moments of bittersweet symbolism would etch this moment in my mind always.  Instead, the bare trees feel full of crows.  I want to stand by the cab forever. 

 Heavy with sadness, my head drops.  The sharp spikes of your beard scrape along my cheek, burning with the cold.  My hands grab for you, feeling thin shoulders and hollowed bones.  Skeleton fingers wrap my wrists. 

 There is no goodbye, we’ve done that already, and as you enter the cab, I hear you give the driver the address.  You tell him you’re tired and may sleep for the duration of the trip.  Not to wake you.  You pull the door shut, the noise like an axe cutting off a limb.  You hunker down in the corner of the seat, like a child in their father’s favourite chair, and your hand dips into you pocket.  It is your favourite drive, and I see you remembering times and places and faces, before taking that fatal sip and slipping away.  I imagine the drivers irritation upon arrival, and wonder if he will take the fifty dollar note you have left for him in your wallet.

  Pulling sharply out into the traffic the cab screeches as it breaks heavily at the lights.  The sound jangles at my nerves, my skin brittle. 

I wait for you to turn, to look at me one final time, but the cab is gone.  I stand and watch its invisible trail.  The wind howls hollow against my ears.  Alone, flakes land upon my face like frozen tears and I whisper…”Goodbye Daddy.”

 

 

I can feel the weight of his hand on my waist, the heat of his body pressed behind me, radiating.  I open my eyes only to close them again.   Willing him gone, I roll over to face him.  He is still.  Bristly and unshaven, his features smooth and unconcerned, he breaths deeply.  Then he is looking at me.  Eyes of clear blue Mediterranean seas, he is perfection.

“Were you sleeping?” I ask derisively.  He shakes his head, and I can hear the scratching of his hair against the linen of the pillow.  “Just remembering” he says, smiling wryly.  For a long moment we stare at each other, then I say “I hate you.”  He doesn’t blink at this, but I sense a sadness as he stares passed me.  “Just go” I say closing my eyes to him.  At the window the chiffon curtains move and the tiny bells hanging along the hemline tinkle.  “Great” I think, “he plays music when he leaves.”  For a long moment I lie there, the crisp, fresh sheets cool like water against my skin. The bed, anonymous like a motel room, is safe.   Clean sheets, put there by Mother.  She thinks the smell of him will kill me. 

In the absolute vacuum of silence, I hear the doorbell.  The floor is hollow, and I am soundless as I cross the room.  It is Mother, immaculately coiffed.  Dressed entirely in black, she is laden with bags.  In her left hand, on a hanger, a dress of midnight hue.  She peers deep into me, and I look away.  As she places the items down and approaches me, I turn from her, avoiding the hugs and the kisses and the murmurings of nurture.  I sense her shoulders slump, her head low.  “I’ve been trying to call” she says.  I shrug.  “I unplugged the phone.”  She tries again, “How did you sleep?”  At this I look her straight in the eye.  “Like a widow” I spit back at her.  Pain paints across her face. She wants to tell me I’m being a bitch, but she won’t.  As I head towards the bathroom, the phone begins to ring, delighted in its recent reconnection.  “I’m not here” I mumble.

Slatted sunlight streams through wooden blinds, casting an evangelical light.  As I move amongst the masses of floral tributes, the floor thick with blooms, I feel like Dorothy in a field of poppies.  Deceived by an awful trick, I wish I could lay down amongst them and slumber.

They say the hardest thing you’ll ever experience, is the death of a loved one. But in reality, the hard part is  the living after.  There is an emotional high that comes with grief.  A soaring misery that peaks and troughs, leaving us disoriented and adrift.  It is an ecstasy of extremes, that leaves us feeling like survival is our only goal.  That if we make it through the first few weeks, through that initial vacuum of shock, that somehow we’ll come out the other side, shinier.  In reality, life takes on a burnished, dullness.  Like Dorothy in Kansas.  The grief party runs out of steam, the entourage of mourners move on to their own place of grieving, and the solitary, endless road lies before you.

Reality bites in the silence.  The empty space where they once stood.  The space that will never be filled.  You realise in that space that you could breath another trillion breaths, and still never see them.  The length of your life stretches out before you, incessant and unbareable.  The phone bill arrives and they’re still not there.  Newest favourite song on the radio…not there.  You get sick…not there.  Not there.  Never again.  Their loss imprints itself upon you, like  a mournful veil.  A veil that forces people to the other side of the street, a veil that suddenly stops the phone ringing.  A veil that beggars the question “How can I go on?”

One day without your loved one is extreme in its ache.  Ten years is an endless hole that stretches inside you.

“There are things that we don’t want to happen but have to accept, things we don’t want to know but have to learn, and people we can’t live without but have to let go.”  ~Author Unknown

In remembrance of all that have perished, and those that are tasked with the living.

Australian Bushfires February 2009

I try to be all “holistic” and comfortable with death.  I have witnessed death first hand.  I have sat at bedsides, have waited in the next room, and have foretold to love ones of deaths imminent arrival.  I have waited beside the dead, brushed their hair, chatted and reassured.  I have “passed” on the sad news, spoken at funerals, hugged the grieving and been the “strong” one.  I have intellectualized death, seen the point, and understood God’s choices. Anne Rice said in The Witching Hour that death is the only real supernatural event most people ever experience.  And despite all the events I have bore witness to, I have never felt a “soul” leave a body, or felt the air around me change. The person is gone.  The force that ticked away inside has stopped.  Just like that. And yet, my heart knows they have returned home.  I feel a sense of completion, like the puzzle has been completed.  We pack it up, put it back in the box and return it to the cupboard.  It’s time to begin another puzzle now, for another life to begin. Another divine spark has moved on.

Someone asked me, after a loved one had passed away, if being in the room with them after, was creepy?  I said “not.”   People don’t always come to the “right” conclusion at the end of their lives (even if they know they are dying).  There’s not always a blinding insight, or deathbed confession.  Some people no matter how ill, can never break their lifelong habits no matter how close by death maybe.  And so in passing, the walls finally come down.  I have felt exceptionally privileged to have been chosen to experience anothers’ passing.  I’ve always said that anyone can be in a birthing suite these days, but most people will avoid a deathbed at any cost!  We think it will be painful and confronting (it is).  They imagine that what they will see will be far worse than they can imagine, so they stay away. Those last words really are that, and it’s not until someone has passed in your presence that you can really grasp this reality. Witnessing a loved one’s passing changes how you live your life.  You will truly understand regret, and live life accordingly.  This doesn’t mean you become a saint, but you see your loved one’s as they truly are, fragile beings with a life force as vulnerable as a newborn.   I’m a believer after all, a broad believer!  There’s nothing I haven’t consider as being possible after life.

It’s my own final breath that doesn’t bear thinking about.  Will I be afraid?  I don’t want to be, and the fear of the fear is the fear. I know I will go onto a better place, but on this plane I will be no more.  How can that be, that I will someday cease to exist?  That everyone I’ve known before me will cease to exist?  I once knew a lady who lived to be one hundred and seven years old.  Her reward for such long life? She watched all her loved ones and friends die!  She didn’t seem to be too thrilled with this and (after introducing me to her eighty three year old baby) told me she prayed daily for her own death.

So, we struggle daily to live, and then we pray for death?  We “rage against the dying of the light!”  And then pray for the Lord to take us swiftly and peacefully.  I find this hard to reconcile.  I don’t believe in euthanasia, and I have seen much suffering.  I think that life is an investment that we strive to nurture everyday, and not to be thrown away.  I try not to judge, but for future reference, no matter how senile I become (or already am!)  I’m not interested in a lethal injection.

I don’t know if God wants whiners in heaven, but I don’t want to go!

“Never knock on Death’s door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!” - Matt Frewer