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