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……………

 

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

The earth beneath my feet is dry.  Silky like gold dust, it coats my skin as I shuffle along the narrow path.  It feels like perpetual sunset, the air heavy.  As I raise my face, the sky seems to press down upon me, its weight smothering me.  I am unsure of how long I have been walking, as if I were travelling unconsciously, but the bitter wind has given my skin a cyanotic hue.  The cold pushes me to walk faster, to get out of here, but the road ahead seems endless.  Teeth and fists clenched I forge on.

I turn to look behind me, and am shocked to see another soul shuffling far behind .  His face is haggard and drawn, expressionless.   Much as I imagine mine must be.  I do not stop to wait.  His presence prompts me to shuffle faster, to get away.  Incessant toil envelopes me as the environment around me appears to alter.  The road begins to slope downward, and its texture becomes sandy.  The air seems to fill with several types of bird life, and after a time they began to circle above me.  Their presence pushes me on.  My mind begins to wander.

Like Moses stumbling through the desert the non descript surroundings push my mind into a place of fugue. As I fall to my knees a hard wooden floor cracks my already aching bones. My head hangs like an enormous melon as I slowly push myself upright.  I can no longer see the sky, the air around me thick and soupy.  The structure beneath me sways and creaks.  A faint lullaby of lapping water tongues my ears.  Blind with eyes wide open, I push myself onward, finally coming to the edge of the platform.  Frosty air dances before me, swirling and enticing, calling me like a sirens’ song.  I desire to step off, to let the air lift me and cradle me and carry me away.  I stand here; time never ending, as a man sized shape glides across the brine towards me.  He stands upon a flat deck, one long paddle by his side.  There is no sound, no sense of movement, just his slow and steady arrival. A heavy brown oilskin coat covers him from shoulder to floor.  A large, floppy hat obscures his features, and for this I am grateful.  The raft stops short of the pier, and the man is before me like an apparition.  His hand extended, palm up, he waits.  I stand limply before him, as his patience feels endless.  I feel my clenched fist loosen, and find my own hand rising.  As my palm crosses his, two pennies drop and clink.  Silently and stunned I lower my eyes and can see the impression of the coins still in my skin.  He returns to the platform, and motions me to follow.  As the ferry pulls away from the dock, I turn to witness our departure.  Swiftly we move, however I manage still to capture a glimpse of my fellow traveller, stranded and forlorn.  I turn to the ferryman, imploring in my expression, but he is facing our destination, and seems unconcerned by the stranded passenger.

The sky lifts around us, and  the air turns rosy and gilt.  Like gossamer it caresses and feeds me. I have left the purgatory behind, and my journeys end approaches.  The land before us draws nearer, and I see shadowy silhouettes waiting on the shoreline. As I step off the ground beneath me is like soft marshmallow, the air sweet ambrosia.   I remember my clenched fists, now hanging peacefully by my side, and my thoughts return to the traveller left behind.  His head hung low as we pulled away.  His posture resigned, his palms empty. The ferryman would endlessly return and never offer his hand to this wretch.   Unable to pay for his passage, he would not travel today.

As much as I need my sleep these days, it seems that no matter how early my children rise, I am always awake before them.  Usually this annoys, but this morning I woke with the rising sun still glowing beneath the horizon in the east, set with a purpose in mind.  As I shuffled  passed slumbering loved ones, I relished the silence and the cool sense of peace that followed me.  In the kitchen window I placed a candle.  As I lit the wick I closed my eyes.  I breathed deeply and felt my spirit lift and rise.  In my mind I pictured loved ones lost and my heart smiled.   An unspoken prayer ran through my conscience.  I wished for happiness, even for a moment, for all people.  In an instant I felt an indescribable connection with the universe.  Even if my words were unspoken, my intention was clear.  After a time, I extinguished the candle, paused to listen to my children sleep some more, and shuffled back to bed.

Being separated from loved ones as I am, this is a ritual I regularly perform.  I guess I hope that somewhere someone is thinking of me at the same time I am thinking of them.  Even if they’re not, it’s my message to the universe that I believe.  Even though we are separated through distance or death, absence does not dilute  love..it makes it more poignant and bittersweet.

My wish this Christmas, is that there is a candle burning somewhere for you.  God Bless.

‘Help, help, ‘ said a man. ‘I’m drowning.’ ‘Hang on, ‘ said a man from the shore. ‘Help, help, ‘ said the man. ‘I’m not clowning.’ ‘Yes, I know, I heard you before. Be patient dear man who is drowning, You, see I’ve got a disease. I’m waiting for a Doctor J. Browning. So do be patient please.’ ‘How long, ‘ said the man who was drowning. ‘Will it take for the Doc to arrive? ‘ ‘Not very long, ‘ said the man with the disease. ‘Till then try staying alive.’ ‘Very well, ‘ said the man who was drowning. ‘I’ll try and stay afloat. By reciting the poems of Browning And other things he wrote.’ ‘Help, help, ‘ said the man with the disease, ‘I suddenly feel quite ill.’ ‘Keep calm.’ said the man who was drowning, ‘ Breathe deeply and lie quite still.’ ‘Oh dear, ‘ said the man with the awful disease. ‘I think I’m going to die.’ ‘Farewell, ‘ said the man who was drowning. Said the man with the disease, ‘goodbye.’ So the man who was drowning, drowned And the man with the disease passed away. But apart from that, And a fire in my flat, It’s been a very nice day.

HAVE A NICE DAYSPIKE MILLIGAN

Reading this to my eldest tonight, brought me swiftly back to childhood memories.  At the time, anything related to my Grandfather seemed dull (like listening to the news on the radio) and irrelevant.  Now I thank him for introducing me to Spike and the wonderful epitaph he left after his death…”I told you I was ill.”