I
live in terror of the years ahead.
I
try not to let that thought slip in, to catch me off-guard. If it
does I push it away and concentrate on the day, the day as it
unfolds, because if I don't I'll crumple. Just for a moment, though
long enough for my face to end up looking like a sodden tissue. You
know, like one of those thin and silky single sheets pulled from a
cube or rectangular box that sit on a reception desk or coffee table,
and are proffered to clients, or guests, to blow their nose or wipe
away a mascara smudge. And disintegrate, when wet or used too
roughly, into nothing; shreds. That then leave white tufts on
clothing which you keep finding and picking off, seemingly forever.
That exercise in itself, should you be somewhere where such a tissue
might be offered, is enough to stem the waterworks though perhaps not
a sniffing nose.
I
prefer handkerchiefs myself, those dirty, germ-spreading cloths that
doctors now so despise, because they're softer and perfect for
cleaning specs. Knickers work just as well, better even, but you
can't really, for decency's sake, carry a pair on you, or you'd die
of public mortification if you forgot and unearthed an old cotton
bikini, from your handbag, to give your glasses a rub; polishing each
lens as if raising a genie. But at home, they serve. As does the back
of a sleeve for a snotty nose and wet piggy eyes.
I
did not, however, launch upon this subject to discuss knickers or
tissues. Or the usefulness, multi-purposefulness of long sleeves, and
apron hems.
And
being terrified doesn't always result in tears, it means worries and
fears; fears of what I will have to confront. Fears that will come to
pass, not those that might or might not happen. Fears that were once
far away but have now moved closer. Like a fairy tale that begins
happily and gets grimmer.
You've
very wise (I can sense that about you) as yes, you're right, there's
plenty I'm not (yet) saying; I'm delaying, because well, it's both
selfish and hard. The fear, that paralyses me before it's even
occurred, is greater than people realise. And besides, I don't tell,
preferring to brush it under the rug that creeps across the living
room floor, since it's something we will all have to find our own way
through, at the appointed hour (as Death decrees it), unprepared.
Nothing
prepares you for loss. Actual loss. The reality of it can't be
compared to the contemplation of it, and yet contemplation is all I
have. At this present hour. And that leads to fear. That this loss,
when it comes, will be too great for me to bear. An only child,
finally (and entirely) alone. With no other to help me shoulder my
grief.
It's
not for that I live in horror of: being lonely, because that would be
really self-absorbed and my own company has never been an issue;
it's the loss of that triangular relationship – parents and child –
or the dynamics of it changing from that to one parent and child.
It's the loss of them: one and both.
Because
it's reached a stage when, although my parents are in reasonable
health, it's more possible for it to happen. For a decline to appear.
For a slowed downwardness to be evident. For their age to be more
noticeable. To them and me.
Mostly,
it's a subject I think about and only broach flippantly. So it feels
weird being more candid here. And especially since I know they'll
read this, though they're aware my mind leaps ahead, magnifies fears
that haven't yet arrived, or can only be spied, as a dot, on the
horizon. I'm not addressing this here to cause them worry. No, my aim
was to communicate the bond and the anguish that will occur when it's
severed, but I find the words to do so have deserted me. The years
that remain will never be enough, nor as ripe with childlike
unconcern, so that like Agamemnon I'm sorely tempted to utter a
similar brutal order, to the heavens: My parents – I won't give up
my parents; except old age has already overtaken them in this house.
Time, my time, with them is running out.
So
then, though it's wrong, I invite Sleep, then his brother, Death, to
take me first, or just as soon as I've repaid those years of
parenting, support, counsel and friendship.
Picture credit: Sleep and his half-brother Death, 1874, John William Waterhouse.
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
