Being left

Mum went without a word - her drug chart would have told you why. As the memory of life sharply began to fade, her beauty was astounding. Smooth skin, pure lips and these quiet eyelids of peace that said a devastating thank you. Outside, the shiny night brought suffocating loss and almost sweet reunion with the world. New Cross was still there and the street lamps still spewed light. Newfound smarting pressure and peculiar guilty relief whipped and spiralled around my body, shying from the fuzziness of my head.

When Daddy wasn’t coming home anymore it was all different - screams and confusion, crisis, tragedy and the unexplained, ubiquitous ‘red tape’ that apparently was all. Endless telephone conversations with countless people were overheard; whole rooms filled with cellophane, carnation and gypsum; three in a bed, cuddles and tears and sobbing and heaving; shock and utter pain. Even before this was death - Granddad‘s disappearance bore the same label but contained only confusion. Not understanding why I couldn’t wear my red pinafore dress didn’t stop me from dancing with relatives in my Auntie’s dining room. Absence was present but I couldn’t feel its cold.

The first day without Mummy was all daffodils and yellow bed sheets and a peculiar aching sunny confusion. It seemed like spring was commanding strength. I had cried desperately for a week beforehand and at this point, I stopped. There was much less cellophane, carnation and gypsum; there was tragedy but it was the sort that slips in, accepted like nausea - not the superlative Shakespeare kind. Tragedy’s almost more tangible - this was real loss and I recognised it because I began to pretend I couldn’t feel it.