And Death Shall Have No Dominion

The dawn is breaking.  I am in a black-hearted place.  I am standing in my darkened kitchen drinking a mug of peppermint tea.  In the background that weapon of mass distraction otherwise known as the television mutters on.

I have not slept for several nights.   I have not had a lengthy conversation with another human being in several weeks. I have shrunk from the world.  I isolate myself, I wall myself in.  Life breaks hearts and so I avoid it.

Nobby is dead.  Correction: Nobby has been dead for a little oner a year now.  ‘I promise I will be with you ‘till the end.’ I told him. It was a reckless promise and I never should have made it. But I cannot go back.  I cannot go back. I cannot unpick the knots.  On the cusp of death I abandoned him.

Come back, Nobby.  Come back. I cannot accept that he is dead.   I make tea and I find myself thinking, ‘I must make a cup for Nobby too.’  Or when I am out shopping: ‘I must pick up a treat for Nobby whilst I am here.’  Muscle memory carries me to the door of Nobby’s flat.  Halfway across the lawn I freeze.  He is not there anymore.  I am left with a hollowed-out inside.

He visits me in my dreams.  So often that I greet the dawn with disappointment. I don’t remember details.  Just elusive images, like shards of broken glass. I try desperately to retrieve them.

I did not fully appreciate what I had until it was taken from me.  I feel him like an amputated limb. I depended on him.  Sometimes I felt as if he were my only friend, my only refuge in a perennially hostile world.  And I know that he would have defended me to the death if the need had ever arisen.

Many spend their lives searching for heroes, for people to look up to, to explain. It must be said that there are those who look in vain and I am fortunate that, thanks to Nobby, I am not one of them.  I have been blessed.

Which is why all this feels so terribly self indulgent.

Cherish what you have, while you still have it.

Check this out:  War Stories 

It began here: Reality Bites

Addendum: They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Does this also apply to brazen plagiarism?

I Am Not Equal to this Challenge

Even life on the periphery can be complicated. I am still living in Nobby’s flat. I had a disturbed night’s sleep. I awoke, suddenly afraid but unable to identify the source of the fear. Upon fully waking up I felt empty. The world seemed cloudless, desolate. A watercolour in the drabbest colours you can find.

A voice in my head whispers, ‘Some thing’s going to happen today.’ A sense of vague dread had metamorphosed into stomach churning terror. And later that day his daughter died.

I turned to Nobby. ‘Will you stay with me? I mean, forever. Even when you know….’
‘Vacate my body? I’ll always be beside you. Even if its not in this form.’

I was sobbing. I felt like my heart was being squeezed by some giant fist. I needed to keep telling myself that it would subside and,finally, it did but a tiny shred of fear remained.

I went to the doctor’s to collect my prescription. When I returned to Nobby’s flat I was confronted by an entanglement of aunts, sisters, brothers, granddaughters and great granddaughters.

‘Granddad,’ the oldest grandchild said. ‘We’ve some really bad news for you.’ Then they all turned to me. I mentally slap my forehead : it’s a family conference and I am not ‘family’.

I gathered up my belongings said a brief goodbye and walked out the door. I walked across the green to my own flat. It was so cold and unfamiliar. Dust motes danced in a sunlit window. I didn’t feel at home. I hugged the walls, wondering what could be happening to Nobby., head in hands, saying ‘Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. Then I scolded myself ‘You stupid, stupid, stupid girl.’

I am so afraid
I am not to be depended upon
I am an untermensch
Someone of no consequence

Bella II