Before the War

She didn't die alone. She had the nursing staff with her. I hope someone held her hand when she went. Even in her state of absence she seemed to like that security. She always clutched back and held on hard. Perhaps some bodily memory of times that were happpier, more unsure, younger and more vibrant caused the muscles of her hand to hold back when she needed to be safe. Bodily memories of before the war. I've seen photos of that time. Her with her hair in those cool forties rolls, shorts above the knee, and strapped in belted-up corsetted casual wear. Him free and easy beside her, holding her hand ever so lightly with the tips of his fingers. She was beautiful and she was smiling. She looked down in this photo, a big smile on her face, and head cocked slightly to one side. Flirting I think. In later photos there's someone else there, not him. The German Friend they called this other one. In some pictures it's her and him, in others the German Friend and him, or just the German Friend by himself. In this one the German is behind the camera and there's just the two of them. He's looking at the camera, a crooked smile and creased eyes. They'd been hiking I've been told. The German was their hiking friend. I think they flirted her and the German. Even when she told me, her face weathered by the war that was yet to come, and the years of sadness afterwards, even then the coy smile would return. She was a different person to the one I knew. They both were. They were the kind of people that got married on a whim the day war was declared. He, a member of the communists, (which got him kicked out of home) and smoking since he was ten, would bluff his way into the prestigous ranks of the fighter pilots by pretending to be a toff and inventing some toff school. She was a toff, but head over heels in love with this slightly cheeky man that made her laugh so. I wonder whether it was the laughter that attracted them - their wicked sense of humour. They would see so much in their time, lose so much and change so much. But then, before the war, they were as carefree as they would ever be. And I wonder now if that's where she flew to in those final years and if she died reliving a time of such great joy, before the war when they still held hands.

Wondering

It's an amazing thing how when someone dies you find yourself reaching for all those cliches you've heard before. It's an amazing thing how much they capture what you feel, the questions you have, the emotions that well up, the guilt, sorrow, anger. So it feels like a sad and tired cliche to say that when an old person dies it's such a bitter-sweet sorrow. Instead of mourning the life that wasn't led I find myself mourning the life that was led. I find myself wondering if that's all it was about. I find myself wondering how it is that someone can make it through their life and die alone in a hospital room, to be buried at a tiny funeral with not more than four people in attendance. It seems unnecessarily cruel that a life led should end with the twisted foetal curling of the body that comes with dementia, with the stench of death, of failing organs and tired rancid breathing. While once I thought it a blessing that going demented once the love of your life has passed away and left you all alone, now I wonder. I wonder if she ended her life screaming inside her head for help, screaming inside her head for her life back, for her limbs, her mind and her dignity. She talked to three people while she was dying, all of them inside her head. All of them a distant memory to all but her reaching brain. And she said for months in this conversation, 'I want to go home now' 'Yes, yes, you can go home now' 'But you can't scratch you know' 'Oh but I itch so' 'No no' 'Help me, oh, help me' 'Do you love me?' Over and over this went inside her head for hours and hours and months and months. The same conversation with people so far away she talked to them from the step of her carriage. Had she regressed? Or was she inside a book she read? We could write it off as the ramblings of a distant floating mind. But what was she trying to say? and was she content there? Her face was scrunched, pinched and pained when I saw her, and she scratched her head and her back, scratching with such force from her frail bony arms, that she made herself bleed, and the blood caught under her fingernails. I'd like to think she's up there with him now, sipping her vermouth with her feet up and her dogs in her lap. I'd like to think she's not alone anymore and that she's been set free. And I hope with all my heart that that's not it for her. That it didn't end with that bitter nasty end. So comes the biggest cliche of all, that hope and desperate conviction that a life lived so hard and in so much sorrow and pain surely must be rewarded with some peace.