What's on:
Painters
Projects
Writers:
Photographer:
Links
Photos
|
Elegy - death at a distance
Jean is dying, my mother said on the phone. Her sister, my aunt, lying, dying, in a nursing home bed. Giving up the battle to live in that scary place. After the first few years she stopped making friends. She'd get close then they'd die. Nothing but heartache. Dying is how people live there, leave there. She had no place else to go, after the stroke. Only had one leg anyway. Nearly 20 years in that small room, in that bed, listening to the dirge, to the dying. Her absent leg aching more each day, each month, each year. Then the other leg went bad, deadly bad. It will take a while, my mother said. I phoned. They said she was sleeping, she was poorly, did I know? I need to talk I said I'm on the other side of the world. I'm at work. Your night is my morning. Can't just call back later, can't visit on the weekend. She's sleeping, trying to eat, seeing the nurse, try another day. The last time we went to the other side of the world, we didn't visit. Although I'd promised. We shuttled between suburbs and countryside, on visiting duty: inlaws, mothers, brothers, sisters. No time for aunts. Not even Jean. Other years we'd all visit, me and the boys: three shades of Adonis in that dale of decrepit dames. Other years we'd pour two sherries for her nightcap before we left. Other years she wave us off at the door, tears pouring down scraggy rouged cheeks. This year she cried when I rang from the airport to say sorry, bawled when I said we didn't find time to visit, sorry, and we're off now, there is no time. Where were you, she sobbed. Every day I waited and waited, she snivelled. I cried too, trapped in a vortex of everyday life. Sorrow on the line. Did she weep more when they took her leg? I've never known. You don't ask. She was thirteen. For the next 73 years she k-shlupped when she walked, dragging the wooden leg up behind. Never wore shorts or swimsuits. Her body always hidden. I stayed with her often when I
was young. I'd sleep in her bed. I wouldn't cuddle up, scared to touch was missing,
feel a wound.. She'd invite the neighbor's kid, someone
my own age, she'd say, to entertain me. He'd recite 'The Man from
On the phone, at the airport, I trembled as she wept. Wept like my mother did when their father said no, no, she couldn't go nursing. My mother could stay home with Jean and do dressmaking, so Jean could have a living too. So they made gowns for debutantes and bridesmaids and brides. Jean never wore one, never danced, never caught the bouquet. My mother left in a white one. Then there was us kids. When we grew up they grew apart. Something bad happened. Neither said what. Enough to stop them speaking. Or they got too old to bother to bite back the bitterness of being made to stay, of being unable to go. Turned grudges into barricades that hardened with the debris of time. Jean lay dying but my mother still wouldn't call. It’d do more harm than good, she told me, the emptiness of her house echoing down the line. As if the dying wasn’t final. I phoned Jean again. I'm no good, she said, I've had it, my leg isn't there but it hurts too much. Do you remember that kid with his bloody poetry, I said, and heard her smile.
They wouldn’t put her on when I phoned the next day or the next or the next. Then someone good held the phone to Jean’s ear.
Silence on the line. She was busy battling pain. Silence, sorrow.
Then, who? she croaked. What? she groaned. Who is it? she whispered, I've had it.
We shared sorrow on the line, through the heaving deep silence wrought by the weight of the oceans on the cable, through the whistle of the galaxies in the satellite signals.
Sorrow silence separation on the line. |
|
| Please see: Sandra Meredith -'Hay: three recollections - 1' (new) Sandra Meredith - 'Hay: three recollections - 2' (new) Sandra Meredith - 'Hay: three recollections - 3' (new) Sandra Meredith - 'Foreigners in Egypt' (new) Sandra Meredith - 'Birth', poem in response to 'Untitled 22' in the Hidden Woman Project |
||
