I'm Not In...

There are some things that are not for the likes of us, and we live our lives accordingly. It pays not to get your hopes up. It certainly pays to remember the lines that should not be crossed. Even better, we build walls on the borders, walls that go so high there is no danger of catching a foolish glimpse of emerald grass that seduces and beckons. Who really needs that grass anyway? What is this obsession with finely manicured lawns? There’s more to life than that. Besides, it’s all very well acquiring a pristine lawn, but keeping it that way is expensive and I for one do not want to waste precious time or money on a Sisyphean task.

Yes, Sisyphean. Why are you looking at me like that? My book cover might not promise much, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t learnt a few things along the way. Now be on with you if you are quick to judge. We’ll have none of that here. Not if I can help it. There’s far too much of that in the world.

Living should be enough, but somehow it isn’t. We all harbour impossible dreams. I recall a childhood fantasy in which I was really a prince. Quite why I was living in a rundown terrace with a butcher’s assistant and his wife, a poorly paid cleaner, was a mystery to me. A mystery that I gave up trying to solve. Perhaps I should have kept going and in unravelling the mystery, I would have gained my rightful place in the world.

Now don’t get me wrong. Not again. The solving of this mystery was never going to lead me through the gates of a palace and into a life of unimaginable service and misery. We may dream of a fantasy version of a life as a king’s son and all the privilege that would convey, but the real mystery is why we don’t see ourselves for who we really are. Forget kings and queens, we were created by God and that is far more important. That fact should elevate us and make this life of ours truly wonderful. And just in case you foolishly discount yourself from this revelation on the grounds of a belief system that denies God, well, you’re still godlike aren’t you? You’re not a dumb animal. Or at least, you have the gifts and the capabilities not to be a dumb animal, if you  try.

I am one to talk. I am an expert in the field of denial. I’ve spent my life relegating myself to such a low division that I don’t get to play the beautiful game anymore. I moved myself away from the game of life one shuffling step at a time and I got so far away from it that I could no longer spectate, let alone join in. 

I was very active in my misery, but so adept was I in the deceit of denial that I convinced myself that I had no hand in my unhappiness. The world happened to me and I was unable to live a worthwhile life. Sound familiar? It should. We’re all up to something of the sort at one time or another, if not all the time. I was a dedicated disciple of woe and I ploughed that rut accordingly. 

Reality has a habit of happening to a person despite their best efforts. When I look back, I am all too aware of the opportunities that life sent my way. I deigned not to look at them, but I saw them all the same. I couldn’t fail to see them. I had to see them in order to reject them, and rejection is much harder than it may seem. Rejection takes a toll and then it charges ongoing interest atop that.

If I am honest, I was not honest with myself. I had values, and yet I lied to myself, telling myself I had no value. That I didn’t deserve value either. But who am I to judge what it is that I deserve, especially if I have so little value? 

The truth is that all that we do and all that we are has value. Granted, some of the value of our actions is a negative. That’s why we have these codes and ways that we call values. Better to spend time doing something worthwhile than taking from those around us. 

I wasted far too much time upon a foolish quest. I never wanted to fall short. I did not want to take from anyone around me and so I concluded that it was best if I did not inflict myself upon any other human being. 

The sad and sorry state of my affairs was that I somehow managed to achieve this splendid isolation throughout my working life. Work keeps a person busy. I made it my business to be busy. Too busy to live.

All good things must come to an end though and I was truly sad when I was forced to retire. I was so sad that I grieved for the loss of a life that I’d clung onto so tightly, I didn’t think I could ever let go. The shock of it was that, that life of mine let go of me and it did so without so much as a backward glance.

For over a year after the end of my working life, I went through the motions of a hollow routine. I awoke at seven, putting on the same clothes and making the same breakfast and walking the same roads and streets. But instead of walking through the factory gates, I bought a newspaper and sat in a nearby park. Come rain, shine or snow, I was to be found on what I began to consider to be my bench. I sat there and stared at my newspaper. Sometimes I read it, but the words did not go far enough into my head to make any sense to me. The paper was a prop. I sat on that bench and awaited death.

Then one day, there was an unwelcome invasion. Reality disagreeing with me and my choices yet again. Stubborn reality, not giving a fig about an old man and his wishes. Uncaring reality point scoring against a man who has already lost everything and more.

“You’re on my bench,” I told the woman who was on my bench.

She looked up from her book. I couldn’t help looking at the cover of that book. It looked serious. She did not. She smiled, and then do you know what she did? She had the temerity to turn and read the brass plaque on the bench.

“Are you the ghost of Rosie Dalgleish?” she asked me, still wearing that smile of hers.

“Excuse me?” I asked the rude woman.

“The only name on this bench is Rosie Dalgleish,” said the woman.

This was unexpected. I have cultivated a way of being that dissuades people from engaging me in conversation of any length at all. This woman was not playing ball. In fact, she seemed to be entertained by my discomfort.

I wanted to say something. I didn’t want to gift her another word. A battle raged within me and she spectated, all the while a smile gambolled across the meadow of her face and that smile made it worse. Not to mention the mischievous twinkle in her eye. Today reality had caught me with an unexpected upper cut and it was all I could do to sit down on the other side of the bench. My bench. She was sat in my place. My actual seat. But I was not going to be repelled from the bench itself. 

I opened my newspaper and made a noise of displeasure. She needed to know that she was unwelcome and that I was not happy with this unwarranted incursion of hers. We then sat in a heavy silence that was soaked in meaning. The predominant meaning was; I don’t want you here. You do not belong.

I was doing rather well with that silence, and almost drawing comfort from it, when she broke it into a thousand pieces. 

“Does the ghost of Rosie read upside down?” she said quietly and almost conspiratorially.

The sound of her voice stunned me and it took me a while to attend to her meaning. At first, I thought she was voicing a cryptic crossword puzzle, and I wanted to tell her I had absolutely no interest in helping her solve her silly puzzle. Then I remembered her book. There was no crossword and so I uttered no cross words.

Rosie? She had uttered that name before. After all this time, I had never once read the plaque on my bench. I hadn’t even noted it’s presence. If anything, my name should have been on this bench and with last year as the final word on the plaque and the matter.

But upside down remained an odd and cryptic quip. So after no further consideration, I chose to ignore her and get down to the novel business of reading my paper.

“Oh,” I said quietly, and I could feel the warmth of her damnable smile as well as the intrusive twinkle in those eyes of hers.

I righted my paper and shook it for good measure, but now it was the right way up, I could not read. The woman beside me had made me uncomfortable and the worst of it was the quality of my discomfort. Try as I might, I summoned my anger, but it hid from me and refused to come out. I was alone and unable to decide what to do next. In this state, all I could do was sit there in protest.

That was when the sun decided to part the clouds and join the party. A party that was taking place on my bench and in my park. I sighed and lowered my paper. For the first time, I looked beyond that shield of paper and my eyes took in the emerald carpet before me. I have never had a lawn. This has been a choice I made again and again. Upon seeing that grass as though for the very first time I felt an emptiness. My emptiness. I told myself that I missed the grass that had caught my attention. A white lie intended to save me from myself. It did not work.

There I was, in a moment. I was not to know that in my own little way, I was coming to terms with the loss of my job and that life. The one thing that had given me purpose and structure. I’d had something to do with my days, and now I was cast adrift in another ocean of life without a clue as to where I was, nor an idea of how to chart a course to the other side.

Then that woman joined me in my observation of the grass! The cheek of her knew no bounds! Thankfully, she knew not to say a word, but all the same, she lowered her book. Looked out across the park and she sighed! That sigh said more than any disruptive words she could have uttered. That sigh spoke to me and then it made a home inside me. It possessed me.

The woman beside me had taken my seat and now she was annexing me. She had found a way to break into the house of me, and now she was an unwelcome visitor. I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell her to stop. I had words forming queues. I wanted to tell her that I knew what she was up to and that she was to stop. She was to stop right now before it all got out of hand.

I didn’t though. Those words of mine were not my own. They also did not belong. She had infected me with a nonsense, and now I was aware of the disease that was inside me, I knew that it would grow. That’s what diseases do.

The ignominy of my situation did not escape me. I had come to this bench for a year and more and I had called upon death to visit me. Had I not been specific in my prayers? For now, here she was. Visiting me and taking from me in a way that I could not defend myself against.

That first day, I weathered her siege. I vowed not to be the first to leave the bench. I won that victory at least, but as I walked home, I wondered to myself; at what cost? 

In just one day, that woman changed my routine. For the first time in a long time I used my alarm clock. I awoke a full fifteen minutes before it went off. I was clothed and ready when it did eventually crash into the quiet of my bedroom. In my haste to get to the park and the bench I did not eat breakfast. I also forgot that the park did not open until eight.

She was sat on my bench as I approached, having entered the park from the opposite gate. A gate that was closer to the bench and a gate that was opened before my own.

“Hello!” she said brightly.

“Hello,” I replied before I could stop myself.

“No paper today?” she asked as I eyed my spot on the bench. The spot that she had yet again stolen.

I looked at my naked hands, “no” I said simply before taking a seat at the other end of my bench. 

I sat there in a state of forlorn confusion. The previous day had left me battered and broken. I sat looking out across the park, but all I saw was the state of desolation that was my life. How had I got it so badly wrong? There was no single thing that I had gotten wrong. Instead it was a patchwork of inconsequential mistakes and errors that had culminated in this shambles. All it took for me to see this was the presence of another human being.

“Here,” she said.

I sensed movement besides me and then the cessation of movement. I looked down at the object that was now almost touching my thigh. It was the book she had been reading yesterday.

“It might not be your cup of tea,” she said in a self-deprecating and apologetic tone.

I picked it up, despite and in spite of myself. I picked it up to spite myself, and I went even further, expecting to feel pain, but the pain did not come, something else came in its stead, “only one way to find out,” I said to her.

We sat quietly on this day, and I read words that I knew she had read. As the sun put on its jacket and readied itself to leave the office of the sky I tried to hand the book back to her.

“Keep it,” she said to me, “I know it’s in good hands.”

With that, she put her own book in her large handbag and got up to leave, “thank you,” she said, smiling that smile of hers.

I wanted to ask her why she was thanking me. But I didn’t. All I did was nod. And as I watched her leave the park, I understood why. I didn’t want to break the spell of her words. As she disappeared from sight, I looked down at where she had been sitting and experienced a strange, unexpected pang of loss.

The following day, she was there again. It took me three days to read that first book. I was out of practice, and I was taking my time. I kept that pace, enjoying the words and their meaning all the more for it.

I handed her the book back when I was finished.

“Good?” she asked.

“Very,” I answered.

“Good,” she replied, then she slipped the book into that bag of hers and retrieved another. The gift of that next book and the way she presented it to me reminded me of my childhood Christmas’s and I remembered a joy I had not experienced in many a year. She smiled and this time I smiled back and it did not shame me to do so.

For one hundred and seventy four days, we shared our bench; Rosie’s bench. Every day, we would sit in an increasingly companionable quiet and we would read, but I never dared bring my own book. Sharing her books was a part of it for me. The distance between us on that bench was constant, but there was a complete lack of distance in every other respect. 

Then one day, she was gone. 

She was gone, and I knew. 

She’d told me with that simple sigh, a sigh she repeated on our final day together.

It was when I got to the end of the book, reading it on a bench that had been mine, then ours, but was always more hers than mine, that I learned the truth of our time together in a hand written note she knew I would discover after she was gone…

Thank you.

Those words again. Through my tears, I read the rest of her note.

It was cancer. 

I promised myself I would get out of the house and do something. Then I found this bench. You shared my last moments in a way I could never have imagined. You gave me more than I could ever have expected. Take care of yourself.

Rosie x

I looked at that brass plaque anew. 

Rosie Dalgleish. 

This was her bench and she’d shared it with me. Clutching the book to my heart, I left the park, giving thanks for a woman who had snuck into my life and into my heart. She taught me how to live again.