The Promise of Snow

Sensitive Content - References to Death and Grief

Jean saw the first snow of the season. It surprised her when the nurse opened the curtains. She was used to looking at the grey Northern Irish sky. It hung heavily above her: oppressive and a constant reminder that she was closed into the world and her husband had departed to the sky. George had died the previous year. They used to share a room in the nursing room, but now it was all hers. She’d never wanted to have her own space, even though it was a room made for one. Slowly, her family had removed George’s possessions from the room. They said there wasn’t enough space for them. They were just taking up surface and drawer space that Jean needed for her own belongings, they said. Her daughter assured her that George had never been a materialistic man. He wouldn’t mind that she had moved his things, but Jean minded. She just couldn’t bring herself to say it. Her generation didn’t tend to share their feelings. She didn’t like to make a fuss.

It hadn’t snowed in a very long time: a decade at least. Even though she lived in a city with a cool climate, it rarely hit extremes temperature-wise. She always would have chosen a covering of snow over the dismal rainy days that plagued her each time she looked out the window. The staff in the nursing home were complaining about how cold it was that day and turning the radiators up. Jean didn’t mind. She was always cold anyway. She was cold so often she barely noticed it anymore. It was worse feeling cold in your heart than in your body. She’d had so many hours of sitting – just sitting alone in silence to ponder such things. It had been the loneliest year of her life. Everyone thought she was well looked after, and she was. Her physical needs were attended to, and the nurses popped in and out of her room throughout the day. However, no one but her knew the depths of loneliness to be found in those in-between moments, waiting for the next meal. She didn’t even have any music to listen to; just the drone of the TV. Someone had removed George’s radio, claiming it for themselves. They said it was vintage and they could sell it for a good price. Sometimes it felt like her family would have sold her too, had she been worth a penny.

Whenever George was dying, he hadn’t been able to speak much. He’d mostly just lain in bed, day and night. But whenever he did speak, he really did have something to say. That’s what happens whenever your energy and words are limited: you have to make each one really count. She remembered the last promise he made her: that whenever it snowed it would be a sign that he was still with her, that he was watching her from his perch in the sky. Since he had passed away, Jean hadn’t really felt his presence. She had doubted that he was even there. They were living in different realms. Sometimes she questioned if his was even real. She’d never been a religious person, and she’d never had much faith in the spiritual things that can’t be seen. She hadn’t had any reason to believe in them. Life had been difficult, especially over the course of the last year, and sometimes it felt like it was all a cruel joke, with death promised as some sort of peace offering at the end of it – one that would never really materialise.

She knew her days were numbered, and that didn’t bother her. She wanted to join her husband in the sky – or cease to exist if that was the truth of the afterlife. She was tired and it sounded much more peaceful than fighting her body and her mind each and every day. She had made a few friends in the home, but it was hard to get particularly close to anyone when you knew you were just biding your time, waiting for your turn at death. She looked at the cheap tinsel that adorned her mirror – the shiny, tacky banners they hung from the ceiling during the Christmas season. It felt like they mocked her very existence. She wasn’t in a celebratory kind of mood. No one came to see her on Christmas Day anyway. She’d be alone with the stripped back team of seasonal staff. Her friends would be with their loved ones while hers forgot her and made time for their own celebrations. She couldn’t blame them; they were in the prime of their lives. It was easy to forget the elderly whenever you were engrossed in your own games and play. She didn’t hold a grudge, but she was resigned to the loneliness of the Christmas season. The times whenever she had celebrated wholeheartedly were distant memories by then.

But there was one Christmas she could remember clearly. She had been forty years old, and her kids were teenagers. George had been in a jolly mood that year. They had woken up to snow: snow exactly like the powdery kind that was falling outside her window that moment. He’d pulled her into the snow, and they’d made snow angels together. She’d forgotten she was an adult then. She’d remembered the childlike joy of Christmas. Her cares had evaporated, and she’d just enjoyed the snow. She remembered the smile on George’s face and the way he looked at her: a look that was etched into her memory. She could see it in her mind’s eye like he was right in front of her then. She could close her eyes and almost feel and see him there, laughing and joking around. He was crystallised in that moment. He wasn’t defined by the last moments of his life when his spirit seemed to be seeping away. She looked out at nature’s delicious dusting of icing, and she felt George’s presence as much as whenever she was forty years old, at home at Christmas, dancing and playing in the snow.