A Different Perspective

Bill looks up at the sky and he smiles. That smile is worth a thousand words, the depth of emotion hanging from it is everything and more. He feels that sky in a way he never knew was possible. Until now.

“I’ve never taken the time…” he whispers to himself as a cloud creeps silently over him.

He has. He knows he has, but that was am impossibly long time ago. So long ago that it may as well have been in another life. He marvels at all he has lost and then he wonders how it is that he carelessly discarded so much. To dwell under such a wonder as this sky and to mock it with his gross indifference.

Sighing, his body shudders and Bill feels a sadness that he has never before experienced. This sadness is not self-piteous, it doesn’t hurt and neither does it mask a hurt. Instead there is acceptance in it. It is acceptance.

Toby sits at his side. “Good boy,” Bill tells him, reaching out a trembling hand to stroke his big, soppy dog. Toby has always been a comfort to Bill. Toby is a large, lumbering vessel of love. If eyes are the window to the soul then the best eyes in the whole wide world are the eyes of your dog, thinks Bill. He hopes that some of what he has seen in Toby’s eyes is his own love; a reflection of his worth. He hopes he is worth something, that he’s done enough to acquit himself in this life. Something more than feeding and watering and walking the kind soul sitting attentively next to him. But maybe that in itself is enough. Bill knows he was motivated by kindness and that that kindness could not help but grow. Toby brought Bill out of himself at the most difficult of times and Bill owes him his life. Without Toby, Bill would have remained exiled from the world, leaving it as alone as he had entered it.

Bill smiles again, but this time, his smile is in lieu of a chuckle. He doesn’t feel much like laughter right now. There’s enough of that going on inside of him. Some of it good, some of it bad. That’s the way of it, thinks Bill. People being a mix of ingredients. They’re brim full of ingredients. The values of good and bad are largely arbitrary. The trick is to pick ingredients that go well together. Living is working out a recipe worth dining on and choosing the right ingredients to create a dining sensation worthy of the world.

“It’s something like that anyway,” he says it to the cloud as it passes him by, revealing a gloriously blue sky, “it’s going to be a cold one,” he tells Toby.

The dog whines in response.

“Don’t be like that,” Bill tells him, stroking him reassuringly. Toby lays down next to Bill, “there’s a good boy,” Bill whispers. Now Toby sighs in that deeply mournful way that some dogs have in their vocabulary. Bill nods. Well said, he thinks to himself.

He closes his eyes, meaning to rest them. He’s not one for afternoon naps. He’s heard the theory of a power nap, and doesn’t deny the possibility of their restorative powers, but he’s just never gotten around to taking one. Perhaps fearful that once he resorted to breaking his routine he’d tweak other aspects of his life to a point where he no longer recognised it. He’s no different to anyone else; a conflicted creature of habit. Not all the habits make sense, and some of them are downright destructive.

When Bill awakes, he wakes to another wonder. Another world. The sky is now a deep, dark blue and the stars pulse with a light that lived thousands of years ago. The unexpected vista lifts him and in his elation, he feels like he’s floating. Not quite a part of the sky above him, but moving that way. He senses a connection that he realises he’s denied for far too long. He is a part of this. Of course he is. How arrogant he’s been in the ignorance of his imagined disconnectedness.

Beside him he hears a snuffle and then the outboard motor sound of Toby snoring. The dog’s noisy slumber is a reassurance. A familiar sound to fill the silence and remind Bill that he is loved. He lays staring up at the sky and grins when he spies a satellite tracking its way along the night sky. There is no sign of the moon, it’s probably hiding somewhere behind him. Now he thinks about it, he’s sure he can feel its presence; lurking awkwardly nearby. 

There is something pregnant about the quality of the night sky above him and that quality makes more sense to him as the stars wink out one by one. Something’s gently and methodically swallowing the lights in the sky. Bill knows what it is well before he has the words for it. Another aspect of the human condition. All that tacit knowledge that sits in the wings awaiting labels; once labelled, sense and order prevail. If not, chaos and confusion reign.

“Snow,” Bill says, his voice rough and sounding foreign to him. Once this would have concerned him, but now.

There is concern in Toby’s low growl though. That one word has awoken the sleeping dog and he’s not happy. It isn’t his interrupted sleep that upsets the dog, Bill knows this well enough. He senses movement at his side, “it’s alright, boy.”

But Toby doesn’t think it’s alright. He doesn’t think it’s anywhere near alright.

As the snow begins to fall from that glorious pregnant sky, Bill gives thanks for it. He gives thanks for the feel of it as it settles on his face, and he gives thanks for this gentle ending to his life. The fall in his back garden had been innocuous. Pathetic really. But then he’s had a couple of close calls when he’s worn his slippers out here. The stepping stones seem to sweat and the sheen of that sweat is deceptively slippery.

Who knew? thinks Bill, slippery stones and slippers not getting along. He smiles that serene smile again, already forgetting the ignominy of falling over and hitting his head on another of those greasy stepping stones. Toby barking at his master to get up. But there was no getting up from this. Never any getting up from this. 

It wasn’t how you fell, but how you got up that counted. That was what they said about life wasn’t it? Dying was a different way of getting up. That was all there was to it. Death was another way to deal with life. The ultimate answer to the riddle it posed.

It was when Bill reached into his pocket and caught his palm on a shard of glass that he knew it really was all over. His phone was a useless wreck, as beyond help as Bill was. This was it. It had been arranged and there was no getting out of it. This then, was the bullet with Bill’s name on it.

At least he’d had this time with Toby, and he’d been reminded of how beautiful the sky was. A sky that he’d rendered into wallpaper in the mundanity of his eked out existence had reintroduced itself to him before he moved on elsewhere. 

He had to be thankful for that.

He hoped Toby would be OK. He reckoned he would be. He’d have liked to have been around for his dog for the rest of Toby’s life. That was the deal he’d struck with his big boy and he felt sad to be welching on it.

Still, it couldn’t be helped.

And so it was, with thoughts of his beloved dog, that Bill was conjured away from his life by the snow and the cold. The last thing he heard before he went was Toby’s long, low and sonorous howl of goodbye. He was unaware of Toby licking the snow from his cooling face to take one last look at his master before curling up next to him, his head resting on his thigh, joining him in the next life.