Vacancies

I’ve heard too many stories of the death of loved ones. That is enough for me. More than enough. Far too much. I’ve had gutfuls of that cold buffet and then some. And so I have retreated here. Where it’s safe. This is where I have always retreated when the fabric of my life has been torn asunder. This, my original home. The place that I now call home is not a patch on this. This is the blue print, but I am no artisan. I cannot discern this plan and I don’t have a clue as to how you would go about making a home such as this. My place is a convenient stop off whilst I work out what I am supposed to do with this life of mine. I once held out a hope that I would find a homemaker and somehow convince them to work for me. The main perk of the job would be that they got to live in the home they had constructed. But I couldn’t write the job spec, let alone afford such a person even for a while.

She is dying. I know this and I cannot deal with the consequences of this contrary action of hers. Her body will cool and become waxen. She will cease to be. And even though she will still be there, in that awful hospital bed of hers, the best part of her will be gone. Forever.

I didn’t even have the decency to run. I slithered away on my treacherous belly. I could not bear the cloying heat of the hospital and it’s surgical aromas. Aromas that always fail to mask the stench of death, despair and loneliness. I wore that same stench even before I pushed through the doors to the ward. Couldn’t last beyond five minutes of awkward denial. Then I was off, whispering a promise of tomorrow’s visitation. Relieved that I would not have to honour another vow.

She is dead. I know this as I enter her home. I have felt this once before. When Dad died. This stone cold tide of loss that washed over me and left me with a lack that never left me. A part of me died with him. He stole more than he ever gave me in the first place.

This time the harbinger of loss is a fetid breath of lavender. A hint of yesterday that does not belong. My Mum was never a lavender girl. There was citrus, cedar and fresh grass about her. Her lawn was always greener. She dwelt between the seasons of Spring and Summer.

Now it is Winter and she is gone. Her absence is beyond zero. It drags me down into a world of grey and freezes the memories in my mind. The dementia of grief renders me senseless and yet I am raw and bloodied. Steaming with an anger of wrongful loss.

I am here in her home. And I am a thousand miles from her and her warmth. I look upon the place where she resided, but between me and the site of it is a gulf of nothingness. A filter of darkness that creeps into my bones and twists them with a hurt that threatens to break me into a thousand pieces.

What once was a home is now a torture chamber. I stand in the kitchen where there was so much life. A thousand mugs of tea over which conversation took place. The hob and oven now lay dormant. Extinct volcanoes lacking the heart to change the landscape ever again.

The silence that envelopes me is pregnant with a pause that will forever be uninterrupted. Eying the kettle I wonder whether I can awaken this sleeping beauty. Realise that my kiss would be sacrilege. The living and the dead do not exchange such intimacies. The time for that is past. There is a border that will forever separate these states of being.

And yet, here I am, in a place of the dead. All life has been exhaled from the heart of a family of which I was a peripheral part. I am dying another death as I step away from the kitchen and into the living room.

Standing in the room where we all once lived, I cannot imagine ever sitting in the seats arranged around the TV. There is the seat my dear Dad once occupied. I see the indentation he wore into it over the years. Despite myself I smile at the determined way his arse incrementally made that seat his own. On the other side of the sofa is my Mum’s seat. There is no wear on that cushion, but she has marked it as hers all the same.

I walk to the window and turn my back to it. Taking in the entirety of the sofa. This is the tombstone of my dear, departed folks. A marker within the mausoleum of their former home.

Turning my head upwards towards the ceiling I imagine my way around the upstairs. My old bedroom, whitewashed of my existence a long time ago. I surrendered my place in this home before anyone else thought of venturing forth into the world. The vanguard of a nonsensical retreat into loneliness.

Back at the hospital, my dutiful brother and sister will be holding a cold hand each and saying belated goodbyes to our Mum. My absence will be noted. My absence was always noted. Even before I was ever absent.

Now I know why I came here. To beat the rush. To pay my respects to the dead, of which I am one. I was the first to die. I am a ghost haunting a place that I never truly belonged in the first place. My closure is to accept the death of me.

I came here with high notions of a resurrection. Beating the chest of the patient into a second life. Administering CPR with the boyish love I have always held for this place. But as I drove along the row of houses towards my childhood home I saw sign after sign saying that there was a vacancy. Room for one more at the inn. Here though, there is no room. There never was room. The nest was built too small and I was the cuckoo. An unwelcome impostor.

Giving it one last, desperate kiss of life, I will my energy into this space. I gather together all my memories and place my final bet. Try to sacrifice myself for something bigger and better than I ever was. I blow the last of my life into the room and wait for it to inflate. But there is no response from the patient and I have to give it up. Give up on myself. There is nothing left and I cannot save myself. Not even in the one and only place I ever called home.