Christmas 2018, reflection

Christmas, 2018

ON this Christmas Eve, of 2018, in this spacious lounge room, in this moderately sized house, in this fairly large suburb and this fairly highly populated city of Melbourne, in this large country and continent called Australia, as part of an overall tiny little plot or particle of a much bigger world or planet, I sit here contemplating the year I have had and wishing, like Sylvia Plath, I could have more days of inspiration:

‘On the stiff twig up there

Hunches a wet black rook

Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.

I do not expect a miracle

Or an accident

To set the sight on fire

In my eye, not seek

Any more in the desultory weather some design,

But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,

Without ceremony, or portent.’

I look for inspiration in the joy that others give me- the words of Sylvia Plath in poems like ‘Contusion’ and ‘Medusa’, the comfort I feel from listening to ‘Astral Weeks’ and lately rediscovering the joy of Paul McCartney, trying to feel grateful for the prolonged time spent living in England and in my mind recalling the Yorkshire moors and the rugged coastlines of Cornwall and Northumberland, playing netball in the backyard with the family, gazing on my beautiful books through the glass of my treasured bookcase, feeling tired but nourished work-wise…

In terms of heightened feelings of joy or anticipation, or experiencing a sense of wonder, or being moved by the simplicity of a beautiful wave or the colours of a fallen leaf, or that sense of uncontrollable laughter or bliss and breathless awareness or serendipity, joie de vivre, even transfiguration, rebirth, enlightenment, effulgence, epiphany, transmutation… I will be patient and await another year.

Contacting my angel, contacting my angel
She's the one, she's the one, that satisfies
Contacting my angel she's the one that satisfies
She's the one that I adore

In a telepathic message for my baby
In a little village, through the fog
Here comes my baby, I can tell, I can tell
By the way she walks
Said I've been on a journey up the mountain side
And I drank the water from the stream
It was pure, pure water and I got completely healed

I met a presence on the mountain side
And he looked so radiant and he was the
Youth of eternal summers
Like a sweet bird of youth in my soul
In my soul, in my soul, in my soul, in my soul
In my soul, in my soul, in my soul

(Van Morrison)

Mortality

I RECEIVED the call at 10:00, I think it was. Night-time.

You were already gone a little time since then.

I waited in the hallway for my wife to gather a few things,

I was impatient to go. I already felt like something was missing. And

I felt this enormous rush or will to see you again.

The children were dumb or naïve

Upstairs. They had become Pa-less

And didn’t know it yet.

We decided not to tell them but left them a note.

If you awake, ring this number.

But they did not wake.

We climbed into the car and traversed the two or three suburbs to where you lay

And where you lived for the last couple of years of your life.

I am loath to call them sad years. I

Like to think that even in these times of

Immobilization and at times discomfort,

Of watery meals and forced socialisation,

Of your sideways view of the television and the hoped for

Social visits that came sporadically,

I like to think there was something in it for you even then.

We did not talk much in the car.

I felt my grief beginning to rise.

‘So it’s come to this then’,

I thought to myself. No, no reason for words, reminiscences

Or speculation.

I took an enormous breath before I slowly drifted in,

Like a ghost,

To the death room.

Mother was there as well as your eldest son, my brother, and my sister, your only daughter

It all felt so new. All new, all of

Us still slightly unaware of our emotions and our thoughts in this new experience

Suddenly transported in time.

The stillness in the room,

The grasping of trying to come to terms.

My first sight of my only dead body.

You looked strangely tranquil but enormously dead on your bed.

Flat on your back, your hands clasped together sitting on

 Your forever silent chest.

I wondered if you had been found like this,

Or were you rearranged, or toyed with somehow,

By the worker who found you there,

Suddenly not breathing.

I made some glib comment about souls circulating around rooms once they were dead.

We all looked at each other, all out of our depth,

Or me, at any rate.

I thought of mother and the long, sad burden, and my heart went out to her,

And my breathing changed,

Short sad gasps.

A couple of hours expired somehow with us all being

Unconscious of time. It was about midnight.

We all had to go- that is, the living, not the dead.

Two of us left, so just mother and I, sitting helplessly,

Strongly aware of this unexpected change,

The finality of it. I felt like I should go, but blurted out, aloud

‘How do I suddenly leave the room?’

I went over to you, father,

And placed my hands under the blanket.

An overwhelming urge to touch you, like I did,

The day before, touching the hands and arms of the living.

Except this final time,

The dead. I tried to unclasp your hands,

Fascinated by their new rigidness. The fingers already stiff,

The warmth and breath of life expired two hours ago.

I went out into the hallway with the others,

Right outside the door, and leant against the wall.

We all gave mother some time alone. Again,

The enormity of it all. How does one say goodbye

To the one you have been married to for over sixty years.

What do you remember? What is replayed at this time

Round and round your mind?

As we left I thought again of yesterday. The mouth of yours,

Opening and closing, trying to form words,

Without sound coming out. An me just smiling back like a fool,

Desperate for anything that might make you feel better.

And then telling the doctor just a half hour later

That we want morphine to kick in.

We want  to help accelerate our father’s death.

And the awful deep gasps in finding yourself using these words.

I remember, powerfully, the sight of a new born, the watery

Tumbling out onto the bed. And now this,

This newest sight which will also never leave me.