India

 

“India is still hard for you isn’t it?” Stan asked rhetorically, from behind the computer screen.

I knew he was sifting through our photos of Rajasthan with a nostalgia that will continue to elude me. The photos have barely seen light of day since we returned seven years ago. Seven years... I breathed a deep lung full of air, remained where I was flopped on the lounge, and allowed several heartbeats to pulse through me, before I whispered back “Yes.” almost inaudibly.

I know I will always have difficulty looking through those photos of India. They represent the last days, the halcyon days. A time when we were all happy. When we were all well. When we were all still alive.

Its complicated. I never had time to process what we experienced in India. The woman I was, who experienced India, doesn’t exist anymore. I don't know what to think about the squalor or the beauty. The history, the dust, the begging, the colour, the smells. The aching poverty. The cremations. Especially the cremations. I thought I understood.

I had no idea.

Stan took a photo of me on a rooftop in Jodhpur, smiling back at the camera, so sweetly unaware of the days ahead when my life would unravel. I can’t bear to look at it. My insouciance nauseates me now. Six weeks after that photo was taken, my life cleaved in two.

Stan took this photo of me too, in Agra at the Fort. The warm light slanting in through the gritty haze of the late afternoon. The day is fresh in my memory. The pervasive smell of wood fires. The Taj, barely visible from the terrace, squirrels darting across stone paths and scampering up the trees. The local women happily posing for us in their colourful saris. I was always at my happiest, in a foreign country, with my camera slung across my shoulder.
I remember the click of Stan’s shutter. I heard him take this photo.

I came across it today, unexpectedly. Stan had left it in a folder he created and romantically named “Alison in Wonderlands”. I look upon the photo now, with a sadness that did not exist that day. I look at myself in the centre of this image with a strange detachment. And I unfairly attribute the loneliness and loss I feel now, to that wonderful timeless afternoon.

I will remember you, will you remember me? Don't let your life pass you by, weep not for the memories...

I type the four letters into the search field on my computer.

g a b e

Then press “return”, the irony not lost.

And I take a deep breath as the photos cascade down my screen.

104 Folders, over 1800 photos.

Of course there are lot of duplicates, but then are a lot more don’t have his name in the filename either...

There are 50 photos we took of him (them) modelling as supporters of the FIFA world cup. The perfect All American couple, except she was, and he just looked the part. I had to slightly lighten the colour of his teeth in all the photos to match his, to her all American smile. How happy they were. What fun we had that day with our shiny eyes. Gabe painted a USA flag on his cheek, but he painted it in the mirror and it was back to front. So we had to flip all the images of him before we sent them to FIFA.

I decide to open all 50 and flip him back, for the sake of prosperity. To restore the balance.

The familiar photos are easier, the ones I remember or see every day. Like one of him bare chested, wearing a fur-collared leather jacket and looking like a film star, that I have on my phone cover. He was 21, fresh faced with an honest open smile and eyes that engaged so intensely with the camera, that it still feels that he is looking right at me. “Is that Justin Bieber on your phone?” someone asked me once. I said “Yes”, and laughed anxiously, because the truth can’t be told in a throw away comment. “Its a long story” I added, “I tell you about it over a whiskey some time.”

There are photos from the parties, and from his childhood, his school photos and his baby photos. Stomping in rain puddles or building card houses at Grandma’s. Many of the photos collected on my computer when I was compiling the slideshows for his funeral. His funeral. What a bizarre thing to put into words. I prefer to say his “service”. Seven years on, I know that a part of me is still in denial.

I’ve noticed that in the group photos he is invariably in the middle. In group photos with his mates they always looked like they were making promo pics for a boy band.

I scroll past pics of him pulling silly faces and photos of him wearing a Santa suit or a Pirate costume. The one of Katie hugging him when he dressed as a giant pink rabbit. Or the ones from primary school when the boys all painted their hair blue for a dance performance. Or the time he donned Katie's hot pink wig. As a dear little boy in preschool looking up at Santa with innocence and wonder. The series of him “swimming with the sharks” at the Sydney Aquarium.

And photos of that cheeky boyish smile, when, as a toddler he challenged my parenting skills. There are photos of his adult muscled torso, posing with weights or flexing them to full effect. The shape of his long frog-like toes, the strawberry blonde stubble on his cheek, his strong jawline, his well defined six-pack. There are photos of him with teenage acne and 17 year old awkwardness. Or the time his picked up an uncooked chicken schnitzel and pretended it was his tongue. And that sweet photo of Katie kissing him on the cheek when they were 5 and 4 years old.

I took all of those photos, so they are memories we all made together. I don’t have to look too deeply into those images, I remember taking every single frame.

There is a photo of him at Fitzroy falls speaking Spanish with a couple of tourists from South America. It feels recent, real. It feels like last week and yet it was taken eight years ago. I am standing next to him. We are both alive.

Its the forgotten photos that are harder, or the ones that were taken by someone other than me. The ones of him in love, the blurry B&W iphone pic of their first kiss. The one of him crouched down between the stacks of a bookstore somewhere, intently scanning the titles. The one where he is staring back at her on a weekend away. I feel like an voyeur when I look at that one, but I love its purity. Photos at parties I never knew he attended and places I never knew he visited, with people I didn't know he knew. Photos of their trip to the States. Random photos I found on his computer, or have been given to me by his friends. They are the ones that I find the most difficult to engage with. The ones I feel compelled to dwell on, and to wonder where and when they were taken. To search into the corners for anything that will bring a little of him back to life. They are the ones that bring a stabbing pain to my chest, but I like that there are welcome surprises there, little unknown pieces of him regained.

...of course I am crying. These little snapshots. These little glimpses into a life that is lost.

I’ve been asked if looking at the photos makes me sad. Its not the photos that make me sad.

Its that is he’s gone.



.

Saudade

Its February again. Again. It engulfs me.

Five years ago I stood at the beach on a hot summers morning telling my friends how worried I was about his health. Five years ago he was still alive. Just.

There are still days I can’t breathe.

“I hope you aren’t going to grieve all over the internet” a friend said to me a few days afterwards. I didn’t know then how I would grieve. I still don't. I didn’t know then that grief is unending. Like water, its seeps into the cracks. It floods the lowest places.

The Portuguese have a word. “Saudade” it is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. It has been described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. It brings sad and happy feelings altogether, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.

“In the air, we'd meet as friends

Equals in the sky,

and I would be content to watch you fly

From the ground you're just someone

who's closer to the sun,

and I am just the shadow by your side.” - Janis Ian

Shadow by Janis Ian

The Absence of Gabe

The absence of Gabe…

We used to joke about it. It used to be a joke. Or not really a joke. It was a thing. The absence of Gabe. He had a energy, an energy around him like an aura. Potential energy. By definition “the energy possessed by a body by virtue of its position relative to others, stresses within itself, electric charge, and other factors.”

That was Gabe.

Its not that anything really happened when he was around. Its just that there was always that edge. That sense that something could happen, at any moment. It wasn’t good or bad. it was just an energy. Potential.

I could always sense whether he was home or not when I entered the house. (Weirdly, its the same with Stan.) I can feel their absence as strongly as I feel their presence. When Gabe left the house the motes of dust settled, and everything that was held in tension relaxed. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good. It was just a sense of who he was. The silence would surge softly backward when he was gone.

And now he IS gone.

The absence of Gabe. It WAS a thing. And now it IS a thing. An irony. A reality. A bad, bad joke.

His absence is now really a THING.

His absence fills everything now. Its different kind of energy. It is weighty… and it aches. And I yearn for him.

His absence fills the room.

It fills his treasure boxes, where he kept his precious things. It fills the pages of his old school books. It fills the fruit bowl and the milk cartons and the cereal packets. It fills his tool box, it fills the space where he parked his car. It fills the hearts of those he loved. It fills the spaces around everything he touched. In the corners of the room and behind all the doors he ever opened.

It fills the space at the table where he once sat. It touches the steak knifes he so loved. It fills the leather lounge where he sprawled, lanky-limbed and T-shirt-muscled.

His absence hangs heavy at the corner of his old high school and is thick as fog on the street he walked home on.

Its thick and cloying and suffocating.

His absence fills the supermarket where I use to bump into him unexpectedly. It fills the martini glass he bought me as a gift.

It fills the suburb. It fills the sky.

It chokes the air in my lungs. It congeals the blood in my veins.

It fills all the empty in-between places.

It fills my life.

Time does not bring relief

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.


Edna St Vincent Millay (1892 -1950)

Bl ack

Some things change... some stay the same...

We were both awake, listening to the clock radio. Neither of us had stirred, neither of us had acknowledged that the other was awake.
The end of the 7:30 news droned on with its usual list of horrors. And then a song. 

I listened and was transported back to 1972 when I was 15, when the lyrics were about love ...
and not about grief.

"You sheltered me from harm
Kept me warm, kept me warm
You gave my life to me
Set me free, set me free
The finest years I ever knew
Were all the years I had with you..."

And then without speaking Stan hit the off button on the clock radio... just as the chorus was about to soar...

"And I would give anything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again."

... because he knew.

"Its too late." I said. "I know the next line too well."

And nearly a week later, the lyrics are still swirling around my head.

Because I would.

I would give up everything I own – Bread 

The Ides of February

Darkness fogs my February eyes.
Steel tears have leached irises to quiet mist
and etched deep tracks into soft skin.

Bird song wrenches me from nebulous Prussian nights
dissolving me into thin cerulean days
that have lost sight of their purpose.

I wake
and again the arrow pierces my brittle soul.

I bleed Rothko.
My vision blurred,
I peer sightlessly through Turner skies,
Picasso distortions.

The Starry Nights swirl and wrestle with distracted thoughts
where Goya and Munch and Dali dance with oily feet
across interminable Bruegel dreams.

I descend
as Du Champ.

There are no Waterlilies here, no Sunflowers.
Klimt’s Embrace cannot stir me.
I am Olympia stripped naked by Manet,
adrift on Géricault’s raft,
engulfed by Hokusai’s wave.

I breathe
motes of ash that carry the ephemeral scent of memories.
Literati silk washed.

I trip
on a grain of sand.
My face is sea-crest slashed.
A single strand of golden hair ensnared on a drift of wood,
refracts a memory of a glaucous gaze.

A meteor sliced the atmosphere that day,
brighter than the sun,
and shattered a glassy lake into
shards of ice.

Its heavy black heart fell deep,
sinking into
the cloying mud.

Powder Blue

 

“Are you cold?” she asked me.

“No.” I replied. “I’m warm, I’m always  warm.”

We have the same conversation every time I visit her.

“See.” I said, placing my left hand on top of hers as proof. “Warm as toast.”

She smiled. Our respective husbands were deep in conversation about politics and advances in science and medicine, and of course, tales of our latest trips.

She was trying valiantly to follow, just keeping her head above the mire of dementia that was lapping at her brain. She raised herself unsteadily on her eighty year old legs and I watched her husband, as he watched her intently, as she tottered towards the kitchen. She returned with a plate of shop-bought biscuits, identical to the ones she’d already served that were still sitting on a plate on the coffee table next to me.

“Have a cookie”, she said. “Eat, eat.”

“We’ve just come from a cafe, we’ve just had breakfast.” I said again. But I took another one, to placate her anyway. There was a time when the biscuits would have been home-made, oven-fresh. Buttery shortbread kisses with passionfruit cream filling. The house always smelled of baking. But in recent times, cooking has become a liability, an activity that has to be heavily supervised by her husband.

The men folk continue on. We sip on our mugs of tea. Hers is half full so that her shaky hands won't spill it.

We talk about family, about her daughters and mine. At times she can’t finish her sentences as she loses the thread of what she was saying. She talks to me about how hard it is to deal with her diminishing health. About how her mind isn’t working. About how she can’t recall things anymore. She says she doesn’t want to continue the way she is. I don’t argue with her. I know what that feels like.

Our husbands move to the front yard. Mine is showing off his new car. I walk with her around the massive hydrangea bushes. Their blooms waning as winter is now upon us. An apt symbol, echoing our earlier conversation. I watch as she bends the stems of the already dead flower heads. “I do this, so they will die quicker, so the new shoots will come sooner.” she says.

I reach for the taller ones, to save her stretching or over balancing, and bend them down too. I’ve always thought that hydrangeas are the flowers that keep on giving. I love the powdery blue of their blooms and the colour variations that occur due to the soil they grow in. And I love that as they die, they hold their shape, fade and continue with a different kind of beauty until their petals dry into fragile skeletons.

“How can you stand it?” she asked me with a disarming suddenness. I knew what she meant. She was talking about her own condition, but she was referring to the loss of my son. Her eyes were crystal clear and the was an urgency and lucidity to her question demanded an honest answer.

“I can’t.” I said. “I can’t bear it.”

And because we were standing outside, in the cool morning air; and because our husbands were out of earshot; and because I knew she had lived a long and full life; and because I knew she would ‘get it’; I elaborated...

“Most mornings I wake up and I am disappointed I am still alive.” I said.

“Yes.” she agreed. Her eyes lighting up. She clutched my arm. “Yes.” she said again, a little gentler.

“But you can’t tell anyone.” I continued. “You can’t tell the ones that love you.” I said nodding towards our husbands. “You can’t tell them, because they don’t understand and they become very afraid for us.”

“Yes.” she agreed again conspiratorially. I could see she was grateful for my candour, for a moment shared. For simply understanding.

“Its not that I want to die.” I said. “Its just sometimes I don’t want to live. Its not the same thing. I just want the pain to stop.”

And with that my husband called out to me.

“Come on.” he said. “We’ve got places we need to go to.”

So we bade our farewells, I kissed her softly on the cheek and we left.

And as they stood there at the end of their driveway in the sunlight, smiling, holding hands and waving us on our way, I wondered if I would ever see her again.

Back in the atmosphere...

I saw you today... Unmistakably you. I saw you at the cafe near the beach. The strong line of your jaw. Fine strawberry blonde stubble on your cheek. I was surprised you hadn’t shaved. I recognised your ear, the darker hair of your sideburns and the tilt of your head, even though you were way over on the other side. But then the people at the table in front of yours got up, and left. And I could see it wasn’t really you at all.

I saw your car today. A streak of blue, dashed passed me on the Kingsway, near your old school. I was pretty sure it was your car. I think I saw you driving. I reached into my pocket for my phone, to call you. “I just saw you drive past me.” I would have said. It was your first car, the Honda Civic you bought secondhand. Strange, because I don’t see many of those on the road anymore. Strange because you had long ago sold it ...and bought another since. Before my hand touched the phone I remembered. My phone cover has a picture of you on it... It’s always with me. a talisman. It wasn’t your car. It wasn’t you.

There was a hint of your aftershave on the seabreeze today... Was it possible you’d walked passed me and I didn’t notice? I turned on my heels and searched for you in the crowd, but you weren’t there. I breathed in again trying to catch the scent, but like you, it was gone.

I saw you on the beach one morning. Your hands pressed firmly into the pockets of your grey hoodie. Staring out to sea. Funny I don’t remember ever seeing you at the beach at sunrise before. Your back was to me, you were staring out to sea. But when you turned towards me, I could see it wasn’t really you at all.

I looked down at hairy blond legs in the queue in front of me. Your legs, but not your shoes. I knew if I looked up to the body of the man standing in front of me, it wouldn’t be you. I kept my eyes downturned and imagined it was you.

I saw you walking down the street this morning. Well, it wasn’t you. It was just someone who walked like you. I’d forgotten what that looked like, until this morning. He had that same bounce off the balls of his feet. The same loping stride. His shoulders ever so slightly hunched, like yours. An apology for your height, or perhaps a concession to the lack of mine. I watched him walk away. He was shorter than you. And darker. I willed him, with every fibre of my being, to be you. To turn around and walk back up the hill towards me. And for a second, as I watched he hesitated, he turned and started back up the hill as if he’d forgotten something. Fot a second my heart leaped. He wasn’t you. I closed my eyes to allow my welling tears to escape down my face. To seep salty rivers into the down turned corners of my mouth. And when I blinked them open again. He was gone. You were gone.

I saw your shirt in a shop window. Blue, collared. Impeccably ironed. The mannequin was wearing your clothes. Blue jeans. White shoes. The mannequin had your body. You had a mannequin’s body. Perfect proportions, your worked (out) hard for that. Quietly proud. quietly vain. I don’t look in shop windows anymore.

I heard you laughing once. Just a chuckle, that cut through a cacophony of sound in a busy shopping centre. Someone must have stolen it from you.

I saw your crown of golden hair, “like spun silk” I used to say. It bobbed passed me on a little boy. Same hair, same lean little body, same blonde down on the nape of his neck. But he was just a little boy, like you were once. He didn’t have the same softness of features as you. His eyes were the wrong colour and his limbs not so sweetly proportioned.

I saw your friend’s father at the beach the other day. I started to make a mental note, to remember to ask if you’d seen him at the funeral. But even as the thought was forming I realised the aching sadness of my folly.

I saw you in a wedding video. You were saying your vows. The music swelled. You leaned in and kissed her on the side of the head. It wasn’t you. I choked and left the room.

I saw your hands gently cradling a baby’s head. Long fingers, a surgeon’s hands, or a pianist’s. Creative, strong hands. I’d recognise them anywhere. The geometry of them, the angle of your thumb, the slightly bitten fingernails. They way you held a spoon, pressed down on a knife. Only they weren’t your hands. They belonged to someone who wasn’t you at all.

I saw you in a dream. You were standing in the kitchen eating breakfast from a white china bowl. One ankle crossed over the other as you leaned against the cupboards. I was trying to explain to you why you weren’t really there. That you had died. You just smiled at me. That wry smile you’d give when you listened intently to what I had to say, but disagreed anyway. You didn’t say anything. You never speak in my dreams. I just saw you in my sleep.

I heard a song on the radio. We’d played at the funeral. I’d forgotten that you liked it. But Katie had said. “Don’t you remember? He used to sing it in the house, when he was younger.” And she impersonated you, impersonating Patrick Monahan. “Patrick wrote it for his mother, after she died.” she told me, a long time afterwards. Drops of Jupiter.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

"It doesn't make it worse," I said. "One doesn't compound the other. Its like two injuries, they will heal independently of each other. Only one of them will never heal completely, it will gnaw and gnash and leave the deepest scars. That one is life-changing, an aching yearning, the other is quiet sadness."

To Istanbul with love...

Dear Istanbul, Istanbul canim, our 4 week romance has been all that I desired... And it's been over 28 days since I last cried. And just today, on my last day, at one of my favourite cafes... Whilst I was grappling with my emotions on leaving you and returning home to those I love... You played The Gypsy Kings... It took me straight back to happy Saturday mornings at Anzac Street. Clean washing on the line, the water glinting off the pool, the curtains billowing with fresh ocean breezes and The Gypsy Kings ... The soundtrack of our Saturday housework mornings. And so now in the cafe, they think I'm crying cos I'm leaving Istanbul... But I'm crying to the strains of a song in a language I don't understand. And to the sweet memories of happy days. Of the joys and of the loss. And now anything sung in Spanish makes me think of him.

Mothers Day

This is not the Movies... this is real life.

Its not like in the Movies.

I don’t “see” him in all the places where he used to be...

What I see is all the places where he is not.

---

On the subject of Ratbags...

---

Stay Safe

"Stay safe." I used to say to him. "Because if anything were to happen to you, I would cry forever."

---

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day

I wake, as I do most mornings, with a sinking sense of dread.

I try to slip back into sleep, but its too late. The dreams that are lurking there will give me no purchase. And if my brain has managed to process anything useful while I slept... let it keep its own counsel.

I am no longer surprised to find my eyes wet, my head pounding or my heart palpitating. I touch the corner of my eye to feel the wetness. Just for confirmation. Just to be sure. That’s just normal now. My heart heaves and sinks. It leaves the emptiness of my chest cavity and slips wetly and effortlessly through my ribcage. It bursts painlessly through the flesh on my back, flutters through the linen sheets and the goose-down topper on the bed. It navigates the springs inside the mattress, finds a gap in the floorboards and falls swiftly, a dead weight, through the empty room below. It cracks its way noisily through the foundations. Down and down, burrowing its way through layers of ancient bedrock til it is embedded in the earth’s core. It can fall no deeper. Perhaps it will be safe there, where I can’t reach it, it can’t break any further. Perhaps the heat will warm some life into it, so it can be useful once again.

I used to be good at sleeping. Now I am good at waking. I used to like sleep, it used to be a pleasurable past-time. Now it is a rocky thing I navigate. I go to sleep tired. I wake up tired. And the intervening hours give little respite.

I can tell that it is just before 6, even before I prize open an eye for confirmation from the little blue numbers on the bedside clock. A small black wooden cube, the size of a child’s building block. I bought it from one of those “fallen-off-the-back-of-a-truck” stalls that pop up like magic in the centre of the shopping mall. He, the man I bought from, and I, both know that I paid too much. But a guy has to make a buck, right? He was Chinese, he was middle-aged, he barely spoke English.

Its 5.40 am. I can tell its going to be a cold day, I can feel cool air brushing my feet where I’ve pushed them out from under the covers. The room smells gently of vanilla and bergamot and I can hear in the distance, the squish of rubber tyres on wet road. I don’t like rainy days. There is not the usual sound of birdsong, but I can hear gulls calling one another, perhaps that is what woke me, this time. There must be storms out to sea for them to be this far inland, though its not far, we are only 7kms from the beach.

It is still an hour and a half till the alarm sounds. I try to go back to sleep. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. I turn on my side and fold my arms across my heart, as if to hold dear that which has already gone. I curl up as small as I can and lay as quietly as I can. Thigh to thigh, knee to knee, calf to calf, heel to heel, ankle to ankle, toe to toe. And try to empty my mind. I recite a mantra. Sleep, don't think. Sleep, don't think. Sleep, don't think. I try to find the stillness and that intangible space between becoming asleep and falling awake.

Its no use, my mind becomes burdened by too many memories.

I think of the day ahead. I no longer look for the joy, but I search at least for something good. For a minute I think it is Sunday... Its Monday. No matter. They are all just days now. And Monday means I have a busy workload. I will be tired, but I will be distracted. It will be as good a day as I can wish for.

It is Remembrance Day. I remember. Lest we forget. Lest I remember. Lest I forget.

He hears me stir and pulls me into him and perhaps I will sleep some more.

To sleep perchance to dream.
To awake perchance to remember.
To remember perchance to forget.
To live perchance there will be joy.

---

On the subject of loss...

On the subject of loss...

I was born with a mop of thick dark hair... Not surprising given my Welsh mother and Scottish father. My mother grew tired of people peeping into my pram when I was newly born and exclaiming “Oh, hasn’t she got a lot of hair.” Growing up in the Antipodes, my head was constantly kissed by the burning Australian sun, so I spent most of my childhood and early twenties as a honey blonde. And although I maintain the blonde these days, my natural colour has darkened with the passing of years.

Winter has finally struck in Sydney. We’ve had it too good for too long. There is a chill in the air and when the temperature dips to one digit, even I start to notice the cold. I stepped out of the car one morning last week, early, before the sun was up and I felt something I’d never felt before. I felt the cold on the back of my head. Not my whole head, not my nose, not my ears, just a little strip at the back of my head. Odd, because I’ve never felt the cold there before, not specifically and exclusively.

There are things they don’t tell you about grief. Things that I’d never considered. “Its so... complicated.” I said to my psychologist. “We have a name for it.” she said. “You are suffering from what we call ‘Complicated Grief’, tho’ we prefer not to use labels.” she hastily added. But I was ahead of her on that one. I knew from the start this was bigger than I could handle on my own, and far more complex than anyone could possibly imagine. That it would be more than I could bear. And on top of that, there is all the other stuff... the stuff they don’t tell you.

There are certain things I never thought I’d lose. I never thought I would lose a child. I never thought I’d lose my hair. But in April my hair started falling out, not in a patchy alopecia kind of way, just an all over thinning kind of way, and as disturbing as it sounds, I wasn’t overly concerned. There are worse things. Its a mantra, I say it all the time. There are worse things. And that’s another odd thing about grief. There are things I just don’t care about anymore. Loads of things. I call it the “Super Hero” effect. I can “see” what is important now, and what is not. It’s ironic that in losing him, I have become more like him with his laissez faire attitude.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really like the prospect of losing my hair. The thought of being a bald bride was leading me towards thoughts of wigs and turbans. And it was supplying Stan with a new source of humorous material. I can always rely on Stan to find the funny side. The master of turning a negative into a positive. “Never let bad taste get in the way of good joke” he always says.

I had lots of blood tests... just in case... but in the end my Doctor just said. “Stress.” and I just shrugged my shoulders and nodded in agreement.

“I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen out before now!” my hairdresser said, not very helpfully.

“It looks OK to me.” Stan said as he nonchalantly picked up a long blonde hair resting on top of his dinner plate. “I don’t have a problem if you go bald.” (He’s such a honey.)

“You have such thick hair anyway.” my friends all said in encouragement. But I could tell by the amount falling out that it wasn’t good. And when I pulled it into a ponytail it was only half the volume. Three winds of the elastic and not two.

So its stopped falling out now, and no-one but me can really tell the difference.

Its such an insignificant thing to lose or worry about in context of all that has happened.

---

Tears

I dreamt that I'd cried so much that all the colour had leached from my eyes... Turning one of them a soft violet grey and the other the palest seacrest green.

---

Three Wise Men and an Elephant

"What the fuck are we doing in Mexico?" She said. "I mean Mexico! Of all places. Fuck."

He smiled and shrugged. It was a rhetorical question. They both knew why they were there. It was just that Mexico was the last country on earth she wanted to be in after everything that had happened.

They had missed their flight to Cuba, it was just one of those things. The flight into Cancun had been delayed 30 minutes on the Tarmac and the flight out of Cancun for Havana had left 30 minutes early. Go figure. She wasn't even particularly upset. And hey, he'd wanted to go to Mexico all along.

They were sitting in a "Mexican" restaurant... "Piknik" in downtown Cancun. They'd asked the guy at the hotel desk for a recommendation. What kind of food do you like? He had asked. 

"Safe food. I don't want to get sick."  he replied. The girl at the desk giggled.

They ordered Fajitas and margaritas... It was Mexico after all. And the food smelled like authentic Mexican food. Like it did the last time she was there, so many years ago. It must be the oil, she thought absent mindedly. The waiter, a tiny happy man who looked Filipino, offered them two for one cocktails and beers. So they ordered both, even though she doesn't drink beer.

She look dubiously at the crushed ice in her margarita but drank it anyway. The fajitas came with salad, he ate his, she prodded hers with a fork.

"Try the cucumber." He said. "It tastes really good. Really fresh."

She eyed him suspiciously.

"You know I don't eat salads in third world countries, I shouldn't have eaten the ice!.

"Just try it." He said. "This is Cancun! the food is... probably safe! Plus it's been peeled." She was glad that he didn't remind her that she doesn't normally eat meat in third world countries either. But she had to eat something.

She ate the cucumber, it tasted really fresh, English cucumber, like her dad used to grow, with the same slightly bitter aftertaste. He smiled at her triumphantly.

The restaurant was located in a narrow pedestrian-only laneway behind their hotel. And their table, out the front, in the warm night air, meant they were prey to a constant stream of hawkers. They were all good spirited and accepted her "no" and abrupt wave of the hand without argument. After a few she realised that a simple shake of her head had the same effect.

First there was a young man in a blue shirt who serenaded them to the strains of a beaten up guitar, then a couple of guys selling souvenirs. A chubby man cruised by with a large bouquet of red and white roses... She thought she smelled aftershave as he brushed past, but it was the scent of the roses that had lingered.

Another guitar player came by, his voice competing with the faint doof doof of a nearby "nightclub" and the intrusive "caterwailing" from the karaoke bar across the way.

"I don't even feel like I'm in Mexico" she said. "I feel lost in
translation again" she continued. "I feel totally ambivalent about being here, unconnected."

"Disconnected." He corrected. But she meant unconnected. He was sipping on the second beer.

"I don't even care that I'm here." She went on. "I should be excited that I'm in another country, but I'm not." She knew she was being grumpy, and she didn't care.

"We didn't plan this." He said. "But we should make the most of it, while we are here."  He started channeling his inner Desi Arnaz. Saying things in a thick Spanish accent to make her laugh. What is it with the men her life, she thought, and their love affair with all things Spanish?

She thought about the other one, and pressed the heels of her hands in her eyes in an effort to hold back the tears. They spilled out anyway.

"Hey." He said, trying to distract her from her thoughts. "Come back to planet earth. We are here."

"He would have been so much fun to travel with to these places." She said.
She could visualise him speaking Spanish to everyone, charming them with his way, delighted with himself at their surprise. So blonde, so tall, so blue-eyed, so fair, so pretty. He would have been the centre of attention.
It was only a year ago that he was here in Mexico. Her eyes prickled with
tears once more.

"Fuck!" She said again.

She looked across the street, past the families promenading with their kids and the odd tourist couple holding hands. She could tell the locals, they were dressed simply, short people, even she towered over most of them. The tourists were either earthy backpackers or young couples way over dressed for this seedy bus-station end of town. The girls teetering
awkwardly on ridiculous high heels, clack clacking up the cobblestone lane way. Escaped from their natural habitat of "resort land", they looked so out of place. Two Rastafarians had spread out their wares on an old blanket. Just near them a young Mexican man was juggling pins. No one was
watching.

The waiter arrived offering more beers. "Do you have desserts?" They asked. "No," he replied . "But we have Tequila! You can have Tequila for dessert!" He announced proudly. "Tequila isn't dessert." She said flatly.

"I just saw a girl walking up the street with a bag of churros" she offered as an alternative. she knew he loved churros. "And I think there might be a street fair at the end of the street." He didn't question her, she was invariably right. Years of travel had honed her intuition.

"I have to say..." He said "I really appreciate your calming influence and words of pragmatism in times like these." He was referring to the missed flight and the "change of plans". He looked good, relaxed and happy despite the stresses of the day, his blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck. She envied him his insouciance.

"It's only money." She said. "It doesn't really matter. I've never placed much value on money. It's a first world problem. I used to say to my kids when things went wrong 'no one is bleeding, no one is hurt, no one has cancer, no one is dead'. I can't say that anymore. There are a lot of things I can't say anymore... "

She fell silent for a minute and then she sighed the heaviest deepest weightiest of sighs. He knew that sigh, he knew it well. He knew not to ask. Her response was always the same and he didn't hold the answers. No one did.

"The worst possible thing that could happen to me, has happened." She continued. "This is nothing. This is a gnat bite. This is just a missed flight.  It's not like we had to be in Cuba, we don't have to be anywhere right now." She just wished she wasn't in Mexico. She had been there years ago before Cancun had been "discovered", she had flown into Merida and
visited Chichen Itza, perhaps if they were stranded for a couple of days, she could go back there. Nobody went to Cancun back then, there was nothing there, just an unremarkable town and a stretch of empty beach. She counted in her head the number of times she'd actually been to Mexico. The first time she was 10 years old, she remembered shops full of silver and buying a sombrero in Acapulco...  The second time she was 17 and a man in a silver shop had asked her father if he could marry her for all the jewellery in this shop. ...Five times, this would make six.

She watched the juggling man go past, his pins tucked under one arm. His black hair was fine and plaited in one skinny braid that reached almost to the back of his knees. It was warm and humid, 4 nights ago, they had been in New Mexico in sub-freezing temperatures. She'd scrunched through snow.

Travel is weird." She said out loud to no one in particular.

The street was lined with mango trees snaked in fairy lights. They walked past a by-the-slice pizza vendor and shop declaring it sold "hot dogos".

The street opened up onto a night food market with local people, families, friends, young lovers and the occasional backpacker promenading under the yellow glow of street lamps. A wagon train of food stalls surrounded a central space that had been set up for a small open air concert. Churros
stands, taco stands and Icecream vendors. A young man scurried past wearing blue shorts, a singlet and red clown shoes. His face painted as a clown with a small upturned red prosthetic nose.

She watched in fascination at one stall where a man was making marquesitas. He poured the batter skillfully out onto a hot black skillet, once it was cooked he spread it thickly with Nutella and sprinkled it liberally with yellow grated cheese. He then rolled it tightly into a skinny cone shape parcel, smeared the side with a dab of Nutella, placed it in a paper bag and gave it a little top knot of grated cheese. She couldn't quite get her head around the chocolate and yellow grated cheese combo.

In the central area small ride-on battery-operated model cars were available for hire and being driven by a mad chaotic traffic jam of small children. Swarming mindlessly like ants on an anthill.

They passed an open fronted street stall where three men were dressed up as the The Three Wise Men. One on a plastic camel, one a plastic horse and one on a fluffy elephant. It was a set up as a tacky nativity scene where children could have their photos taken with the three wise guys. Like our Santa photos she thought.

"I think Its time we got the cameras out." He said.

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