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.