Face, space, hands

This is a different blog from normal. During lockdown I was part of a writing group. We were given a subject heading with free rein to interpret it as we wished. Most of my pieces were instantly forgettable but the following is, quite frankly, the best thing I have ever written. I hope you enjoy this bonus edition:

Face, Space, Hands

I close my eyes and I think of our visit earlier. It is strange because the image of your face that my mind conjures up is not as it was today, haunted and anxious, but rather the face of a few years ago before you were taken ill; bright eyed and with a smile hovering around your lips. It is as if my mind refuses to accept the truth that life is ebbing from you, and instead wants to lock in a memory that time and tide cannot snatch from me. I realise that in a few weeks, months, maybe a year, I too will be, in your words, a ‘double orphan’ – a status by the way, that doesn’t exempt you from serving a penalty in Mexican Train Dominoes, even though you try to claim it does on a regular basis!

You caught us by surprise when you announced that you wanted to be put into a ‘home’ – it was the last thing we had expected and we quizzed you for days to check that you hadn’t changed your mind. You were adamant, indeed I don’t think I have ever seen you so determined, but it marked too the moment you disappeared from sight. The ‘home’ is bright and airy, the staff loving and attentive yet the woman they are caring for is not the mother I have loved for almost sixty years. You have lost your curiosity about other people’s lives, your love of a good story and your sense of fun. You have lost your joy and the world is a poorer, more frightening place as a consequence.

I think too of your hands – still elegant but now covered in paper-thin skin. The scar is still there on your left hand where you slashed it so many years ago when the sharpener you were using snapped and the knife blade cut through an artery. I still remember how we all came running from every corner of the house as you called out my father’s name: ‘Duncan’ – that single word carrying with it such urgency that all four of us were on the scene of the bloody crime within seconds.
And, oh my goodness, the number of burns your hands sustained over the years! The sound of the cold tap running over your seared fingers is definitely part of the soundtrack of my youth, as too is the sound of you scraping the charred remains of the toast you had just burned. Indeed burning things seems to be a recurring theme throughout my childhood. Do you remember how disgusting the smell of burned carrots and beetroot is? It hangs around the house for days.

Now here I am standing in your empty house – the space you have inhabited for sixty years. So many memories locked up in these four walls, everything exactly as it was when you were taken to hospital and to which you will never return. It was your presence which illuminated these rooms and now you are gone, everything seems dull and drab. You have agreed we should sell the house and  now I have to work out how to clear it. I move to your bedroom and open up your dressing table – a place that was always a source of wonder to me, filled with paste jewellery, orphaned earrings and other mementoes which you could never bring yourself to dispose of. It is the smells that speak loudest to me though – your perfume, the smell of Dad’s long abandoned pipes and the pervading presence of Old Spice. These smells will live long in the memory, to be awakened when I am least expecting them, unleashing a wave of nostalgia.

I move from room to room, sorting a lifetime’s possessions into piles; discriminating between those things that the family might want to keep, those things that we can give to the charity shop, and the oh-so-much stuff that will need to go to the tip. The items to be retained are piled up in the front room awaiting the time my sisters and I will get together to agree how the ‘spoils’ should be distributed amongst us. I smile as I look at everything set out on the chairs and sofa in precisely the same way our presents would be laid out for us on Christmas morning. My presents were always on the armchair by the door and it is on that chair that I place the few things that I have earmarked as being items I would like to keep – your crystal glasses, your old potato masher and the new milk saucepan that Clare has had her eye on.
And that is it. Will you be disappointed that I wanted to keep so few of your possessions? It is not your possessions that I treasure, it is the memories that are the real treasure, and there is not an armchair big enough in the whole world to hold all those.