Dead Man: 1

The day John Bardo died was an otherwise unremarkable day in his life.

It was in late spring, when the mornings were beginning to get lighter and warmer. A positive time, John had always thought. A time of renewal and growth. And – even if he had no particular plans for anything yet – a time to look forward to change.

That was as vague as it seemed to him on that morning as he lay in bed musing, waiting for the ten-minute snooze alarm to sound on his phone.

He would take a holiday that summer, he knew that. Two years now without one, what with so much else going on: the crap with Kate, the move, the time for... well, for healing, he guessed – though he hated that word. It always seemed so naff and middle-classy to him. Something for the 'influencers' to make videos about. There was always the whiff of incense about it, too. The idea of so many pounds per hour charged by the smart person, in the book-lined room, who you sat with and told your life to.

Why did everyone need 'healing' nowadays? Why was there so much that needed to be 'healed'?

Even so... it was probably appropriate for him. Wounds needed time. Emotional ones, too. Perhaps those especially.

The alarm brought him back.

6:30am

He swiped it off. He waited a few seconds longer, as if building himself up for something.

Then he threw back the duvet and got up.

He showered and shaved as usual, rolled anti-perspirant into his armpits, rubbed moisturiser into his face. As he did so, he looked thoughtfully into the mirror, as if assessing the person in there staring back. Same old face, really. Perhaps a little more world-weary now. The lines that ran down from his nose to the corners of his mouth, which had always made his smile seem broader than it was, had gone a bit deeper. More jowly and hang-dog, it seemed. The skin around his eyes was likewise looser - the crow's feet there in the corners, like prints in the snow. These last couple of years had taken their toll.

He put his hands at the sides of his cheeks and pulled back, and saw the years fall away again. He understood now what 'face-lift' meant, and why people had them. The slenderest threads of spider veins – like the first tendrils of facial ivy – had sprouted at the sides of his nose. His hair had been greying for years, but there was a whiteness at the edge of it now, like a frosting. A hint of grizzling in the eyebrows, too – like frayed electrical wire. On the whole, it didn't seem a bad face for a man of 47. No longer young, but with character. Lived in, as the old phrase had it – which was, he knew, not an unattractive quality for some. Funny, he thought (dabbing after-shave on his chin now), we all walk around with an image in our heads of how we look, and how the world sees us in a physical sense. We mentally airbrush out the imperfections – the bags and sags, the discoloured front tooth, the gap in the smile line, the jug-ear, the lines and pock-marks and craters and furrows. We like to see ourselves as eighteenth-century aristocrats might see themselves depicted in their portraits, or models on the front cover of a glamour magazine. Perfected. The ideal image. And then we see the person on the other side of the mirror - as he was seeing now. It was usually a disappointment. Or maybe a necessary reality check. Whatever... there it was.

And as he thought it, it never once occurred to him that it would be almost the last such image of himself he would ever see.

(to be continued)

Image: mine