Raking up the past

“I love you, son.”

“I love you, too, dad.”

It’s all I can remember of the pained conversation, crouching on the footpath.

One of us kissed the other, uselessly, on the forehead; I can’t remember who.

There was poignancy; a sense of something overdue; of a flame guttering and finally going out.

It was a weak and pitiful death; a hanging-on and lingering death, but its coming was sudden for all that.  I was left alone, kneeling by a low garden wall; the burden of his body there beside me.

And now I don’t remember whether he called me “son” or if he used my name.

What a cruel thing the unconscious is.  Why inflict that scene on me?

I missed his death, being far away; too busy.  Modern life, I suppose.

In all the weeks of putrefaction and lost dignity, we never spoke of it; skirting the truth.  Just another way of getting by: pyjamas and routine.  Visits.  I asked the consultant if he’d been told how grave the situation was.  I was given an assurance that he would be.  

Perhaps they finally told him.  There was something in the last, lingering look we shared.

He rallied in the final week, as they often do (they?).  Remission poured fuel on his denial.  He got out of bed and dressed, ready for a taxi home.

It couldn’t last.

Last night, the unconscious undertow of thought, writer of dream-scripts, goaded me for failing to be near enough to kiss his living flesh when the outcome was finally beyond doubt.

Self-annihilation.