Close friends.
Death and I are very close friends.
Although she saddens me, with her abrupt ways. Angers me, with her stubborn sense of finality,
I still have in my heart, a profound reverence towards her.
Today was a beautiful windswept day. Perhaps the last of the winter rains fell last night, spring has arrived and although it’s days number only one, there was a sense of the freshness of spring apparent in the air today. The tulips and rhododendrons I had planted at the onset of winter showed their first sprouts to me today. They peeked above the dark soil, bright green globes of life against the cool black. I spied them on my way out the front door this afternoon, I set out with a troupe to the local store to buy ingredients for nachos. My two neighbors, two other friends, the boy, and myself. All six of us trotted down the shop, enjoying the soft sunlight, watching its brilliant afternoon glow. It wasn’t yet twilight when we set out, the sky was still a cornflower blue and the world was still lit up brightly, the smokey lilac of dusk only just seeping in at the edge of the horizon.
I was absorbed the entire walk, both to the shops and back. Whilst my male companions all became fixated on a piece of metal jutting out of the ground at the junction between the oval and the bin for red cross donations, I remained fixated on the flutter of a willy wag-tail. The mischievous little bird dancing about in front of our path, almost as if his flitter back and forth was an act of defiance towards us.
My friends set about the task of trying to pull out the metallic shaft. My prince charming leading the way by giving it a good kick with his foot and then wiggling it back and forth in the earth. I resolved to retrieve the nachos on my own. Sat my beer down on top of the Salvo’s bin and walked the last few hundred meters to the shop alone. Inside I managed to avoid an acquaintance that I didn’t wish to speak to and retrieve the required ingredients in good time. At the cashier I bought a lollipop as a treat for myself and was hurrying back to my beer and friends when I was suddenly struck with the memory of our last remaining rat, Jacques. Jacques was the last of four brothers, and we had given him some cabbage early this morning. I thought of left over baked potatoes in our fridge and resolved to give the little guy a treat when I got home, he deserved one too. He lived all alone in his large cage. A cage that had once housed his siblings. He rarely bothered to climb to the top level anymore. Preferring the dark bottom corner with all the torn up sheets and sawdust and bedding.
As we walked down Love St I was captivated by the deciduous trees in the area. They hold a strange beauty, with there bare limbs silhouetted against the sky. Staring up at the branches, exposed and barren I foolishly loosened my grip on my beer and it fell to the ground. Smashing the neck and spilling the last few mouthfuls. I felt a bit silly having dropped it as It was only the second drink I’d partaken in the whole day. With the jeers of my compatriots in my ears I picked up the glass and deposited it in the nearest bin. I spent the rest of the walk back relatively silent. I consoled myself about the beer with my lollipop and only made a few throw away comments, hardly following the conversation.
As soon as we walked through the door I headed for the fridge, pulling out a baked potato and slicing it in half. Jacques slept under the awning by the back door, right next to the parsley and basil. When I opened the door to his cage to give him his well deserved potato, I found him lying still upon his bed.
You always know when the life has left something. The absence of spirit is painfully obvious. His breakfast was barely touched. Only a few meager bite marks littered the edges. I felt my throat tighten as I moved my hand to touch him, there was no warmth left in his tiny black and white body, and a trail of tiny black ants were moving in an orderly procession to and from the corner of the cage.
I sat there for a moment, my hand resting on his tiny frame, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. Because he had always been a resourceful little man, and to some people he might have been a plague bearer, but to me he was a hero, a survivor. The last of his tribe.
I went back inside to ask my neighbor to borrow a shovel and dug a hole by the lavender bush. I put him to rest there, with his brother and his cousin, our cat Enki. I committed him into the earth for it to do with as it wishes. Then I sat there, my hands on his resting place, and I talked to death again.
She frequents my life, she seems to visit me quite often. I remember our first encounter, the day after my 7th Birthday, when Reginald my Grandfather dropped to the floor, it was a hemorrhage in his brain.
I was sad, that first meeting, and it wasn’t my Mother’s promise that I’d see Grandad again that stemmed my tears. It was something else, a strange feeling of clarity. Like a softly whispered epiphany. Something that made my mind turn my eyes to the sky and see the sun, feel the wind, hear the gentle heartbeat of existence which every created thing possesses. Then, when I was seven, I thought that sweet realization was my Grandfathers soul ascending to heaven. When I was 15 and I held the cold, still hand of my Father I knew it was death. Her presence laden with melancholy, but offering a bitter-sweet comfort. For even though her presence only manifests when a life is taken, she always leaves the living with gentle memories. Each of them etched deeply in the heart because of her arrival.
I shed a few tears at this meeting. Not as many as our first, but still, they wet the soil, and I asked death if she was swift. But she couldn’t answer, she never can. She just stood there, stoic, silent, evanescent by my side. A heavy hand on my shoulder, helping me say my goodbyes, as she always does. Then, when I knew my heart had nothing left to say, I almost felt her hands softly touch my face, and I almost heard her sentimental reassuarance that we will meet again.
