life

Her life didn’t turn out how she’d expected. She had thought she’d get a happy ending, or at least a bit of solace. She didn’t think her life would end like this.

But that was stupid of her, life had been telling her what it was from the beginning. She should’ve known this was coming. But she didn’t. Not even after Dad or Mum, or Bill, or Jack… or sweet Rosie.

Her Dad had been the first. She used to look at him as he fidgeted in bed, and wondered whether the war had ever really ended for him. It hadn’t. But they didn’t know then what they do now, about the mind and trauma. He died on one of his quieter days. A small mercy, she supposed.

Her Mum hadn’t taken it well; she had to call her brothers to clean the mess and she refused to eat or drink if it wasn’t forced on her. It was no place for a child to be, but nobody noticed her. They drowned in their grief as she crept into the garage. She didn’t know what she expected to see. She had never seen a dead person before. Did they go grey and clammy, or go cold and stiff? The thought almost made her turn back. Did she really want to know?

She pushed the door open as slowly as she could, and peered into the room. The body had been covered with a sheet, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. Because for the first time in her life, she realised, her father wasn’t with her. There was only Death. He reared his rotten head and met her eyes, but didn’t approach her. He just knelt, long coat spilling out onto the floor as he did, and pulled the sheet up.

“No,” she said, suddenly feeling very cold. “Don’t take him away.”

Death didn’t look up at her, he just pried her father’s lips open with his thumb and forefinger, and drew out his soul. For a second she thought she saw it. It looked like sunlight, or if someone was holding a candle from the wind, just a soft flicker of light against Death’s palms. Then it was gone. Death dropped the sheet and looked up at her, and for a moment she thought there was some glimmer of sadness in his eyes. Then he disappeared, and she was all alone.

Her Mum managed to survive another sixteen years, but eventually Death came for her too. Her Mum was asleep and she was in the chair next to the bed when Death bowed his terrible head and entered the room. There were no words for him this time. No pleads. He had been expected. He sat on the bed next to her, and opened her Mum’s mouth with his thumb and forefinger. This time she saw the soul clearly, as he drew it out. It was a light, but where her father’s had flickered this one held strong, and seemed harder for Death to grasp. His expression didn’t change, but she could see his papery hands tense and fold around the soul as they hadn’t before. Slowly, she leant down, and put her lips to her mother’s forehead. “It’s okay,” she lied. “I’ll be okay.”

By the time she had sat back up, she was alone.

It had been a while after that before she met Death again. Thirty years after her Mum’s death and three kids later, her husband fell ill. A disease with no cure. She was sitting on the bed, cradling her husband’s head when Death once again graced her door. She had thought of what she’d say to him, imagined how she would curse at him, and make him feel what she’d felt, but her mouth had dried up. She watched him step up to the bed, and slowly sit down on its edge. He met her eyes, and with one of those thin, papery hands motioned for her to say something.

How desperately she wanted to scream at him, but nothing would come. For one solid minute they stared at each other, silent. Then she shook her head, and ran her hand through her husband’s hair as Death leaned over, and opened his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. This was the closest she’d ever been to a soul, and as she saw it spill out from her husband’s mouth she realised it wasn’t light, it was something else. Invisible, but as it fell into Death’s hands his bony, paper-like skin seemed to swell with colour. The pale grey became a soft gold, the deep creases in his palms vanished and the hands filled with life and then it disappeared. He met her eyes, and opened his mouth as if he was going to say something.

And then he was gone.

She shouldn’t have tried again, but life was just so lonely, and sitting all by herself at church and at home did nothing but fester the sadness that had grown in the pit of her stomach. So when Jack approached her, she let him sweep her away. Maybe this won’t end in tears, she thought. Maybe just this once, she’d be allowed to be happy.

And for a while, she was. Memories were made and her worries gently dissolved, crumbling away like cliffs into the sea. She let herself sink into the new normal, she let herself smile and laugh.

But then Jack said he didn’t feel well. Her heart almost stopped while she told him that he would be fine, just sit down and rest. He would be fine. He would be fine.

But then the left side of his face sagged, and his speech became slow and drawn out. She called an ambulance and then her children and tried not to cry as she waited, holding his hand. He looked at her and tried to smile, tried to tell her he was okay.

She didn’t believe him.

The ambulance came and the paramedics said they needed to get him to the hospital. She clambered into the back with him and held his hand, and her Rosie quickly joined her. She sat opposite her mother, and held her hand tightly as she continued the chant of comforts. Everything would be okay. Everything would be okay. But all of her daughter’s reassurances fell on deaf ears.

He was there.

He had slipped in the door of the ambulance just as the paramedics closed it, and was now looming above the three of them, his dark eyes sweeping over them like a cold breeze. He moved sluggishly, his thin frame creaking and buckling as he moved between the two women, and took Rosie’s seat. He seemed to ripple like a mirage as he sat there, both of their images coming together as one. He reached up, and brushed Rosie’s lips with his thumb, but didn’t press further. Instead, he reached up to Jack, and like her father, and her mother, and Bill, he took him away. She thought she had endured everything she possibly could, at that stage, and even though she felt stupid and embarrassed she couldn’t stop the tears. People offered their condolences exactly the same way they did the first time, and she received them with exactly the same poise. This was her lot in life, it seemed. To love and to lose.

Yet the pain she had suffered through was all the same. It is a different pain, a different sort of suffering entirely, when you lose your child. She squeezed her eyes shut, and shook her head. No. She would not cry, not now. She would see them soon.

For as she sat on her rocking chair, looking out at the great sunset, she watched a single rider leisurely trot his way from the horizon towards her. She knew it was Death the moment she glimpsed him. She sat there and watched him as he rode up to her house. He stopped in front of her porch and slid off the horse, before slowly stepping up to her. She regarded him with stern eyes for a long moment, before sighing, and patting the chair next to hers. For the first time, Death’s eyebrows creased, but he obliged, as he moved around her, and fell into the chair. They sat like that for a moment, watching the sunset as she rocked back and forth, and as he sat still. He turned to her, and she met his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but his furrowed brow and soft frown betrayed his confusion. She sighed again, and shook her head. “I hated you for the longest time,” she whispered. “I blamed you for so much… for all the pain. But I think I know better now,” she shook her head, and smiled sadly.

“So… shall we?”

They nodded, and Death helped her up. She leant on him as he walked her inside, his horse nickering softly as it nibbled at her lawn.