Large Cold Teeth

It’ll always be one sided, much like the nature of the event, and unerasable, and continues to appear in others lives, just as unrelentingly and forcibly.

I have to begin this somewhere, and the crux of this story, the heart of the event became fully formed on a hot, perfect blue sky day, by the coast, in a hospital room with windows that wouldn’t open. Closed to prevent attempts at life. It had an odd view into a car park, and up into that clear sky. Screams of seagulls, the squeal of tyres turning on painted car park floors, the floating gasps of conversations that drift in from the exterior and bounce in from the interior. The bustle and unfolding of a busy hospital ward, in a quiet room, tucked back, a place for some solitude, distanced away, a place where news is delivered that can provoke change in unexpected and unwanted ways. It’s a neutral, square, functional space, and in it we all stood, sat, perched as words where spoken that shifted the world for us all.

The beast was real, words describing its shape gave it form, it became a truth, worst fears catalysed, forming, solid, real. The beast became a multi formed creature - all at once near mythical, invincible and yet misunderstood and almost unknown. Shadow with substance, a solid but shifting, black but light, the definition of implausible and unreal, imagined but entirely, terrifyingly real. The baring teeth of a dog, the smell of rot, the warmth of decay. Musty, unknown but recognised and the crumbling, horrific moment of realising something awful and immeasurably powerful sits lurking in immediate proximity.

There is a point when the enormity of a situation becomes apparent. When it opens up wide like a horizon, akin to when the sun tips over a sea, or a mountain range comes into view. Or when you fall suddenly, tripping, smack bang into the ground, face hard against concrete, and the pain is quicker to come than the realisation and comprehension of what happened. Comparison to a train crash or a bus are equally as apt, but having never experienced those, I feel the instant finality of those is in some way different. Not easier, just quicker.

Honeysuckle tendrils cast a smell forcing corrupt disconnect from the slow, calm evening.

The scent pushes up parts of three spectres; one cold, one looming and the other feral. Ice cold, unavoidable, teeth bared. This is how it was, but won’t always be. This is how it fell apart, this is how I was forged.

Knocking off the pump, surrounded by crews, noisy, sweaty open drill yard. Large appliances, hose reels being made up, energy, nerves, commitment, doubt, focus all swirl around me. The pump winds down to quiet chugging and then off. We are dismissed, trooping back into the station.

We all pull off tunics, helmets and gloves. Steam from hair, the rise of dank kit, grubby, worn and shaping to my limbs, fire boots pulled off, voices banter, joke, query and consider. The distraction of all this rubs against what might be happening.

She won’t be able to make the passing out ceremony. Too much pain, and doesn't want to use a wheelchair. Can’t use a wheelchair. Struggles to get up from bed, the pain a vice like, crushing, debilitating weight. I stand, eyes closed in the sun, for a moment. I’m the polar opposite, strong, upright, and still, in my gut, something worms, turning, it whispers words I don’t want to acknowledge, it whispers the truth, and I can only silence it by exhaustion. Afraid of what’s coming, afraid doesn’t touch it, this is harrowing, bitter, deep seeded dread. What I can feel is undoubtably on it’s way, as when all other options are exhausted and empty, all that’s left is truth.

Loading my bike into the car, as I ferried the small ones to school, dropping them off, and seeing the regular faces, at the same points on the walk from the car to school came with a sort of detachment and distancing effect - I was at once part of it, yet segregated by an invisible bubble that made my world all turmoil, distress and pain. I packed these feelings down, into a distant place, and months after the moment of death they rose up one night, with a howling wind outside, they quietly crept out and I confronted them as they snuck out, felling them with acceptance and tears. The only way out of that time was fully engaging with those days and months, making them stand in the light and not let them hide in the dark places where they fester and they become strong.

That warm orbs rays clip the tips of green shoots, on veiled fingers that are the start of clouds. Two seasons have tumbled by, a blur of days, rolling in the thrusting chaos of after. So task focussed and buttoned down, reflexing out, expanding. Tilting the balance of all the events. All the pretence, blindsided and reacting until one morning, gasping deeply, chest tight with all the moments that are gone and the ones that won’t ever repeat. I retch, an empty guttural physical expulsion. Misguided, misplaced staring blank but not blind. Blinking at the world, for the first time, old eyes seeing new, aged mind, a settling view.

Driving through Sussex villages, the journey to the hospital became a time to think, to sit and feel stunned, to do something manual and automated, to escape the emotional loading that was everywhere else in my days. Pulling up past the last set of traffic lights, and parking in a car park on the edge of town, where concrete runs out to chalk and flint, the sides of old paths dotted with the red of poppies, and offer direction to escapes of rolling hills and greenery. The warmth, dust and smells salty and dry, I’d ride the last few miles into the city, across golf courses and racecourses - the meeting of man and nature, places made and built in the form required, pushed and shaped to our bidding. One field was a nature area, skylarks hung and fly, seldom seen, their song more present than them. Fleeting and immediate. A cry of another world, one we lost.

As the team of doctors walked in, I knew the news would be hard, body language gave so much away, eye contact fleeting, and a tension lay in the air. The beginning of the onset of the encroaching, of the change, of the inevitable narrowing of options and outcomes.

I don’t full recall the words, I just heard the cries, tears and a low, heart broken base moan of loss. I stood in silence. Absorbing the shockwave, feeling it smash and ebb forcibly around the room. Questions came, and they where met with the best replies that could be found for something that was unanswerable, unfixable and utterly devastating.

The beast was fully formed, it had been named, it was growing and it would take many forms over the coming months. It held three primary appearances for me. The first was the dark, shapeless mass that was like dark thick oil that suffocated and clotted hope. The second was the glacier - cold, impending, inching forward everyday, with absolutely no way to hold it back, a mass of crushing negative certainty. And lastly, the Elephant in the room. This one appeared in the moments when everything became normal for a tiny half blink of the eye. It then appeared, firmly, reminding you of what it represented and what was happening.

The dark, the cold and the huge. There was no ways to fix these things, no mighty tool, no way to lighten, melt or hold back their presence.

The concept of reeling with shock is often overused, there was no other word for it. Something moved in my head that day, the stubbornness in me, the love for the ideal of marriage, or the simple reason that giving up wasn’t really any practical use, and the idea of giving up or not handling it, for some reason never entered my head - completely foreign. I had doubt, fear, but not any worry. The outcome was nearly fixed, and short of a real, actual miracle it would be what it was. The end. Even now, the time in the lead up to that last day, feels like a different world, a lifetime away, I can recall minutiae of detail, coconut water bottles in the fridge, the views over the sea. That blue sky stayed for a long while, giving a contrast to the emotions inside of me that felt incongruent, disruptive but oddly welcome, showing that beyond all this there lay warmth, beauty and positivity, even if it felt like an unachievable.

Despair and exhaustion are the two emotions that rise up in the night, as I lie awake in the whining, dark, foggy moments of pre dawn. Vocal owls, noisy creatures that cry and send their words and calls across the dark void of night, they pulse and wander into my ears like aural beacons that anchor me. The bird calls feel like they are just for me, they have messages, they talk a language I can only feel, not fully comprehend. In these moments I curl into myself, overtaken by the release of the event, my body pouring out what my mind experienced. And in return the fog lifts marginally and the tension in myself eases a touch. Just a slight warning, a crack in the shell, as I drop some of me and stretch out.

Death has a smell, and slowly it rises and coats everything it touches like nicotine clinging to paint. It’s not one thing, it’s a cocktail. A bloody, shitty, pissing, sweating base, with medical overtones, layered with the uniqueness of the situation. There is no standard as I understand, It’s completely original and nothing has come close to it since. It’s a sighing, gasping unconscious monster, transforming all you recognised into something that needs care but also holds something repellent. Guilt rises from that, guilt you can’t change it, that you can’t fix, save or repair it.

I find myself in tears. Stood in the kitchen, paintbrush in hand. Paint and saline drips to the worn vinyl flooring - I’m detached from myself, I can’t figure out what’s making me fall apart, but huge chunks of something are breaking from me. Slow hairline cracks unleash huge lumps of emotions that have sat frozen for months. They hang limp, thawing as they crash around me, physically causing me to wince. My hand is trying to steady me, and I can’t quite grasp why. I see white/black dots in my eyes, flickering vague electric like across my vision. The beast lays stunned, shattered into pieces, with no power left to wear me down. These tears well in me for days, then weeks, my days are fuzzy and detached. I have flickers of being fully engaged with the world, but mostly like I’ve forgotten to take out ear plugs, and half the world is filtered out. I wake one morning, after this prolonged period of broken nights, and dismal, disheartening days, and go run. That simple act of a foot in front of the other, a rhythmic act, but not a pretence - it’s solidly real, my lungs work and my feet push on. Whether I’m fully out of this punishing season is unclear, but I feel the low and distant stirring of the deep soil, and the warmth creeping back again.

The dog doesn’t stir from her bed. The bustle of the morning routine, shepherding the kids into uniforms, making breakfast, this everydayness, but with something missing that was unwelcome. The vessel it survived in and took over, now gone, the person lost across the gulf and desert of death. A stumbling, weak, thin skinned hound clumsily falls against the wall, once powerful, muscular legs, give way and a stunning crash of head against radiator, a cry of fear, surprise and shock, a scream of sadness, and confusion comes from two humans and the hound. I rush in, grabbing my dog, my friend, my companion of adventure. This feeling that I let her down, walked her too little crash round my head. The unflinching truth is she too is old. She is at the place where she knows she has little to give the pack, her family. We hold her close, carry her to her food, she shows no interest, and as I move my hands away from her delicate ribs, the hair falls out, and her legs fold, she falls to the floor, rheumy eyes looking at me. I stare back, all too aware of how weak and how little I can do to make this better. Words come out to the kids. They are accustomed to this news, their young, resilient minds absorb it, comprehend it quickly. Long hugs and little whispers of peace get spoken. I take them to school, and return to scoop up my black and white pile of fur and take her to the car. I show her the garden, the woods, I stroke her ears.

The vet tells me he could take her a few months longer, but its unlikely it would help. The tears boil from my eyes, a month to the day when the three monsters took that other life away from us.

I bury my hound in the garden, the work of digging covers some of the seething anger, rage, hurt and loss I already feel, that's been fuelled and fired, stoked and I surpress the emotions of the last two seasons, I feel a deep, cold in me. A long Autumn has closed down, the first freezing frost of Winter has crystallised and crept ongoingly, the glacier moves on, its near-silent creak echoes around me, the cold settles in and I succumb to a numbness that at once comforts me, and also hides the things I should face. I have no energy left. Every single part of me was spent, thrown against the beast. Squaring up to a monster that you know you can never ever beat, but you still get back up and keep throwing punches, because the second you stop, the icy creep will take over and the blackness invades with its finality and completeness.

Back. Into the lateness of this autumn heat. Its ongoing blue sky, sunlight, hyper-real, sharp focus, dust in the air bringing some sort of filtered and self edited reality. All at once normal, but for the abnormality of the hospital bed, with its paralysed cargo, who lies in a slow state of downward and futile degradation. News of a new life with a close friend brings a razor sharp contrast into my world. I don't share this - the wave of grief it may trigger would become unstoppable, a violent tsunami of all the rage, anger and cold fury would wash across the house, and destroy our immaculately made denial and positive thoughts only. Burn down all the uplifting quotes, explode the crystal vibrations and shatter auras of protection. The wooden claves of elm in the garden channel nothing of use, they may as well be crutches of straw, not elm. Totems of make belief, lies woven from ancient ways, in return for money. It just adds another layer of rot to the world.

People have come and gone with regimes and self created wisdom of cause, with solutions that start from odd to utterly bizarre and not grounded in this world. They begin to build the bridges to that final world that will be entered. We've become well versed in ignoring the giant, our little routine inside our bubble of denial is one of food, its simple comfort and the raw, the cleanses, the fruits, have been washed aside by that champion of eating, taste. Things are cooked and made, with every stir and chop, we step closer to that last meal, we just choose to turn the music up and dance headlong into that.

Up is Blue. Her breath is slowing. I count them every half hour or so, she unconciously grunts, eyelids closed almost completely. The driver of drugs clicks, ticks and whirs, keeping her under and in the clouded world as that final descent starts. The intake and exhale grow longer, at times pausing. I find my breathing is laboured, the tension and fear as the apex approaches. There is little time. So little time, yet it expands out, beyond what we deal with, a flicker in her eyes pulls a memory out from years past. I shouldn't be here, at this place, in this time of my life. She shouldn't be here, in that bed, with the tendrils of the tumour spread wildly across her cortex, wrapping, choking her spinal cord, closing off the things that made her a mother, a friend, a daughter, the compassionate, complex and caring soul I had in my life. The shadow of the three fall into alignment. The beast is the glacier is the elephant. Nothing can be ignored anymore. No more time.

She won’t go there. How can you. How can you stare into the finality, line your eyes up squarely to a thing that is the closure to the moment we are pushed screaming into the world. But, how can you not. How can you not face it. I struggle with the daily duality and crafted ignorance of the elephant. Under firm instructions, we ignore it, build huge dynamic, living realities to keep it masked in the room. Screened and filtering out its hugeness. A poster hangs with the decree of positivity only. A chant and a battle cry, a futile reminder. We create a life when there is not much left, and zero chance of it continuing beyond a short obtuse measure of time. Peace is made, old wounds are calmed and closed, things are said that will remain secret until I pass on. I hold half of a loves dreams in my hands and head.

I can’t fold, I’ll carry this onwards, despite it being way beyond what I should be able to even lift. Summoning something that lies beyond what can be comprehended. A stroke of emotional creativity, something is forged across this span of time from the blue skies and seagull screams of July, to the last moment of a phone call in early October as I stood in the garden hearing she was gone. Somewhere between the destruction, a new way emerged.

My words are tapped into the flat glass light, its the darkest time of the night, there are no stars, the moon is sunk. I pull phrases down into my fingers, tap, tap, pause, build, reflect, create. I wake into grief, the trauma floods my room. My sadness is focussed on the loss that my children face, I can sacrifice any inward sadness of mine, I can handle that, I struggle to handle the loss for the two little minds that sleep soundly, processing their own complex visions and views of the world.

I tap more words, these form a net of safety, they chip away at the cold, skyscraper high wall that sits paused in my life, I can hear that beast snarl and swirl off and away, returning less frequently each day. Less potent and powerful, its starved of the fuel it needs to remain. Its teeth and claws grow blunt. Muscle wastes, it becomes the process it lived from. Hair falls down like leaf drop.

And the large, gentle looking but unavoidable mass, seems to exhale, releasing itself, fading, shrinking folding reducing.

The contact on the sensors below the glass poke it back and away, hurrying it into the night, the vast empty other place, the endless state, the passage we avoid as we react to everyday. As we balance, juggle, spin, create and just breathe. The vast motion of the turning of the days, a full set of equinoxes observed, passed, a world changed but continuous. It was never real, the monsters, the darkness and the looming shapes, there is nothing left, just the sunken grass waiting, with the vessel that once carried you.