Grim Tidings

I was returning from buying a newspaper.  It was one of those crisp winter mornings when your breath looks like smoke.  S walked beside me, holding my hand, her little face peeping out of her fur-lined hood, her button nose red from the cold.  Bill was washing his van on the drive.

‘It’s not the news we wanted,’ he said, ‘It’s terminal.’ 

He didn’t say ‘inoperable’, not ‘incurable’, ‘terminal.’  It’s the end.

Bill is going to die.  And he’s going to die in the next few months. 

Even though he was wrapped in the stupefying cotton wool of drugs and slower as a result, the agony of expectation was too much for this proud man to conceal.  He choked and looked away.

I know what he dreads. 

That he’ll not see his children grow up, blossom into adults, have their own families.  That if his daughter marries, he won’t be there to walk her down the aisle.  That he’ll never know his grandchildren.  That he’ll never kick a ball with his son again.

That he won’t finish the decorating.

That there won’t be enough money for them.  That Sarah, his wife, will be on her own.  That he’s abandoning them.

That there’s still so much to do around the house.

That he’s let them down.

He’s not allowed to drive any more.  That’s why he was washing his van: it has to go.  That’s his livelihood gone.  And his independence.  His life is collapsing.  Too unexpectedly and too quickly to cope with.

In his panic, it’s the trivial mundane chores that are easiest to cling to.  But all of a sudden he’s too unsteady to climb a step ladder; he can’t finish the wall-papering.   A builder all his life and now he can’t paper a wall.  It’s unbearable.  And yet it might just be the unimportant things that keep him together.

Comments

[Mrs RW]

I think you need to invite them over for dinner (or a pint), uncomfortable though it will certainly be. He needs to know that even though he's going to die, he isn't dead yet and that people care now and will miss him later.

I know you can't provide reassurance about finances, or anything else for that matter, but trust me, he knows that and wouldn't expect you to.

You are a kind man or you wouldn't be writing about this.

On another note: you have life insurance don't you? I know you're picturing what would happen if this was you - we all do. I took out extra on Mr RW and told him I'll hold the pillow over his face if I have to...