Diaspora

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day.

The parade in my town starts in just over an hour.

We never go any more.

We only ever really went on account of the boys. When they were very little, they liked the tractors and were scared of the clowns, in equal measure. Then, when they got a bit older, they were required to march with their schoolmates and toot out 'The Minstrel Boy' on their tin whistles. A task they never really enjoyed.

Sometimes, things happen very quickly. In a flash, everything can change and it’s suddenly a whole new world. But, more often than not, things happen slowly and subtly. So much so that they sometimes seem to have already happened for quite some time before you fully realise that they’ve happened at all.

Our boys don’t live at home anymore. They aren’t here. We don’t have to argue gently about the pros and cons of parading in the warm drizzle. We don’t have to struggle to find some tufts of shamrock for the lapels. We don’t have to try to throw some form of logic onto what is, let’s face it, a generally shapeless day. It’s just us two here now and we can do whatever the hell we want.

Today, our eldest son will meet some of his friends and plan next week’s excursion to London and next month’s excursion to Japan. He will enjoy a day off from his responsible government job.

Today, our younger son will join his two bands on stage at the Windmill in Brixton. He will enjoy a day off from his work in the very heart of the West End and he will doubtless play his heart out, as he usually does.

No parades required.

How did it happen? When was the moment when they no longer lived here anymore? Of course, there wasn’t one. It was a gentle fade from one thing to another. First university, then fewer and fewer runs home, new jobs, new places. Gentle but firm, that’s how it all plays out.

And it’s wonderful, of course. They are their own men now. If Patricia and I were to be hit by a bus later today they would be sad, of course, but they would be okay. No longer helpless mites but, instead, grown men who find their way in the world. It’s great and Patricia and I, avoiding all the buses that we can, are having a lovely time in our own time and space again.

But the bedrooms down at the beginning of the hall are pretty quiet now. Nobody will need a lift home at some silly hour of the morning. There are brief moments of dizzy disbelief, that the pair of lads who were so well guarded and so well-tended within these walls are now out in the world and reliant effortlessly on only themselves.

It’s all good.

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day.

The parade in my town starts in just over an hour.

Maybe we’ll just go down and have a little look.

 

A Small Word of Gratitude for the Sick People


(PIcture by Tambako)

One of the good things about fifteen years of dabbling on the edges of Social Media is that I have got to know some people who are really unwell. And, although I know it sounds a little bit strange, I am very grateful for that.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to name any names here. Let’s just proceed on the assumption that there are at least two people I know around the Social Media circuit. I’ve never met them; I’ve never spoken to them. But, for fifteen years or so, I have seen what they’ve posted or blogged or tweeted or whatever. And, like it or not, some tiny measure of real-life leaks into each and every thing we say on here. Thus, a person becomes rounded and real and ‘known’ as far as the limits of the medium allows.

The two people. What can I say? When I first saw them, say, fifteen years ago, they were younger, and the world seemed to be at their feet. There was nothing they could not go on to do, no mountain they could not climb. And then they got sick. Not together, not at the same time. As far as I know, they don’t even know that the other exists. They just got really, really, sick. Slowly, mysteriously, their worlds closed in on them and their options and their possible game plays became fewer and fewer.

And I just want to thank them.

Genuinely. I hope I don’t say it wrong.

There are a number of reasons to offer a little gratitude. If I’m not very careful, they may start to sound cliched and twee. We tend to go on about how brave sick people are and how much fight they have. That’s true and true, of course, but it’s not quite the thing. For me, it’s not how strong they are – they aren’t always strong, how could they be? It’s that… and I’m going to use a religious image but I’m looking to bring any religion along with it. They bear the cross that has been given them. They carry it as best they can. Will I do it with as much grace when it comes my time to do it? I don’t know. I can only hope so. My sick friends have shown me how it can be done and for that, I am grateful.

But it’s not just that. It’s complicated and it’s hard to set down without sounding like a condescending fool.

My sick friends still find times of joy and creativity in the world. Despite everything. I see it on their social media which, thankfully, they maintain as best they can. They find joy in family and in pets and in partners and in momentary respite. They also find it in more practical things like care, analgesia, and information. That last one is a big one, as far as I can see. Information about what they must go through. What can be done, what cannot be done… what on earth is it? I am grateful to my sick online friends for showing me that there can always be the possibility of a moment of comfort and joy, even when things are pretty lousy.

They have shown me at least some of the technicalities of being ill. That it isn’t really about lying in a quilted room with a flannel on your head and a worried physician at your pulse. That it is swelling and nausea and intolerable itch and moments of utter hopelessness and fear for continence and loss of privacy, license, and independence. That sickness is a messy, messy business on every practical level.

It would be remiss to not remember here my friend Simon Ricketts, who also shared the very best and the very hardest of his life, in sickness and in health, with us. I will never forget Simon and all he showed us. 

Of course, I haven’t needed to resort to the internet to know all this. Like most of us, we have lost precious family to long term illness. We have lived it first-hand. But, like it or not, there is a curious intimacy to the sharing of a life online. Things get opened up that might not be opened up in real life. It creates understanding and it increases empathy, I think. So, again, for this, I am grateful.

And lastly, for now at least, the thing that is hardest to say without sounding self-satisfied and callous. I walk into town, and I take a conscious deep breath of cold air into my lungs, and I know I can go anywhere I want and do anything I want, and I don’t need anyone’s goddamn help to do it. I am completely and utterly blessed. And I want to thank you for making me realise that. I don’t remember it often enough. I plough through my blessed life, burdened by worry and uncertainty. I tie myself up in knots. But, sometimes, I think of my online friends and of all the effortless things I still have that they do not. And, hopefully, to honour them just a little bit. I appreciate it in a big fat tangible way, if only for a little time.

I sometimes think there should be a mandatory two-week holiday for everybody every few years. For the first week we would all be confined to a hard, too-tight bed, and pumped full of drugs and left a little too long before we get what we need. And in the second week, we would be allowed back to our regular lives, to appreciate just how good we have it.

I also wish that we could evolve as a species in a way that would somehow allow us to share each other’s pain a little more equitably. Imagine if a partner could say, “I’ll carry the pain for you today. Take a day off.” How good that would be for the sick person but how good it would be for the carer too? To help carry the burden. To share it out.

But they are just a pipe dreams. Sickness will come to most of us, in time. But to some, it has already come, terribly early and terrible hard. To you, I offer this strange but heartfelt gratitude today.

Thank you.

Short Fiction - Post It

A little short fiction for you today. It's been a while. 

Day 1,826

As soon as I wake up, I can tell that the mist has cleared. Alone in my bed, in the gloom behind my curtains, I can immediately sense the quality of my unaccustomed focus. My vision is clear, my hearing acutely tuned to the solitary blackbird outside. I stare at the ceiling and wonder. This kind of thing never happens of its own accord anymore. Something must be driving my new-found clarity.

But what?

It comes to me. Easter Thursday. Money Day.

The laptop on the kitchen table is always on. That makes it sluggish and inefficient but who am I to judge? Even in its unfit state, it will still bring up my bank account in a matter of minutes. As the hard disk chunders I run a simple sum in my head. One thousand, that was a given, and then another three hundred for the mishaps of the past calendar year. Not much, but not bad for a ten-year-retired guy whose pension had not done anything close to what it had said it would do.

The bank screen coalesces in front of me. There is no new payment. That is annoying, for sure, but it is slightly worrying too. Stationery Joe is like clockwork. He never misses Money Day, and he never works the payment out wrong.

The post box outside my front door is empty. It is quite normal that there was no post. But there is always something, isn’t there? Almost always. Today there is nothing at all and that too is annoying but slightly worrying.

I check around inside my head. The mist remains very thin on the ground. Clarity is good. But how long has it been since this was the case? How many days has it been since I clearly acknowledged what was, or was not, inside my letterbox? Had it been a day, a month, a week for Christ’s sake?

It is time for me to go and find out.

Day 1

Stationery Joe was standing motionless out on the street side of my hedge. I could see him there as I clipped away on the garden side. He was in profile and his big roman nose made him look like De Gaulle in crosshairs, like in the film. I clipped a little more and hoped he would just walk on.

“Morning.”

I stopped clipping. Stationery Joe might have been my next-door neighbour but that had never made him my friend. When we had living wives, we were always standoffish with each other at best. An occasional nod if there was no other way around it. We were never fully at war but there had certainly been disagreements. The overhanging tree, the scattered bin. Now it was just him and me, me and him. I had gone to his wife’s funeral the week before, as he had come to mine some years ago. We had both stood at our respective gravesides and we had both turned up afterward to eat each other’s hotel soup. Then we went home to our respective houses and said no more about it.

“Morning,” he said again. “Can I come around?”

He walked around the hedge and onto my property. He stood there on my grass in his purple cardigan. He looked old. I guessed I looked the same.

“I’ll cut to it,” he said, “I want you to do something for me.”

I had come this far without saying a word and didn’t see any need to change the arrangement now.

“Can I get some kind of a response? Just so I know that you’re in there.”

“I’m in here.”

“I have a mortal fear,” he said, and then he said nothing else.

I waited. Nothing.

“We all have those,” I said.

“I have a mortal fear that I will die inside my house, and nobody will find me until it’s too late.”

“You’ll be dead. How will it be too late?”

“My fear is that I won’t be found before corruption has taken me.”

This was one of the reasons he annoyed me so deeply. I mean, who says things like, “until corruption has taken me”?

“I won’t look in on you, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said. “I’m not taking on any new commitments.”

“I don’t want that,” he said, almost scoffing, “Fuckin’ last thing I’d want.”

“What do you want then? This hedge won’t clip itself.”

It was the kind of a conversation that had to have a little speech somewhere in it. Stationery Joe delivered it then, on my grass, the dew moistening his shoes.

“After I closed the shop, I brought a lot of office stuff home with me. I have thousands of those yellow sticky note things in a box.”

“Post-its.”

“I know what they’re called.”

“Good for you."

“What I want to do is to post one of those yellow sticky things into your post box there every morning. Early, before you even get up.”

“And?”

“And, if there’s ever a day I don’t post one, you come and knock on my door and if I don’t come out, you call the police.”

“That’s it?”

“Will you do it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I have enough on my plate.”

“You have nothing on your plate, and you know it.”

“Why should I do it? One good reason.”

“Today is Holy Thursday.”

“And?”

“If you do this, next Holy Thursday, I will lodge one thousand euro in your bank account, you can send me the number.”

“It’s not much.”

“It’s literally money for nothing and it will let me sleep at night.”

“And you’ll leave me alone and not be coming round standing in my hedge.”

“I’ll leave you alone.”

Day 2

Not much in the post. A new offer for high-speed broadband. A bill from the Gas Company. A futile chase for a TV license.

And one yellow post it sticky note. I roll it up and put it in the bin.

Day 686

It took him all of five minutes to open the door, but I knew he wasn’t dead as soon as I had rung the bell. I could hear him inside, shuffling and coughing. I could see his silhouette inching up the hall. He fumbled with the latch and finally hauled it open.

“You’re not dead then.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t get round with the thing. I have a really- “

“I’m not doing this anymore. I‘m out.”

“I miss one day…”

“I can’t be your nanny.”

“One hundred euro.”

“What?”

“For every one day I miss, I’ll add one hundred euro to the pot.”

I thought about it.

“All right then,” I said, “but don’t miss too many.”

“I won’t.”

Day 1,826

The police officer is young. There’s an older one too but he’s standing back, letting the young one control the scene. It’s cold at Stationery Joe’s front door, it catches the wind. He put the door on the wrong wall. I could have told him that when he was building but we were never on those kinds of terms.

The kid policeman has his phone out and he’s taking notes with it. Hardly Morse.

“So, you haven’t seen Mr.… Joe in several days?”

“I haven’t seen him in months, but I knew he was all right until…”

“Until?”

“A little while ago. I’m not sure exactly. I’ve been unwell.”

The kid detective turns to the older guy.

“Do we get a warrant?”

“Just open it up.”

I thought they’d have some kind of master key, some lock-picking tools. Not the case. The younger guy stands back and plants his boot hard, as high on the door jamb as he can go. One shot, the door flies open, the lock housing all splintered to hell.

Nobody runs out to see what all the commotion is. Nobody crawls.

The older guard nods to the open door.

“Go on in,” he says to his young partner, “See what’s what. We’ll wait out here.”

It is a blooding. All three of us can tell. The young guard looks hesitant.

“Should I-?”

“Just go in. It’ll be fine.”

He goes in. Suddenly brave and unflinching. An act. He comes out again, forty seconds later, expectedly pale.

“He’s in his bed.”

“And?”

“He’s dead.”

“Are you sure?” The senior guy says. “did you check a pulse?”

The younger guy almost laughs. “He’s dead all right.”

“Make the call so.”

The young guard eases past me. It’s not my business but I can’t help but ask.

“In there?”

“Yes?”

“Does he seem… peaceful?”

The young guy stares at me.

“I wouldn’t like to say,” he says, then he adds, “Funny thing.”

“What?”

“Blank post it notes.”

“What about them?”

“He has four of them, stuck to his face.”