demising *

My sister and I had a very difficult relationship

with not much in common   But the best day we ever spent as adults was with my mother, going through her little house at her request with her – deciding who’d do what, who’d have what – when she died.  It may sound morbid but we drank tea and laughed – we had a fine time.

Whether it is Ukraine’s worst attack since the war began, Sudan blown to smithereens,  Afghanis thrown out of northern Pakistan where they have sought refuge for 3 generations, or the Hamas pogrom in Israel, there is a lot of  death about.  

And I was stroke-struck five months ago which concentrates the mind so, somewhere in there, I thought I should show my son where to look when I had gone to glory.

The best word to describe the enormously big, strong and thoughtful man my baby boy has become is overextended but he had just had a break and he suggested coming to supper, indeed, he persisted through my demur with the phrase “I have to come, you want to tell me about your demise.”  Now, there’s a word. We laughed.  I made supper and showed him the preparations I have made – lists of things he needs to know, names, numbers, bequests and details, the will, the lease – that’s there and this is here.  “But Mum” he said “it’s all so organised.”  Don’t sound so surprised.   “It’s what I can do for you.”   He asked me if I had some premonition.  I said no, I just wanted – the mantra of my childhood – to do my best,  

 We both know I pray for it to be fast – not blindess, dementia or disabling stroke – but God sends and He’s busy.

When I told Wal about this, he who does not do death, he fell off the phone laughing and began using the word as a verb* – hence the title. There is no value judgement in all this.  Out of a clear blue sky is just that, you can only do what you can do.   I am not saying you “should” but I am saying – second generation of “works for me”.

In marked contrast Cas (not her real name) lost her mother when she was 16.  That phrase is for once quite appropriate.   The hole of that loss is unclosed. 

Her family is the classic two party state – here, Cas and her mother, there her father and her older sister. Not much détente.  Her father is a bully and her older sister apes him, indifference as a survival strategy..  And Cas’s luck after that beginning contains two other major catastrophes – a marriage that ended badly and bitterly and an accident to an excellence that was her secret weapon – in which she was so badly injured, she will never compete as an athlete again.   

I don’t know her well.  She lives locally, we like each other and she has been nothing if not kind to me.  But I sense that for her, as for a lot people, “managing” means not saying what you really want to say because not a lot of people want to hear it.   She is very capable, bright, attractive, working – managing. But the wounds which she told me about because I am interested, have time and will listen, remain open.  Dangerously so.

I asked her what she wanted to do for Christmas.  She told me what her father and his sweet, heavy-drinking partner wanted.  I asked her a second time.   She told me what her sister wanted.  I asked a third time, pointing out it was,  and I wanted to know what she wanted.  She said “I don’t know.”   And I said (Hecate the Hag) “Well you never will if you don’t face it. And you are running out of time.” 

What I fear for her is that she will risk her current everything, in the hope that something out there – child, trip to Samarkand, esoteric research – will resolve her pain.  I doubt it will – and what do you do if it doesn’t ?

When she left – I like her so much -I was tired to my bones.   But I felt moved, useful – not demised yet.