Remembering

This piece is in response to a prompt from KOMOREBI (with thanks to James (HVR) for directing me to it) to write something using this photo and the word ‘Remembering’.

I approach the chair beneath the window,
pull it out and take a seat
I glance out into the green beyond,
should be lush smells of summer
and that fresh grass, pollen smell,
not unpleasant, but enough to slightly
set of erratic hay fever.

The window does its thing though

and I remember

I'm no longer here,
the smell less pleasant;
sickness, shit, decay, death,
making its way through
the myriad of cleaning products
which always fail to cloak it.

Uniquely ‘hospital’,
unique to this type of ward.

Something feels different today,
we're all here, sensing the end.
I look at you.
The stroke a few weeks back
had slurred you speech,
limited the movement.

It was the uninvited guest in
the oesophagus that
caused it all though,
once they diagnosed it,
they gave you six months.
Wouldn't quite make that,
I think you wanted to be elsewhere.

Now though, you were quiet,
a sound of light breathing.
Nothing else.
No stirring.

A nurrse approaches us.
These parts are hazy
but I remember being told of
medicines, machines
which could keep you here longer,
though only in this state

and I remember,

Weeks back pre-stroke, you sat in this bed
looked at the woman along from you.
Wires and tubes going in and out,
a machine doing the breathing.
A family that want her around
as long as possible.

"I don't want that", you said.
Let me go peacefully,
don't keep me around,
using machines so that
you have a shell of me here,
that doesn't know what's going on.

That was the gist of it.
The exact words have been
robbed from me by time.

and I remember

Memories from a little further back,
when you were first taken to hospital,
United came back against Spurs
from 3-0 down to win 5-3.
I wanted to tell you.
You loved football
but the ambulance staff had you.

From there the diagnosis.
Cancer.
Six months
Maybe a bit longer with radiotherapy.

You tried it, and also instantly stopped
a 60-year smoking habit,
got yourself moving again,
trips to the shop.

It was almost like it wasn't there,
you made me my pre-Christmas rabbit stew
a tradition for the two of us these past five years
and with my Grandad before that.
I enjoyed it, knowing it was the last,
knowing the feeling was tempered
by that ‘almost’.

I was amazed by the strength shown,
fending off the effects of the treatment
to prepare the whole meal
it was still a battle to get you
to let me wash up and put things away.

and I remember

You've always been strong.
Losing a daughter, my aunt
and then almost parking grief
other some of it's physical effects,
to become a Mum-Nan hybrid
for my three cousins.

There have been other losses too,
but you weathered them all.

and I remember

Evenings spent with you
both before and after my Grandad died,
watching Monday Night Football
at yours on Sky,
cup of tea and we'd share sweets and mints.

and I remember 

even around the grief-filled times,
you'd always make time to play with me.
Sometimes for hours.
Even though you didn't enjoy
watching wrestling
you'd play matches with me and my toys.

So back in the hospital,
we declined the nurses' request
and a few hours later,
you left us.

I sat there with you,
holding your hand,
hoping you'd find
my Grandad somewhere

and I remember

I remember taking a breath,
walking to the family room
where others waited
and just sitting and crying.

and I remember

I can remember the sensation
of trying to say something
but sobbing too much
to be coherent.

I always felt some tiny bit of me
was left behind in that room.
Maybe it's like that for everyone
in that position

Maybe it's those pieces of us all
that leave us, that contribute
to that awful smell,
it's a part of us there,
perpetually withering
a donation of ghostly death
from the living
that get to walk out of there.

A sharp breeze from the window
snaps my trail of thought 
and I think to myself how I
hope I'll dream of my Nan, tonight

in those I don't have to remember
in those, you are as you were,

but with us, as we are....

....and those dreams are the best.

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