This is the opening chapter of my new book - a story about the Gift of Death.
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| Early morning, Tea Tree Lake, Mortlake, Victoria |
Chapter 1
It was a dream
that began it, not just the dream, but the feeling
that went with it - the feeling of an enormous love and compassion. I held the
poor, poor skinny old lady in my arms. I held her with love, and she felt no
pain from all of the sore spots and all of the aches that go with an old, old
body. She weighed nothing at all, and I held her so gently. She needed to die.
She needed to leave the body that was only a burden for her. It had been so
long since she'd been young and free. For years she had yearned for an end to
the suffering. She wanted to endure no longer.
And I gave her
that. That body in my arms, weightless, feeling no pain for the first time in
years. And she died. I gave her that. She died, and I carefully put her back in
her bed and covered her. She was finally gone, finally free, finally without
pain. Love. Compassion. And I freed her.
I didn't lose
that dream when I woke, though if there were details, they were lost. What led
up to it, what happened afterwards - if those things had been part of that
dream, they were not retained. Just the feeling of an overwhelming love and
compassion. And then the poor old, old lady was finally free.
If there was a
God, it was what He should be doing,
not me, just a very ordinary, middle-aged lady. Grey-haired, a worn face, and
my own beginning aches and pains, the sign of what was to come, the trials that
old people endure every day. Most old
people, in spite of those stories of old people lifting weights or running
endurance events. Most of us are not like that. For most of use, old age is an endurance event.
I continued to
think about it as I went about the morning routine, showering, dressing, making
and eating breakfast, the same as on every other day. It was as I rinsed my
coffee mug that the identity of that poor old woman came to me. It was old Mrs.
Campion, Vera Campion. She'd been one of those I'd visited the day before, one
of the sad residents of the Nursing Home that was only a short walk away. My
husband had spent his last nine years there. He'd been only fifty when he'd had
that stroke, two years older than myself. The children had come to see him,
even Deb, who'd been in Italy. It had been the holiday she'd planned for years,
but she hadn't hesitated to cut it short. But seeing their strong father so
helpless, just lolling there in the reclining chair, often dribbling, unable to
speak, not really knowing how much he could hear and understand - it was too
much for them. They'd tried, but their visits quickly became fewer. And they
lived so far away, Jenny busy with her little son, such a demanding tot...
But Kane was eighteen
now, in his last year of school. Quicksilver, they called him. My only grandson
- lithe, black-haired, filled with the arrogance of youth. I didn't see much of
him. I bored him, and I knew it perfectly well. His father's parents were
different. They had wealth, a big home in a big city, and money enough to spend
on their family. They travelled a lot, and were happy to subsidise their son
and his small family so that they could go with them. It was no wonder that Jenny
and Renzo spent far more time with his parents than they did with me. Me,
Shirley Bridgewater, who lived in a tiny country town, had no career and not
even a husband. Not any more. Stan. He'd been gone seven years now, sixteen
years since our lives together had come to an abrupt end. There had been no
warning signs, he was not a smoker, not a heavy drinker...
But I switched
off that line of thought. There were occasions when I'd have a quiet cry,
privately, for myself. But I'd be a lot more lonely if I didn't socialise, and
while I found playing Bingo an awful bore, I would not tell my friends that.
Joy, Gwen, Maisie and Christine. None of them were close friends. I had no
close friends. But life would be unbearable lived entirely alone, and I took
care not to show that I sometimes found their chatter shallow and their
pursuits less engrossing than they found them.
So I checked my
watch and prepared to go out to play Bingo. We'd probably have lunch
afterwards, maybe at the pub, maybe we'd try the new restaurant just opened,
though their prices were a touch fierce for a country town. It would be interesting
to see how long it lasted.
*
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| Tea Tree Lake, Mortlake, Victoria |
http://www.amazon.com/M.-A.-McRae/e/B008BYWRQ2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1340847276&sr=1-1
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