By Hannah Morris-Voth
April 10, 2021
People can be removed from the
world. They don’t tell you that, but it’s
true I mean, they do tell you, but they
don’t tell you.
–Emily Berry, Ghost Dance
Birdsong—blue or red. The popinjay shut up in bed. He listens, he hears. Flitting—something on the telly, oh!—if happy little bluebirds fly…
Where’ve the linens gone—only a moment ago…
A strong hand on his brow, smoothing sweat off chilled skin.
There is always someone nearby, now. Now and always—he never did feel strong alone. Few things change over the course of a life. There is Peter, the steadfast carer at his bedside, and there is his last love. Through it all—the years of illness near indistinguishable—there are touches, gentle, always, and blessedly unhesitant. No one here thinks twice, and really, a soothing touch is the easiest thing they have to do—the easiest thing they’ve ever had to do when it comes to him.
A bed change. A cat slinking up.
Animals de compagnie, Dominique had said, the dear. A friend’s wife—a friend herself—sitting on the silken sofa, stroking soft shiny fur. Lithe body—everyone in the room: she, him, the cat. Things that are supposed to be bigger than they are. Another trick up your sleeve—she too is dying, this is shared knowledge: fight the impossible fight, the one you are destined to lose. Know this and go into the sea battle willingly.
Free the dress of your choice from mortal constrain—it’s only a matter of rising above it, of walking on water. It’s not a miracle, it’s only continuation; the sort many will never encounter and thus, this truth remains veiled. The mechitzah between the well and unwell.
Spirit and the luminescent dawn. Winds rustle both—silent in stillness, the movement is there despite. Onward and onward –
Eating carefully—picking at the tiny treats that are made for him—then sicking up anyway. It must be the pain. It’s awful, so much, and his throat is the betrayer.
She hadn’t allowed him to apologize.
He wanted to, but she wouldn’t hear it, her eyes held understanding. For a while he said nothing, stroking her hand. Dominique let him.
She’s not mummy, no. Still, her perfume is almost the right florals. If she stood out in the sun by the sea for a while… but things don’t work like that. People cannot replace each other. Not wholly.
Visitors leave with reluctance, but there’s a relief there when they step out the door. When he could he watched from the window and saw how their shoulders dropped, how they breathed in the life of fresh air, and reminded themselves they were not dying.
Why do people fear it so much? The road to the gates isn’t all horrid—you can get used to the way of walking. It’s a different path, perhaps, and in some ways better, even. You’ll know yourself—reaction to prolonged pain, being exhausted into immobility—far more viscerally.
If you’re optimistic—and he isn’t usually, not exactly—you’ll find that merely stepping outside is a gift. The sun is heaven itself after so long indoors.
And what is the opposite of dying? It’s not living—he’s living now, and though he’s never said it aloud, there were times in the past when he wasn’t living at all.
Guaranteed continuation? But—there is no guarantee. Darling, you could kick it tomorrow. And yet, everyone has this grand illusion they aren’t going to—that time really exists. That it singularly continues with them in mind.
If he tried to explain that—well, really, he doesn’t care. Now, he will be better off gone, no longer a bag of bones needing cleaning up after. It’s not that the idea of death—the truth of it, that you continue no longer—has only now come creeping. There were times… well, no one knows—perhaps Peter suspected, but he couldn’t know, not really. He would talk himself out of the conclusion the minute he reached it—still is, just in a different way now. Everyone is, aren’t they?
Everyone but him.
Another curtain, another level: fair one, hide yourself from the eyes of the needy. That is the explanation—maybe it’s true, maybe it’s pure constraint.
On one side: the believers in continuity. On the other: the souls faced with inevitability. The believers will not look at the souls, they tarry with their heads buried in prayer books. He won’t argue with that; in their way, the doomed pray too—the dying, the sinners. It’s just softer, kinder. The words aren’t for themselves, they’re for everyone else.
And that is another truth: when you’re gone, you won’t miss the world—it will miss you. Whichever way you look at it, life isn’t for you. You can’t be that selfish. If you are, you’ll end up with nothing real.
He knows this because it’s how his life has gone. It’s a lesson he’s learned now. Not fully, nothing ever fully, but halfway—enough to make sense of dying, and the rest of living.
It’s a distanced view, at times a severance from what matters, from what’s real. Even if you’ve accepted death, time and again, the previously ingrained belief comes screaming back—now, you won’t continue, your life won’t last forever. There will be things you can never do.
One by one, like petals from a flower, they’ve fallen: you are no longer a lover, no longer a proper body, no longer anything of worth. You no longer have anything to give—you’re dead before the dying.
Now, he glances out the window. In the tree is a bluebird—it seems rather late in the year to see one, but there it is.
What’s your song? Have you something to tell? Everyone does, especially those with a cut-off voice.
Oh, yes, the stories I could tell… gruesome as a fairytale.
He wishes he could sing about beauty, but now all that comes to him are grey words, the myth of a life beyond.
Things of the body are rote, no one bats an eye at any of it. In him, the former humiliation has stilled to acceptance, and he stares unseeing at the wall as they clean him up. How little you come to care. He almost wants to laugh about it—joke with Peter that, at least now, he doesn’t need that enema, that old way of life. He doesn’t say it though, because some days the jokes can cause grim expressions and he can’t bear that now, the reminder that this is hard for them.
It’s selfish, but he just can’t. Some things are hard enough facing alone, and the facts hit sore at unwitting times.
Everything is fine—only everything isn’t. Talk all you like about it, darling, joke and think and wave it away, but you know you’re afraid. And that’s the most difficult thing to swallow yet.
He’s turned on to his back, and even though his love is beside him, he keeps his eyes on the bluebird. Calling up the music of the bluebird—Tchaikovsky, yes? From the ballet?—he thinks the melody through and watches until it flies away.
Beyond the rainbow…
The bough doesn’t stir upon losing the weight.
Hannah Morris-Voth
Hannah Morris-Voth has cultivated an interest in prose and poetry, alongside her studies in Chemical Engineering. Her defining literary characteristic is a longing for innocence and simplicity, a theme presented in her work and approach to life. She has been a guest editor for Inlandia and is presently working with the Aster Review. She is currently working on her first pamphlet.