Come back

(in response to a passage from The Iceberg, a memoir by Marion Coutts)

I come back often to this room with green walls and 70s cupboards. The makeshift cooking island he built with the scrap-marble top. The small window in the corner that you fell out of, split your forehead on the concrete below. I see the yellowed curtains of the garden doors in details, green, cream and brown geometric patterns meant to resemble flowers. Ugly. Not my first choice. I see the small black and white telly on top of the fridge. Hundreds of crumbled receipts piled in front of it; the contents of his pockets after a day's work, a day's finding work, the evening back from the bar.

Behind the glass cabinet, dozens of cups and glasses and small plates gathering dust. The 'best' sets which haven't been used in years. Nobody comes in this apartment anymore. The kitchen furniture is all there's left. Apparently, bailiffs are not allowed to take anything from kitchens and bedrooms, so that's all we've got.

But that was a long time ago. Yet I keep coming back to this room in my dreams, different impossible scenarios played out in this four walls. This kitchen has become an office, a chapel, a school, a prison. A variety of strangers have sat at that kitchen table, organised dirty dishes in the dishwasher that didn't work. I am trapped in there and I can't figure out how to get out.

I open the door to the garden, the dying bushes, the pine trees, the cats, rows of ants drawing patterns on the red tiles of the patio area. Everything still the same, as I left it. Who lives there now? Not me. I left.

I come back in my dreams.

Taking steps along the snaking pathway, I see you up ahead as we wind our we through the bumpy terrain.

Searching for a rhythm: in step with breath & balance. It feels hard to keep up, but really there is no hurry.

Discard your sense of urgency. The feeling of movement & momentum is all that really matters because therein lies life. Every so often you go out of sight as the bend in the path takes you away from me, but then again, I catch a glimpse of you off in the distance as the path lines up again.

I wonder if & when you might look back? A glance over your shoulder brings comfort & connection. I recall the phrase “ like a horse being pulled in opposite directions” & also of a time long ago, when we walked a similar path with an eager dog, a dog who ended up exhausting himself after the two of us walked in opposite directions & he would not let go of his dogged determination to continually run between us, even as we walked further & further apart. It seemed comical & farcical, but also shot an arrow deep into my heart, the confusion & longing to always be somewhere else.

You left. I knew you were going.

I've pondered, often, where you might be.

I imagine you close.

Surrounding me with bright energy.

Closed enough to know that I miss you,

and to dry my tears as they fall.

I am able to build on your incredible strength.

The legacy you left me.

An invisible thread keeping my head above water.

How can I thank you.

I tower above you, your body prostrate on the sands. The firm sand, compacted by thousands of footsteps. My body compacted, rigid with shock and horror, paralysed by the dreadfulness I am steeling myself against. I cannot move. Everything is still. Still. This is how it is. You and I in this frozen relationship. Endlessly. Time too is still. We are here forever. Neither of us moving. Moving neither into life nor death. A limbo of stillness. Crushing stillness, the weight of silence, the undrawn breath upon us all.

Now the pounding of footsteps. A newcomer breaks the circle. Drops to his knees, pumps frenetically, each muscular rhythmic pound a belief in the possibility that you could come back, that he could bring you back. I am astounded. I had not seen that possibility. Just the inevitability of an endless frozenness, a standoff between life and death.

In a way we were both right. He brought you back with a choke, a cough, a gasp. Silence broken with wracking relief. All changed again. The horror recedes as suddenly as the tidal wave that dragged you under. But only to descend more forcefully with the news you have died in the ambulance. The finality is cold. As is the absence. You died in the ambulance with your sister and that’s how it was in reality for you. But for me, you died on the beach, at my feet. The bringing you back wasn’t really a coming back. It’s been a long time of not being able to let you go, to unfreeze the picture, to move back into life as you step off into death. I come back to life, to love and friendship.