Death is a Kind Mistress
Death is a kind mistress,
A lovely mistress,
A generous mistress,
A giving mistress,
A taking mistress.
Death is a kind mistress,
A lovely mistress,
A generous mistress,
A giving mistress,
A taking mistress.
***
When death comes knocking we think time should stand still, for this moment, for this hour, day, month, year, century, millennia. It should stand still. But it doesn’t.
A mistress who waits for none.
***
It is the oddest things that one’s mind centres on. The lighting, too sharp. The towels, always askew, but today they weren’t. The chairs, old, very old, three generations old. They still had Daisy’s bite marks on them. Very light though. My father kept getting them redone. The marks annoyed him. For me, it just gave the furniture more character, a deeper legacy, a longer tale.
The ceiling fan, slow, just slow enough I suppose. The edges were tinged with ochre. No, a lighter brown, beige, I think. I do not know the exact colour.
My head, it was aching, it still aches. I remember the time when I was 10. That was probably the first time I felt something I didn’t want to ever feel again. A headache, migraine. It was heavy, loud. Pain was normal, but this, it was… I still do not have the words.
I never had that kind of pain again, but now I did. This was loud, painful, heavy, numbing.
***
Death is a disgraceful mistress. We hide from it. Is it the loss or the disgrace, the lack of nobility in our movements?
Do we hide from the disgrace of death in others because of the fear of loss of life, or the loss of ability? The abject state of the disillusioned well functioning “normal” body.
***
Death is natural, grief is natural. It is the most mundane give and take of the world. Perhaps also the most complicated emotion that is a tapestry, not a single strand in the tapestry.
I have seen death before, why does this grief layer over me so thickly… . Why does this one, this specific one feel so unfair even though the life was long… . Why does this one feel so very strangely layered on my skin, etching itself into my bones. Why.
***
I saw her die. My father told me to go up, but I refused. I was there with her for the last month, every day, every single day. I checked on her, I gave her her medicines. I held her, fed her, took care of her. I even got into a lift I hated, feared because she couldn’t take the stairs. I was there.
I was not leaving her.
I saw the life leave her. It was a kindness. She was in so much pain. Even then, the last few convulsions before the anaesthetic, they haunt me.
Every time I close my eyes I see her, her teeth, her tongue, her fur, her legs, her body. I see her. I see those last few moments. Her essence etched onto the places she slept in.
I cannot stop seeing her.
***
Her hair is on and in my paintings, I smiled. I used to hate that, but now, it’s a nice reminder.
They are stuck to my paints, my palette.
My beautiful girl.
***
There is a myth. A house that sees a death shall also see a tree die in honour of the death. It’s a folklore, my mom told me that when I was young.
I saw it in some houses, with some deaths, I didn’t with others.
I wonder if the ones that had a tree accompany them were the creation’s favourites? Or maybe the world weeper for a life that wasn’t lived in full.
Daisy had no death of a tree that accompanied her. Or maybe a plant fell in a distant forest somewhere, voiceless.
