The truth came out with an elongated zeal

I’m afraid I must apologise ahead of time. I met an incredible artist who said that you need to make work from everything, even things that are not your practice, make everything your practice (and you should swallow it all heartily) and I’m afraid that I took her request and ran with it.

So this, is what I wrote after working (another day) caring for a lovely group of old people. And aside from writing about *** and his lovely bottom (his lovely wife told me this), and the man who was 6ft 1 and ½ inches when he died (they only fact he could relay) I thought I would dabble at something else, and since it is only dabbling – you must forgive me.

The truth came out with an elongated Zeal.
I am the night watch, I said. Teeth still crooked. Don’t stagger out under my care.

My patient sat. Eyes covered in a thin veil of water that kept some of the fierceness out. Vision blurred, and stuck somewhere between the skirts of her mother, and the first kiss – wherever that had come. I fashioned myself a seat and sat my self down for the night.

I used to take knitting, but something impatient began to wrap itself around the needles, as my eyes moved hastily up and down the mouth (breath) to the chest. I began to observe the tiniest movements, I needed to, as though depraved of any sanity. I would hold my breathe, to hold longer on to hers. It would rasp up and down, skimming each notes on the piano, without ever striking one. These were the chords life played. And life was still holding firm.

I would always return to my mother when I felt tentative. I was still trying to sketch her out fully. Over the years I had concoted pleanty of stories to form her, but none of them quite fitted. I imagined it was the same for this lady here, perhaps there were those still making stories, that would never quite be resolved. No matter how many answers are summoned it only means more questions. Better not to think, there’s still time ahead.

The clock began loud, Her body still inert but pushed out with the harshest of breathes. I’d like to say that death could be calculated, and yes it can for those ready to equate signs, but usually there is a bit of luck in most guessworks. Some people keep striding , plodding ever onwards – as their bodies become a mass of fluids and bowels. The closer to death the more bodily they become. The ends of piss and shit, Runny, solid, None at all. All become the confines of the dying. It is examined, monitered, and frowned upon by all others. Your excrement (and I take carefull ownership of it) becomes my priority. I barely even touch your flesh only that which comes out of it.

It becomes a concern the tones we use, honesty is side stepped for love (and who made love so dishonest) but it still cauterise the wound. Our wound anyway, the one that says that the other’s dying is really difficult and they wouldn’t leave us if they had a chance. I listen to the prayers, the “I’m ready.” “Take me now.” “Where am I going’s?” and all else. The restlessness, marred not by fear but by a longing. The life of piss and shit is no longer a life, but a well-meaning function. And our intentions to preserve it (or suspend it) are really just ill formed gestures. For really, someone who becomes defined by their bowels, how much soup and water they have taken and how dark their piss is – is no longer a becoming, but a being. And the being is all done in the bladder and the anus. (Becoming is enacted elsewhere)

Not that the line that separates us is very harsh. No, the body remains steadfastly determined to some things. Dying must, first of all be an art, rather than just an experiment as we assume (and if Luck would have it, our genetic cells must forestall our death in our children). It is the mind that becomes our priority. The mind that we are trying to save.

Hush. I nearly woke her, not that the flicker of eyelids would have done much to prove alert. No, in fact we could do more. I think her head is a bit uncomfortable where it is, the pillow not soft enough – perhaps she needs another? Well not to worry – Tomorrow, I think, or when she stirs.

The red parts become the worse, the body is closely analysed for signs of deep red. As the skin becomes sore from being crushed in the same position. Carefully the body is manoeuvred to ensure the back, arms, bottom, legs are all red free. And if not, cream is applied in liberal doses (it says sparingly) but an expert knows it rubs in quick enough.

She’s humming now. Every so often she’ll say a name, she’s talking to someone. Reality has side stepped the bedroom as it often does for all of us. She takes careful precedent over the identical fixed stares she uses. One is with a slight hint of desperation, while the over more salubrious in tones. And we all know her tones most heartily.

It is about now I usually begin to read a book. With all honesty I have been stuck on the same one for the past little while, the same words and phrases arching themselves steadily along my conscience. Okay, I think. Dreadfully apprehensive, tonight is when I will finish this chapter (the one I have already started dozens of times) and suddenly a cough fills up the room flitting the temperaments and passages in the book into something more heartfelt. I cannot displace her despite her displacement for me.

At times she will call out, muttering indistinctly the last name she recalls. Once I was Irene, other times I am completely different – it doesn’t matter whose arms ensure she’s comfortable, or offer the warmth of the other – but merely that she imagines they are someone she trusts. Why confuse her now I think. Why trouble the predicament more. She is after all a body someone once loved rather than the person they adored.

The birds scuttle outside now. I’m starting to breathe deeper, time is pressing on. Time heavily pressing but now it flickers.