THESE ARE FOR YOU.

I shall always remember your last act of kindness. It was on the day you left me. I had been crying as I packed your things but you remained in the same placid and gentle mood as always. You had your breakfast and sat by your bags afterwards, trying in vain to examine their contents though I knew you were sure what lay within them. Salty tears mingled with the washing-up water as I cleared away the breakfast things. I chatted to you about inconsequential things as usual, hoping that I’d hear soon about how you were getting on. As usual, just like an overly attached child you followed me from place to place so as not to miss a word or a single falling tear.

You’d known for ages I wasn’t well. I wasn’t seriously ill but rather very inconvenienced. I sat about a lot nowadays and like many in such a position, began to reminisce and go back in time to happier times. At first I thought of the wedding cake I’d cut so many years ago and went back even further to the times when I was a child who played her time away on swings and see-saws till the fat boy who gave me the bumps scared me so much I refused to go on it with him any longer even though he’d promised not to do it again. I thought of the big chocolates which you can no longer get, with the rims round their edges. They came in cardboard tubes with silver foil wrapped round each one. I thought of my grandmother teaching me how to distinguish my coins – One from another and the “money” game we used to play. Maybe it was then that you came silently to my side and put your head on my knee and I realised that today was the day when you would be going on a journey of your own and without me for the first time in many years. I knew how mothers felt at school gates as they bade their children “farewell” and understood why it was that they cried. I put on the radio in order to distract me from my thoughts but of course it didn’t. I hardly remember anything about what the announcer said or the music played. With the callousness of the burning sun in the desert, the time ticked on relentlessly, punctuating the day with the half-hourly announcements made by my clever clock. I felt the nearness of you as your warmth mingled with mine as I knelt on the floor, your body pressed closely to mine and thought how I’d sometimes said a similar “goodbye” to others I’d loved so long ago. Their scents mingled with yours as memory shuffled the cards in the pack of my experiences and jumbled them up together, fanning them out in a different order now. Your sigh, gentle as any lover’s from the past calmed my racing brain as I wondered how I’d cope with the coming days and months without you and when and even if you may come home. Panic seized me as I wondered too what I would do if time ran out before this could be possible as it may do if I took too long to heal. The ache of loss – Of this and all the others I have suffered – Returned and then intensified anew until it became a pain almost beyond endurance.

The bell rang then. Excitedly you greeted our expected visitor. I offered him tea, done not only as this is the gesture of a good hostess but also so as to delay our time for parting. Too full for words I simply hadn’t the strength to wave my hand as you departed. Trusting as a child, how easily you went with him to his car. I bet you looked out of the window at all the passers-by. I bet you jumped out excitedly when you reached your destination. I knew whoever would take care of you would love you for how could they do otherwise? Then I remembered the long slow haul I had ahead of me to recover enough to have you back again and it was then that I remembered the little package you dropped at my feet on the morning that you left. When I opened it – Carefully in case I damaged the contents – I found within a pair of specially knitted mittens with tiny hard objects sewn into the thumbs and almost heard you saying in a series of barks which I had come to understand:

“These are for you. Be careful when you put them on”.

For peeping out through tiny knitted holes in each thumb were tiny little lenses.

“You’re going to need those while I’m away”.

I put them on and held my thumbs up to the world and, hey presto! What do you think happened? I know you’ll not believe me when you finally come home but I could actually open my hands and see!