Olive

It was the finality of thing that confused me.

'She died this morning.'

And that in itself was (sort of) fine and not wholly unexpected but my initial thought was "I'm never going to be able to speak to her ever again". And it was the 'never' and the 'ever' parts of that thought that struck me as odd. Because although we say "never ever" and we oftentimes mean "never ever" but this was really, truly, never ever.

The choice was no longer my own.

That's what bothered me more than anything. The fact of her dying was sad, yes, of course it was sad. But it's not like we were bestest buddies. She was a ninety-four year old woman and I was not. Our common interests were knitting (though she was unable to do much of that towards the end), cooking (though she hadn't done much of that in years given her withering appetite and widowed status), and being related to one another. But none of these really led to any deep or meaningful conversations. I never felt profoundly connected to her in any way. I wasn't really at all interested in indulging in a deep and meaningful conversation with her in the first place. But now, if I did want to do that, if I did want to discuss theology or philosophy, or slipping stitches purl-wise or knit-wise when the pattern doesn't specify, then I couldn't. I didn't actually feel an overwhelming desire to go talk to her about any of these subjects, or anything else at all, but now I knew that I couldn't and it just seemed strange to me. This finality.

If anything it left me feeeling a little winded. My stomach dropped and my legs felt eerily light. "I'm never going to be able to speak to her ever again" when, just before the knowledge of her death was imparted on to me, I'd walked around believing I could go and speak to her whenever I wanted. This woman, who had always been around as far as I was concerned, and always available for a chat had I wanted to take the opportunity was no longer there. What was once true, now was not. And it had happened just like that.

I'm never sure what I'm supposed to do with knowledge like this, where and how I'm supposed to squirrel it away and process it. I sometimes get scared because I don't understand how emotions work exactly because, really, what am I supposed to be feeling right now? I couldn't tell you what I was feeling two minutes ago as I was still in the 'post-work' daze with a single minded/automatic determination to get through my front door, take off my shoes, take off my coat, and collapse on the sofa. Was I thinking about anything else? Oh, yeah, I was thinking about my nephew waking up and saying; "is it night time still?" when he stayed overrecently and slept for about eleven hours (a new world record for a toddler surely). I was repeating "is it night time still?" in his cute little two-year-old voice in my head and giggling: "is it night time still?"

"no, it's the day time now, the sun is up and he's got his hat on"

"his hat on?"

"yeah, look. I'll open the curtains and you can see"

"what hat on?"

Which is the sort of two-year-old perfect logic that makes you wish you hadn't said the usually-accepted-by-adults phrase that actually makes no sense when you think about it. So that's what I was thinking about and that's the last words I said (using the two year old intonation) before she told me:

"is it night time still?" I said

"Um... She died this morning" she replied

I think about that. The non sequiturs we both employed. She obviously had this thing, this huge thing, that she knew she needed to tell me face to face (hence no phone calls during the working day) and was building up to telling me all day and probably rehearsed in her head before I came in ("She'll come in and go 'hi", and then I'll just have to come straight out with it right away so at least she knows and it's done") but I come in and speaking in a silly two year old voice say "is it night time still" and ruin the practice she's done because there's no way she guessed I would come out with something like that. No way she could guess I was in a playful mood and had been giggling for the last bit of my journey home thinking about how cute my nephew is. So that's how it happened, that's how I found out.

But I still don't know how I feel about that.

Is it night time still?