Death on a cold day
Friday, 22 December, 2006 - 00:50
On very cold days, when your breath buffets away visibly, I still think of a car-park, outside a hospital, five years ago. Frost on the wind-screen first thing still takes me back to mornings five years ago, over christmas, going from hospital to house to house, brother, ward, step-mother, brother. Cold winter, hospitals, houses, disconnection, cancer, death, ward, breath. Dad. Never cried like I cried on christmas day, 2001.
I still can't write about it. Winter mornings, cold breath, disconnected hardness, death. Man aloneness. I remember most clearly getting out of a car, looking up at the hospital building, christmas morning, breath tossed away, little brother, silent, sun shining, carrying PG Wodehouse to read to a man in a white starched bed, wanting to be made of granite.
If I'm miserable and nasty to you at christmas, I'm sorry, I can't help it.
