Drinking The Poison

                                     

"The forgetting

is difficult.

The remembering,

worse."

 by Peter Mc Williams. From How to Survive the Loss of a Love.

'Tell me about it. All of it,''

she says

this new person who doesn't know me.

this grief counsellor

sitting in the comfy chair 

opposite me

in a high ceiling room

which smells a bit musty.

I show her a photo of Robin.

Her face colours

her eyes well up

''But I know him'', 

she says

''we made ceramics

in the same class''

A lovely man.''

So now it's easy

to tell her the

details

 of the disease

of how it was

to drive him

to feed him

to wash him

to undress

and to dress him

over and over again. 

And to 

love him 

and to 

loathe

the drenching

demand

of caring 

so much.

But it's not easy 

to tell her about 

that last day

when I didn't 

know

it 

was 

the 

last

day.

And then the next day

which was even worse.

The voice on the phone

I didn't know

which rang beside me

 in my bed

at 7.35am

while I was writing an email

to the MND nurse

saying that

he was slipping sideways

in the car seat

and maybe it was time 

to buy a car 

that you could put a wheelchair in.

So I could still

take him out

which is all he wanted to do.

But it was too late.

This is the day

that

I re-live

over 

and 

over.

In surround-a-sound

technicolour.

Drinking the poison

that doesn't quite

kill me.

She says she can help me with that.

To remember 

without 

hurting myself.

Yesterday at the Killerton Estate with my brother.