| Ebb | Flow | Eddy |
| They say the tides come and go with regularity. And who's to say how nature might deal with the ins and outs of the soul as breath leaving a dying body. Ashes to ashes, and a single drop of water in an ocean of pain. |
No saying goodbye
On your last day we weren't planning to visit. I'd shuttled to and fro for days, and that day we had to go up to your house and fetch the car, find where you'd hidden the computer, check the mail, sort some things. It was a long way and a long day, we'd miss visiting hours.
But Lancaster is kind of on the way, and as we passed a sign on the M6 I said, let's just pop in quickly. My brother wasn't going to have time today, and somebody should go. They'd put you in your own room by then, having failed to get you to a hospice. At first you weren't sick enough, then you were too sick. Dying is a bastard, no straight lines.
Your own room, just in time to be unconscious. But it wasn't for you I guess, but for us to say good bye. It's funny, that day, when none of us were going to make it by, my brother was there too, and her. The first time we met her, and the last. I was grateful on your behalf, that she had stuck around to say good bye. |
eddy | ˈɛdi | noun (plural eddies) a circular movement of water causing a small whirlpool: the current was forming foam-lipped eddies along the bank| eddies of controversy swirled around his theories. • a circular movement of wind, fog, or smoke: an eddy of chill air swirled into the carriage. verb (eddies, eddying, eddied) [no object, with adverbial of direction] (of water, air, or smoke) move in a circular way: the mists from the river eddied round the banks. |