A Visit From Death

This is the first time I’ll see him. In a small, windowless room. I am 35 years old. I feel numb. He isn’t here yet, he’s waiting somewhere. There’s so much waiting in hospitals.

Of course, he’s visited before. I’ve heard friends and family talk about him. I think I might even have been in the same room as him once or twice, but those memories have become so eroded by time that I can’t recall his face. I can’t have seen him. He must have already left before I arrived. I’m sure I’d remember his face.

This time though, I do see him. Well, not directly. But he is definitely here, just a shadow. I see him first in her eyes. Then I hear him in the sharp intake of breath she takes as she hears the words. I see him in her tortured face as she clasps her hands to her mouth to stop that breath coming back out as a scream. I feel him shake her, and squeeze tears into her eyes as the news hits. But I can’t look directly at him.

There is a computer monitor in the corner that shows the evidence, perhaps even the judgement too if I could understand it, and we await sentencing on uncomfortable plastic chairs. The walls are covered in charts and posters containing information on conditions and cancers that I can’t bear to look at. The only bright light comes from industrial strip lighting with no hint of the divine or celestial. It is silent bar the hum of the lights and the sounds of distant machines, and remains so as she takes her hands from her mouth. She composes herself and takes my hand. He is still here though, I can see him in her bloodshot eyes. I am numb.

How can we see the wind? How do we know it is there? We see its effect on the trees, we hear it as it moves past us and we feel it brushing up against us. We see how the world around us reacts under its pressure and we know for certain that it is there. Today, I have seen him reflected in her face.

I know that he is here, and I know that he is here not for her, but for me.

What happened to him, where did he go? I had seen him reflected in her so clearly. I could feel him as I had done years before, but it was different this time: he was closer, I could almost touch him. Almost. Not this time.

This time, I have seen him as Perseus saw Medusa: reflected in a polished shield that protects me from his direct gaze. And this time, he has been cut from me, seething and spitting, a dark chaotic growth. But next time? In what guise will he return? Next time, when I’m told that he is coming back, maybe I won’t feel so numb. Maybe I’ll be ready, and I won’t have to see him reflected in her eyes. I can’t look at him that way again, because I can’t bear to look at her that way again.

But I have seen him, I’ve seen his effect on the world around me. I’ve seen that grief will be the reflection of the void he creates, a black hole visible only by the effect of its inescapable gravity. Death isn’t what happens to the dead, it is the aftershock that hits those who stay behind.

She protects me now, but how will I protect her then?

I am 44 years old. The industrial lights flicker above and the machines hum in another room not too far away. My shield sits beside me, she is quietly reading. And him? I haven’t seen him for a while. He’ll be here again soon enough. He’s waiting here somewhere. There’s so much waiting in hospitals.

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