Not Waving But Drowning

"I really don't know how to begin and there must be so many more people you ...". "No, No, it is quite all right, just trying to find the words to describe your experience is an achievement in itself. Do sit down and try to relax,tell me in your own way of the situation..."."It was a long narrow room as I recall,the window at it's furthest end looked out and down into the town which looked like a Lowryesque landscape.The inner furnishings were devoid of any statements of character save perhaps a large Van Gogh print on the wall,illustrative of the artist's struggle against the onset of a final and tragic despair. No one seemed present at first,but standing at the open door as I was, I sensed rather than saw a slight movement and from above the wheelchair that was placed near the window a tendril of smoke manifested itself to slowly fight its way upward to be lost in the stilled damp and slightly fetid air. The chair now was propelled around and recovering from this seemingly explosive movement settled gradually back on it's uncertain base,righting itself like as if it was a drunken soldier called to parade who still wanted to preserve some semblance of order.
It is difficult to describe her now,to you,or even to myself, so many emotions, so many memories tangled up together, hard to live with what remains. Yet even now in her ravaged loveliness there is such a presence about her, a haunting loveliness of feature that desperately echoes what she was as if she was left in some travesty of a play without players. She still has the signs of her youth and beauty,these long tapering fingers that flitting over the piano produced the notes that married with my father's rich baritone singing sounded out the riches of our once musical home.These fingers, slim and tapering,pale and hopelessly fragile now and tapering to delicate ends held the still burning cigarette,burning away at almost the same rate as herself. I offered her greetings,kissing her tenderly on the forehead,yet she spoke no word to me,but her face became a welter of emotions,expressions of grief, anger, loss and despair,hope and yet love and all mixed together like some ethereal storm chasing scudding clouds.

Her clothes were nondescript, a black dress of uncertain vintage covered her with a high ruff at her neck to the voluminous material that swept to her ankles.Her raven hair cascaded still down her back and the tresses found their fitting end embracing her still trim waist.She was here and yet she was not,she was out there on the ocean and far from shore she seemed to me to be waving or maybe not waving but drowning.The visit seemed poignantly pointless,she was clearly falling away in some miasma of being that I only had permission to enter when moments of clarity intruded into her thought life. I barely noticed the nurse sitting quietly knitting in a corner of the room as I stumbled out the door,eyes filling only just gasping out"goodbye Mother" as I left." "I understand now how you must feel" the Psychiatrist said," here is a prescription for you,leave a cheque won't you at reception and I will see you next week at the same time". I sagged into my jacket and left his office,my forehead furrowed and far too many painkillers in my pocket than I had excuses for.I walked down the drive,blinded by emotions,hoping to Christ that there was a God for I knew that I, a dancer in the dark was far far too blind to see.Too deep for tears I needed a God who would come down and weep with me and then as I walked and walked something stirred in my memory and told me that I knew of Him already,that He was there, that He loved me,that He would walk into the darkness with me and the shadows that were cast around me were lit on and through my mind by the strangest thing, someone my late father had taught me was always with him and with Mother and that I could know Him too.He was the one that knew the weight of sorrow, knew Death yet was not destroyed by it, and it was His Hand that was pierced for me and at last the healing tears began and I wept and He walked and wept with me.