JUE POST 2

Just this here now…

… became our mantra in the dying days. I stole it from her friend, who believes the road to God lies in meditation and world music. When Pandy returned to the hospice, I would sign off my texts with it and she would return it. I wrote a short story using the mantra and read it to her on a bright November morning, when she was still in our summer room that will always be Andrea’s room; sat on her bed that I said I wouldn’t keep but kept anyway – it was there, but I didn’t plan it that way, or did I?  A freshly decorated summer room and a new downstairs bathroom, in exchange for caring for my dying sister. Guilt. It’s a normal part of grieving; I must keep telling myself that, but what about greed?

Andrea was greedy at the end – greedy for custard and Tunnocks teacakes and moisturiser and massages and tears and pyjamas and tantrums and sunsets and me. She devoured me, tugged life from my hands, and I read her a story that told her this, told how I struggled to cope, but I hid the truth in a mantra, hypnotised her with a sentimental lie.  That story, that cheap trick, won 3^rd place in a competition. I never want to read it again.