A Poppy

The safe unlocked and a key to the front-door pieced in my hand.  The warm Saturday morning air lies still and heavy round the house.

Entrance - stark, sharp stained-glass.  Red and green shards of diffracted light on the varnished wooden floor.  There is a Japanese lacquered vase on the shelf in the hall, beside it a single red poppy.  She's barely conscious as I come through to her bedroom.  My younger brother is there.  He shows me the ropes, the stash of liquid morphine to dull the pain, the crumbled paracetamol to sprinkle over her food, and then we are alone together.

I hold her hand.  The skin is wafer-thin, stretched taught across her twisted arthritic bones.  She trembles slightly and awakes, her eyes rheumy and heavy-lidded.  I think she recognises me for a second, and then she is gone once more, chasing down the pain toward another fitful sleep.

I sit beside her, at peace.

We talk at intervals throughout the day - sometimes lucid, sometimes not.  Dear Uncle Malcolm, just married and riding his courier motorcycle across some distant Asian island.  Invaded.  The Japanese took his life, and the single poppy bears memory.  She remembers him each day.  An unmarked grave in a distant place.

She wanders in and out of consciousness.

We're off on holiday now, I don't know quite where. I run down an ice-cream van for her, and two precious spoons of melting sugar pass her lips.  At peace, and the light holds her for a second, breathing.

"Where is she?"  Waking fitfully again, she calls, "You can tell me, I won't cry."  Hilary died many, many year ago, the wheels of her bicycle spinning uselessly.  And she is here with us.  Captured in a black and white photograph on her bedside table.

We pass the day together.  Walking the dead .. endless.