July 6th. 4.25am
I turned twenty-eight yesterday, an age I never thought I’d reach. An age I never particularly wanted to reach and now, here I am. I am real grown up with real grown up problems like debt and death and loneliness. My Grandmother died this evening, whilst I was at work. My father, who was the only one of her three children able to see her on her death bed spent her final two hours with by her side, watching as the breath left her for good. I do not believe in an after-life, and so to me, she is just gone; washed from existence in a cloud of cancer, morphine and the low hum of hospital equipment.
I feel nothing yet. I am numb to the pain of death. I spent the last few weeks expecting to die myself from one incorrigible ailment or another, and found myself almost disappointed when I made it over the hump of twenty-seven (that dangerous age for the creative addicts of the world) and venturing into unknown territory. It is just gone four AM and I have work in about twelve hours. I work in hospitality, sadly, not the world of literature. If I worked in the world of literature I’d be at work right now and I could get drunk until midday and sleep until eight. If I worked in the world of literature I’d have deadlines and lay-ins and bottles lining a desk with an old type-writer on it. But I work in hospitality, so I have shirts and black jeans and a rota to stick to. I have paperwork to sign to say that I’m not sick and money to count which isn’t mine and habits to kick. I work for a face on a wall and a payslip at the end of the week. I have rent to pay and post to avoid and phone calls I don’t want to have and blood tests and Doctors appointments and several pills a day to combat chemical misery.
On Saturday –my twenty-eighth birthday- we re-opened the pub and quickly found ourselves surrounded by absent minded drunkards too stoned on ignorance to follow simple guidelines like ‘stand on the dots’ and ‘six to a table’. We opened our doors to the infected public and comforted ourselves with our sanitizer and one metre plus distancing rules. I worked for eight hours, walked home and drank a few non alcoholic beers. I am one week sober today and Jesus Christ did I pick the wrong time to have a personal revelation. I have to be an adult. I have to deal with death and taxes, the two universal constants with which we are all too familiar. I could have killed myself a week ago and never lived to see the pain and misery that attacks me and those I hold dear at each turn, around each sharp bend. I could have carried on drinking and using drugs and numbed myself to the realities of adult life but no, I had to have a waking moment and clean up my act in time for the grand re-fuckening that is the easing of lock-down and the re-opening of pubs and restaurants. Of course I don't blame the industry. Only the government. We are doing all we can in this trying time and I feel sorrow for every worker in every pub across the country. I could have died before my Grandmother and never had to worry about figuring out grief at my own confused pace.
As I said, I currently feel nothing at all. I am numb, and I am led to believe that that is quite a normal reaction to terrible news. I’m more concerned with the family and the practicalities than I am with the news its self, and I am certain that it will become more real to me at the most inopportune moment; likely sometime tomorrow when I am managing the shift and trying to keep my composure under an already stressful set of circumstances. Life waits for no man and death takes no prisoners. Death comes when it wants to and takes who it wants to and ruins what it wants to and hates without prejudice. Be it a wilting rose or a failing heart, a fallen tree or a burnt out star, all things must end. Ashes to ashes flames to smoke, the truth of it all is it’s all a joke.
But we soldier on through the storms. We clear out our loved ones attics and give their sofas to goodwill so that someone else might die on them later. We plan our days and we plan our funerals and we do whatever we can to forget or postpone the inevitable. But these things are inevitable. So we love without sense and we dance without rhythm and we drink without mixer and we sleep with strangers. We fuck and fight and hate and cry and we believe whatever we can to help us get by. Me? I believe in nothing; perhaps in better living through chemistry but not much else. I have no profound sense of spirit or self or universal truth. I take no comfort in prayer or meditation and I have never seen a mid-filled glass and called it half full. Even when a glass is filled to the brim I’m likely to note that it’s mostly ice and barely whisky.
Yesterday I turned twenty-eight, and today my Grandmother died. I am numb and I have work in eleven hours. If I was a real writer I’d already be at work and I could sleep until eight. But alas, I have pills to take.
Walter Laurence, on death and income.
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