Six Last Lessons

lesson two: we will never be the same again

The trees were bare, and the earth was hard with frost.

My shoes sounded muffled as they tapped against the cold concrete, stifled by the thick mist that had descended more than a week ago. I jammed my hands into my pockets, but despite the fact that my body trembled with cold, and I could no longer feel my feet, my mind was elsewhere.

When everything you know to be real and solid is whisked from under your feet, you learn to cling to the things that are steady and safe like your life depends on it. And perhaps, I thought, it did.

Finding out about Adam's illness had turned the concrete under our feet to sand. Suddenly, next year was not a possibility. Next year, in my own mind, was a void, which I skirted around very carefully. The last thing I wanted was to fall in. I didn't want to find myself thinking about a time when I could no longer look Adam's sister in the eye, because her eyes were so similar to his, so blue and earnest and bright. I couldn't stand to accept that one day, Adam would stop, and I would have to keep going.

My breath was a cloud in front of me, and I exhaled sharply, as if I could expel the heavy feeling in my chest if I tried hard enough. But I knew better.

I was hunched down in my coat, my eyes fixed on the pavement ahead of me, my view filled with cracked cement. I didn't have to look up to know that the flowers had long since withered. They were gone. Death is present in all of our lives, from start to finish. But winter reminds me of it the most.

The light is pale and weak, and everything it touches is bleak and pale. I think about Adam. I think about how pale he is, how weak. I think about the light, and how it seems almost exhausted, as if making it through the grey clouds has drained it of all it's brilliance. And then I think about something else, because I don't want to cry.

So instead, I turn my mind to Alice. Brave Alice. Bright Alice. She is small and intelligent, almost a head shorter than me, but she makes up for it with her warm presence. She makes us laugh, she picks us up when we fall and the prospect of standing up again is almost incomprehensible. I think about how she tries so hard to keep us together, but we are all coming apart so fast, and I think about how it is breaking her, although she doesn't show it.

I don't want to think about Alice. I don't want to think at all. So instead, I think about Charlotte. Clever Lottie. Quiet Lottie. With her quiet demeanour, and her remarkable ability to place herself in somebody else's shoes, to empathise. She fixes people, listens in a way I never could, with her limitless patience and endless understanding. I think about her and I want to protect her, like I want to protect Alice and Adam. Lottie is silent and strong in her own way, but in her dark eyes I see pain, and darkness, and the loss of all hope. And there I am, scrambling in the dark, trying to find a way to fix all of them, because perhaps if they are okay, I can be whole and I can be okay too.

But I am not. They are not. We are not okay.

It's sobering to discover that you can't protect those that you love from everything. Death is inevitable, but before this bitter winter, I didn't think about it at all. I didn't notice it's shadowy presence behind me; I just kept going, as we all do, towards the inevitable end.

I stopped abruptly. The gate was frosty and the ground was covered with a coating of white, so I walked the path with studious care. I didn't want to fall over. Any sudden movements, I thought, and I might come apart. And now wasn't the time to fall apart, not when I had to hold us all together.

I let myself in, because it as well have been my own house, I had spent so much time there. Inside it was warm, and the Christmas decorations were bright. The Christmas tree could be seen in the lounge at the end of the hallway, adorned lovingly with assorted baubles, accumulated over the years. Some were old, made of glass, and hand painted with great care. Others were cheap plastic, and then there were the ones we had made as children, with clumsy strokes in garish tones of bright green and red. The fairy lights blinked welcomingly, their reflections distorted on the surface of the baubles. Everything was as it should be, with the sprigs of holly, and tinsel, and a sparkly star at the top of the tree. Mrs Marshall was nothing if not thorough.

Alice appeared at the top of the stairs, and I could only see her feet from where I stood in the doorway.

"We're up here." She said, rising up onto her toes as she spoke. I watched, silent, unmoving. "In my bedroom."

I followed her voice up the stairs, grasping the banister tight even though my fingers were cold and it hurt. My cheeks and nose tingled as the blood came back to them, and I slowly regained feeling.

In Alice's bedroom, I found Lottie, sitting on the bed with her legs crossed. She looked up at me, smiling. But her gaze was behind me, and it fell as I closed the door and it became clear that nobody was coming in after me.

"Is Adam coming?" she asked, hopeful, even though we both knew he wasn't.

"No. He's not- he's got a fever." I said, even though we both knew already. Saying it like that, it almost sounded as if that was the only thing the matter.

I took my coat off, dumping it on the bed.

"Where's Alice?" I asked, rubbing my legs, because the denim of my jeans retained the cold from outside, and my legs were still somewhat numb.

"She's gone to get more food." Lottie said, with a small smile, "Seeing as you arrived."

"Sushi?"

"Yeah."

"Lovely."

She was fiddling with something that clinked as she moved it, and I said nothing as I closed my eyes and leant my head back against the wall, allowing the warmth to seep into me again.

"How are you doing with that?" Alice asked as she walked into the room, and I opened my eyes. On a plate, she carried a dozen or so sushi rolls. She smiled, setting the plate down on the bed in front of me, before sitting down on the floor.

"Well, you know. I stuck my fingers together." Lottie said casually. Alice rolled her eyes, and I leaned forward.

"What are you doing?" I asked, picking up a roll of sushi.

"This statue fell down from the shelf. You know, the Christmas angel? Broke clean into three pieces." Alice said sadly.

"We're trying to fix it." Lottie said, "But it's not easy. And it won't look the same."

"Here, let me help." I said, swallowing hard even as I dropped my sushi roll, untouched, onto the plate.

We glued carefully, first, the head to the neck. Holding it together, we waited until it dried, and then with the utmost care, we glued the delicate wing back to the body, where it curled around the angel's slight frame. I'd never noticed it, always having been too short to see it properly on the shelf where it resided, too young to care. It was beautiful, the detail in it's face giving it an almost haunting countenance.

There were tiny cracks where it had fallen apart. Really, the impact should have destroyed it. We had fixed it, but it would never be the same again.

I allowed myself to think about the fact that we were changed. And we would never be the same again. But perhaps there was still hope, and although there were cracks and holes and voids we weren't ready to face, perhaps there would come a day when we could be whole again.