Broken Wings

There was no warning from a magpie.

No signal or sign.

No chance to prepare.

Or to brace for impact.

Before I saw The Man Who Used to Be My Dad.

In a wheelchair.

Or Christian roared the colour red.

And I fell down the stairs.

Or he pushed me.

Before I became eight years old and my mother.

In the blink of an eye.

Swift descent.

 

I am on the left side of my bed in South London. His side. Facing the French doors that look out onto the garden. I need to water the grass.

 

There is no magpie roaming free.

There is nothing.

 

I have not eaten properly in eight days. Not since I left North London for South; his home for mine. Again. Not since he threw the remote control at my head with such force that I saw bright stars and a galaxy behind my eyes. Since I presented poached eggs instead of ‘sunny side up’ for breakfast and he called me ‘a stupid bitch’. If I didn’t want to make it properly, I shouldn’t have made it at all. He cooks for me every single day, and does he complain? No. He is fed up of waiting on me hand and foot. It’s a fucking egg, not rocket science. And I’m supposed to be a barrister? What a joke. It doesn’t matter that I offered to make it again or that I said ‘sorry’. Nothing matters any more.

 

My taste buds are dead, so it doesn’t matter if I eat or don’t eat. I don’t care about food or cooking, not like I did when we cooked and ate together. When I think about food, I think about him. I am not hungry. I cannot eat. I drink coffee and manage a slice of toast and a boiled egg every day. For eight days. I check my phone for a message. I try to work. Or signs of his activity. Is he online? I need to concentrate. I need to work.

 

I am mid-trial. Murder. Central Criminal Court. Led by Queen’s Counsel. There is a broken-hearted mother in the third row of the public gallery. She comes every day to watch her son sit in the dock flanked by Serco security officers. To listen to the heinous things he has allegedly done to another human being. Denied bail. And in time his liberty for some twenty-five years. A young adult, unrealised potential, a wasted life. There is another mother in the front row. She sits broken-hearted and listens to the merciless way her son was robbed of his life, violently and prematurely. To hear how he spent his final minutes in this life before he passed to the next. She comes to court every day. While her son lies six feet underground in Mitcham cemetery. A young adult, unrealised potential, a wasted life. They grieve. Six feet apart in the public gallery. For the sons they have loved and lost. For their lives irrevocably altered. For the pain that has made its forever home in their broken hearts.

 

We rise for lunch. A call from Sol to let me know that Dad is in hospital, again. They suspect another stroke. A mild one. He is stable for now. Sol will keep me posted.

 

I don’t know what a mild stroke is. Or whether it will affect the left side of his body in the same way it has affected the right. I don’t know anything anymore.