Nobody asks me for my opinion any more. That’s another thing no one tells you about old age. People talk about the weather or the telly, and sometimes they ask a little bit about how you are keeping, but they don’t stay long for an answer. Everything has to go on in your head because there’s so little life left in the world outside. I think that’s why so many old people go crackers. If the dementia doesn’t get you then the loneliness will.
When I look back over my life, it’s not always the big events that I can remember. It’s mostly silly little things: a laugh at a party, Len taking my hand or George flying a kite that Christmas after the flood. Sometimes I’m not so sure that any of them happened at all. Was I actually there? I wonder. It’s like I’m looking at a photograph of myself and thinking that the woman in it could be almost anyone. It certainly never seems to be me.
Of course I can’t acknowledge how much of my life has gone and that there’s so little of it left. I can’t accept that Martin is no longer a child, that the men who mattered to me are dead, or that I am old. How many springtimes will I see? How many birthdays? And who will be with me to celebrate them?
Celebrate: well, there’s a funny word for it.
I was a different person in the past, always up for a bit of larking. Now I’m more serious. I suppose it’s because there’s so much less to be larky about. And it’s all gone so fast; that’s what Mother always said: gone so quick. I never believed her when she told me. I thought I had ages and that she’d just wasted her life. I even thought that she was somehow to blame for her old age, and that perhaps if she’d lived differently and appreciated everything more then she wouldn’t have found herself in such a state at the end. I thought it was all her fault. And yet, of course it wasn’t. I know that now.
When you’re old and alone you sometimes have to stop yourself thinking too much. You have to give yourself a good talking to, or have a chat with an old photograph. Imagine he’s there with you for a cup of tea and a bit of a laugh. People might think it a bit mad but sometimes it’s the sanest thing you can do. If you can’t do that then you have to find things to look forward to and get on with it. No one likes a moaner.
Sometimes I think, Oh, why bother? Can’t I take a pill or something? but then I hear Len’s voice coming back to me all over again: Come on, old girl. The last battle.
And that’s what it is. And I’m fighting it in every way I can. Mostly it’s the small things, having nice soap and making myself presentable, but they all add up. I can still cook and I like to keep everything clean. It may be a bit vain but I think it’s only common courtesy. You don’t want other people seeing you when you’re not at your best or without your make-up.
I do think about dying, of course I do, but I can’t ever quite imagine it happening to me. George had the right idea. He must have known, walking off the jetty like that. And for Len to die with a chuckle thinking the whole thing was a joke, well, you have to hand it to him. Both of them knew how to go, whereas I haven’t the foggiest.
When I do get scared I think of all the things my friends have said to me in the past. I hear their voices. I see their smiles. I remember the way they laughed and I try to imagine they’re still with me.
It’s the voices that matter most because when I hear them I can make myself believe that they haven’t died at all. They keep talking, and laughing, and dancing, and they won’t fall silent, I know they won’t, because I am keeping their memory safe for them and they’re always close by.
And in the end it doesn’t really matter whether they are alive or dead because they are still with me and with all who remember them.
And then I think of the things I’ve learnt in life, and how you have to keep living through it as best you can, and that death is simply the last thing you have to get through.
I try to picture myself dancing towards it with everyone I’ve ever known in an endless reel, all of us changing hands, one and then another, each in turn, past all our memories and our fears towards a future we cannot ever quite grasp. The orchestra is playing and we have forgiven each other everything and we keep moving, dancing towards the light, and I can’t ever imagine it ending because we are together at last and for ever, it’s as simple as that, and no one is ever going to ask us to stop.