He was dying for a long time, but his death took just a short while.
He had planned his funeral, he had written his will and he had said some select goodbyes.
Nurses came and went as dignity and indignity intertwined. He was trying to die, but he could not let go. She played him Django Reinhardt, and heard his last breath. Django was playing when he reached the other side too, she was sure of it.
He spoke to her in dreams. She felt him again.
He wasn’t always the easiest company. He was a musician. He was interesting, exciting, dynamic – he was so alive. On stage he was ever present, he was authoritative. He was life itself.
And then the illness took over the life. And the fog fell.
She can’t go out in the fog
She can’t breathe
She panics
She grieves
But now the fog is just a shadow. A cloud where the fog was once. A silhouette of past trauma.
And suddenly more fog lifts, and skies are clear.
And she must live.
Nobody could tell her how to grieve, so like everyone before her she muddled through in a haze of fuck ups and misguided decisions. And then she ran away, to live with an easy man. To live a perfect life. The kind of life that he, the musician, would have sneered at, teased her for.
And suddenly more fog lifts, and skies are clear.
And she must live.
She is suffocating in perfect suburban bliss.
She searches for her life.