This Substack series, ‘Dying to tell you’, is a memoir-meets-manifesto, born in the ‘quiet room’ of a hospice that was anything but. From candid cancer tales to dark humour, and stirring scenes of raw human courage, this series is an exploration of life, love and loss as I share - through essays and poetry - my observations whilst working in a British hospice over the course of five years.
Yorkshire puddings
He has a kind face and it’s the kind faces I drive home and think about;
the blue eyes: once ocean, now grey, that don’t light up like they used to
and the warm smile that falters at the edges.
I wonder what he was like before.
‘Life wasn’t meant to be like this,’ he says.
They were going to go to Paris and drink champagne on cobbled streets;
get married upon a rolling sunlit hill and renovate a boat.
Sundays, for the next thirty years,
would be spent at bootsales buying old scratched vinyls
and cooking roasts with extra Yorkshire puddings,
because if there’s one thing she loved in life,
it was Yorkshire puddings.
‘She’s always with you,’ I say, but neither of us quite believe it,
because how is that so
when there is one more bottle of champagne in Paris than there should be,
a vinyl player that doesn’t spin anymore
and three Yorkshire puddings that go cold on Sundays?
How is that so when her wildflower eyes no longer catch his across a room;
when his mouth cannot feather those berry-stained lips;
when the melody of her laugh is lost.
She was grace and joy and light, he says,
and now she is gone.
I drive home and think about this man: kind face and graying eyes
with a smile that falters at the edges,
and of the tidal wave of grief that has swept him away.
He is alive and smiling, buoyed by love,
but he is as gone as she is.
I think about the promises he’ll never make to her upon a rolling sunlit hill
and how an oblivious couple - giddy in love - might drink their champagne in Paris.
And I think of this woman and her Yorkshire puddings.
I wonder of her grace and joy and light;
the depths of this man’s smile as he basked in it.
I wonder what he was like
before the loss;
before he became his loss.
This absolutely gutted me, Kathy. What beautiful writing. The image of one extra bottle of champagne in Paris? What a heartbreaking way to think of loss. But then, to imagine it being drunk by another couple? How poignant <3
My goodness, that’s poignant, Kathy. Pausing to think of friends who have outlived their beloved partners.