Moving Finger - Issue 3 - Brunel University

opulence and luxury of still, private moments. People I love and know move typically
around the room, their own private gesture captured in their sways. I will never love them
more than I do now. I want to be them, at one with this painfully intimate crowd. I want
to have been part of their lives, longer than merely my own lifetime. They have loved and
lost and they face that now. I am so painfully aware of my age, so young and innocent
and with 'so much ahead of me', but I don't seem to count in the chronology of their lives.
I would give my soul to understand the reason for the dullness in their eyes. Their
comradeship goes beyond my entire life. I haven't shared 30 years with one person and
haven't had to face the prospect of losing them, of being so totally alone. The only thing
that can bring relief is to stand in a kitchen on a cool Sunday and laugh with the people
who understand that this is the only way I can stay sane.
Cassandra Phillp
A DAY IN THE LIFE
The box stands so woodenly, topped with flowers, cut off in their prime, soon as dead
as the box. Their scent hardly permeates the cool dank air of St Mary's. I stifle a cough,
choking on the past.
He told me they began here. On a hot June day, with the smell of roses and freshly cut
grass in the air, they had promised, ‘Till death do us part.' And on a cold January day it
did, with me listening to her wheezy breathing slow and stop, and feeling her hand go
cold in mine.
'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today....' Bitter tears are caught by black ties and
white tissues as her existence is condensed into five minutes by an emotionless vicar. 'We
deliver her soul to the merciful Lord....' Merciful? If he were merciful, she would still be
here, a wife, mother, daughter, friend, cooking the dinner, watching Coronation Street
and feeding the cat. She'd be more than a pine box, a brass plaque and a wooden cross.
And as we bury her, the sky cries too. Its cold clear tears fall on my face and I shiver.
Everything seems as empty as a freshly dug grave and as she descends and we whisper
our final words, there is only one thought in my mind: I love you, Mum.
Clare Woods
WAKE UP
It is time. The day has come for me to say farewell. It's come too soon. Brothers,
uncles, cousins, aunts are rushing like swarms of disturbed bees, hastily preparing for his
return. White sheets are being thrown across the dark green carpets and prayers are
echoing in the house. My father is coming home; he's coming briefly, never to return
again. I'm supposed to feel pain, but my body is numb. I should be crying, but there's not
a trickle in my eye. I watch these people, wondering why they are weeping for a person
they never knew as well as I did. What gives them the right to wail for someone I loved
more than they ever could?
Finding a small space away from the multitude of weepers and their songs of woe, I
crouched down like a ball with my knees locked closely to my chest and any arms
wrapped around them. I rocked back and forth like the swaying of a pendulum, trying to
escape. Enclosed in memories of moments we shared together, I didn't hear my mother
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