Everything is blue

Still Waters - by Jacqueline King

It’s a sleepy Sunday afternoon and I’m in the last few chapters of a rollicking good novel and like all good novels my inclination is to not quite finish it. I imagine that if I don’t finish it somehow, I can leave the characters alive. The now very real to me characters that I’ve infused with life in all its intensity and nuance, as if I can feel their skin, their scent, their intent, their very mystery.

Then I fall into a chapter that really lights me up in a dialogue where a very kind mature lady from an aged care community, Joyce attempts to help a dear friend who has experienced a life reducing event. The friend, Ibrahim had a long career as a psychiatrist so he’s no fool when it comes to human motivation.

Humour me while I recount the chapter section of note here…

‘I just love to see a horse in a field,’ says Joyce. ‘When you can tell their happy. Happiness is what life is all about, don’t you think?’

Ibrahim shakes his head. ‘I can’t agree. The secret of life is death. Everything is about death, you see.’

‘Well, recently, yes,’ agrees Joyce. ‘But surely not everything? That seems a bit much?’

‘In essence,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Our existence only makes sense because of it; it provides meaning to our narrative. Our direction of travel is always towards it. Our behaviour is either because we fear it, or because we choose to deny it. We could drive past this spot once a year, every year, and neither the horse nor ourselves would be younger. Everything is death.’

‘That’s one way of looking at things, I suppose,’ says Joyce.

‘It’s the only way,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Will there be a toilet at the rescue centre?’

‘You would think so,’ says Joyce. ‘And if not, there will be a staff toilet.’

‘Oh, I can’t use a staff toilet,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I always feel I haven’t earned it.’

‘Surely if everything is about death, then also nothing is about death?’ says Joyce, applying lipstick in the passenger mirror.

‘How so?’ asks Ibrahim.

‘Well, just say that everything was blue. You, me, Alan, everything?’

‘OK.’

‘Well, if everything was blue then we wouldn’t need the word “blue”, would we?’

‘I accept that,’ accepts Ibrahim.

‘And if we had no word for blue then nothing would be blue, would it?’

‘Well, death is an event, and so…’ begins Ibrahim, then sees the entrance to the rescue centre up on his left. ‘We’re here!’

Which is a relief, because Joyce does sort of have a point.

Perhaps everything isn’t about death after all?

(Extract from The Man Who Died Twice – Richard Osman)

Clear Waters - by Jacqueline King

Now perhaps if you’ve read this far one of two thoughts might arise. The first being ‘I wonder where I can purchase this book as it sounds cool?’, the second being ‘What on earth is her point in sharing this?’ and I accept the second question as the only one I can act upon.

The first question you can act upon yourselves, and I recommend you do!

To address the second question, I must lean on my own lived experience where death touched me profoundly way too young and without preparation. I lost my mum to a sudden death while I was barely out of school.

Strangely it became a kind of gift over the years as I never doubted my own destination, itself being death too, with a certainty that isn’t afforded most people without that first hand direct and shattering brute force touch.

‘Where’s the gift?’ you ask?

It’s held in the certain knowledge of this whole thing, life, being staggeringly brief. It’s the urgency to experience life and to love, to create while there is time. We think we know this innately, but I can assure you that knowledge and experience are two different things entirely and the first of the two can be pushed aside easily enough but the second cannot.

So, what lit me up in this extract?

It’s the very idea that I may have missed in my hurried journey to experience and create on my inevitable march to death. The idea that death itself is everywhere therefore it’s no longer a colour, no longer a word.

It’s the notion that I need to let loose that inevitable destination and dance slower in the day right in front of me.

So, I wrote this all down as maybe it’ll do that for you too…

Maybe everything really is blue!

Bursting out with Love - by Jacqueline King

 Post Script: While writing this little blog that insisted on being, a dear friend called and we spoke about his Dad, Strawb, nearly 95 and not well. Tears and love filled the spaces in between words.