Disappearing Me

  I can’t remember   when it was I stopped really   looking at you, but here beside me in bed, I am shocked to see that you have turned into someone old. Lying facing me, your head on the pillow, I can see how the loose flesh has distorted your face into   a melted waxwork   facsimile of someone I used to know. Your mouth, half open and relaxed, your exhalation deep and rhythmic, I can smell the night’s sleep on your breath. Your eyes closed in sleep allow me to   examine your lashes which even now, are longer than they should be on a man. Your eyebrows are barely visible as like your hair, they have turned snow white. I never knew you when you were young, but you often talk of how red your hair was and how proud you felt for it being so. The only concession to your   heritage now being the golden tinge to the hairs on your arms, and your temper when crossed. You tell me you had freckles as a child, and although your skin suggests a vulnerability to the sun, all I see are the l

  She wanted no fuss. No ceremony, no gathering of people wearing their ill-fitting, moth balled best. No one there out of duty   and the hope of a cup of tea with cake afterwards. Just her family- meagre at that- and me. It was the farewell we had talked about for several years on my trips to see her. It had been a game of sorts initially, both of us making light of the day that was approaching as if on the incoming tide that twice a day covered the salt marsh near her home. An ebbing away from life that little bit more each time I saw her. Then as her illness progressed and the certainty of her going felt more real to us both, the laughter gave way to a silence in which her thoughts and mine met and danced together in the sunlit room overlooking her garden towards her “ blue remembered   hills” in the north.    She loved her garden, a rebellion of wildflowers and ivy cloaked trees. A small patch of woodland dropped into the pristine neighbourhood which caused disgust to those w