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34
The next day, Danny took Joe and Daisy back to Cambridge. He and Sally planned to fly up again in the next few days and stay at The Elms so that Sally could say her goodbyes to old friends and make any necessary arrangements for her death. So as soon as Joe and Daisy were safely disembarked, and they had said their goodbyes, Danny turned the flutter around and took off straight away.
When Danny got back from the airfield, he found Sally sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea. She looked up and smiled at him as he came in, but he thought he detected a little uncertainty. She gestured at the teapot, saying it was fresh and warm, so he poured himself a cup and added milk and a little honey, and sat down at the old pine table, opposite her.
“You OK? Do you want to talk about it?” He looked into her large grey blue eyes.
“I’m fine, honestly . . . last night was lovely, and I’m glad we’ve got it all out in the open and the children all understand what I want to do, and they seem OK with that . . . and I’m glad Johnny was with us too. I sort of feel I’m letting him down somehow, which is silly, because there’s you and the children who I’m leaving as well, but you know, you all have each other, and it’s sort of what we sign up for, parents and children, in sickness and in health, but Johnny’s all alone, apart from me . . . d’you understand love?” Sally finished, looking back into his eyes.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything; there didn’t seem to be anything that really needed to be said.
About two weeks later, they got a call from Susan Gibbons. She wanted Sally to come in for another scan. Sally said that she felt fine, and questioned whether there was any need for another scan if she hadn’t deteriorated at all, but Susan explained that the tumour could continue to grow without necessarily producing any obvious further symptoms or effects. So they arranged a time, and as before Johnny brought Sally to the airfield on his cart while Danny cycled over to Earl’s Colne to collect the flutter. He made a note to himself to set up some sort of temporary hangar up on the village airfield so the flutter could stay there for the summer. He had no idea how long they had, but if there was an emergency, it was much better to have the flutter on their doorstep and there be no need for him to get to Earl’s Colne airfield first.
Susan Gibbons met them at the landing strip at the university and walked with them to the physics lab where the scanner unit was housed. As they walked she asked Sally how she had been feeling, and asked Danny if he had noticed any deterioration in Sally’s movement or other behaviours. Sally confirmed that she had been feeling fine, if anything better than when she was first diagnosed, and Danny said he’d really not noticed anything, and at the beginning at least, he’d been on the lookout all the time for any sign that Sally was getting worse.
They waited for a few minutes while the technicians prepared the machine and Sally was laid on the gurney ready to be inserted into the scanner. Then Susan Gibbons gave the thumbs up, and Danny bent down and kissed Sally on her forehead, and she was wheeled and then slid into the large doughnut shaped aperture. The scan took about twenty minutes, with the technician monitoring the displays and various dials and meters and Susan Gibbons looking over her shoulder. Danny resisted the temptation to take a peak or ask any questions. Finally a buzzer sounded, and the technician turned the scanner off, and Sally was withdrawn from the tube. The lab technicians helped her off the gurney and they were taken back to Susan Gibbons’ office, and a nurse offered them each a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Susan Gibbons came into her office a few minutes later, smiling warmly and reassuringly. They both looked anxiously at her, waiting for her to speak.
“Well, we can see why there has been no deterioration” she said. “The tumour has continued to grow, as we expected, but no faster than we expected, but at the moment it’s growing into a void in the brain, so it’s putting no pressure on anything else. It may continue to do that for some time. So even if you have no further symptoms, I’d like to do another scan in two or three weeks, just to keep an eye on things. And, of course, if anything happens in the meantime, you just have to call me. Now”, she sat on the edge of her desk, looking at them both, “do you have any questions, or concerns?”
They looked at each other, questioningly. Sally shook her head. Danny looked back at Susan Gibbons. “Is this good, or bad, or what you’d expect?”
“Well, to be completely honest, I don’t really know” said Susan. “Sally’s my first patient with a brain tumour, and there isn’t a lot of literature on treatment and patient progress that’s survived from before the crisis. I would say it’s good news, and there’s still the chance that the tumour will stop growing, or even start to shrink, and obviously as long as it’s growing in the void, it’s not doing any further damage to the rest of the brain.”
“Do I hear a ‘but’ in there?” Sally asked, leaning forward in her chair.
“Yes, of course. The tumour may start growing much more rapidly, or in a different direction. It’s close to a lot of critical parts of your brain, so if it grows anywhere outside the void it is liable to cause you problems, maybe quite severe problems . . .”
“Would that happen quickly? How much warning or time might I have?” Sally asked this in a calm, even voice. She seemed almost clinically detached, more so than Susan Gibbons, Danny felt.
Susan Gibbons looked unhappy. She hesitated, and then she said “I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s a fair question; I truly don’t know the answer, so anything I say will just be a wild guess. I think I understand why you need to know so my answer is with that in mind. I don’t think there are any guarantees - you could have the equivalent of a life threatening or even fatal stroke tomorrow, without any warning. Or you could just be paralysed from the waist down, or lose your speech, or sight, and then carry on for weeks or months afterwards. I’m really, really so sorry - I just can’t tell you, and I couldn’t tell you even if we scanned you every day.” Susan raised her hands in a gesture of helpless despair, and then let them drop into her lap.
Danny looked shocked. Sally just nodded, and then she said “Thank you, and please don’t be sorry - I know you’re doing the best you can, and I really appreciate your honesty. As I think you understand, I just need to know as much as I can about the possibilities and probabilities, in order to make my plans. You’ve been a great help, and very kind.” Sally turned to Danny, who sat slumped in a stupor of despair and shock. “It’s all right love, don’t worry, we can cope with this. Shall we go home now?”
Danny nodded, and started to get to his feet, looking as if he felt every one of his sixty seven years. He just nodded to Susan Gibbons and turned for the door, holding it open for Sally. She got up from her chair and smiled at Susan Gibbons. “We’ll talk soon. Thank you again, so much.” Suddenly she leaned forward, over Susan’s desk, and kissed her on the cheek. Susan Gibbons stood up and kissed her in turn. Sally turned away and walked towards the door. As she passed through, Danny took her by the arm and they walked together down the path back to where the flutter was parked.
When they landed back at the village, Johnny was waiting for them with his horse and cart. Danny quickly pushed the flutter back towards the old hard standing, and tied it down to the metal stanchions sticking up from the concrete. Then he pulled a loose fitting tarpaulin hood over the cockpit canopy and tied it down to the wing roots.
He climbed up on to back of the cart with Johnny and Sally sitting on the front bench and they trotted the two clicks back to the house. On the way Johnny asked them how it had gone. Sally gave Danny a look, easy enough for Danny to interpret, and then she started to tell Johnny how well it had gone and how encouraging the news was. She did finish by saying that nothing was guaranteed, but by that point Johnny was past caring and had started to whistle. Sally smiled back at Danny and put her finger discretely to her lips. Danny smiled back.
Johnny pulled the cart up at the front of the house. They both got down, and waved him goodbye as he wheeled the cart around what had, a long time ago, been the village bus stop and trotted away back up the lane to the Chisholm farm. Danny and Sally watched him go and then walked around to the back of the house and let themselves into the kitchen. It was warm and full of rich smells of cooking. Rachel was bent over in front of the stove basting what looked like a large leg of lamb.
“O Rachel love, how kind” said Sally. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Don’t be silly, Mum, it’s nice to be able to do something to help. Anyway, Tom’s away and the children are with friends, so it’s been no trouble. I’ve quite enjoyed myself actually.” She turned back to the stove and shoved the joint back into the oven and shut the door with a loud clang. She rocked back on her heels and stood up.
“So? How’d it go?” She looked at both of them, waiting for a response.
Sally hesitated. “It was fine. The tumour is growing larger, but we knew that it almost certainly would. The good news it’s growing into empty space so it’s not causing me any more problems. But,” she hesitated again, “there are no guarantees, Dr Susan was very clear. Something could happen, quite suddenly maybe, at any time. So we’ll have to put our thinking caps on after supper. Right now, what I want is a nice stiff drink. I’m going to sit in the other room. Is the fire lit?” Although it was high summer, it was actually quite cool, or at least, Sally felt it was.
“I’ll do it” said Danny, relieved to have something to do. “Will you pour me a drink too?”
“ ’course, what would you like?”
“A beer please, and a whisky.”
Sally raised an eyebrow, and smiled, and went off to get glasses and the drinks.
It was dark when they sat down to eat. Rachel had opened a bottle of Danny’s rowan wine and lit the candles. The lamb was perfect, and they ate in almost total silence.
“No pud I’m afraid” Rachel apologised “I wasn’t very industrious really. I think there’s some fruit in the larder? Or some cheese?” Danny and Sally both shook their heads, smiling. “All right then, I’ll clear away. You two go and sit by the fire and have another drink. I’ll join you in a minute. Would you like tea or anything?” They both shook their heads again, and walked off to the sitting room and the fire.
Rachel joined them a short time later, with a glass of wine.
“You said we have some thinking to do?” She looked at Sally.
“Yes” said Sally, sitting up and suddenly looking like the chairman of a village council meeting. “Danny, I need your help here I think. Can you draw up some sort of decision table, and critical path analysis, something we can use to make sure we’ve thought through all the possibilities, and have a plan in place for everything? I don’t mean every last jot and tittle, just a general idea of what we’ll do. Then maybe it will be clearer what we need to think about, who to contact, what to do next, whether or not it will be time for me to go. I just think when the time comes, and there might be several ‘times’, if we’ve thought about and talked about it beforehand, it’ll be easier for all of us.”
For a moment it looked as if Danny wouldn’t speak. Then he seemed to brighten up, as if seeing everything from a different perspective. “Yes, OK, we can start with a decision table and use that to work out what combinations of things we need to think about. And then some sort of flowchart of what happens after that. It’ll be just like my systems analysis and design course at university. I’ll get some graph paper and a pencil.” He stood up and turned towards the old bureau Frank used to use for his accounts and started opening draws.
“Don’t forget a rubber, Dad, and a ruler” Rachel offered. Danny nodded and carried on looking through the draws. Eventually he found what he wanted and came back and sat down next to Sally on the sofa.
“Right” he said “we need to write down all the possibilities, what might happen, how long it might take, what combinations of things might happen. Then we can work out what to do in each case.”
“So first off - nothing happens. Sally’s condition doesn’t get any worse, the tumour stops growing, even starts to shrink. That’s easy, really. We just exit the loop and don’t come back until one of the other conditions applies. So there are no intermediate questions or decisions, we just have the decision ‘Come back if the situation changes for the worse.’ Are we all happy with that?” Sally and Rachel nodded.
“OK, second possibility. Sally’s condition gets worse, but only slightly and slowly. The tumour slows down its growth or something - the scan shows it growing but very slowly.”
“So now, what do we think about? Is the tumour affecting some parts of Sally’s capacities differently? I mean, for example, is her vision getting worse, but nothing else? How would different types of disability affect what we do? How bad do they have to get, and how quickly, before we decide on some course of action?”
“D’you mean, like take the pill?” Rachel asked, anxiously.
“Well, in the end, all roads but one lead there” Sally said, firmly.
“No, not necessarily. But we might need to think about full time care for Mum, or a wheelchair, or something. Or just someone, if you go blind, who can be your reader and your guide, if you were able to get around otherwise OK. Or maybe you’d think that unacceptable, so, yes, we go straight to the pill.”
“In a way, that’s what we’re doing” interrupted Sally. “We’re planning all the different routes there might be to me taking the pill, and what we realistically can and can’t do in each scenario, if we don’t have enough time, or resources.” She looked at Rachel and Danny. “I don’t know about you two, but I think I’m ready for bed. Why don’t we carry on in the morning. In the meantime, if you think of anything that fits in to the table, just jot it down. Danny, give us each a blank sheet with the table on, and we can fill it in if we think of anything, and then we can compare what we’ve all done in the morning, if anything, and combine them.” Sally looked at them both again.
“That sounds like a good plan” Danny and Rachel said, almost in unison, and burst out laughing and Sally joined in.
“Come on then, let’s all go to bed. Do you need to go home Rachel?”
“No mum, it’s fine. The children are staying with their friends overnight, and Tom isn’t back until late tomorrow. Is it OK if I stay here? I can just doss down on the sofa here” Rachel answered.
“Don’t be silly Rachel” Danny insisted. “The spare bed’s all made up - sleep up there and be comfortable.”
Rachel looked relieved, and got up and gave them each a good night kiss and went upstairs. Danny turned out the lights and followed Sally up the stairs.
The next morning, Danny woke with the dawn. Sally lay beside him, snoring softly. He slipped out of the bed and padded into the bathroom to pee and wash his teeth. He decided he’d like to go for a long walk. It was a beautiful summer morning, just faint wispy clouds low on the horizon and a gentle breeze. He went back into their bedroom and picked up his clothes and went downstairs to the kitchen. He found a notepad and a pencil, so he could make a note if he thought of anything while he was walking. He made himself a cup of tea, and wrote a note for Sally and Rachel telling them where he was going and not to wait breakfast for him.
A few minutes later he stepped out of the back door and crossed the road to take the track that led down to Garnons Farm and the river. He’d picked up a towel before he left, which he’d draped round his shoulders. He suspected he wouldn’t, but he might feel like a swim, if it was warm enough. His mind was pleasantly empty, and he left it that way. Just walked, and listened to the dawn birdsong, and watched the sunlight flood the valley, the greens and golds and yellows glowing in the early morning light. After a while, he began to think about yesterday. How he had reacted to Susan’s news, and how calm and controlled Sally had seemed. Not seemed, had been. As if she’d stepped up a gear - no more grief or regret, just a businesslike, detached analysis of her position, and how best to deal with it all. It made him realise how much he had always relied on her, not just loved her, that was a given, but taken her capability and support almost for granted. That was perhaps the reason he had been hit so hard yesterday, almost more so because of her reaction, that somehow her coolness under fire had given him permission to just emote, to let the feelings he had been holding at bay have their say. He felt calmer now and wanted to take this chance to see if he could sense what he really wanted to do. Could he stay on here, alone, after Sally had gone? And even if he could, did he want to?
It took him twenty minutes to reach the river. Garnons sat on its little mound above the surrounding water meadows, dry now, but they’d be flooded soon enough once the autumn rains came. The Catchpoles had moved back into the house a couple of years before but they still had a lot of work to do. They were a young couple, his great-grandparents had lived in the village near Frank’s house before Danny was born, but the family had moved away with everyone else when the troubles started. They had two small children and Cathy and Rachel shared their child minding when one or the other were busy. There was no sign of life as yet about the house. Danny walked on, down along the river bank, looking for a break in the nettles and brambles where he might be able to get down to the river. He knew he’d be able to at the mill, but that was a kilometre further downstream, and he was beginning to feel like a swim. Eventually he came to a break, a path beaten down to a small mooring point or somewhere for someone to fish from. The water was still, smooth as a steel plate, flecked with dead leaves from the overhanging willows, dragonflies flitting above the surface. He stripped off and dived into the water, swimming strongly for a few metres to warm up and get used to the chill of the river, and then turned on his back and looked up at the trees arching over his head, the sunlight flickering through the trailing willow strands. A grass snake, rule straight, swam across the river a metre or so below his feet and for a moment he saw the bright blue of a kingfisher flash down the opposite bank under the overgrown bank. He turned on his front and swam on until he saw the little footbridge at the mill appear around the bend. The river here was over two metres deep and with a gravel bottom, clear and weed free, and full of fish. They came up and started nibbling the dead skin on his feet and legs as they trailed below him in the water. Suddenly he found himself wishing that Sally was with him, ‘for one last swim together’ he heard himself say, not sure whether he had spoken out loud or not. He turned and swam back strongly to where he had left his clothes. He climbed out on to the little platform, picked up his towel and his clothes and walked back to the water meadow, where he lay down in the long grass and let the sun dry him off. He supposed there’d be a lot of ‘last times’ in the next few weeks, or months, that they would miss, or not. What was hard was the uncertainty, and that was what had been most shocking about Susan Gibbon’s words yesterday - no guarantees, the end coming without warning, or not even knowing whether this was the end or not, or just another loss of Sally’s capacities. A stepping down, rather than a falling off. And he felt torn, between caring for her, grieving for her, and his own pity and grief for himself. And none the wiser.
When he got back to the house, he found Sally and Rachel sitting at the kitchen table, the table covered with sheets of paper; some blank, some filled with writing and tables. They both looked up and smiled at him.
“Did you have a nice walk? How far did you go?” Sally asked.
“I swam down to the mill and back. It was lovely. I wanted you there.” He looked down at the sheets of paper on the table. “You’ve been busy.”
“Mum almost wouldn’t have breakfast, she was so keen to get started” Rachel laughed. “Do you want to look at what we’ve done?”
“I will in a minute. I want some breakfast, and a coffee.” Danny turned away from the table and busied himself with the kettle and the stove.
A few weeks later. Another scan. Still growing.
It was late September. Danny woke up and turned to look at Sally. She was lying, awake, on her back, looking at the ceiling. She looked very calm.
‘Morning love. How d’you feel? Been awake long?’
‘Danny, it’s time. I can’t feel anything below my waist. Can you tell Rachel, and fetch Joe and Daisy?’
‘You sure? Have you tried to move? Do you want me to help you up?’ Danny tried not to sound panicky.
‘Quite sure, love. I couldn’t be more certain. I’ve been feeling a bit fuzzy down there for a few days, but this is like a switch has been turned off.’ Sally turned her head, and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry love, but yes, I’m quite sure.’
Danny leant toward her and kissed her on the lips. In all the planning and thinking since Sally and he had come back from Susan Gibbon’s and the previous scan, they had rehearsed this several times. Rachel was ready whenever they called to park the children with a friend, if Tom wasn’t at home, and they’d arranged with Daisy a way of contacting her immediately, and she could get hold of Joe fairly easily. The flutter was still parked at the village airfield, and fully fuelled, so Danny only had to throw a few things in his shoulder bag and cycle up there. He could be airborne within an hour.
‘Would you like me to bring you up some breakfast? I’m going to make myself some porridge before I go.’
‘Will you ring Daisy first? Just to give them a chance to get ready. And yes please, porridge and some tea would be lovely. I might need a hand though.’ Sally smiled up at him.
‘I’ll give Rachel a shout as well. She can come over and help you once I’ve gone.’
He got dressed quickly, and gave her a peck on the cheek, before going downstairs. He went over the road and knocked on Rachel’s door. She came quickly, and opened it, a half questioning, half expectant look on her face.
‘I’m sorry darling, it’s Mum, she says it’s time. I’m just making her some breakfast and then I’m going to go and get Daisy and Joe - can you pop over in half an hour or so, just to make sure she’s OK?’
‘’Course I can Da. I’ll just get the children sorted out and I’ll come straight over. Can you wait until I get there?’
‘Yes, sure. I’ve got to try and get hold of Daisy anyhow, if I can, before I leave, and have some breakfast myself. I’ll wait for you.’
‘See you in a bit then. I’ll be as quick as I can.’ Rachel leant forward and gave him a hug, and a kiss, and then turned back into the house and went up the stairs. Danny went back to the kitchen to put the porridge on, and to give Daisy a call. She answered almost immediately, and Danny suddenly realised how early it was. She had obviously not left home yet.
‘Hello Dad, how’s Mum?’
‘She thinks it’s time, love, and wants me to come and get you and Joe today. Is that OK? Can you get away?’
‘Of course we can Dad’ Daisy almost snapped at him. ‘We both arranged things with everyone weeks ago, we just have to let someone in our offices know and they’ll tell everyone else. Hang on a minute.’ Daisy put the ‘phone down, and Danny heard her shout up the stairs ‘Joe, are you awake? It’s Dad on the ‘phone. We’ve got to go.’
She picked up the phone again. ‘Sorry Dad, didn’t want him to try and slip out of the house without telling me. When will you be here?’
‘In about two hours, tops. Can you get to the airfield by then?’
‘No problem, we’ll see you there. How is Mum? Is she OK?’
‘She’s fine, incredible really, so calm. But she’s quite sure this is the time.’
He heard what sounded like a muffled sob or a sigh, but Daisy said nothing. Then she said ‘We’ll see you soon, Dad, we can talk on the way back. Goodbye. Fly safe.’
‘I will love. See you soon.’ Danny disconnected the call and turned back to the porridge, now bubbling happily on the stove.
* * *
They all stood in the kitchen. Danny and Sally, Rachel and Tom and the children, Daisy and Joe, and Johnny. Sally stepped forward and kissed each of them in turn, and hugged them, Johnny for an almost uncomfortably long time. Then Danny did the same. No one said anything. Tom and the children were going back to their house. Rachel, Daisy and Joe were going to walk to the Mushroom Hill. Johnny had agreed to stay in the house, in case Danny or Sally needed him.
Danny took Sally by the hand and led her up the stairs, she holding the bannister to steady herself, no longer quite able to trust her legs to do what she needed of them. They went in to their bedroom. Outside the garden was filled with sunlight and birdsong, and a light breeze blew in through the window, gently waving the curtains. Slowly they undressed each other. Sally put on a long white nightdress. Danny wrapped a towel around his waist. They sat together on the edge of the bed. Sally reached over to the bedside table and picked up the glass of water and handed it to Danny, and then picked up the two white pills. She handed one to Danny. ‘Such a little thing’ he said, ‘to bring it all to an end’, looking at it lying in palm of his hand.
‘Not an end, love . . . a change . . . and we’re going on together . . . even if one of us comes back, it won’t be forever.’ Sally laid her hand on Danny’s arm, and then leant into him and kissed him on the cheek. He turned to her and put his arms around her and kissed her on the lips.
‘Are you ready?’ he said.
Sally nodded. They put the pills in their mouths and each took a sip in turn from the glass and swallowed. They lay back on the bed and pulled up the light quilt. Danny took Sally’s hand.
‘Goodbye my love. Thank you for everything.’
‘Not goodbye darling . . .’
Danny gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and closed his eyes. He started keying. His breath came in, went out, softly, feeling rather than hearing Sally’s breath and the rise and fall of her chest, in synchrony with his own.
He feels himself falling, into dark empty space. He is filled with a momentary feeling of panic and searches for his breath, focuses on that. Gradually the sensation of falling morphs into floating; he relaxes. He finds himself sitting in a half lotus, at the bottom of a deep pond. Above him he sees the surface of the pond, made choppy by a breeze, but it feels very far away. Down here it is perfectly still. His mind wonders how he is breathing under the water, why he doesn’t feel cold and wet. There is no sense of loneliness, or oppression, or the pressure of the water above him; just a space filled, distanced detachment.
He’s riding a horse across a grassy plain, above him a great open sky dotted with white clouds drifting east. The grass waves in the soft breeze, the plain utterly featureless to the horizon, in all directions. He gets down from the horse, and starts to walk through the waving grass, holding the horse’s reins loosely in his right hand. Then he lets them drop, and the horse trots away from him, and begins to gallop in great circles around him. He stops and stands quite still, his gaze unfocused, looking towards the horizon.
He is sitting on a small, very black rock surrounded by a calm, pale turquoise sea, sunlight dancing on the surface. There is no land in sight, or clouds in the sky. He slips into the water and starts swimming, and then just floats away. No effort is needed, either to stay on the surface, or to move. He has no fear that he might move out of range of the rock, or drown.
He no longer has any sense of his body, just a pure awareness, and he seems to be looking out on a field of points of light, dancing in a soft grey-black void. There is no sense of scale, rather of an infinite depth of field, yet everything feels warm and close, as if these dancing points of light are somehow part of him. He is filled with joy and comfort and has an urge to smile or laugh. It seems to him that each point of light in the field is another being, another consciousness and that they are all somehow welcoming him, saying hello. Or that he is looking at the ground of creation, an infinite field of energetic particles, of energy, dancing.
Then the field of dancing stars disappears, as if someone has turned off the light. For a moment he reaches after it, wanting it to continue, but again he returns to his breath. His visual field goes quite blank, a sort of soft grey, with somewhere in the centre an intense black patch, very small, like a scrap of burnt paper, that wanders about the centre of his vision. Gradually it is replaced by a glowing cloud, as if of molten gold, that resolves itself into a brilliant ring, slowly spinning. He is drawn in to the centre of the ring, which steadily widens and behind it forms a white vortex, drawing him on. He loses all sense of identity, of his ordinary self.
In a moment, all that disappears. He has a sense of his whole life, from birth until now, as a string of small black packets, arcing across the sky. The packets remind him of sharks’ eggs, or at least of a picture he once saw that he remembers as being sharks’ eggs. Little jet black envelopes, with at each of four corners, four strands, as if the envelope had been pulled out, into a point. The envelopes are roughly rectangular, seemingly air or liquid filled, like small balloons. All this in a flash. And at the same time, he understands that each packet is an event in his life, all the elements, people, feelings, decisions associated with that episode. Each links to the next, the pairs of little strand like extensions joined to the next and previous in a chain of uncountable little packets coming up from the far horizon and arcing over to the opposite horizon. And each little packet, each event, he sees was inevitable, shaped by what came before, and giving rise to what came next. No blame, no guilt, no shame, even about the events that at the time he had experienced as filled with guilt and shame. No pride in achievement either. Just a complete acceptance and understanding and sympathy for his life, and everything that had happened in it. As if he sees the whole of his life in one instant, and understands it, and accepts it, loves it even, without judgement - this is him, the entirety of his being and his journey through time and space.
Then, without being aware that he has opened his eyes, he looks out of the window, at the sun filled garden, and the fields and trees beyond, away to the south. And now he is looking, somehow at the same moment, inward. He floats above what looks like a sea of mercury, glittering silver in an almost brassy opalescent light, as if the sun is hidden behind a thin gauzy veil of cloud. Beneath him he sees little puffs, balls of greyish fluff, the sort of thing you find under your bed if you haven’t cleaned under there for a while. The clumps of fluffy dust float like little clouds just above the surface of the sea of mercury. And he understands that each of these balls of fluff is a person, that one is him, as he is now, his memories, thoughts, feelings, everything that makes him uniquely himself. But it is curiously dead, inert - just a ball of fluff, floating over the mercury sea. Away to the far horizon, seemingly much further away than a normal horizon, the little grey balls of fluff float just above the surface, until in the distance they just fade away and all he can see is the shining sea, and above it the bright pearly sky.
The vision fades and once more he is looking out of the window, at the quotidian world, but now full of love, life, truth, in which everything connects, relates; there is no separation, no loneliness, where little me no longer exists, or matters. And he understands everything. Everything he has ever puzzled over, read, experienced, makes perfect, beautiful sense, although he cannot begin to put it in to words.
And, seeing his life as whole, all at once, as they say you do when you’re drowning, he now sees it with complete understanding and acceptance, with love and compassion for himself and everyone he has ever loved, for those he had been indifferent to, even those he had once hated, or feared. No judgement, no rejection. And they start to come before him, the faces and presence, one by one, and then in crowds, of all the people he has loved in life, but there is no regret, no anger or resentment, simply the joy of having lived, and known, and loved them all. Sally, perhaps clearest of all, his children, his father; then a strangely familiar woman, smiling, her arms open, walks up to him and says his name. “Hello Danny, you’re home now” she seems to say, and enfolds him in an embrace, and he is a little child again, in the warmth and security of his mother’s arms, and everything is just as it should be. He starts to weep, softly. A tear trails down his cheek and into his beard.
He opens his eyes and turns to look at Sally. She lies beside him, her face turned towards him, smiling and weeping too, looking at him.
“Hello my love” she says. “It’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes” he answers, “it’s fine.” They seem to lie there for a long time, looking into each other’s eyes, smiling, then simply looking, gazing in on each other’s depths.
Sally speaks, very soft. “Goodbye my love, it’s time now . . . I love you” and she reaches over and lays her hand gently on his cheek, and closes her eyes.
Danny puts his hand over hers, and closes his eyes also.
* * *
Several hours later, Johnny crept as quietly as he could up the stairs, and pushed the door to their room open a little way. They are lying together on the bed, Sally’s hand under Danny’s, resting on his cheek. To Johnny, Sally seemed to be smiling faintly, but in the gloom of the evening he couldn’t be sure. He closed the door again, and went downstairs.