pain was too much, the knowledge of what was coming next too constricting. I knew I would pass out soon. I could feel it creeping up my arms and legs. A stillness as my extremities conceded defeat. The blood flowing from my body was unstoppable, it came from too many places. My life was leaking out, a millilitre at a time, forming a pool in which I lay. It warmed the concrete around me, inviting me to relax, to accept. And it didn’t hurt, it didn’t matter.
I wasn’t scared of what was next, part of me knew it was inevitable. It didn’t even matter where I went once I died, all that mattered was that life would continue. The storm would end, spring would come. Summer would burn and then winter would return. It would do so for many, many years. There would be laughter and love. There would be success and change. There would be children growing to become adults who would have their own children one day. Then there would be peace as it came to an end, only to be replaced with another winter, another summer for ever and ever.
I was just a very small part of a much bigger picture.
I was just a single paint brush stroke on a canvas that was the entire world. A single small stroke of paint. One that was never very vibrant or colourful. More shading than subject.
Just before I closed my eyes for the final time there was a small gap in the grey, just enough for me to see beyond it. A small space of the brightest blue I had ever seen. Pure. Untouched by the past five days.
And that bit of blue, it told me everything would be okay, for the one person that it was all for.
And that was what mattered.
One week earlier
Daniel
Stamford
29th December 2017, 7.48 a.m.
A long time ago I was told that the moments that were truly important in life were the moments we carry forward and recall on our deathbeds. Things like the perfect sunset. The moment we fall in love. A passing of someone dear.
As I lay in my bed, I was doing exactly that, as coming from the room next door was the sound of Thomas and Katie, talking and playing together. Their voices were my two most favourite sounds. Katie said something I couldn’t quite make out, but whatever it was it made Thomas laugh and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. I wanted to join them. But not yet, first I would use my senses as I had been taught.
It was a doctor who told me to let my subconscious take over when it mattered. A doctor who was one of the many I had fifteen years ago in the days, weeks and months after I woke up in a hospital bed. But he was the only one I would never forget. He was the one who first told me what had happened and helped me understand my life had re-begun. He helped me make sense of the facts. I was a broken body that didn’t know where it was. A broken body that didn’t know its name. A broken body whose even more broken mind couldn’t comprehend that it once had a past that it may never see again. Its memories, my memories, like all memories, tiny bubbles that contained joy and happiness, sadness, fear. Only mine had all been popped.
Our conversation, the one that helped to save me from the pit of despair I was in, came on a grey February morning. I was sitting staring out of the window nearest my bed, trying to find a reason to carry on and he, doing his morning rounds, approached. Noticing I was lost in thought he asked me what I saw. I told him I saw drizzle, darkness before looking away from the window, back to nothing in particular.
‘What about the trees?’
‘What about them?’
‘What do you see when you look at them?’
Sighing, I looked outside again, to humour the doctor. Thinking if I did he would go away and leave me alone.
‘They look dead,’ I said, holding his eye. I almost followed it up with a comment about how they were lucky, but stopped myself. The doctor sat on the end of my bed and looked outside. I watched him, wondering what he was doing. Doctors usually rushed in and out. I didn’t blame them retrospectively, I was intolerable to be around. I waited for him to say something, but for a long time he just sat, looking out of the window, a small smile on his face. The silence was too much.
‘What do you see?’ I questioned.
‘The same as you at first glance.’
‘So then why ask?’
‘Because I wanted to see how hard you looked.’
‘Doc, you aren’t making sense. If you don’t mind, I want to be left alone.’
He looked at me, the smile unmoving and nodded.
‘Before I do, Daniel, humour me once more and look again at the trees, but this time, look closer. Focus on the tree tops. Look at the way they are moving in the wind. Look at the very tips of those branches. What can you see?’
Reluctantly I did what he said and looked again, having to hide my astonishment when I focused on where he told me to. The trees may have looked dead at first glance, but as I focused I saw their tips starting to show the signs of sprouting buds that would become leaves eventually, they would attract birds who would nest and raise families. As he spoke I could almost smell the sweet scent a sapling gives off in spring. But I didn’t remember any springs, or summers, or autumns. Only winter, the one I watched from my window. I learnt that the small act of stopping to let my senses work properly helped me see something wonderful that was always there, and the morning wasn’t quite so dreary anymore. As he left my hospital room he told me if we embrace the stillness from time to time, we capture the moment entirely. His final words to me were that letting myself see the small things that really mattered wouldn’t help me remember my past, but it might just help me have a future. That day, I knew I could learn to hold on to the precious moments that were to come in my life. Things I would experience going forwards, and they could be wonderful if I let them, despite not knowing anything about the past. Shortly after that moment with the smiling doctor I was told I would be going home soon. I never saw that doctor again.
I have had several moments in the fifteen short years that I can remember where I have done exactly that. I stopped, I became still, and in doing so I made sure those moments were branded permanently in my mind so that no matter what may happen I would never forget them. Moments likes the two occasions I have fallen in love. The first time to Rachael, traditional, sweet, and almost as far back as I can remember. Two people who were nervous and excited. Full of possibilities. That first kiss suspending me above myself. I didn’t know then, but that first kiss would eventually lead to another wonderful moment when Rachael told me I was going to be a dad. A box presented to me, inside being a positive pregnancy test, a card and baby grow. Tears that fell and warmed my cheeks. Her smile, unfiltered.
The biggest moment of all is reserved for the day my son was born, six years ago. Although it feels like six minutes. His tiny body helpless and defenceless. His beautiful little head that fitted perfectly in my palm as I carried him towards his mummy who lay on the operating table post-caesarean. His cry, his voice. As I carefully moved towards her, his eye found mine and changed everything I assumed I knew about myself.
But there is also the second time I fell in love, more recently, to my Katie. Our meeting and dating coming from a place that was wiser, but no less powerful.
I may have had more of these moments in the years before
