Tag: death


Here is an event which it
has become my duty to

all my life I have
been searching for the world, then, while it hurtled through space at roughly 107 000 km/h with a spin speed of aproximately 1670 kp/h (it matters where on the rock you stand) then … this flower smaller than a small coin, caught a bit of the flare that fumed and spat from the sun eight minutes ago, and held it, like a promise, and though we move and in that movement find the earth to be such a place where pain and grief find us, no matter where we look, then also we must remember that it will pass. Everything passes.

And we are little more than caretakers of brevity called upon to do the impossible, to make a life with a brief spell on a brutal rock. But, here is where we have surprised, even ourselves- we have found beauty where there ought to be none. Are we not remarkable? Are we not better than we thought?

Notes from a window

I do not know her, the old lady at the window. But, she is familiar to me. I see her almost every day when I approach the cross section. I look for oncoming traffic, then look for her. It has become a habit. She is consistent (a necessary requirement for a habit to form). I do not know if her looking out of the window is the result of habit or the lack of alternatives. She sits to the right of her window. (would it alter the narrative if I called it the window?) So, now I have designated the window as hers. Naturally, she does not own the window. Ownership in old-age homes are a complicated business. Usually it is strictly limited to private possessions: blankets, clothing, books, toiletries, jewellery, false-teeth. Unlike their owners, these items retain value. They are handled with tenderness, treasure-like, as if the care shown them might somehow reach the dead. Perhaps we treat their things as sacred in the hope that these gentle gestures might have retrospective powers. Maybe kindness in the present has currency in the after-life. Nevertheless, domestic rituals emerge around the debris of life. Clothing and blankets are held up to the face, breathed in to detect traces of the dead. Unopened cakes of soap sit in drawers scenting underwear, rosaries gather friction, grief adheres to old toothbrushes, broken spectacles, roughly scribbled champagne corks and postcards from Egypt written in illegibly elegant script. The physical disappearance of someone is shocking. These objects absorb the after shocks of their leaving. As for the places where they lived; in old age homes a bucket of disinfectant, wide open windows to release the miasma of death and a lick of paint re-sanitise the venue for the next itinerant. Ownership may be complex in old age homes, but the simple certainties of death and departure compensate for it. I do not know the contractual details of her facility. I know there are places like these where inmates are expected to purchase a space that is recycled every time the current owner/s die. A safe investment that just keeps giving.

In First World countries we tend to pack the aged and infirm away when their maintenance outweighs their value. One must contribute positively to the GDP to warrant state concern. Otherwise, one finds oneself gradually removed from society. Folded up like well worn tablecloths and placed in the back of the linen cupboard, until the next Salvo’s run. In Third World economies, the aged are generally valued and, if not valued, at least respected. Those who struggle for material security understand the emotional and spiritual value of people. They know that dignity is priceless and owed to their parents who have struggled to hold onto it all of their lives. The aged are respected for being there, for having carried on, teaching their children that value lies in endurance, not assets. They build their lives on people, not money. They have community where individual well-being is everyone’s concern. We, on the other hand, are a loose collection of cocoons. Each of us spinning silk and blind to the world around us.

I knew a man once who did a brave thing. I did not understand it as such at the time. I was young and had not yet been called upon to endure anything more than my adolescent neuroses. He lived on a large piece of land. We flew over it once in a small plane. We had travelled in a straight line for ten minutes and all the time it was his land beneath us. It was beautiful, rugged, arid African Bush. The memory of it fills me with nostalgia. In the evenings Impala herds settled around a thorn tree near the home. He had resettled vultures that were endangered. One day he walked out into the bush, undressed and then shot himself in a place where he knew the vultures would be. I believe he was a brave man. In the end he understood a thing or two about real value.

She, the lady at the window, has draped over her knees a crocheted patchwork blanket. Coloured squares of lilac, blue, purple and pink are bordered by yellow. The palette of severe bruising. I’ve not seen her do anything but sit and look out of the window. I have willed her to lean forward, possibly smile but it feels like a prayer, more for my sake than hers.

Her curtains were drawn today. If tomorrow the windows are open wide, I will be sad.

A meditation on Death








By Mike Scallan

Ode to a moth

Ode to a moth

Quiet as brick and effortless as breath you slipped your soft form and went, leaving just this delicate presence that rocks a little from my own exhilation.

Did you suffer? Do moths suffer as people do? Was your leaving as tranquil as your slack wings suggest? We’re not all that different you know, our species. Yours and mine both seek out light and finally settle unnoticed in the shadows. Here, looking at you on this ledge, in this public toilet, your mausoleum, I offer a few minutes of silence. Dead quiet. Did you try to enter this light bulb? Did moths live longer before electricity? Chasing the sun is easier than gate-crashing closer light. It takes longest to see what is closest to you.

I’m not in the habit of talking to dead insects, that would be absurd. Perhaps whenever we talk into an absence, we are really just talking to ourselves and maybe real people we knew who are now also on the edge of our memories, our world. Death reminds us that life existed where it no longer does. A brutal irony.

It is the brevity of life that gives it some worth but also bridles the heart with such unbearable pain. Maybe that is why I’m having this conversation with you? If I cannot pause for you, what will I stop for? If the stuff that once bound us, life, goes out of something little, surely it’s as sad as when it leaves the larger among us? My life is as little as yours in the context of the world. We may even be brothers? There is vast chasm between your world and mine. There is language for one thing, I do not know yours. But, whatever the differences my friend, we depended on air together. The only real difference is that I still breathe and you are simply still.


letter for mother


The last time we spoke I struggled to understand your words. A day later you were moved to ICU and two days later you died. But there were other, more important words that passed between us. We spoke often and for that I am grateful. There is a sense of closure in the love we knew we had for each other. I feel remorse at being over 6000km away when you were folding your life away. I wish I could have been there to hold your hand, just once. Sean did that for both of us. I know you would remind me that geography does not alter the state of the soul, that you knew we loved you dearly. We did, do. Now I experience the real cost of migration. You made our leaving easier by supporting it. You were brave that way. I also know it played its part in breaking your heart. What a big heart you had.


I shall visit Sean in April and together we will with care and all the gentleness we can muster, trace your life in the belongings you left behind. There will be letters we wrote to you as children, hand made gifts from your granchildren … you kept everything. Archeology of the soul. Memories will re-establish your beautiful presence and we will cry. We will encounter your absence in every room of the home. We will embrace your presence which is now only found inside of us. It seems darker and roomier inside, colder. I will feed your birds and water your plants and talk to you. We will laugh. In the laughter we will recall one of the finest gifts you ever gave your sons, the ability to find in the bleakest hour of the day a reason to smile.


This was meant to be a letter of thanks and goodbye, some sort of eulogy shared. Like our lives it is imperfect, a poor mirror of the vast emptiness your leaving has left. The words do not express my heart, they never do. At best, all they can do is point towards someone they are trying to embrace and whisper the words one last time, ‘I love you mom’.


p.s. Happy birthday 🙂

A mind in iron

Here is the great mystery of life: it ends.














How buckshot turns grouse into swans
