I sit with toast and tea despite my stomach's morning sickness rejection of it. Toddler giggles float through the room and calmness sits at my feet. A knock. Excited bounciness follows me down the hall to the door. A policeman in black and yellow stands at the step. "Granny!" chirps my little one to my mother as she walks up the path. She is fidgety but in control. They come in and I am asked to sit down. The police officer's words fly into my ears and buzz like bees into my mind. But I don't cry. I am not sad. I am not shocked. It doesn't hurt, and I don't know why. But the buzzing stays. They leave and I clear away my dishes. I can't remember his face. I don't cry but I am frightened. I go upstairs to my photograph album, but there is none of him. His face is gone. But I remember his hair, short and cleanly white. It's all I can remember. It soothes me.
Now I can remember. Time has moved and the buzzing which took my memory of him has gone. I have a part of him now. Reams of little white wires poke through the dark and they still soothe.
2 comments:
I know it's not a fictional account but it strikes me that this would make an excellent prologue or first chapter. It definitely makes me want to know more about the story and characters involved. A very clever snapshot.
Thanks for sharing x
Like it, Lindsay, and Vicky is right.
The WHITES I remember most vividly are our son's face when he came to see us just before Christmas when the girl he thought was the Love of His Life had just dumped him, and a friend discovering the dead body of his father lying exactly in the spot where he had been felled by a massive stroke in the kitchen of his house when my friend responded to an urgent phone call of the "Come Quick!" variety, but with no specification as tom the nature of the emergency.
I always thought "The blood drained from his/her face..." was a cliche until these incidents occurred.
White is right.
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