Author: Ellen Bell

I saw it from my studio at about 1.45 am. It was huge, burning yellow and orange. A half-shape, not neat, but ragged and blurred. It burnt through the black, scorching. A hot place. Far away.

Ah death. I think about it, I write about it, I hear about it, I see it and I encounter it. We all do, but I am alert to it, watching. Waiting. I still walk to that cottage, that house on that island as I fall to sleep. Last night I saw another bedroom. It was on a lower floor. The bed made up. A big bed that filled the whole space, virtually. The landing outside was higher, the bed and the bedroom was slightly beneath me as I looked in. The duvet cover was floral. Pretty. Light. A little old-fashioned. Daylight was coming in from somewhere. A windo, that I couldn’t see? I climbed farther. My bedroom, the white one of my imagining was on a higher floor still.

The cut down the briar bush yesterday. The scent had been lovely, sweet, heady and pure. Some of it may come back, said one of the gardeners as she swept up the debris. It looks denuded, hacked. I loved its wildness. Yes, it was taking over but everything on this old school’s environs is being over-neatened, manicured like an American theme park. They do their best. For the meantime, the wildness outside our bedroom windows remains, though nore building has been mooted. The birds roost there, butterflies drink from the huge buddlieas, cats prowl and life teems in the undergrowth. I didn’t like it at first, now I do.

It floors me, sapping my energy and taking away any sense of achievement by a task done. I know the fault if mine. Always mine. But it is a hard pattern to break. I feel so clumsy, so awkward, suddenly the language I use and own, is not mine any longer. I am speaking foreign, a gobbly-de-gook of sounds. Oh, give me grace. Let me learn to stand back. It doesn’t matter, he says, over and over again. So what, is another. So what. If only. I got irritable with her, as she, no doubt got with me. She was the first one that I spoke to on the helpline that hasn’t been all patience and kindness. It’s not the way I do it, she said. Just help me. I wanted to implore. Help me to understand this. She didn’t. I fudged through.

She wrote about it. There are still things beyond language, she wrote. Sensations, pleasures. This is one of my mine. It doesn’t matter where. Just that heat. It slows me. Steadies me. Calms me. I need more.

He told me about bumping into her on his way back home from the car. She’d been carrying a bucket of soapy water with which to clean the seagull shit off the car. He said how she’d offered to do his too. A quiet woman, woman/girl really, she often blushes when she speaks. He said she’d asked after me. Anyway, she told him that she’s now to be called by another name. The old name was familiar, it did suit her, sort of. This one fits better. We muse over the reason for the change. Gender-neutrality, perhaps? Whatever the cause, good for her, I say. It takes courage to make such a shift in outward identity, particularly as by doing so you are drawing attention to yourself. Something that I suspect, diffident as she is, she might find difficult. Bravo.

He posted it on Instagram. I don’t know why. Perhaps he felt it was the best way to crowdfund. His daughter has cancer again. Poor love. Poor loves. It must be devastating. Death. Death is everywhere. Francoise Hardy died. And I drew in an ex-funeral home. I didn’t know what I’d find. I expect black shadows and gloom. It was gloomy, and dusty and dirty. Little remains. The two chapels were extraordinary. It was hard to draw in there. I didn’t really do it justice. Do I ever?

She told me that her ex-staff member felt nervous talking to me. Not a crush, as such, but awe. I don’t know what to do with that information except to protest that I am nothing. Not really. Nothing special. I like her. I see her awkwardness, her crankiness with people when everything isn’t under control. I understand it too well. Should I be touched? I am touched.

He went missing on a Greek Island. I’d heard his voice on the radio, often. A gentle voice, kind, I think. He was campaigning about fitness, about taking personal responsiblity. One good thing. One thing that we could do to live longer. To live well. They found his body, days later, with that purple umbrella by his side, his guard against the sun. Devastating. His wife had said through the media that she wouldn’t give up hope. And now it is confirmed. He is gone. Gone. Poor love. Poor loves. Ah, so much pain. What can we do with it but live it? All of it. Rest in peace, sweet man.

When I lie in bed at night and all that I have yet to do and understand threatens to assail me, I often try to visualise my death. Though it’s not actually my death but the days, or possibly weeks, before. I see myself lying, immobile by then and content to be so. Waiting. Waiting to be taken. I am clean, washed through, emptied of rancour and regret. Patient. More patient than I have ever been in life. And content. That too. Yielding. I am waiting to yield. The room that I am lying in is white. There is no clutter, no stuff, no things. Or people. Just me. An open white and a white muslin curtain blowing in the gentle breeze that is coming through the open window. It must be open so that my soul can fly.

I’m not good with uncertainty. Is anyone? I passed. I progressed. But more questions needing answers have been added to the already amassing pile. I start to hyperventilate. He tries to help. One step at a time. That’s all you have to do, he says. Take one step at a time. He is right. But it’s the not being able to see the end result that wobbles me. And yet, therein lies the creativity, the possibility of getting better – of learning, of new knowing. Embrace it, sweetie. Be brave.

It’s today. As always when I am nervous about a performance or a testing it’s worse the day before. Now that it nears I feel a detachment coming over me. A hollowness in my stomach. There is nothing more I can do. I have read, written and prepared. One more run through with him and then it is my time. I fret over the reliability of technology, but I have done what I can. I can’t do anymore. I yield to it.