Apricot Press

My father died suddenly on the morning of my sister’s wedding. He died alone while his large family were busy preparing for the festivity. We were at hairdressers and make-up salons or we were munching on toasted cheese and onion sandwiches to keep us going until we feasted at the wedding banquet or we were driving on that breezy September day towards a celebration with hearts flung wide open to let in the joy. During that frenzied preparation, my father’s heart stopped without warning. My sister, the bride-to-be, found him alone and cold.

I had seen death before but not like this. It was my first death, I mean the first loss of someone I loved, there have been many since but none that affected me in quite the same way. I expected black for death but I discovered that the first shock was a kind of deep blue. I tiptoed into that bedroom, where my father’s body lay, all dressed up in his wedding suit. Everything(except my father) was so vital, the green outside the window, the echo of a child’s laugh from outside, the sound of tires on gravel… not hushed but incredibly intense. All this I noticed through a kind of super-aware numbness. The house was full of the peppery smell of lilies from my sister’s wedding bouquet, a white mass abandoned on the hall table downstairs.

But in the bedroom, there was the faint, fading smell of the soap my father had used in his shower that morning, Imperial Leather, and the smell of lavender from the fabric softener on the freshly laundered sheets. A bird, maybe a blackbird, sang a tune in the tree outside the window. Someone had lit a fat white candle on the bedside locker and its flame wobbled from the slight breeze coming through the check curtains and gave the illusion that my father was still breathing. There was a tiny nick under his chin from his morning shave a couple of hours before and a piece of tissue clung to it like a soft downy beard. I imagined him putting it there, not wanting a blood spot on his new white shirt. I held my breath and for a brief moment, my mind expanded – or maybe contracted. I suddenly understood, almost held it in my hand, some essence of eternity. I discovered that the price of life is loss. Then I breathed out again and with each breath I felt like I was falling, drowning in a bottomless sea.

The room became white with emptiness as if my father had flown through the open window to become the wind.

Header photo credit: Tomas Williams