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Ah! how suddenly one is set apart,
And how pervertedly the fearful heart
Of even the dearest friend or lover
Seeks out camouflage — or runs for cover.
This is not to deny unfeigned distress
Or bravery, or, God forbid, still less
To denigrate that tenderness of feeling
Which bears one up when iron words are reeling
In clouded storms of terror and of dread,
Knowing that one will soon lie cold and dead.
No, this is the separateness unlatched
From life’s free paths, when all becomes detached
Of free will’s stroll, when curving lanes run straight
As some dark shadow waits beyond the gate,
The servant of a darker thoroughfare,
And there is nothing left to try or dare
But cast a swift look up — then kiss the sky
With one last wink to wish the world goodbye.
This detachment, this knowledge that you are ‘apart’ from others and grow further apart as your end approaches, reminds me of my early youth when on entering my grammar school of 500 boys I found that only one other pupil (in the year above me) had a divorced parent. Good training for what is happening to me at present. This is nobody’s ‘fault’ (if there is indeed any fault at all) but mine. But it is how I feel and how, I now learn, many terminally ill people feel. It’s why cats creep out into the bushes to die, and why condemned prisoners act as they do. Unfriendly, odd and disturbing to all; but, I guess, not so unnatural when you think about it.
