We’d moved on from biopsies, consultations and assertions of relief to talking about his work big, important things he was peripherally involved in at Whitehall. I looked at my legs, shining brown in the evening sun. ‘I know I’ve been distant,’ he said, ‘not myself.’ Nothing to worry about, we clinked the necks of our bottles together. He was easily convinced, accustomed to happy endings and painless resolution. We drank beer on the grass outside the old pub near Blackfriars station. It was a nice enough evening, unseasonably warm for September. Still, he insisted we at least meet somewhere after work for a drink. Generational persistence, without meaning or memory. It was survival only in the sense that a meme survives. No common country or culture linked us other than British (which could only be claimed hyphenated or else parenthesized by the origins of those whose deaths our mothers detailed over the phone). I knew that we, the children who remained, would do so with weakened bonds. The screenings, pre-emptive tests and speedy follow-ups that sustained life. Tinged with a guilty numbness as I considered the absurd luxury aesthetic of my company healthcare provisions. It induced a rollercoaster lurch within my solar plexus. I decided my complaint was primarily formal, the set-up and punchline structure she employed making me remember knowing, invoking memories of a person, of a life, then unveiling the death. An exhaustive proof that we, whatever it was that bound us all together within the first-person plural, were not surviving. In fact, these frequent missives felt propelled by an unspoken loss. I wasn’t sure why this conversational habit bothered me so much. Oh, of course I knew her – remember she used to stop by with her niece (sweet girl, you two were friends). My mother was always telling me over the phone about people who had recently died.
From a tufted ottoman beside the window, I looked out at the street below. With the un-rushed certainty of time blocked out in Outlook playing out as intended. Stamens, snipped clinically, left smudged red pollen on the white petals.
The flowers that day were huge lilies with gaping petals and thick stems. And welcomed me as though we were at a spa. The receptionists – young, pretty, interchangeable – were polite, always. Yesterday, as I sat waiting in the bright reception area of the private oncologist’s Harley Street office I had visited now three times, I experienced a detachment – not imagined no, it was a tangible, physical phenomenon.
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