An Hairbrush, Covered in Hair.

I wrote this back in 2009.

For a Beautiful Strong Friend.  Much Loved, Much Missed… xxx

I sit by the window, my eyes and chest hot and aching from the heaving sobs that had previously wracked them. My inhaler lies by my feet alongside the pills that my fumbling stupid hands failed to open. It’s all just shite and my apparent inability to do anything i wish frustrates me beyond belief. But I am beyond anger. My frail, weakened body is numb with exhaustion. My pathetically weak lungs and the asthma that ails them now burning as they battle to recuperate. “Too broken even to cry”. I should remember that for my eulogy. The darkness nestling beside my lungs has miraculously not affected them. But its evil is still apparent. The hairbrush that had caused this whole hysterical episode, still on the floor of the bathroom… out of my sight… the long blonde tresses covering it… My trademark. My most cherished possession. Gone. My pride. My Life. My identity. Lost in a sea of tears and pain. Compounded by an hairbrush, covered in hair…

My chest heaves, the racking, gutteral rattle from them stinging my pride once again. The bravery has melted.  The mask and smile behind which I hide everyday has been left at the door as always. I look around at the cacophony of crap that surrounds me. The vase we got so many years ago as a wedding gift, the assortment of photos of smiling faces, happy, content and not plagued by darkness… The hairbrush, covered in hair…

The timer in the kitchen pings as it announces a 10 minute meal ready for eating. My limbs are too weak to move. My stomach too weak to eat. I should eat. I can’t eat. I will eat later. The silence in the room is deafening. I beg the clock to tick. The phone to ring. Anything. The hairbrush is still there, covered in hair…

My limbs feel heavy and start to tingle… there is a pain in my chest… the darkness is coming, and I know it.

Suddenly, far away, a door knocks. That stupid, musical knock that double glazing salesmen and eccentric older relatives use. I wonder whose door is being knocked upon. It’s too late for a milkman… too early for Jehovah’s Witnesses… My concentration drifts, and I see the hairbrush, covered in hair…

My eyelids and body are heavy. The numbness in my legs and hands are making me tired. I want to lie and rest, to sleep… “to sleep, perchance to dream”… I have not dreamt in many months… just a dark, solid blackness… not like the comfort of a dark enveloping womb, but the stifling suffocating blackness of oblivion… The darkness is closing in now, cold, harsh and frightening. My eyelids feel swollen and I am unable to lift them. My lungs are aching from the added strain. The blackness in my chest a ticking timebomb, choosing its moment carefully… That hairbrush, still covered in hair….

The aching heaviness lifts suddenly, the numbness relieving in its totality. Suddenly the weight of the world is lifted from my shoulders and I feel free as a bird, like I could fly… maybe I can… It’s lighter now, an almost blinding, dazzling light, and there is a blue flashing through the voile at the window. I wonder what is causing it. I know the answer, but it is hidden in the confusion of my mind. In the distance, I hear strong, friendly voices, but I recognise none of them, heavy footsteps and and only vague comprehension of an hairbrush covered in hair…

I watch my husband as he stares through the window, his eyes red and swollen. I feel nothing. His heaving sobs have subsided, that awful noise emanating from his chest replaced by silence. I feel nothing. It’s all just shite, but his anger is supressed by exhaustion. I feel nothing. I am beyond anger. The room is bare, stripped of everything that once made it ours. In his hands, he lovingly and gently caresses all that is left. An hairbrush, covered in hair…