Open Writing

It’s my sister’s birthday today. She’s having a wonderful day with her friends - everyone’s come to raise a toast: a good glass of wine, the very best vintage. A cigarette or two, Turkish perhaps in a black lacquered holder. I gave her that a long time ago, I’m glad she’s found it again.

“Welcome!” they say, “where have you been. What kept you so long? Welcome at last!”

And the sweet heady smoke curls up to the skies and hangs in the air: scrimshaw etched upon the night sky, or graffiti upon the soul. Take your pick, choose your analogy. Look, my mother is there, and father too. What do they think, to see her so soon? Nobody speaks, no question is asked, just smiles and acceptance, no query, no blame, for I am not there to beg and harangue, to plead and cajole. No, I am not there with my futile pleas, my gifts, my praise.

“Well done, Paul, well done, well done … ”

How many times did I say “well done - you can give up, you don’t need to smoke. Think of your body, your lungs, your health.” She always assured me that she was fine, nothing was wrong, she was going to give up, and she’d cover a cough with a hearty laugh, but the cough would win and she’d choke on a word, put down the phone and leave me aghast.

How can anyone be such a fool, fill up their lungs with poison and tar? Why did my sister have no sense, why on earth … but I wasted my breath. How could I know or understand? I have never smoked, never felt the need to hold some pointless little white scroll of paper between fingers and thumb and watch it smoulder and foul the air around me, destroying the scent of newly washed hair or polished pine. Have you noticed? Do smokers ever wear perfume or aftershave? I doubt it - my sister never did. What would be the point? No, no, just the unmistakable pungent odour of nicotine - that’s the only perfume a smoker chooses to wear.

A couple of months ago I took my sister’s ashes to be buried in the family grave. My parents lived in a village looking down over Wells in Somerset, and it’s a small cemetery, a green and leafy space where the saplings I remembered have grown into beautiful trees: chestnut and silver birch and Japanese cherry, and dotted about the yews of long ago. I hadn’t been there for a good few years, and right in the corner where my parents are buried, the elegant little cupressus that we had planted had become a giant. A double trunk had emerged where the tree had begun life with only one, and now, at the base, a hole had been prepared for another member of our family to lie still and dream, and listen to the whisper of the trees above.

A fine drizzle had begun to fall, and it was such a simple thing to do: to kneel, to open the wooden box and tilt it gently over the hole. The ash was soft and warm, softer than sand, and as it slid down onto the two photographs at the bottom, I lifted it again with my fingers and let it trickle through. I marvelled at the warmth of all that was left of my sister, and sifted it again one last time. Then in with the soil and we smoothed the top, and I planted a new little rosemary bush. For Remembrance, you know, it’s rosemary for remembrance. I don’t think I’ll forget.

Some things I wish I could - the harsh, hacking cough, insistence that everything was fine. Perhaps that was her safest defence against me, with my persistent, disquieting voice. What a painful aggravation I must have been. It’s too late now to apologise:

“I’m sorry, Sis, for nagging you so, for telling you smoking was bad for you.”

What gave me the right to interfere, to put in my two penn’th over the years? I have all the time in the world to think about it now. She didn’t do it to me, didn’t tell me to stop doing something I loved. What is it about an addiction that causes a non-addict to be so judgemental?

Well, there it is. Happy Birthday, Paul, I’m sorry I couldn’t call you, it’s the first time ever.

You look happy now, did everyone come? Yes, everyone came, a really good crowd, enough for a sing-song! What a perfect place for a bit of Handel! I see the rosemary is growing well, I expect Mum is keeping an eye on it. Give them my love, tell them both I’ll see them one day.

I don’t know when; just one day.

Oh, by the way. Don’t worry about your little cat. She’s doing fine now. You should see her in the garden chasing butterflies. But then, perhaps you do. I see her staring up to the sky with light blue eyes so wide … so wide …

Perhaps she’s caught a glimpse of you.
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