Easy, lucky, free.
There is a crow in the backyard. My kitten senses it before she sees it. Jumping off the bed, she pads with the quiet efficiency of a practiced killer to the sliding door at the back of the house. By the time I reluctantly pull myself from broken slumber and reach her, she is already staring back at me expectantly, waiting to be let outside.
There is a crow in the backyard on the morning I will say goodbye to you.
Wear colour, the notice says. Come in a shirt emblazoned with the name of your favourite band. Come in glitter or lycra, or a work uniform, or a pretty dress. You have pre-written the details about how you want this day to play out, having long known that it was rapidly approaching. As the cat mews impatiently, I can see the bird looking at me. It is an old soul, all glossed black feathers and weathered-glass eyes. It is also entirely unafraid. This animal will make short work of any domestic housecat, I know this much. A protective instinct washes over me, and I wonder if your mother felt this way when the diagnosis was delivered to you 18 months ago.
Deciding what to pull from the wardrobe has suddenly become a matter of critical importance. Life and death, you could say. I can’t decide what is appropriate… everything seems deeply wrong. What rules should you apply when making a decision like this? Will your family be affronted to see unironed jeans, and a hairstyle that suggests I just rolled out of bed? I glance at the alarm clock, the glow of traffic-light red numerals telling me that I am wasting time.
The minutes become a procession, ticking by in an eternal ceaseless loop. This lip gloss, a tangerine-hued reminder of our first shopping trip to LUSH. You were well then - flirting with the boy behind the counter, your eyes effervescent and shining. I smear the colour on, annoyed by the banal regularity of the task. This cylinder of compressed wax and oil has the audacious nerve to act like it’s just another day.
Radio songs fill the car as I sit at the intersection. The windows are wound shut tight, whether I’ve done this to keep the noise in or the world out, I am largely unsure. The old man across the road is walking home, plastic bags weighted with some bread. A chocolate bar. Two litres of mik, full cream. By the age of 70, I suppose you care less.
It is both baffling and entirely understandable that I am able to congregate in this mass of your people, and barely know any of them. You were the star of the show, always, but had a soft spot for rank outsiders. I think of countless Saturday mornings when we would quietly browse the bookstore where you used to work. How I would go home and spend the night with new literary friends, whilst you would go out and drink with real ones. You never judged me for not wanting to tag along.
The place is full to bursting. Sliding doors are open, allowing the overflow of people to gather at the back behind relatives, and those who have either arrived early or deemed themselves of enough importance to take a seat. I’m staring at the wood above you through the dark of my sunglasses. It’s a deep brown, light reflecting off the lid.
I think again of how you have orchestrated this entire performance. The bands ringing out, the flowers resting above your bones. It seems fitting, to know that the event is occurring the way that you wanted. How many people get these decisions made for them? Most, I’m sure.
Your smiling face is looking up at me from thick card usually reserved for wedding invitations. You are standing in front of a Christmas tree, with sparkling lights glowing behind you, a Tiffany pendant hanging from your pale and slender neck. The same pendant that is also draped around mine. Rewind a few years: “I don’t care for corporations”, you said, “but romance is timeless”. Oh, that look on the sales assistant’s face, when our dirty sneakers ascended the steps in King Street, and the suited door attendant caught her eye. We didn’t belong there, in that obscenely expensive jewellery store. We don’t belong here, either.
You spent 15 months being frontline-soldier brave, a stoic determination emanating from your chest as you remained matter of fact about the situation you were facing. “We’re all going to die”, you said to me pointedly. “I’m just doing it a little sooner than most”. I remember the night your defence finally folded: the invasion of the enemy now simply too great, like the cancer cells inside you. Your voice, broken and haggard, admitting the grotesque truth that you had struggled for so long to hold in: you were terrified. I didn’t know what to do, so I just looked at your stricken, ghost-white face, and lied with all the conviction I could summon: everything would be okay. You must have said that line to me one hundred thousand times. “Everything will be okay”. Fat tears ran rivers of designer mascara down your face, forming black streams through the thick layer of foundation you would stop bothering to apply the next day. A failing body crumpled in my arms. I knew you couldn’t fight anymore.
There is a line and I am in it, slowly approaching the wooden box where the flesh and bones which housed you now reside. Friends are comforting friends, but there is no-one beside me. There’s just you, hidden from view, and me, trying to stifle desperate gulps of breath as reality hits home. Conor Oberst is singing our favourite Bright Eyes song, and it’s frankly not helping. “Did it all get real, I guess it’s real enough”. You knew how to create a moment, always.
An instant later, I’m here, it’s my turn. I knew the moment was coming, but now that it’s arrived, I feel ill-equipped to deal with it. 15 years of the popular girl and the misfit, and we’re on the last page of our last chapter. My fingertips reach out and gently touch the unassuming panels of jarrah. I feel the fracture deep in the centre of my chest: I have to say goodbye to you. My sweet, beautiful friend. As I struggle to remain composed, I step back and grace the box with the peace sign, the same one we gave each other whenever we’d part ways. The ritual was well honed: 10 steps and we’d turn around, V-shaped index and middle fingers waving triumphantly in the air, stupid grins on our stupid faces. I forgot to do it once, early on, and you got so cross with me that we didn’t speak for a week - the longest we’d ever been absent from each other’s lives since meeting. You eventually phoned at 1am in a sulk to remind me in no uncertain terms of our agreement, demanding a full apology and angrily making me promise to never forget again.
As mourners console each other and make travel arrangements to reach the next venue, I’m walking outside, the sun hot on my skin. I am overcome with the knowledge that I am alive. I have every intention of skipping the after-party, crowds never were my thing. You knew that I wouldn’t go anyway - we always had an understanding.
Turning briefly, my fingers raise towards the sky one final time. I know you can’t see them now, but a promise is forever. And romance is timeless. One foot in front of the other, you are morphing into memories. You’re a Saturday morning espresso, you’re the radio song I turn up. You’re a tangerine dream, a silver pendant hanging. The earnest kitten which I shield from harm.
The last line of the story arrives, it having long ago written itself.
Everything will be okay.
