Can Never Go Back

Can Never Go Back. Adventures in the Otherworld VI.

I've never been back here.

Dead flowers wilt in a vase on the window ledge, bright colours now
fading to pastels, the slightest touch ready to shatter them to powder.
The dedication tag is still glossy, the words written on it in blue
ink

GET WELL SOON
LOVE ALL THE LASSES AT WORK
XXX

The wardrobe door stands ajar, clothes on hangers untouched for months,
creases preserved and cloaked in the smell of dust and lavender.

The bed is neat, its great width flattened over, all the covers
unwrinkled and fresh, the pillows plump, the sheets white and
clean.

There's a birthday card standing open in front of the mirror, next to
surgical dressings and bottles of pills and unopened boxes of
chocolates, the garish design and colours bright in the sepia haze of
the room.

The phone next to the bed rings, the cable snaking across the cheap,
fluffy, golden bedroom carpet. It rings and rings. No one answers it,
the sound absorbed by the empty stasis of the room. It's been ringing
for years, the sound echoing down decades and forgotten afternoons,
unanswered.

I float in, the door open behind me, and watch the movement of
particles of light as they pour through the net curtains and come to
rest on the bed. The room is not big and I float upward looking down on
it, the carpet, the wallpaper, the fitted wardrobes. I see my parents,
as they might have been, blissfully cuddled in the light from the
streetlamp outside the window, serene and warm in the orange
glow.

I float still further; looking down at the house and garden, the
kitchen extension that never was, visible now and almost gleaming,
built in red brick keyed beautifully to the house. My Mam moves
relaxedly inside, putting away plates with lugubrious ease and humming
to herself.

I see a conservatory at the back of the house that was never there,
reflecting the sun below me, my Dad barbecuing on the patio, his
shoulders slack, his face smooth and pale as he turns the meat over
above the white hot charcoal, standing in his shorts.

Suddenly I shift and see children running toward a grey slate cottage
over the lip of a hip, smoke rising from the chimney, flowers around
the door. My children, I watch them as they run toward my Mam and Dad,
both grey and stooped standing in the doorway of their home, jagged
fells of Cumbria green and purple behind them. I run myself and hug my
father, his firm pats on my back resounding through my lungs, his easy
laughter echoing through the valley. My mother turns to me, arms
outstretched and we embrace and she begins crying, as do I, rivers of
warm salt water falling down our faces.

"I've missed you so much. Why did you go away?"

"I had to, my time had come, I had to leave."

Great sobs wrack us both and I start to fall into her, merging, mixing,
blending together.

"Now you're back and I'll never let you go again."

We absorb each other and all the pain disappears, the emptiness filled
in. Everything is returned to its rightful place. I feel warm and safe
and finally see the sunshine again after so long in the dark. I look
into her eyes, so like looking in a mirror and I see

Nothing. No longer floating the room sucks at me, heavy and enclosed.
Once the place I came for comfort after nightmares in the dark, the
night spent sandwiched between Mam and dad, protected simply by the
warmth of their skin, now just a room, empty of feeling.

I look up at the pelmet above the window and see a photograph of me,
fat and blond, brown dungarees, food around my mouth, moon face
disfigured by my first black eye, beaming eagerly at the camera. Me as
a little boy. My Mam must have looked at it every night before she went
to sleep.

I try to imagine my dad lying next to my Mam in this bed as she slowly
died, drowning inside of her own body, but I can't.

All I can hear is her crying.

I notice the phone is still ringing and I pick it up, saying
hello.

I hear a voice say "I can't come back," then silence. Something inside
me breaks forever.

The next second, the wind of time blows through me and I am dragged on,
a whooshing in my ears, hard to breathe, leaving the room to my Dad to
do with as he wishes. Pale figures pull limply at me as I travel out
through the world faster and faster, the world dominated by the image
of my Mam, imposed over all things but unreachable. I try to move
faster, to get to the world where things made sense and the future
exists but I can't.

The future never happened for my parents and I can feel it slipping
away from me.

My mother, Freda Brown, died of cancer in July 1997 and I miss her and
always will.