THE ABSENCE OF SHADOWS

Five years ago on the fourth day of January
I lost two of the most important people in my life.
One was my father,
The other a total stranger.

I’d known for the last few months of his increasingly sad and isolated life
That my dad was dying
As the Parkinson’s finally robbed him of the precious little mobility he had left,
While what had began as a minor chest infection
Developed into the fully fledged bronchitis
That finally cut him down.
His carer had my home number and had been desperately trying to contact me
As he lay in a shadowy side room of the crowded geriatric ward of a local hospital,
Fighting a losing battle with each dying breath.

Meanwhile, rather than resting in my own bed,
I was in a £19 a night room courtesy of Travelodge,
Somewhere off an anonymous B road
Between two towns you wouldn’t know and I can’t even remember,
Wrapped in the arms of a woman half my age
Who’d struck up a conversation with me earlier that evening at a nearby art gallery,
But whose name I’d never took the time to ask.
I’m still not sure how we’d both ended up in the same bed,
Although some degree of physical attraction most have come into play,
Even if I’d convinced myself it was more about a meeting of minds
And a shared interest in Pre-Raphaelite art,
Than unbridled animal magnetism.
After all, there was I,
A middle-aged middle-income middle manager
In an ill-fitting suit and shabby raincoat,
While she, a good few years short of twenty-five
Looked like a crust on her uppers
In her Laura Ashley three quarter length dress and kitten heels,
Designer frames and Clara Bow bob.
I recall the small talk but forget the words,
Although I remember her carrying a pink umbrella
As shelter from the rain outside,
And the fact that she drove no car
Which led me to believe she must have lived in the vicinity
Of that pretentious gallery,
With its overstuffed sofa’s and under stocked walls.

I remember how, around 3am
When a distant relative finally got through to my mobile
And I sat on the edge of a lumpy single bed
Shedding tears of sadness tinged with remorse,
She’d placed a warm arm around my cold, sagging shoulders
And whispered words of cool compassion into my ear,
Words that I failed to hear at that precise moment in time
But which now haunt my sleepless nights.
And how I’d left shortly after,
Excuses hastily made,
Apologies reluctantly exchanged,
And how, on many occasions during the intervening years
I’ve walked those anonymous streets
In the vain hope that somehow we’ll meet.
A brief encounter, and accidental occurrence,
And that somehow we’d carry on as before
As if the past five years had never happened,
And the absence of shadows
Would finally disappear from my life,
To be replaced by the light in her eyes
And warmth of her smile.