the tentacles of time

The prelude to death scares me more than death itself. How vain of me to be twenty-two years young and petrified of ageing, but it’s not the mental image of wrinkles or dentures that make me quiver. 

It’s the thought of the gradual erosion of everything – one’s eyesight, one’s memory, one’s selfhood.  

It’s the inability to climb a flight of stairs, or bake chocolate cake, or read Douglas Coupland anymore.  

It’s the feeling of everyday, all-the-time helplessness as someone else scrubs your back, feeds you lunch or plaits your hair; the things mummy used to do for you when you were six.  

It’s the indignity of having to greet visitors when you’re in a hospital bed and your chest is exposed and you are wearing a urine bag. 

It’s the inevitability of loss as your children surround you, and you relate memories of your youth and remind them to bury you next to your husband.

It’s the unmistakable sound of your own gulps for breath, and the taste of too many pills and the slow tears of no more hope.  

It’s the quiet, bewildered surrender as you lay there, empty, having come to the end of yourself.