Brief Moment
You're here and then you're not.
You exist for a brief moment. And then you are gone.
Brief Moment
'I liked the way she moved.'
Thoughts on Death
Not too long ago ago I watched someone die.
They went from there to not and witnessing it fucked with me in a way I found hard to explain after.
For 8 years, I lived next door to the coolest little lady in Brisbane. She was a fashionista. A rockstar. An original. She was also my friend. She was most people's friend.
And she made my life a bit better while she was here.
-
On Friday she'd told me she felt great.
She was planning on living to 100.
On Tuesday she stopped breathing.
A paramedic covered her and called it.
-
Half our neighbourhood gathered out the front of her house and huddled together while the ambo's did the best they could. I remember my neighbour John- a big kind man who's built like a bear- holding her dog and somehow looking small. We stood and stared at her little legs laid out flat, twitching on the porch as 4 paramedics thumped her body and tried to keep her here.
There was a small noise; a sound that seperated something from nothing.
And then there was a corpse instead of a friend.
Bones and a body in a little floral dress.
It felt like something left.
-
We can't see sound but we know it exists.
We experience it when it is there-
in motion.
Like a song,
a life exists when it is played.
I feel you, when you are in motion.
You exist.
And when we move together, I witness you existing.
And I see you and you are spectacular.
-
Desley loved bright colours and telling tall tales on the corner of our street to anyone who would stop to say hello. She had a tiny dog called Gizmo.And her house was painted bright turquoise -
"the colour of traffic lights."
I used to go to dinners with her and the other people in my street- all in their 60s, 70s, 80s. I liked listening to their stories.
Des's were the best. The wildest.
I liked the way she lived.
I loved the way she danced.
In the days after, I watched people take her books and clothes out in garbage bags.
It only took 2 weeks to pack up the whole of a person and their life.
She had 3 tiny little wooden men in her window- the kind you fold and bend for art.
Every so often, she moved the positions of their hands, so it looked like they were waving.
The last time I saw them, it looked like they were waving goodbye.
