27th Feb 2016

As I mentioned in my series of dying thoughts post, I have decided to put a few of my dysfunctional entries online, as separate posts. They'll all be about my thoughts on dying so, you know, a little morbid. I am aiming to get them all up within the week.

It was around February when I began assessing songs on their funeral suitability. I even made a playlist. I obviously have grand narcissistic visions as to its length. What? Four days is too long? Hmm, ok I will reassess it then. But February seems to be when I realised that things weren’t going so well, even though I did not go into marrow failure until March. So I will start with what I wrote in February and move forward chronologically.

27^th Feb 2016

I feel like talking. I don’t know who to talk to. Mike and I are alone but he is too unwell to talk. Or to listen. He is trying his hardest not to be unwell, and I am trying my hardest not to be frustrated by him being unwell. But he does have the beginnings of a cold and I ought to let him, on this quiet Saturday evening, just rest and submit to being ill. He has done so much for me. I have become selfish.

Yet, when my head decides it wishes to talk, it is rather difficult to stop it. The thoughts swirl around my skull, before pushing through my brain and into my mouth. Sometimes an audible a sigh can keep them inside, sometimes a gulp, even a little headshake. Unfortunately, this usually gives the appearance that I am having a minor stroke, and the techniques never work. The thoughts always seep towards my tongue’s tip. They always come out eventually. Today, I will try and substitute an audience with my little black book. Death is on my mind. Not death as in the actual dying part, the part where you can’t walk or talk or bathe yourself, that only crosses my mind every so often, no, it is the pre-dying part that occupies most of my brain. And these pre-dying thoughts, well, they are punctured by flashes of a future where I do not exist. I am not dying yet, nor pre-dying, however the likelihood that both these stages will happen this year is high. High enough to make me want to talk about it. But no one wishes to talk of death. The ‘How are you?’ questions cannot be answered with truth. The enquirers do not want to know the truth. I do not want to know the truth. 

Katherine Mansfield sums up my thoughts quite well in a telegram:

“At the moment, too, I can’t write letters. I haven't the time. I’m late now for the Sphere & it’s a difficult job to keep all these things going. I write to nobody. Please forgive this, understand it & don't get anxious & don't telegraph unless you have to! I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead. It’s the only reply. What, in Heaven's name, can one answer?”

http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/13-june-1922