HOW LONG IS A DAY?

To this day I can’t explain why I felt so tired, it hadn’t really been such a busy day, but I did feel tired and at Half past nine I persuaded myself that bed was the place. Television offered only darts which made me feel more tired still. No, bed was the place to be. If there was anything there was always the phone. Good night Val.


Now you guessed it, about an hour into my early night, it rang. Joan had taken a turn for the worse and the hospital had called for Jim and the children. I was glad he had rung, really glad, for I had not always felt Jim and I were all that close, yet these days I felt things had improved, and the thought helped me. 

On the other hand,  I asked myself, what was there for me to do? She’d been absolved, anointed, and nourished with the Body of the Lord. I’d done all the priestly things. Yet even as Jim spoke I knew the one thing I could do, I could be there.

“Poetry, Please” was on the car radio as I drove. Roger McGough was talking about the poet Charles Causley who had died recently. Then he played a recording of Causley himself reading his poem about Christ, “The Bread-Maker.” I had always thought it a bit “clever”, yet now, on my way to Joan on her death bed, I found it strong and helpful, like a commentary on what I was doing. “Now do you want any bread?” Christ asks at the poem’s end. The reply, the poem’s last line, seemed harsh and defeating, “Not today, they said.” It made me want to be with Joan and Jim and the family even more. 

She was very low, everyone said. I held her hand for a moment and could only agree. The ritual contains some lovely prayers for the dying, but they can be a bit demanding for people. I explained this but there was no problem, Jim wanted me to go ahead. Then quite suddenly Joan roused herself for the first time all day. She opened her eyes and smiled at us all. She looked at me dressed in my Sunday outfit and did her best to laugh. “I haven’t seen you dressed like that for a bit,” she said. They were the first words she had spoken for hours. The mood round the bedside changed. “You should have come earlier,” one of the nurses joked.

On the way home I asked myself if I should see anything in Charles Causley’s poem being on the radio as I went to the hospital. And I thought yet again of how often a visit to the sick does me good; something many others have also noted. The car radio brought the news that Arsenal had gone level with Manchester United at the top of the Premiership and the weekend lottery had been won by two people who shared just over £5 million between them. “I’ll bet they’re not feeling tired”, I thought. And strangely, I wasn't either.