funerals

My friend thomas and also Jen (not jen aitken) both died. I was away in melbourne, but i could go back for the funeral. Both funerals were on at the same time, so I could only pick one. Jen's mum had put up posters advertising her funeral kind of like you would advertise a tacky show, there was glitter and a big picture of her face.

save squad

7th febuary

Jen and I were part of some sort of squad that saved people, it had a harry potter feeling about it, we wore robes like them. Ben was in the squad too, although he didn't come back from the last mission so jen and I went back out to find him. We were rowing or swimming somewhere, and we saw the death boat pass us. The death boat was a ghostly figure alone in a single rowing boat. It was obviously a sign of death, because both Jen and I then understood that Ben had died. Admitting our failure we returned, only to find that Ben was alive and had saved himself. Everyone said that the three of us were the best squad.

Kitty: Tuesday 4th November.

I've been so exhausted there haven't been many sleep stories but I've just woken up so here's the last bit which I can remember.

There was a man, who might have been my grandfather, in a bath-tub, and I've gone to help him out and take him to his room (for dinner? for bed?) but he's crawled up in the foetal position and his head is under the water. 

There's a boy, who might be one of two people or he might be both, who comes into the bathroom after me and together we haul the streaming wet old man over the side of the tub and onto the bath mat. And the boy breathes into his mouth, and I pump on his chest.

The man shakes his head the tiniest fraction, and one eyeball flickers under its lid and there's part of me that jumps to attention. But it's in my head, in my mind's eye, because of all those movies with miracles that you watch in your lifetime, and the man who might have been my grandfather doesn't splutter out two lungs worth of water and gasp for a breath like a dying fish. Because the man is dying, has died, is dead - past tense, and there's no waiting film crew and there's nothing anyone can do.

And what I feel is not sadness as such, just exhaustion and a hollow, guilty feeling. I'm sitting, crumpled on the ground, with this man who might be my grandfather lying in front of me and this massive gulf stretching between myself and the boy kneeling on the other side of the body. We can't look at each other, we just stare into the middle-distance, my mind is grey.