we_were_not_meant_to_stay ovenbird It’s so cliché, isn’t it? The phone call bearing bad news, that feeling in your gut that tells you something is wrong before the disaster is spoken out loud, that moment of paralysis after the thing is said where everything stands still because the horrible thing is now in the world with you, a reality that was already here but is only now reaching you, like light travelling from a distant star. It could have been a movie. We set the scene: I’m having my morning tea when the phone rings. I see that it’s my parents and dread sparks in my reptile brain because my parents don’t call me. I call them when I’m out for my walks, and if they’re home we talk, that’s how it works. So when they call at 9:30 on a Sunday morning I know something is wrong. And when I hear my mother’s voice I’m SURE something is wrong because she sounds half choked. She tells me that my uncle was found dead this morning. She doesn’t say “your uncle died.” She says he was “found dead”. The “finding” being the active part because my uncle was found by his brother, the one he has breakfast with every Sunday, the one he will never have breakfast with again, because on this particular Sunday he was found dead of a heart attack on his bedroom floor, the cat skulking under the bed. I didn’t cry immediately. That was surprising. I had time to worry about the fact that I wasn’t crying, but when my parents hung up and I was holding my phone and my uncle was dead tears came and for a moment there was grief and that thing we do when we’ve lost someone–I cast my thoughts back and tried to remember exactly what happened the last moment we were together. Was the last moment a good moment? Was it wide enough to act as a vessel for eternity? I saw my uncle last when I went home to visit in the summer. He came over with the rest of my extended family for pizza. He showed up first and was the last to leave. That was unusual. He’s a man who has sometimes come for Christmas and gone home an hour later. He was funny and scathing and I hugged him good bye. I didn’t expect it to be the last hug or the last good bye. He wasn’t sick. He was 77 years old and still playing volleyball. He was taking some heart medication, but seemed in relatively good health. His heart betrayed him, as hearts are wont to do. And so he was found dead, 911 was called and the coroner arrived and everything was a crime scene until it wasn’t and a funeral home dispatched someone to take his body away, later to become dust so that I will never again see his face or hear his voice or laugh at one of his off-colour jokes. Tonight when I crawl into bed, worn out after a day that still made all its regular demands (because days do not stop for death, no matter how much we want them to) my uncle will be lying in a morgue. Or his body will be lying in a morgue and he will be whatever “gone” is. “I’m not ready,” I tell the universe. “I’m not ready for the generation just one rung up from mine to become voiceless matter.” But the universe isn’t listening. It’s too busy boiling hydrogen to make stars. So I boil water and make tea, not as impressive, I admit, but the ritual is soothing. My uncle was found dead but I find I’m still alive and the kettle is whistling and I’m thirsty so I drink. 251214 what's it to you? who go blather from