I remember walking around the hospital when Elly was born - empty corridors, with just the occasional cleaner freshening the place up during the lull of night, ready for the messy hordes the following day. The floor shone in the low level security lighting and the warmth of the day finally gave way to a gentle dark stickiness. We were satellites; operating independently of the rest of humanity and in a world, an existence, of our own. The occasional intrusion of another family, evidenced by a panicky moaning from behind one of those wooden varnished doors, or someone wandering around to find the toilets or leaving the building for a cigarette, seemed to me to be wrong - how dare they be in our hospital? The staff were surely just for us - they had led us to believe that anything we wanted could be given to us. Shared gazes focused inward onto one spot.
The same went for the oncology ward and the hospice. Sucked into being individuals and leaving society behind, it was dislocating to find someone else there living out the same experience. I would meet another relative hovering by the kettle or trying to work the remote for the family room tv, and wonder how they have blundered into our universe. One woman in the hospice talked to me most days. I went there every day for just over two weeks - my incarceration was completed on 11th July, but hers kept going. Her uncle had hung on for 23 weeks and she went in every single day, wandering round the corridors and getting to know others passing through. When she had seen I wasn't there, she told me she knew what had happened and wished me all the best in the rest of my life. And with that and a quick hug from a fellow sufferer she released me back into a world of cars, shops, people, noise and connections.
The odd thing of course is that it was all an illusion: people are being born all the time. The hospital was filled with rooms that held women in the feral act of childbirth - exposing flesh and behaviour that is normally so locked away. Animal noises, warm pale limbs, bare feet.
Couples will walk out in a steady stream, one by one so they don't see other couples, clutching soft bundles or hard plastic car seats. Women wearing slippers more suited to the bedroom than the street, walking slowly with exhaustion and bed culture; new dads with swollen eyes from lack of sleep and blinking back unaccustomed tears.
And the hospice - families leaving, not with a newborn baby but a plain carrier bag that may contain a washing kit, more slippers, a photograph: precious little compared to the amount of objects we magpie together over the years and that clutter up the mantle pieces and shelves of our lives. Every day, families walk out like this and every day the beds are cleaned and remade, ready for the next person. We did not have a unique experience - it is being played out in multiples in this city right now. The miracle of birth and death is made mundane by its ubiquity.
I went back to the hospice the day after Karin died to organise some clothes and after an interview with the nurse I went through to thank the doctor for her care. As I passed the staff many said hello to me, but they had stepped off the path. They were caring for someone else now - all that focused compassion was redirected. The doctor hardly recognised me despite us having had some quite intimate conversations in the last few days.
The individual act of dying - or being born - takes place parallel to similar journeys undergone by countless other individuals. Any sense of Karin's death being unique is dashed in a moment's refection.
Was her death unique? Are all deaths unique? What makes us think that our experience is noteworthy?
Three months later I am still reconsidering what happened and what is happening; but six miles from here seventeen families are sitting drinking tea while the low sun streams through the window in dusty shafts. Laundered cotton sits in smooth piles, blankets gently slip to the floor, someone cuts the grass.
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