Read The Language of Dying for Free Online

to stop myself saying that all of this is too bizarre, because you already know it is – just as I know I need to get new bloody wipers.
    We are silent as I pull off the clinical grid road and follow the sign down a sweeping drive. Even though it’s raining and the grounds look beautiful, I can’t help but think of Dachau or some other death camp. I look to the sky, half expecting to see a plume of black smoke rising and pressing against the grey clouds. It isn’t there, of course, but I see it through the window of my mind, far too clearly. I see a lot of things I don’t like through that window.
    ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I ask you, although the question screams inwards, at me. Only our mad dad, I think. Only our mad dad would ask me to do this and think that it’s fine. You smile at me and nod, and I see how tired you are, just the act of leaving the house draining more hours and minutes away. Ismile back. You put the small plastic sputum tub into your pocket. You carry it with you everywhere now, just like your tobacco and lighter. The yin to the smoke’s yang. But then all that spit has to go somewhere and it can’t go down, so it has to come out. Surreptitiously, though, and when no one is looking, because spit is rude, spit is wrong and you are always such a polite man. It doesn’t make me heave anymore when I see it. Not like it used to.
    I get out of the car and zip my jacket up so that it’s nearly touching my nose. Sometimes, at home, when you’re using the jar, I concentrate hard on the TV so I don’t have to catch sight of the tobacco-brown slime that escapes from you as you cough and choke it out. I don’t let you see my discomfort. I don’t want you to know that I’ve started to hate the feeling of my own wet spit flooding against my tongue. I’ll get over it. You won’t. Time will heal me. Time will take you from me.
    We don’t speak as we hunt out the office, our feet crunching on the gravel, disturbing the silence. The rain patters lifelessly to the ground. It’s thinned since we left the house; only drizzling now. Through the window of my mind I see an ageing, fat God sitting above us in stained underpants, hacking and choking as he sends his saliva down in rain. It’s a comical image, farcical. My mind does that to me sometimes.
    You are striding ahead and I run to catch up. There is no breeze or wind and it should be cold, but it isn’t.There is a nothingness to the weather, and although I normally like the fresh chill of water on my skin I don’t want it today. Too much water.
Too much water under the bridge
. The phrase makes no sense, but I think it anyway. My world is full of clichés. My empty thinking space finds trivia to occupy itself as we trudge along the path that leads from one brown building to another. Nothing is open. We find no one. I can feel your frustration. ‘This is a waste of time,’ I mutter, and then realise the depth of my words and bite hard on my cheek.
    We walk past the garden of remembrance and I see a small wooden sign pointing the way to the children’s garden. It is in bad taste. Why would children want to play here? I stare. My breath catches. I understand. I look at you and see the lines of age and experience on your wasting skin, and I see the sadness in your exhausted expression. You turn away and maybe in that moment I can understand why you are
okay with this
as you keep telling me. Some things are natural and some things are not. You may be going quicker than either of us want, but you are a long way from the children’s garden.
    The stillness around us makes me want to cry and I’m glad to follow you back to the building. I don’t want to think of the dead children. I can’t think of them. It might make me drift too far. I like to think it wouldn’t, but it might.
Doctor drifting
. Like before. And I don’t need that right now. Right now is all about you.
    We find the office. It’s locked, but the small waitingroom is