We’re pleased to announce the winner of the June WWWC: Leah Rosebrock! Responding to the prompt ‘time waits for no one’, Leah’s winning piece is a mediation on living life to the fullest, even when there’s not much of it left.
Read her winning entry below.
Time Waits For No One
In my final year of high school things started to fall apart. Disco had reached fever pitch with the Bee Gees responsible for six bangers in the top ten at the same time. Everybody was mad for them, until they weren’t. My mother cried the day Gough finally called it quits and announced it really was Time, and in September that year she cried again. This time they were tears of joy when Bernie ‘Superboot’ Quinlan sent a 75 metre torpedo punt spiralling through the goals to win the night premiership. Unfortunately, after that burst of brilliance her beloved Roys went on to fizzle their way to extinction. A few weeks later, when we arrived back at school from study break to sit our final exams, the portrait of the Pope in the hall had been swapped out for a third time. But it wasn’t until the final day of the year that I really knew things were spinning out of control; the day my mother told me she had only a short time left to live. What I had hoped might just be the settling cracks of life were actually serious structural fractures.
In the weeks after mum got her happy tidings, the gang was already showing signs of breaking up. It felt like the dismantling of a star. I learned about that in physics class, and while it didn’t interest me much at the time, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the death of a celestial body and the dissolution of my treasured circle. I watched on, powerless, as the layers of our collective years began to unfold before me in a series of sheddings.
Helena was first to go, heading straight to the big smoke for an arts degree.
‘At the University of Melbourne,’ she was always compelled to add. I wasn’t sure she even knew what an arts degree entailed. I’d never actually seen her read a book she didn’t have to. Gavin tagged along with her, perhaps motivated by love or lust, but most likely by lack of imagination. Sally’s unravelling took her to Canberra for an entry-level position in the tax department. No surprises there. She’d had a fair amount of practice, completing the maths homework for most of us over the years. After Sally, it was Robbo’s turn. In a simulation of a stellar core collapse, he bought himself a clapped-out four-wheel-drive and set out west to try his luck in the mines. Then came the final shockwave. When my best friend Marco made his move I knew we had all but vaporised. He chose to go supernova, generating a massive, life-shattering explosion when he dumped me to go hang out with relatives in Sicily. The plan we had originally conceived for the two of us turned out to be a sole adventure. Not only did this mark the final disintegration of life as I had known it, but when that final bang went off, what remained was an astronomical black hole. My black hole.
It shames me to say that it played heavily on my mind; my friends out there, living their dreams, while my days had become bathing and bandaging and bedpans. No more Hustle or Funky Chicken for me. I now got my exercise from running mum to medical appointments and late night dashes to the pharmacy or grocery store. I spent more time on her personal care than I did on my own, manicuring her nails, applying lipstick, arranging her wig. Later on, undertakings that would have previously made me dry retch or keel over with embarrassment were now performed with unemotional ease. It was not just the surgical wounds and the physical pain that needed tending. Life really catches you by the throat when you are confronted with the person you love most in the world facing their own mortality. The vacuum left by my youthful friends was now filled with people twice my age. Bev from the flat next door, a constant supplier of soup and other savoury delights, the visiting nurse, Alison and a host of heavenly angels from the local church.
‘It’s tough on a young person,’ said Bev when she made one of her culinary deliveries. ‘You’ve become a cleaner, a nurse, a cook, a bloody psychologist and god knows what else. At your age! She’s lucky to have you.’
No Mother Teresas here, I thought. I’m all she’s got.
Some days were horrible. Like when she was in so much pain and I had to distract her with massage and meditation until Alison arrived with something more useful. On good days, she liked me to read to her. Books she had put off reading because she thought she would have time later. Towards the end she opted for poetry. Small powerful nuggets she could commit to memory and rattle off.
‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light!’ I often heard her shout.
I liked the late winter the best when she was happy to be wheeled out on the balcony to check on her potted camellias. She planted them, she told me, for their transience. For their short, sharp display of beauty. Just like you, I thought.
On New Year’s Eve, she asked to be moved onto the balcony so she could be perfectly positioned to watch the fireworks. Bev came over and helped me relocate the bed outside. She’d left a bottle of bubbly and mum’s favourite, quiche lorraine, on the table. There was no card. What do you write on a New Year’s card when you know it’s likely to be the last?
We sat together on the bed, sipping from champagne flutes. I lit up a joint courtesy of Gavin’s brother who had dropped over that afternoon with a small amount of weed, on Gavin’s orders apparently. As the evening chill descended upon us, we snuggled in tight with a clear view to the town’s humble skyline.
‘Have you heard from Marco?’ Mum asked. It knocked me for six. That name had not been mentioned for almost 12 months.
‘As a matter of fact, I got a postcard last week,’ I answered, pointing to the damning object I’d tossed on the small outside table.
I handed it to her, signalling I had no issue with maternal scrutiny. She looked at the image of a smoking volcano then turned it over and read aloud.
‘Ciao bella regazza, Missing you heaps. Having a ball. You should get your arse over here. Soon! Time waits for no one … Arriverderci. Marco.’
‘Insensitive prick,’ I heard myself say. Mum’s mouth began twisting and contorting into strange lines. I was about to ask if she was okay until I realised she was stifling a laugh.
‘Time waits for no one!’ she repeated as she released her built-up tension into one great belly laugh. Soon she had me going too. We were cackling and guffawing uncontrollably, clutching our sides from the pain of it, tears rolling down our cheeks.
‘Men,’ she said and that sent us off again.
‘Boys,’ I corrected her, when the eruption began to subside.
We spent the rest of that evening tucked up under the doona. Preferring to avoid the midnight countdown, we decided instead to drown out any outside festivities with revelry of our own.
‘Mozart’s Requiem, please.’ Mum said.
‘Are you sure?’ It seemed an odd choice, given the circumstances.
‘I find it uplifting, life-affirming,’ she said. ‘And besides, I won’t get to hear it at my own funeral, will I?’
‘Fair point,’ was all I could manage to say.
Above the drama of Mozart, we could be heard oohing and aahing as shower upon shower of coloured lights burst from the darkness and rockets exploded into the night sky. And when the man-made display was over, we turned to nature. The Milky Way swept across the heavens. We gazed out in wonder and when the infinite expanse became too unfathomable our eyes settled on familiar friends: the Southern Cross, the Pointers, Orion and the bright star Sirius.
We slept together that night, out on the balcony, our arms wrapped around each other. I sensed her drifting in and out of sleep as I stayed awake for much of the night, tuned in to the sound of her struggling breath.
This did bring tears !