Take your broken heart and GO!

We walk in as the mum is laying a bundle of egg blue blankets on a huge cushion. She sits to one side, and the dad sits opposite her, like two proud golden eagles watching over their nest. We walk towards the bundle, and see a tiny face. I am looking at a foetus. No. A baby, whose tiny yellow body is somehow managing to breathe on its own. I look at the mum and she smiles sweetly, expectantly, inviting us to stay. I look at Wallop. The need for this encounter to be perfect fills every cell of my body. I take my harmonica out of my pocket and start to play very quietly, tuning into the shallow, sweet inhalation and exhalation of the sleeping baby, putting everything into making this moment as sublime as possible. A nudge on my shoulder, heavy breathing, that builds to a snore. Wallop. Unbelievable. I stop playing and under my breath hiss, ‘Wallop…please…for once in your life, be professional!’ The Dad giggles. Wallop wakes herself up, apologises, and we begin again. Again the snoring. ‘Wallop….if there was one moment in your life to do a good job, it is now!’ Get…a….grip!’ The dad guffaws. And so we continue until the little boy opens his big blue eyes to the bubbling, contagious music of his parents laughter.

​I heard that the baby died a few days later.

*****
Igor and I exchanged messages today about the possibility of clowning and teaching in Dnipro in June. I had the most extraordinary bodily sensation of knowing immediately that we are going and simultaneously feeling flooded with fear. We’ve got our eyes and hearts open, and so much love around us. And who knows what will happen before then. The thing is, I have this one small thing I can do in the face of pain and fear and grief, and a path has opened up. It seems to be that I have to do it.

*****
We are in a bed bay, visiting a baby, when my antenna hears a nurse and a mum say to a 10yr old boy behind us, ‘you said you were brave, well that wasn’t very brave, was it? What a scene you caused…’

We finish up with the baby and I turn around and my eyes fix on a pink armchair in the corner of the room, facing me. Fear floods my body,

‘McFlea! McFLEAAAA!!’ I shout-whisper, ‘Don’t look now…but….is that chair looking at me?!’

McFlea uses her most expert spy body language to check,

‘Yes…Yes it is’.

I hold my breath taking in the gravity of the situation and notice the 10yr old boy looking at me and nodding.

‘You see it too?!’ I shout-whisper again.

‘Yes. It’s looking at you’ he replies loudly and with glee.

My hands feel funny, I flap them. I am hyperventilating, I start to pace up and down the corridor in the middle of the room.

‘It’s looking right at you!’

For some reason both McFlea and the boy are enjoying themselves a great deal. Pleading for some empathy, some sense of camaraderie, some solidarity, I ask,

‘What do you do when you are freaking out? Do you have any calming ideas?!!!’
‘Nope’
‘Can I hide behind your curtain?’ I say, as I wrap myself in it.
‘Nope’
I emerge, desperate,
‘YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!!’.
’Sit on it’
‘What?’
‘Sit on the chair’
‘Absolutely not’
‘You have to sit on it’
‘No thank you, Nope’
‘You have to face your fear’
‘…. …..’
’GO AND SIT ON THE CHAIR RIGHT NOW!!’

The authority in his voice gives me some resolve. And a fright. On balance I think I might be more afraid of him than the chair. So I walk towards the chair. My body is tense, shaking. I say goodbye to McFlea, internally hoping she will relay my bravery for years to come, as I turn and lower myself slowly into the seat, eyes squeezed shut, ready for the inevitable. At last my bum makes contact with the seat. It’s…soft. It sort of holds me, embraces me, and my body melts into it. A wave of relief washes over me that feels like…LOVE. Ha! This is it! This is my place on Earth. Right here. This is my purpose, my meaning, my North Star! I’ve never felt such peace and happiness! I look at the boy as he laughs and says,

‘No, You can’t stay here’

I pause, confused. That’s impossible. This is LOVE. I HAVE to stay here. I communicate all of this with my desperate eyes. I begin to shuffle with the chair across the room as quietly as I can.

‘You can’t take it with you’
‘I’m not’
‘I can see you’
‘…….’
‘I can see you!’
I have to…leave it?’
‘Yes’
‘Forever?’
‘Yes’
I embrace the shiny pink leatherette, resisting a kiss as everyone is watching, including perhaps half a dozen healthcare staff. I walk away slowly, wistfully, each moment thick with meaning. My heart is broken, ripped asunder, bleeding onto the floor.

’Take your broken heart and GO!!!’ He shouts with glee, laughing with his mum.

I take a deep breath, pick up my broken heart and go.

Five minutes later I see him with the nurse receiving his treatment, calmly.

*****
She is in her usual place, lying on the floor; a yellow nightie covering thin bones. Although she is quite happily on the floor whenever we come, part of me clearly feels that frail old ladies should be tucked up comfortably in bed. I breath into my discomfort and Petal and I crouch down beside her and wait.

She looks up and smiles in slow motion. I hear Classic FM playing on the radio in the corner and exclaim, ‘I’m going to the Royal Concert Hall tonight! With a boy! To see Swan Lake!’ She looks me in the eye and her usual rhythm starts up again, a vocal repetition, ‘da da daaaa da, da da daaaaa da, da da daaaa da’. For some time we sing with her until her eyes shine and she says, ‘I met a nice boy! da da daaa da, da da daaa da, da da daaa da…’ I so want to hear more but the rhythm resumes. I gradually shift from mirroring her, to singing the theme of Swan Lake. I surprise myself that I can remember the tune and that I am mostly hitting the notes. Surprise turns to admiration, and I am full of my own voice. In my minds eye I am leaping across the stage in tragic abandon. She is watching me intently, no longer singing her own song, fully engaged. I am sure we are all transported into the same transcendent fantasy when suddenly she says firmly, ‘Stop it! Now isn’t the time!’ Chastised, I stop it.

A long silence. The Classic FM jingle.

​And then her body begins to melt, cell by cell. Micro-moments of surrender, each one a tiny death. Her eyes drift closed. We stay by her side for minutes, in awe. Her body is suspended in space, her head, hands and feet hover above the ground.
This impossible and perfect image stays in my mind for days, so uncanny, familiar, strange, beautiful. Today I looked up John Everett Millais painting of Ophelia. That’s exactly how she looked.

“To die, - To sleep, - To sleep! Perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life;” (Shakespeare, Hamlet)
​
Maybe she was dreaming of her nice boy. I hope so.

The talented and skilled partners accompanying me were Diane Thornton (Dr Wallop) and Zoe Darbyshire (Dr McFlea and Petal Elderflower). We are all able to do this work thanks to the small but mighty charity Hearts & Minds, based in Edinburgh.