Things To Do Before I Die by Vicki Masters
It is September 2004. I am lying on the couch, knees curled up to my chest, clutching a blanket. I am sick, sick with terror. I struggle upright thrusting the blanket away and take a half shut knife stagger to the bathroom where I retch some more. Back in my place of safety on the couch, my younger son tucks a hot water bottle under the blanket. I wrap my arms around it, holding it tight to my breast. The trembling stills, then with a violent shudder, it starts again. My whole body is shaking, I am amazed by the physicality of my fear. I am doing this with conviction, no half measures here.
There’s cooking happening in the kitchen and the stench blasts out at my couch. It’s fried eggs. Next to chocolate I hate fried eggs. The oiliness, the slimy white encircling the frog eyed yoke, which, when poked, spurts a sickly yellow stream. My husband walks to the couch, sits on the end weighing down the blanket and trapping my legs. He strokes my arm. I am reassured by his touch. Instinctively he stops before I pull away. In my envelope of fear it is his touch only that I can stand, and then only briefly.
The phone rings, again. I shake my head at my elder son as he stands above me extending a long arm down. ‘It’s Gran,’ he says. I raise myself on one elbow and take the phone. Why is my mother calling, I saw her only a few hours ago. But I know why, for soon I won’t be here. She’s snatching her last chance to speak to me. I sit up further, I don’t want her picking up anything from my voice. I am fine, yes, all ready.
I am not ready. I stopped work a week ago. Five days earlier than planned. They gave me a farewell afternoon tea. They gave me gifts including a massage voucher which expires in 6 months. I’ll be gone for longer than that. They gave me their support and best wishes. I walked around frozen in my fear capsule knowing I couldn’t back down now. It is too late to say I’d changed my mind, I’m not going after all. A year of planning, a year of preparing people and I forgot to prepare myself.
We went to Lunnan Bay yesterday. I thought the sea might calm me, that the gentle rhythm of the waves would dull the panic. The five of us huddled together as the wind whipped the waves to a froth and birled the sand. I trudged up a sand dune, thighs aching with the effort of lifting my weighed down feet. At the top I hunkered down, knees to chest, whilst my family gazed up at me. My daughter took the sand dune at a run to join me. ‘Let’s roll down it.’ I said. I lay down and waited for the momentum of lying on a slope to roll me to the bottom. My daughter looked down at me and sighed. ‘Like this, Mum,’ she said and set herself rolling.
When my children were small I thought it would go on forever. Sometimes I thought about all the things I’d planned to do and hadn’t done, but mostly I was too busy. I am so sad that I didn’t stop and smell the roses. One day they were grown up and they didn’t need me in the same way. One day fifty was around the corner and I knew it was time to do the things that I have always wanted to do, before I die. ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ became my mantra. I read it and every other follow your dream book around. I ran personal development programmes, I didn’t tolerate an ‘ah but’. No excuses allowed. And look at me, how will I get on a plane tomorrow when I can’t even get off this couch?
I rehearse the journey in my head for the millionth time, hoping that if I make the unknown knowable the fear will be contained. I will get on the plane and it will touch down overnight in Dubai, that part is fine. I arrive in Delhi early and this is good for it will be day light. I have a car booked to collect me and take me to the hotel. I will be safe there. It is the next part that I struggle with. I have to get to the railway station, find the platform and board the right train and travel on it for 24 hours, until I have reached the most lawless state in India. A state where, such is the scale of the kidnappings and murders, Indians themselves are afraid to go. My husband doesn’t want to go with me. ‘I went to boarding school, why would I want to go again?’ he says when I describe the ashram where I will be closeted for four months doing a yoga course. But I am enchanted by the idea of living in India, especially of living a spiritual life there. And so, when I started the planning for my very big adventure, I didn’t think much about having to travel all by myself. I clutch the lukewarm hot water bottle tighter and wonder what happened to the bold young woman I once was. The psychic I phoned yesterday told me the journey would be accomplished with no problems whatsoever. I paid for that reading, why don’t I believe it.
Then I wonder some more about what is going on for me. I don’t take the anti-malarial that evening. In the middle of the night I can feel my mood lift. I make it off the couch to the airport the next morning. My husband gently detaches me and gives me a little push in the direction of the gates. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he says. And I am.
