Tai chi and hot chocolate

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Each time I visit now you are weaker, smaller. Your clothes hang. You are melting like a winter ice sculpture. I hug you and joke that I can count your ribs. (They are all still there.) Last week we sat, as is our new habit, in your sitting room facing each other. You still felt well enough to stand proud for me when I entered the room. We talked about economics, doctors appointments, pain relief and bonsai trees. We tried to work out how long we had known one another and settled on around a dozen years. We watched two roe dear pass under the trees on the other side of the river.

Today you have disappeared a little more and with your ravaged flesh comes your morphine-dulled mind. I sit listening to the district nurse and notice your mountaineer’s hands. They still look capable. Look overlarge against your collapsing chest. They flutter like eagles’ pinions in the high thermals.

We met at a tai chi class and, both being new, kept one another company at the end of the back row. We made comments under our breath to one another during the routines and sometimes got told off. We’d keep one another straight while we learnt the challenging moves of The Fan. I’d show off my Parting the Horse’s Mane. Then there came a diagnosis and the tai chi ladies rally round. I visit you in hospital and get catheter tales and later we welcomed you back to your place. I’d missed you at my back.

We stop tai chi but promise to keep meeting. You tell me the best place in town for hot chocolate so that is where we meet, every other Monday morning. I don’t tell you I’m not that bothered about hot chocolate. Ten years of drinking hot chocolate for you. We perch in the window seat and you carefully sprinkle brown sugar on the foam and watch it slowly sink. The first sip, and you smack your lips in appreciation. We talk about the state of the country, Nicola, wind farms, the Common Riding, your latest favourite recipe, our children. You talk about mountaineering, trips to the Himalayas, your birds of prey, and I talk about living in Uganda. You tell me about the bent copper in your division and the philandering sergeant, that you hated having to turn out for the miners’ strikes. I tell you I write poetry and you look worried, but you like some a lot. Somehow we drink our way through (is it four or five) prime ministers and a couple of presidents.

Then, one day, something they call Covid happens and we are locked away. I phone you because I know you will be getting more and more depressed and you will want to talk but won’t be able to make the decision to call me. Then they let us outdoors and we meet up in the park. At New Year we huddle in the Chinese pavilion with coffee and rum and Christmas cake, yours with butter because, 'bad cake needs butter and good cake deserves butter'. Mine is good cake. We wonder if we’ll be arrested for sitting together in public, like those people in England, and imagine the headline in the local paper about the ex-policeman and the elder of the Kirk. Later they let us meet indoors and we return to our café, fiddling with masks and signing in. We hug when we meet and hug when we say goodbye. In front of everyone. We don’t care. We need a hug. 'Keep smiling,' you say. 'Keep breathing,' I say, and we wave each other off.

Months pass and a recurring theme becomes your ‘numbers’. They are rising, slowly. Maybe the drugs aren’t holding back the cancer anymore. We talk about what might come, about palliative and end of life care. You tell me to make you laugh. I try and sometimes succeed. Then something changes. You get an infection that knocks you sideways. You start losing weight and even more strength. We meet up a few times, then one Sunday afternoon you call me. You sound upbeat, and I go to your house.

You are ready for me. You have prepared. You put me on the sofa and sit opposite me, look into my face and take my hand. I can’t remember what you said. Something about having been in hospital, that they were upfront with you (at last), there is nothing more to be done and that you are dying but it’s alright, now that you know what you suspected. I know it had to come, but I am not ready. I say we will keep meeting for as long as you want to. We will take our hot chocolates for as long as we can.

And now here I am, sitting on the side of your bed, holding your hand, telling you I won’t stop coming, saying call me anytime and I’ll come even for just ten minutes, that I am praying for you. You nod and say thank you and I let you sleep.

When this is done, which will be sooner than we would like, but at the right time, I will choose a bonsai tree from your collection and learn to care for it. You particularly said I should take a juniper. I will browse your books and choose a few as you have asked. I will ask for your green hat. And I will go to our café one Monday morning and sit in the window. I will picture you there, dapper in your polished shoes, pressed shirt and silk cravat, a glinting diamond stud in your ear and a twinkle in your eyes. I will raise a mug of hot chocolate to you, take a sip and smack my lips.

BA d. 29 January 2025

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