When I am writing with Wolf I feel seen and heard, actually listened to for once; for the first time ever I am not just an invisible cleaner, clearing the dead bodies. Wolf writes with me. We write about my memories and my dreams for the future and what my legacy will be, at least what I would like it to be. Wolf asks me, Will there ever be a day when Mrs Death will rest? I don’t have an answer for that. Wolf asks, What happens if the earth is annihilated, what happens when all is flood and fire? I say, It will be messy, I know that much and that little.
Doctor Delano, all I know for sure is unless the humans change the way they are living, they cannot change the way they are dying.
Doctor Delano:
We can change the way we are dying if we change the way we are living.
You have so much on your plate. You really are taking everything on your shoulders here. It sounds like you have a lot to process. Losing people – loss – it’s a big parcel to unwrap and comprehend. I think the best possible way to deal with loss and trauma would be to write about it. This writing, it sounds very healthy to me. Use your creativity to process it. Grief is a big job. It is a big job you do and a lot of work and it sounds to me like you have reached a pinnacle, or perhaps a turning point . . . Do you feel like that? Do you feel comfortable enough to tell me any more? When did this friendship with Wolf begin? What draws you two together: did you choose Wolf or did Wolf choose you?
Mrs Death:
We found each other on Christmas Eve. It began with The Desk. Wolf acquired my old desk from a junk shop and it started then, a couple of months ago. I use The Desk as a vessel, a conduit, to speak to Wolf. When Wolf sits at The Desk and listens we can communicate through the veil. All my poems and songs, my private thoughts, seep through Wolf’s hands and fingers and out onto the pages.
But we go back much further than that. I met Wolf as a child. There was a horrible fire. Wolf was only nine back then and Wolf’s mother died that night. Wolf howled a note so loud and so sad and so pure that I never forgot it. I never forgot that kid, that curly-haired kid standing barefoot in the road in pyjamas, an angel in all that black smoke and chaos. Lots of people died in that fire, it was a catastrophe, cheap housing, no fire alarms or sprinklers. Of all deaths, I don’t know why but I never forgot that night or Wolf.
Doctor Delano:
Earlier you talked about safety: may I ask, are you safe? Is Wolf safe with you? Are you safe with Wolf? Do you feel safe?
Mrs Death:
What do you mean by safe?
Doctor Delano:
I mean is Wolf safe? Is Wolf safe talking to Mrs Death?
Is Mrs Death safe with Wolf?
Mrs Death:
Death isn’t catching! Hahaha, that is what Wolf keeps saying, death isn’t catching.
Well, I don’t know, what harm can come from talking about death? That’s what you said. Talking is healthy. Writing is cathartic. We’re talking now, you and me, and you’re alive and fine, aren’t you? . . . I mean, you haven’t dropped dead by talking to me, have you?
Doctor Delano:
That’s true. Writing can be cathartic.
Would you be interested in going to a writing retreat? I have friends in Ireland, they have a place, a tower, it is a place where poets and artists like you can go to retreat and write, it would be perfect for you . . .
Mrs Death:
That sounds amazing. Thank you. It’s good to talk to you today, Doctor . . .
Doctor Delano:
I’ll give you a letter to send to them in Ireland. I think it would be perfect for you to have a break. Talking is healthy. Talking and listening, talking and listening, that is what we do here, we’re here to listen. And writing seems to be helping you too.
Mrs Death:
I have never spoken about this with anyone before. I just want to say thank you. That sounds wonderful. Doctor Delano, it is such a relief to talk. You used the word cathartic. It has been cathartic to write and to talk. We need to give ourselves space to grieve, to be open and vulnerable and to tell someone about the business of Death. Lately it’s been horrendous, every day another trauma, another battle, another bomb, another catastrophe, another tragedy. Death has been working hard; I have been working hard. Thank you, I would love to go to Ireland to write.
Doctor Delano:
You’re welcome. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. I can tell you have been working hard . . . You’re doing some great work here.
Mrs Death:
Thank you.
Doctor Delano:
Please don’t think me rude, but you’ve never been gender specific in any of our sessions before this. I’ve never imagined death as a person, let alone as a woman. Death is a woman, you say, you identify as a woman. How does that feel, how does she feel, how does that manifest?
Mrs Death:
You’re not alone. Nobody sees me. The world sees death as male. This is how it has always been. The artists, the writers, the poets and storytellers, they’ve all imagined me, they have fictionalised death, but always as a male energy. They will tell us stories of a woman causing death but not being death herself. When we think of the female role in death, we might picture Greek or Roman mythology, the Medusa, Atropos, the vengeful Goddess or the siren luring sailors to their death. There is a female guardian of hell in Viking tradition and Nordic folk stories. You will find Kali Ma, the female incarnation of Shiva, as the powerful Goddess of destruction. We find women here as Goddesses and powerful deities in Asian cultures and African cultures and Caribbean folk songs and stories too. In Islamic and Middle Eastern folklore we have powerful queens and Goddesses: often depicted as an outcast woman or a witch, a hag, she is often destructive or motivated by malice. She is a vengeful crone, a woman of ‘hysteria’. And often she is childless or barren, as though having a child is the natural and only thing that makes a woman a sensible woman, a real woman. Often even when a Goddess is powerful, she is enslaved by a curse to a male figure, to a devil or Satan character.
Then there are horror movies, with repeated themes of enslavement and submission, the Devil’s concubine, a female vampire or pagan witch. We see cinematic images of the Devil’s whores, naked women possessed by evil. Mystical witches in a circle dancing naked in some woods by firelight in a bloody ritual. There are women of magick, white magic or black magic and Voodoo spell-makers, African witch doctors and Caribbean Obeah priestesses.
None of these are me. They are not DEATH – Mrs Death – they are not Death itself: they do not do my work.
In the media, in the newspapers, there are horror stories of evil women capable of taking life – for example the Moors murderer Myra Hindley. But we don’t hear of many famous serial killer women or female repeat offenders who act alone. Most female serial killers we hear of appear to work in a team, a pair, a deadly couple that kill, have you noticed that?
Only three women have ever been given whole-life sentences in the UK: Rose West, Myra Hindley and most recently Joanne Dennahy. Joanne Dennahy was a thirty-year-old mother of two and a triple murderer. These were the Peterborough ditch murders. She pleaded guilty on all charges in 2013. She hunted and killed men as though for fun, and allegedly wanted to be famous for her crimes. She appeared to enjoy frightening people. She threatened to kill Rose West within minutes of arriving in the same jail and they had to move her to another prison. I digress, but it is fascinating, don’t you think?
We are programmed to believe that the female is here for birth, that she is a she, she is mother, she is here to nurture a soul inside her body and to feed the infant at her breast. That the woman may house the new life and soul, and feed and care for a soul, but she may not be the power that takes a soul. I am here. Death is a woman. I am a woman. Surely by erasing me we have erased this power? By never portraying a woman as the representative of Death, the boss of Death, the figure of Death itself, one could debate that an important and fundamental disempowerment takes place. Perhaps this is what erasure looks like.
> All over the planet women are portrayed as nurturers, life-givers, life-providers, nurse and mother and carer. Women are here to respond, nurture and feed us, but not to have the final say, not to pull the trigger, close the curtains and press the exit button. We are told that God is a man in the sky and that the Devil is a man down below. The Christian Church is ruled by a pope, who is a human man and judge and jury. And our policemen and our laws are made and amplified by men. Time is also a male; we have been told there is a Father Time. And then the time of our death and our mortality – the Grim Reaper – is also depicted by a male figure in a black hood with a scythe.
It is exhausting how much space men want and how much credit and control man wants to take for mankind. Male is the God and creator, male is in the centre of the story, male is the narrator, the source of the fire; male as the light, male as the night and the dark and the war and destruction. Man holds all the cards. Think of the Sun and the Moon, the sky and the sea, the water and the flame, the air and the earth, the yin and the yang, the birth and the death, which is female to you and which is male? Think of the colours of the rainbow, red and yellow and pink and blue and purple and orange and green, which colours are female and which are male? Think of each and every star in the galaxy and tell me which is male and female? These spirits and energies, the gender of the world and our universe, how ridiculous it all is to me. Is oxygen male? Is air a boy too?
I have come here to walk the earth as human. I choose to be disguised and camouflaged. I live in the faces of the most betrayed and ignored of all humans. I live in silence. I am the words trapped on the bitten tongue. I am more than a statistic. I am more than another hashtag. I live in the heart of the poor woman, the black woman, the elderly woman, the sick woman, the healer, the teacher, the priestess, the witch, the wife, the mother and the girl. I am Death and I am quick. I am a rabbit and I can vanish. I can be anything I want to be. I choose the unheard and unspoken. I live in the silent scream and I will be silent no more and I have so much work to do . . .
Wow . . . I’ve never said all that before. I trust you, Doctor Delano . . . I trust you . . .
Doctor Delano:
Thank you for trusting me. You’re doing some great work here . . .
Mrs Death:
I feel like you believe me. I am real. I think you believe in me.
Doctor Delano:
I do believe in you . . . I do.
Yes. You are real, of course.
Mrs Death:
REALLY REALLY REAL
breathing am I breathing?
Doctor Delano:
Yes . . . really.
Mrs Death:
I mean, put it this way, people will read your notes on this page and erase you, they’ll presume Doctor Delano is a man, just because I have used Doctor, Doctor, won’t they, Doctor? They will read Doctor Delano on a page and assume you are a male doctor and that it’s a man, a male doctor talking to Mrs Death here today. But you are real, a real woman, and a real female person who is a doctor doctor in a real hospital trying to help me . . .
Doctor, you are real, and I am real, and it is all really real, it is an erasure, isn’t it, breathing am I breathing wait I think I have forgotten to breathe . . .
Doctor Delano:
Real. Yes. You look pale. Do you need a break? Do you need some water?
Mrs Death:
You are real though . . . I am real . . . this is real.
MRS DEATH IS REALLY REALLY REAL
but what if I stop breathing am I breathing? I sometimes forget to breathe . . .
Doctor Delano:
Yes, real. I am real. You are real. Here, have some water?
Would you like to rest? Wolf?
Wolf? Wolf? Wolf?
Wolf:
I’M NOT BREATHING . . . I CANNOT BREATHE . . . I CANNOT . . .
Doctor Delano:
WOLF! WOLF?
WOLF? BREATHE!
WOLF, WOLF!
WOLF?
Wolf: First Snow
Nightingale Hospital, Marylebone, London
They tell me I have to rest. They found me a bed and gave me a pill to make me sleep. I woke up here. I do not know how long I have been sleeping or if I am still dreaming. Or if I am awake. Same as it ever was. I know I am in a hospital bed. I have a green blanket and stiff white sheets. I remember this, I have been here before, this itchy green blanket that smells sterile. I have a tube in my hand and a really dry mouth. Water? Is there water? My throat is raw and sore. My eyes are puffy and hot. So much crying has happened. Outside it is snowing. I wish I could eat snow. Ice cream. Snowy ice cream would be lovely and I would push my hot face into it. Snow falls, patting gently at the window.
I turn my head and find Mrs Death sitting in the green chair by my hospital bed. She is vivid. She is so colourful today, more beautiful than I have ever seen her before. Her afro hair is decorated with orange-yellow marigolds. She is smiling at me. She nods at me and winks and swigs from a silver flask. Today she is Nina Simone – a young Eunice Kathleen Waymon – her big beautiful soul, her bright smile, a powerful heart beats in the room with me here today. I hear her heart, it goes: Dum-dum . . . dum-dum.
She cocks her head and asks: do you want me to leave you alone, Wolf?
She is a young Nina, toothy, grinning at me from the corner of the room. And Nina begins to sing, trouble in mind, so slow and so easy and so soft. I am gazing over at her and Nina is shimmering and gold and magenta and orange and flickering and fizzing. She is watching the snow out of the window, the soft feathery snow, the pure notes, the gentle music. Snowfall. I float here crying, I am crying, something is dying, winter is dying, Mrs Death is dying, Wolf is dying. I must be dead, I am in heaven, I must be in heaven, Nina is singing to me. I manage to whisper: please don’t leave me, Mrs Death . . . you’re my best friend, as I fall asleep.
Mrs Death: We Could Be Heroes
Bowie died. Prince died. Leonard Cohen died.
And everyone that made you feel beautiful and young is going, one by one and there is nothing you can do about it. Everyone who knew you when you were beautiful and young will all fade away. One by one. Nobody will be around to remember the young you any more. And your heroes will disappear, they will stop being there and then you will hear that they died and then you will die a little bit too. You probably haven’t seen them for years. Nor listened to their music nor read their books nor watched their movies. But there was a time you had their poster on your wall, a shrine in your heart, they were the soundtrack to the good times, your glory days. You might go to their funeral. You might go to a bash in the local pub in their honour. This is how it will go. Your heroes die one by one.
You find you begin to be more sentimental, nostalgic, you reminisce and live in the glorious colours of the past, weeping for your heroes, as the future grows more papery, and time burns easy as tissue. The older you get the better you were, and the better they were. Music is a time machine to before: There’s that song, remember that song? Music takes you back. And the most ordinary objects have value: a hair clip in an old make-up bag will take you back twenty years, you didn’t even wear it much, but once you did and there you are again. Photographs are precious. Look at me. Look at before. Look what we did. Look what we wore. Look how we are now. Look. Look. Flashback. Look. Look. Look. Your body aches sometimes. You need glasses. You have a round belly now. You forget the names of things. You aren’t as quick. You drop the ball.
Bowie is dead. Prince died. Leonard Cohen died. George Michael died. Jock Scot died. Howard Marks died. Gil Scott-Heron. Aretha Franklin. Maya Angelou. Toni Morrison. Bill Withers. Little Richard. Carrie Fisher. Princess Leia. What is going on? Who else will we lose? And who will be next? This isn’t a joke. Circle the wagons, please protect Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Dolly Parton, Keith Richards, Stevie Wonder . . . And you sit and stare into the internet at the cult of public grief, performative grief. Every day, another star falls, another someone who meant
something special to someone, who meant something special to a whole group of someones.
Some deaths mean everything to everyone. You read the obituaries and how brave and admirable these heroes were. How beautiful she once was. He donated so much of his wealth to the needy. You knew they were good people. Just look at the kindness in their eyes! Look at this twentieth- century photograph. Look how twentieth century we all once were. We were all so twentieth century! And what a life. What a legend. Read the truth: how they were rejected, how they were once considered failures, thrown on the heap, how they fought to survive, how they overcame life’s obstacles. Once they were nobody and then they were somebody. And then they were old hat and then they were dead. And then they were someone special for all of you to remember. Che Guevara, Malcolm X and Bob Marley worn on your t-shirts forever! They blazed a trail, they smashed the system, they changed the game. You wish we all had that much courage. You wish people would say all this to the living when they are here – show your appreciation to your living heroes now, nice and loud, so they can hear you. Celebrate the living! Why are you waiting to outpour your love only when people die?
I just hope new heroes are being born this year . . .
Your heroes are here! Your heroes are all already here, darling. I see your heroes, I follow them, I watch them, they keep going and never stop. Your heroes are never giving up on their dreams. I see heroes at the food bank, your heroes are at homeless shelters, they take food to people sleeping in doorways. Your heroes are itinerant and broke, with no funding or arts grants. Your heroes are in Calais and Dunkirk, they wait by the shores of Mediterranean seas and volunteer to help the capsized boats and refugees. Your heroes are on the borders. Your heroes are down in Soho donating and distributing food and blankets. Your heroes are working overtime in the crumbling NHS A&E departments, your heroes are your doctors and nurses, your teachers and volunteers, people taking phone calls at the Samaritans and talking people down from the edge.
Mrs Death Misses Death Page 10