Beyond the High Blue Air

by Lu Spinney

  On Sunday morning Marina and I drive to Gael Lodge and we talk about that first Easter in Innsbruck, the earliest memories, fragile now with retrospective knowledge of our naïvety. The colourful stalls on the cobbled plazas of the Old Town selling painted eggs, elaborate breads, marzipan cakes, stout men and women dressed in their surreal Easter rabbit costumes regaling the children, the shock of confronting the festivities as we walked through the April sunshine to visit Miles lying unreachable on his hospital bed. The fantasy, it turned out, that none of us could suppress, that he would wake and rise up from his bed and talk to us, tell us where he had been, what he had experienced. We were sure that could happen. How strange it is now to imagine ourselves then; we are no longer the same people.

  Arriving at Gael Lodge we find the in-house service in full swing in the main day room, wheelchairs drawn up and carers in attendance. Some of the residents are able to sing and the priest is helping them along in his splendid baritone. There are bowls of small chocolate eggs dotted around and a lunchtime barbecue in the garden is planned; today is going to be fun for the residents who can join in.

  When we get home the day starts peacefully. Miles is awake and we all chat to each other, reading bits out from the Sunday papers and trying to find things that might amuse or interest him. But then the day deteriorates, his cough constant and the effort to clear his throat becoming more and more difficult. By early afternoon he is exhausted, but his coughing has not been followed by the usual roar of anger and frustration; instead he coughs, chokes, arms and legs stiffening with spasticity and his face growing purple before he manages the final gasp of air, then silence, broken only by heavy breathing as his limbs slowly retract. The silence is such a marked change that I am alarmed, his passivity, his slumped calm like the deadened, glassy inertia of someone at the deepest reaches of their depression. I take his hand and find myself pleading with him. Miles darling, please don’t go away like this now. We are doing everything we can to help you, though I know how unendurably slow it seems. I cannot bear to lose him like this before he has gone.

  Will and I drive him back and I tell Jana of my concern. She will call the doctor on duty. I know there is the ever-present danger of chest infections turning to pneumonia for people who are bedbound. We exist in a strange paradox. While we dread the ordeal he endures day after day and long for his release, the reality of his becoming ill and suffering further is terrifying, to be prevented at all costs.

  On Easter Monday the infection escalates. Claudia and I arrive in the morning hoping to bring him home, but it’s clearly not possible. He’s still in bed, flushed and sweating. When he coughs he struggles to get his breath, but he does not look fearful; it is I who am afraid. There is something about him that makes me feel his acceptance of this is willed, for I am aware of that fierce determination that used to be his defining characteristic, a sense that at last he is back in control. Eventually he falls asleep and we stay on in his room, watching him, checking his oxygen levels, reluctant to leave. Matthew is coming and the nursing here is skilled; there is no more we can do but we don’t want to go. He sleeps for the rest of the day and in the evening we leave.

  Before going to bed I call the ward and speak to the nurse on duty, who tells me Miles is sleeping well, despite his raised temperature. We will keep an eye on him through the night, she reassures me.

  Tuesday morning, the Easter weekend over and the children back at work. Fran, an old friend of mine who lives in Hong Kong, is in London and has asked to see Miles. Our two families would often join together for Christmas in the Alps. Her son, Paddy, became a great friend of Miles and Will, little boys creating snow forts only to destroy them in furious battles and then as teenagers, snowboarding, finding ever more perilous jumps. When Paddy fell into a crevasse off-piste Miles grabbed hold of him, clinging on while Will left to find help. The story still haunts Fran, though she laughs as she remembers that instead of falsely reassuring Paddy when he asked, terrified, Am I going to die? Miles responded frankly, I don’t know.

  This will be the first time Fran has seen Miles since his accident. I call her and tell her that he is unwell, but I can hear how upset she is at the thought of not seeing him. I won’t stay long, she says, I would like just to see him again. I’ve thought about him so much over the years. He was exceptional. She continues and I’m in tears when I put down the phone. I’m reminded afresh of the waste, the senseless waste.

  Jana is in Miles’s room when I arrive. He seems more settled, she says, though I’m a bit concerned we haven’t been able to lower his temperature. Again the unspoken fear is pneumonia, the sudden escalating of his chest infection. Miles looks more drowsy than usual, neither asleep nor awake, and his breathing appears more shallow, but an infection always does that, especially in his compromised condition. Matthew has seen him and for the moment there is nothing more that can be done. At least, as drowsy as he is, he does not look as though he’s in any discomfort. Fran’s impending visit may not be as difficult as I thought.

  I should not have worried about her. She is immediately at ease with Miles, goes straight to his side and quietly and warmly engages with him. He appears to rouse a little at the sound of her distinctive voice, but it’s short-lived. His face resumes the bleak, resigned expression he has nowadays and he closes his eyes. She is undeterred, pulls a chair up to the bed and, holding his hand, begins to reminisce about his escapades with Paddy when they were small boys. Maybe Miles will enjoy that. As I always do when friends come to see him, I’ll leave them on their own. I’m going to make some tea, I tell her. Call me when you feel you’ve had enough time. I’ll be in the day room.

  The making of tea here is a ritual, a necessary punctuation of the time. I don’t want it particularly, nor the stodgily sweet biscuit I take from the guest biscuit tin, but the process is soothing. I will be alone in the small cubby-hole of a kitchen off the ground floor ward and as I wait for the kettle to come to the boil I can stand with my back to the world outside and just for those few minutes let my mind go blank. Then the swirling of the teabag in the boiled water, concentrating on ensuring I get the right colour and strength before removing it and adding the milk. Putting the milk away in the small fridge, finally selecting a biscuit, the ritual is over and I set off, no different, I suppose, from tea or coffee breaks in offices everywhere.

  Walking back into the day room there is the usual social banter of being here, greeting a nurse or carer or relative, engaging with the residents from other wards who sometimes wander in. Really I lead a double life; this is my other social world now, a gentle world, a place of curious harmony. There are tiffs and crises, but everyone is safe here and people are kind. All the while the residents who belong in this high dependency ward are ranged around the edges of the day room, facing each other in their wheelchairs, Alex, Ellen, Petros and the others, their world a different one, mute, excluded even from this.

  Eventually I pull up a chair and take out my iPod and something to read from my bag. Unwinding the knotted earphones I put them in, scrolling through the titles to find something and stop at Adele, recently added to the list for me by Marina. Set Fire to the Rain is playing, Adele’s pure, rich voice taking me with her, when I realise Fran is standing at the entrance to the day room calling me urgently, Lu, Lu, come now, come right now. She looks strange, something about her eyes conveying more than the words, her face ice pale, and then she is calling for a nurse, a doctor, Help please, she calls, as I run past her to Miles’s room. Please somebody come, he needs help, Fran cries, I think he’s choking, somebody, please, Miles is not breathing properly. I run to the bed and lean in to lift him, hold him up, Miles, Miles, are you all right? What’s happening? What’s wrong, my darling? His face is darkened, his breathing rapid and shallow, but his expression is calm, clear, as though he is seeing through me, past me, far beyond this place and the moment to something infinitely understandable at last. I love you, Miles. A long shuddering breat
h, his eyes wide open so deep green, so deeply peaceful I freeze. I remember Ron, his last breath, his eyes. I don’t understand. It is too sudden. Is Miles dying? Is this what’s happening? I know he wants to go but I don’t want him to go now, I want him to stay, I cannot endure the loss. I have not confronted the loss. My mind cuts loose and from somewhere far above me I look down and observe a woman holding a young man in her arms, see his strong face, his clear jawline, the thick dark hair and long lashes, so dark now resting on his paling cheek. The woman, me, I am gazing down at them both.

  The silence is absolute.

  There is no next breath.

  Miles’s breath erased, breath ephemeral as consciousness.

  The door opens and the silence is broken in a blur of activity as Matthew and Jana enter the room. Matthew strides towards the bed and I step aside as he bends over Miles, speaking urgently to Jana who has joined him on the other side. I am suspended, useless, I don’t know what’s happening and I can’t help. Eventually Matthew stands up and looks at me and then I know. Now I want to hold Miles and I climb straight up onto the high bed, the first time I have ever done that. Aware how preposterous and undignified I must look but not caring. Why haven’t I done this before? All those times I could have hugged him properly like I am now, my arms around his strong back, my face in the sweet hollow of his neck; it seems unbearably sad that I have never done this before. I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m crying, a strange new sound. I love you, Miles. I love you, my darling, darling Miles. Lying there, even now his face cooling to stone, his chest, his heart beneath my heart holding its warmth. He wanted to go; I must not hold him back. You can go now, my darling, you can leave us, you need stay no longer. You have stayed long enough and we will survive now. You’ve taught us how to survive. I tighten my arms around him and we have melded, together we are crossing the divide and he is leading me, taking me with him, our bodies on the bed in the small room that is too full of people all disappearing far, far beneath us. Now there is only emptiness and absolute peace. I am void of all feeling; it is the pure peace of nothingness.

  Miles, my son, has died.

  Some time later – I have no sense of how long I have been there, with him and not with him – I climb down off the bed. The room seems strangely light, the silence immense. Huge Jana hugs me. Fran is sitting down on the only chair in the room, her head in her hands. She looks up and she is crying, Oh Lu, I didn’t understand, I didn’t know what was happening. I knew he had a chest infection, I thought it was just that, I’m so sorry. Her words float in the silence. I put my arms around her, detached, aware only of this sense of intense calm and emptiness. Please, Fran. He wanted to go. I must call the children and David. I call them, their shock, they will all come immediately.

  I can’t access what I feel. I remember the Sunday five years ago, watching myself sleep-walking, the same out of bodyness. There are things to do. Later I will talk to Rachel, ask about undertakers, know what happens next. But for now we will stay until they come to take Miles’s body away. I don’t remember any more.

  I have made an appointment with the undertakers to see Miles in the mortuary. At the end at Gael Lodge he was surrounded by people and by all the paraphernalia of his damaged existence. I want to see him again, unencumbered, on his own. I did not need to see Ron again; his death at home was private and complete. I had told the undertakers to come and collect Ron’s body in the evening and we had time to be alone with him, at peace in the quiet room and his death so gentle.

  Marina wants to come with me. It is a comfort, for there is something, we are not sure what, that feels shared in our relationship with Miles. Perhaps, we say, as we drive to see him, perhaps it is his particular protectiveness of us. A kind of paternal protectiveness, Marina says, even of you. Arriving at the undertakers we are both guarded, this thing so private, Miles so much ours that it feels wrong to have to ask to see him. Who does his body belong to now?

  A middle-aged woman is at the reception and she is expecting us. Her manner is restrained without being falsely respectful and I am grateful to her. She leads us down the stairs to the viewing room. You may stay as long as you like, she says, and disappears.

  We stand still for a moment, bracing ourselves, taking it in. The lighting is subdued, the atmosphere hushed, reverent, ecclesiastical. Two great vases of white lilies are set on gilded wooden pedestals, their scent filling the room, obscuring faint echoes of something more clinical. Above them hangs a painting of a sun setting over a darkened ocean in a rapturous splash of greens and gold and pinks, the well-intentioned metaphor ghastly in its sentimentality. Heavy purple curtains are suspended from rails that cross the ceiling, which I see can be pulled for further privacy. In the centre of the space stands a table, the top and sides draped in the same purple velvet as the curtains. A wooden coffin lies on the table, pale grained ash with brass handles; I recognise it as the one I chose from the brochure for Miles.

  The absolute shock of seeing him. I had thought I was braced for this, but I am not. He lies on his back in the coffin, dressed in the dark green shirt and sweater I had given the undertaker. He looks so present, so strong, his face perfectly composed. Realigned in death to what it had been, there is no single indication or sign of the past five years, all the damage, the tension gone. Erased in death, no trace of it remains. Such strange beauty, a body without breath. His face freshly shaved. So cold when I kiss it, freezer cold.

  I think, here he is on display again, as he was in Innsbruck that first day all those years ago, a magnificent specimen of young manhood. His presence is palpable, a field of energy that emanates from his stilled body. There is a sense of something distinct and contained, as it had been in the hospital room, though this time there is no conflict. In the first instance death was defeated but now it is his choice; he desired this end.

  What word is there to describe Miles as he is in death? Awe, above all. Awe for him, for the grace that resides in his tangible, residual power; awe for death, its omnipotence. Its unequivocal magnificence. And with this comes a sudden and unexpected sense of deep calm and comfort: we are alive and then we die and all of it is magnificent and right. Grief will resume, but for now, standing here in this alien underground room, I am suffused with reverence for the life that Miles was given to live and lived so intensely.

  Marina takes my hand as we leave. He loved us too, she says. That is ours to keep.

  A week later and Miles’s funeral, the day as beautiful as Ron’s, a sky the texture of watercolour blue. The crematorium chapel is local to Gael Lodge but none of us has noticed it before, hidden away from the high street behind what appears to be a lush private park but is in fact a tree-lined cemetery. It rained last night and as we drive up the long driveway towards the chapel everything looks newly washed, the clean grey of the old chapel at the end and the surrounding headstones set against a verdant green of massed sycamores and flowering chestnuts. How can it be, that Miles is dead and yet the world renews itself, quivers with fresh life.

  Madeleine, a friend and interfaith minister who has known Miles since he was a small boy, takes the service. We are a small group, the children, David and his two brothers, Amelia and Belinda, my nephew Sean and a few close friends of Miles’s; we want this funeral to be private. Later we’ll hold a big memorial at home and celebrate Miles with all his friends and the carers and medical staff who know him so well.

  The coffin stands alone in front of us, draped in the same cream and lime roses I chose for Ron, their velvety lusciousness comforting. It is a strange thing, knowing how Miles looks now, lying there under the plain ash and roses; I know what he is wearing, the precise unearthly coldness of him. I can see that expression on his face, imagine him listening intently the way he does as he hears Will and Marina read from his book and registers the ringing, defiant ending Claudia gives to e. e. cummings’s ‘Buffalo Bill’:

  Jesus

  he was a handsome
man

  and what i want to know is

  how do you like your blue-eyed boy

  Mister Death

  Madeleine talks about Miles with tenderness and a deep understanding of his and our predicament throughout the past five years. Intimate, personal and loving, this is a profound validation of Miles. He really was exceptional, extraordinary, she says. Miles was so richly gifted in every sense, his crystal-sharp mind, his joy-filled physicality. She describes his moments of deep connection with what he called the ‘nameless One’, how he transformed them into poetry, music, right into the way he lived; she talks of his joyful seriousness and his clear, honest, searching enquiry, always stripping away nonsense, claptrap, mumbo jumbo. And then, she says, there’s Miles the hilarious spontaneous rapper: who else would rhyme Chaucer with flying saucer? She has been listening to his electronic music, not the sort of music she normally listens to, but she is absorbed by it, sees the connection with his writing that marries mysticism with quantum physics and language. A Quantum Leap! She names the composition we are about to hear and then a recording of the music begins to play. Hesitant and tender at first, the hauntingly eerie electronic sounds start to merge and rise and unfurl themselves until Miles’s wit and wild exuberance are filling this old grey chapel, his energy ricocheting against the walls in bursts of colour that defy the final silence he endured for so long.