An Unwelcome Herald

*Entelechy is Greek for soul; in New Age thinking, it is the template of our perfect energetic soul.

** Telomeres are protective caps of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that shorten with age until you die—a metaphorical hourglass with the sands of one one’s life slowly ebbing away.

……..

In 2019, after watching Wales win the Six Nations on TV, my uncle said, “It’s only a game.”  I loved watching rugby with my 97-year-old uncle Glyn and, sharing the vibe, I was often just as vocal in disagreeing with the referee, but such outbursts had been unusually muted that day.

I thought nothing of his comment until the following morning as I packed up to leave my Abergavenny home for a few days to visit my mother, who was in hospital in Swansea. She had dementia and had been sectioned again after running around her residential home naked at 2 am in the morning claiming she had been raped. I had rushed down the previous week to see if I could help, but she was adamant that she had been forced into a carnal relationship. I joked and told her she was in NHS care, not private, and that such services were not provided free of charge.

She snarled when she realised she had been rumbled, and that I knew her myriad ways of seeking attention. Indeed, on one occasion she claimed she had been raped, which led to the police being called, and staff being questioned. Eventually, my mother confided in me that it was a lie; she did not want to upset anyone; she was simply bored! Another time, she pressed the fire alarm just to see some firefighters.  Like Dylan Thomas, she certainly did not intend “to go gentle into that good night.”

Thus, feeling torn between caring for my uncle and mother who lived 60 miles apart, I had not really given much thought to my uncle’s odd comment until I was on the road back to Swansea. I was ten minutes into my journey when my mind automatically went into panic mode.  Did I lock the door? Had I unplugged the kettle? And even, Did I put Fido in his car carrier?

Suddenly, I was hit by an epiphany—rugby was NEVER just a game to my uncle; something was seriously amiss.

I turned the car around and hastened back to my uncle’s home. I was right; he was sitting in his armchair, staring almost lifelessly into space. The grim reaper, this unwelcome herald of death, was hovering in a corner. He wore a long brown robe with a floppy hood such that I could not see his face. In his hands were strings of glimmering beads twisted into a double helix.  He was playing impatiently with the beads as if they were a rosary whilst my uncle’s entelechy glowed dimly behind him.

The reaper appeared annoyed at my unexpected arrival and said, “You can’t save him, he has pneumonia, and his telomeres are worn out, he must come with me.” He raised his hands and showed me my uncle’s DNA encoded in the rosary, there were no telomers and my uncle’s life force was dripping from the unsealed ends of his DNA.

He was right, but my intuitive return enabled me to get my uncle’s pneumonia treated so that we had a few more months in which to midwife his way across the veil. It was a wretched three months for me, forever torn between my two surviving relatives, but my uncle was calm and content to die.

On my 70th birthday my uncle was ready for end-of-life care and I had to pack a hold-all for him. I was desolate but joked, “You will do anything to avoid getting me a birthday card.” He smiled and told me where to find a little case which had belonged to my late aunt. It was in a cupboard under the stairs and inside was a tattered old brown leather handbag which had once belonged to my grandmother. I checked inside to make sure it was empty but all I found was a small piece of cardboard that looked like it had been torn from a cereal packet. On it, in my late aunt’s handwriting, were the words “Happy Birthday Anona.”

I was awestruck, my aunt had died 14 years previously, so how come I found the note on my birthday—a 1 in 365 chance? And, even more amazing, why had I found it immediately after complaining I had not received a card? The odds must be high. Why would my aunt have even written the note on a rough piece of cardboard? And why put it in an old handbag? Maybe my beloved aunt was watching over us.

A month later, the night before Glyn died, I visited him. He was in a coma and, as I held his bony, bruised hand and prayed for his soul, I wept silently. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in bed and stared at me with his beautiful blue eyes. I said that I loved him, and that I had never noticed the colour of his eyes before. He stared silently back, too weak to talk, but in those final minutes, our souls spoke to each other more profoundly than any spoken word.  He then slumped exhausted onto his pillow and closed his eyes.

The grim reaper came for him in the early hours of the morning, and I was called to see him one last time. I kissed his forehead and said, “I will miss you, so you had bloody well better come back and haunt me or I will cancel your Amazon account.”.He was addicted to Amazon shopping. And I did cancel his account.

I wonder if he is still sulking because he has never come back … yet.