ChilledVodkaIV
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2004
- Posts
- 230
Even though he’s told her his name no end of times, (Jason) she insisted on calling him Peter Selby. It wasn’t her fault, she’d been sent to a mental institution at a very early age for being ‘wilful’. Wilful enough to be both unmarried and pregnant. It was in the institution that she learned everything she knew and was able to forget everything else. Except two things. One was the soldier that had ‘covered’ her. And the other was Peter Selby. Jason was pretty sure they weren’t the same person.
Through his ‘more than a few’ years Jason has collected a large number of songs to accompany his life as it was. The inevitable soundtrack. Memories that mostly made him shed silent tears and occasionally paint rueful smiles. From Rod asserting that ‘You Wear It Well’ right up to Billy Joe hoping that he was having ‘The Time Of Your Life’. Just recently he was considering what song he would like played at his funeral and at the moment was pretty convinced it would be the Johnny Cash version of N.I.N’s ‘Hurt’. Particularly for the chorus:
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the End
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
On the other hand, songs at funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for those that haven’t gone away.
It was the first thing, via the next that had prompted his morose thoughts.
In the previous six months or so he’d had about a dozen friends leave. Not that he was supposed to call them friend, or love or dear or show them any affection whatsoever, they were officially titled ‘service users’. The people that he ‘cared’ for in his job at the day centre.
Some had just moved on, to care homes, or other centres or been disqualified from attending because their needs were social. Their needs were just being fucking lonely. Sitting and staring at four walls from one fucking week to the next, seeing not a single soul in between that one day a week when they met up with other poor lonely fuckers. But as it turned out they were neither cost effective nor incapable so were sent to their prison homes to endure their societal sentence in solitary.
But the other’s that had left him. The others had actually gone. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Gone to join the choir invisible. More than half of those dozen friends had given up the ghost
At least two of them had actually told him they were too tired to go on.
The other handful had been entirely unexpected.
One old girl who’d retained a beautiful singing voice even into her eighties had come over all ebullient one day. Just as she was leaving for home she had told him that she loved him and thanked him for all his efforts. Completely out of character. When he returned to work on the Monday he was told that she had died suddenly.
One of the old lads was something of a character and had a fund of re-told stories from his days as a banksman and later a winder at the local colliery. Big strapping fella he was, now bent by age and 50 years of mining. He was one of those that used to say “They ought to shoot us when we get like this.” Monday morning he was moving from his home to a care setting. Thursday morning, he was dead.
At the beginning of the year Jason was assigned to a newly opened centre. One of the new ‘service users’ was someone he’d known as a schoolboy. In fact he’d had a crush on her daughter and wonder of wonders the daughter actually recognised him after some thirty years when he went along to collect her mother for the day
The mother told lurid tales of thievery, arguments and animosity between siblings. (“They’re both adopted”) The chilling moments were her lucidity when she broke down remembering what it was that was affecting her ability to care for herself.
But every morning when Jason picked her up, no matter the weather, no matter her insouciance towards the escort of the day, she would brighten up enormously on spying Jason and his ever present smile. Jason took time to talk with her, which is when he heard the lurid tales and offer homespun homilies about her fears for her children (“Sometimes arguments are how people show they care deeply for each other.”) and was often amazed that these were fresh insights for this crazy old woman.
Then came the inevitable Monday morning. Jason felt sad. No tears or anything, just an overall cast upon his day.
And this was about the time that he started to get maudlin and wondering about his own funeral songs and the soundtrack to his life.
But he still sees some of them about, the living ones. Different homes, different places. And like the lady that insists on his name being Peter Selby, he smiles and listens carefully when they have something to say.
Someone once said to him: “I couldn't do that job. Is it hard?"
He replied “It’s a job. Light duties, but it’s very heavy work.”
Through his ‘more than a few’ years Jason has collected a large number of songs to accompany his life as it was. The inevitable soundtrack. Memories that mostly made him shed silent tears and occasionally paint rueful smiles. From Rod asserting that ‘You Wear It Well’ right up to Billy Joe hoping that he was having ‘The Time Of Your Life’. Just recently he was considering what song he would like played at his funeral and at the moment was pretty convinced it would be the Johnny Cash version of N.I.N’s ‘Hurt’. Particularly for the chorus:
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the End
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
On the other hand, songs at funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for those that haven’t gone away.
It was the first thing, via the next that had prompted his morose thoughts.
In the previous six months or so he’d had about a dozen friends leave. Not that he was supposed to call them friend, or love or dear or show them any affection whatsoever, they were officially titled ‘service users’. The people that he ‘cared’ for in his job at the day centre.
Some had just moved on, to care homes, or other centres or been disqualified from attending because their needs were social. Their needs were just being fucking lonely. Sitting and staring at four walls from one fucking week to the next, seeing not a single soul in between that one day a week when they met up with other poor lonely fuckers. But as it turned out they were neither cost effective nor incapable so were sent to their prison homes to endure their societal sentence in solitary.
But the other’s that had left him. The others had actually gone. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Gone to join the choir invisible. More than half of those dozen friends had given up the ghost
At least two of them had actually told him they were too tired to go on.
The other handful had been entirely unexpected.
One old girl who’d retained a beautiful singing voice even into her eighties had come over all ebullient one day. Just as she was leaving for home she had told him that she loved him and thanked him for all his efforts. Completely out of character. When he returned to work on the Monday he was told that she had died suddenly.
One of the old lads was something of a character and had a fund of re-told stories from his days as a banksman and later a winder at the local colliery. Big strapping fella he was, now bent by age and 50 years of mining. He was one of those that used to say “They ought to shoot us when we get like this.” Monday morning he was moving from his home to a care setting. Thursday morning, he was dead.
At the beginning of the year Jason was assigned to a newly opened centre. One of the new ‘service users’ was someone he’d known as a schoolboy. In fact he’d had a crush on her daughter and wonder of wonders the daughter actually recognised him after some thirty years when he went along to collect her mother for the day
The mother told lurid tales of thievery, arguments and animosity between siblings. (“They’re both adopted”) The chilling moments were her lucidity when she broke down remembering what it was that was affecting her ability to care for herself.
But every morning when Jason picked her up, no matter the weather, no matter her insouciance towards the escort of the day, she would brighten up enormously on spying Jason and his ever present smile. Jason took time to talk with her, which is when he heard the lurid tales and offer homespun homilies about her fears for her children (“Sometimes arguments are how people show they care deeply for each other.”) and was often amazed that these were fresh insights for this crazy old woman.
Then came the inevitable Monday morning. Jason felt sad. No tears or anything, just an overall cast upon his day.
And this was about the time that he started to get maudlin and wondering about his own funeral songs and the soundtrack to his life.
But he still sees some of them about, the living ones. Different homes, different places. And like the lady that insists on his name being Peter Selby, he smiles and listens carefully when they have something to say.
Someone once said to him: “I couldn't do that job. Is it hard?"
He replied “It’s a job. Light duties, but it’s very heavy work.”
