I almost had it once before, so long ago it seems now. I never forgot the feeling. In the quiet times, in the time when life allowed me a brief respite, I tried hard to re-capture that time and make it real again, as real as it was back then.

I thought that it might happen again just after my father died, but for some reason I just didn’t feel as bad as I always thought I would. Perhaps it was because I had been prepared for it and, in the end, it came as a blessed relief for everybody.

It was the trauma that did it, I have known that since the time. As I began to forget the pain of it all and start to pull the pieces of my life together, still with Ann after all that happened, the power to see it all unfolding just seemed to fade away. I became Mr normal again. I went to work and got on with the mundane job of living. I never really forgot though.

We had been married for seven years. Two kids. Ann spent all of her time looking after them. I went out to work. I’m not sure how we drifted so far apart in such a short time, and the fights just got worse and more frequent. In the end I left. I got a small flat. That was in June. On new years eve I was alone on my tatty bed as the church bells rang in the new year. It was the worse time of my life. I missed Ann so much.

It was two am. When I got to the door of  the house, our house, where Ann and the kids would be asleep. I still had a key so I let myself in, quietly.

I came to my senses a week later. I was lying in a hospital bed. It was early morning. There was a fresh faced young doctor standing at the side of my bed, he was saying something about pints of blood and scar tissue.

The memories came flooding back. Two humps under the quilt on our bed instead of one, the shocked faces as I woke the sleeping pair. I didn’t cause a scene. I didn’t do any of the things that macho man is supposed to do. I turned around and walked out.

Ann followed, desperately trying to engage me in some sort of dialogue. I just kept walking.

Vague images of pubs and nightclubs flashed through my befuddled brain. Over them all was the indelible image of a bed with two humps in the quilt. Both wrists were heavily bandaged. Ann came to see me later that morning. The next day she took me home. There was just me, Ann and the kids.

It was in the weeks that followed that it happened. My mind had changed somehow. It was as though everything that had happened had purged my mind of all the dross. All of the unnecessary clutter which permeates the mind in what we consider normal life, had simply vanished. My brain became like a sponge, a clean slate soaking up information at a fantastic rate. And I remembered it all. I had always been interested in astronomy and cosmology. I seemed to be able to concentrate on the theories for hours on end, seeing right into the meaning of even the most complex equations and proffered explanations. One night as I lay in bed, just on the verge of sleep, I saw it. I saw it all, everything! Life, The Universe and Everything. It was suddenly so clear to me. It went spinning around my mind like a tornado.  “This is it!”, I yelled out loud.

Ann woke with a start.

“What’s wrong, another bad dream?”

“No…no”, I said, stroking her hair gently, “ I love you, that’s all, go back to sleep”.

Of course, in the morning it had all gone. I was back to Mr normal. But the pain had gone with it.

Ann died last week. I haven’t got long myself now. The cancer which began in my prostate gland is spreading. I won’t leave this hospital bed. The Chemo is doing something to my brain, emptying it out.