GERALDINE AND DEATH

a girl too worried about life and death

Geraldine had worked everything out. It was more than just a hobby, it was an obsession that had started in primary school when it first dawned on her that life wasn’t something that just went on and on ad infinitum, but actually had an ending one day.

It was Trixie the cat that first demonstrated mortality to her. A black and white cat, Trixie was adored by everyone, especially by Geraldine, and one day Geraldine’s mum said something along the lines of, “isn’t it a shame that little Trixie’s looking old…”

That’s all her mother said, but it was enough.

“What do you mean, mummy?” she asked, “that it’s a shame she’s looking old? Does she need some medicine to make her look young again?”

And in response her mother was sensibly honest.

“There’s no cure for old age, Geraldine, everything that’s ever lived grows old and then dies. It’s the way of the world, and think how crowded it would be if cats never died? There have been cats around for thousands of years, and if they never died, well, we’d be suffocated by all that fur… then there are dogs and rats and mice and goldfish, all growing old and all dying.”

It was a well-told lesson, but nonetheless it was a troubling one.

“But mummy,” she said, “I’m alive, aren’t I? Does that mean…?”

“You’re only nine, love, you’ve got a long life in front of you!” She might have been wrong there, but the future is a hidden book and she had no idea what each chapter held.

“And how old is Trixie?” Geraldine asked cunningly, because they’d always said that they got Trixie when she had been born.

“You know how old she is, but Trixie’s a cat and cats sadly have much shorter lives than people,” came the reply.

And that had to be that. Conversation and lesson over. She wanted to ask her mother exactly how old she was, but daren’t, just in case the answer made her very old indeed. Because she knew that the old pastor who had shared auntie Michelle’s home had been very old, had been, in fact, almost one hundred, and she hadn’t seen him with Auntie Michelle for simply ages. Had he died? Is that why, a few months ago, Auntie Michelle had come round quite a lot to visit mum and done a great deal of crying while she was there? She, Geraldine, hadn’t understood at the time, but it was beginning to sort itself out in her mind as a theory.

She worked out that the old pastor was dead. That was someone she’d met, an old man who had died. And Trixie was getting to be old too.

Geraldine was almost eleven when Trixie finally died, and it was she who had spotted the cat and tried to wake her up, and been shocked that she wouldn’t move even when she tickled her.

“I’m sorry, dear, but it was going to happen sooner or later,” mummy said, “I tell you what: we’ll bury her in the garden next to Scamp…”

“Who’s Scamp?” asked Geraldine.

“You must have heard us mention him, darling, he was our dog before you were born, and he died when he was thirteen. He was a lovely old fellow, everyone said so…”

Geraldine took herself into the village for a walk. She was, after all, close to being eleven and Trixie had been eleven and she was dead and a dog she’d never known was buried in the garden, and he had only been thirteen. In just over two years she’d be thirteen.

Was she likely to die then? And if she did, what would that mean?

Would she be buried in the garden along with Scamp and Trixie? And if she was, what next? Would there be anything after then? Just cold earth in the winter and slightly warmer earth in the summer, and no more waking, no more playing out, no more letting Adrian kiss her secretly when no-one was looking, no more peeping up his shorts when he encouraged her, no more ice creams, no more school?

Mother was very helpful when she got home from her secret walk and asked her what Trixie would be doing now she was dead.

Propping up the daisies was what her mother wanted to say, but it an seemed inappropriate sway of answering the queries of a clearly troubled child, and she decided to be honest. So she was.

“Nothing, darling,” she said, “just lying there in the ground until other creatures have eaten her all up. That’s the circle of life.”

That gave her a great deal to not understand properly but to think about so deeply it almost made her head ache. Then the worst possible thing happened at school. Mrs Abrams died at her desk in front of a class in her religious education lesson, including Geraldine. One minute she was talking slowly and in a monotonous voice about something so boring nobody understood it, about the resurrection and ascension of someone who had been executed for being a thief, and how glorious he would be now he was risen, radiant with lights shining out of his eyes, when Mrs Abrams’ head slowly sank down until it was actually on her desk. Then the Headmaster came in and looked at Mrs Abrams, felt her pulse, sent Jennifer Spencer out to tell the secretary to phone for an ambulance, and told the class that Mrs Abrams was finally resting in Heaven.

By the time she was eleven, Geraldine had picked up enough to know that resting in Heaven was a nice way of saying dead.

The big thing was, she’d actually seen a dead person and become aware that when you’re dead you don’t sit up, answer questions, respond to being poked (she suspected the headmaster had done a bit of poking at Mrs Abrams before the ambulance arrived), anything like that. In a way things became clearer in her head, though what she imagined death to be wasn’t at all cheery.

She slid through her early teens with very little to add to her constantly rumbling questions, and those very questions took a very back seat when Adrian and she grew so much closer that, at sixteen, she found herself to be with child. She knew what they’d done, she wasn’t at all stupid even though her mother told her she was the most stupid creature since Noah had dropped his abacus into the seas. That analogy meant less than nothing to her, but it did cross her mind that Adrian had got off rather lightly because it was to do with him, too. But one thing mother said did hurt and make her think.

“You’ve ruined your life, you know,” she admonished her swelling daughter.

So her life was ruined. She might as well be dead.

But if she died now an unborn baby would also die because she and it were as one person, and although she may have been a silly girl Geraldine had a great deal of morality in her head. The baby must live, ergo so must she. She would die when the baby was born and not until then rid the world of her ruined life.

The baby was John and the moment she saw him she loved him. And when she fed him with pure breast milk she knew she would love John for ever, even more than Adrian, who had moved into the family home to that they could sleep together, though Adrian had said so they could both look after John, “it’s not fair,” he said, “for everything to be down to Gerry.” That’s what he called her: Gerry.

And then years started to do what years often do when you’re busy, and they raced by. Adrian became a policeman, which she rather liked, and when John didn’t need her every waking moment of her life she started writing a novel which never got finished but which, according to Adrian, was jolly good.

Then, when he was ten, and when Geraldine hadn’t been troubled by thoughts of death since he had been born, he raced across the road after the ice-cream van and was mighty lucky not to be struck by the bus which did actually struck Geraldine as she desperately raced after him, to save him.

She, of course, misjudged everything and consequently had a decent time to contemplate the meaning of death and how it might apply to her, because she was in hospital, in a coma, for absolutely ages.

It would have been silly if she hadn’t used that silent hospital time well, because in the end she died, quietly, her life being over once and for all.

And if she was aware of anything at all it would have been what death was really like.

© Peter Rogerson 27.08.23

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