Written on 5 January 2019
As deathbed confessions go, my Aunt's sure was weird.
I was never too close to her, always thought she was a little condescending, a little cold. But, my Mum needed support, and since Aunt Julie was her only sibling, I agreed to come along as moral support.
She was asleep most of the time. She was in the stage of cancer where you basically pump the person full of pain killers until they give up the ghost. But when she was awake, she was off her tits, and it was hilarious.
“Nutella is totally overrated as a chocolate spread.” sure it is Aunt Julie. “If I'm here, who's watching my Alsatian figurines?” don't worry Aunt Julie, we've hired a guy. She was very funny, but beautifully earnest at the same time. Like she’d been stripped back to her essence, and her essence was that she was a bit dull.
The last time she was awake, the last time she was conscious, though, that was something else. My Mum had popped down to the cafeteria to get a coffee when Aunt Julie awoke.
“we're all adrift.” What's that Aunt Julie? Do you want me to get a nurse? “ We're all adrift, and sometimes we just have to let the current take us.” I suppressed a smile. It sounded as if she had thought long and hard about her last words, and now she was unveiling them, whether she meant to or not.
“I let the current take me once. The mermaids. The mermaids saved me.” Okay, maybe that bit wasn't supposed to be in her final monologue. “No one believed me. Everyone said it must have been a lifeguard, but they had a tail. Why would they have a tail if they were a lifeguard?” I glanced around for help, I had no idea how to deal with this.
“They were the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen. That was my best moment. I feel so lucky.” And she went back to sleep, never to wake up and ramble about mermaids ever again.
I asked my Mum some months later about the mermaids and she smiled. “Such a sensible woman. She was very much of the “seeing is believing” persuasion, so who knows?”
I had thought about it a lot. The important thing was she believed, and whether it was a mermaid or not, she can lay claim to seeing one. From then on, whenever I was near the ocean, I kept an eye out for them.