Bloody Roses

I live a stone’s throw from the cemetery where my mother’s relatives are buried (dad’s family favoured cremation). I see their headstones every time I walk down the lane leading into town. I give a glance of acknowledgement. For a long time that was my sole concession to their presence.

As years went on, the family plot grew: once it contained just Grandad (he died of bowel cancer when I was four. One of my earliest memories was seeing him, jaundice from liver failure, on his sick bed), then it housed Grandma (passed away 2002) and my still born cousin Thomas. More recently, my uncle died in a car accident, buried in a plot of his very own, always easily recognised by the Middlesbrough FC regalia adorning it.

In 2011, my mum very nearly joined them after doctors failed to spot a ruptured appendix. Death, once a subject that was usually in the back of my mind, was everywhere. A lurking threat to my family. A shadow clinging to our heels.

To me, death was a subject I mostly thought about in times of stress, when it seemed like a good escape route. I never thought to wonder whether I would be buried or cremated (I’d chose cremation simply because it’s cheaper and the cemetery is overcrowded). Unlike emergency exits in buildings, death isn’t easy to locate when you’ve decided life has screwed you over one last time. All I’ve got to show for my efforts is minor liver damage.

It is one thing when, as I do, have suicidal thoughts. That is under my control, and I can decide “not today, Satan” and carry on.

You can’t stop it taking away others. It seems unfair, almost taunting, to take the life of someone who had everything to live for and deny the suicidal person who actually wants to leave. A cruel joke.

Today, I did something I rarely do, and spoke to my grandparents. Or if you like, I spoke to a slightly tilting piece of granite like a mad woman. I apologised to my grandfather for a very private reason. I joked he’d picked the right grandchild to favour since my sister is the only one of us who actually has a stable life and he adored her. And I cried. I’ve cried so much recently, somehow a floodgate opened inside me and everything I have repressed over the years has come out in unpredictable bursts. I accepted my terrible failure of a life and confessed my deepest sin: I still don’t want to be here.