Light and Shade

I've had these crank phone calls since I identified his body and gave my details as the mother of his son to the police. 

'Please ring this number regarding the estate of your ex husband Mr Drummond' ... (he was so not a Drummond) ... or 'We are ringing regarding the insurance on the car crash.'

When I press the callers on details, they hang up on me. After the third call in the two weeks after he died, I began to feel a bit paranoid. I've never had such targeted calls before. Normally, they just want to tell me that there are problems with my internets. Was that form I filled out in the morgue compromised? I have no idea. Maybe it really is random scam. Dunno. There is not much normal going on anymore anyway.

I wish they'd washed his beard, the first time I saw him, after the last time I saw him. His beard used to be red when he was young. It hasn't been red for fifteen years. His beard had greyed over the years but it was red last Friday. A false youth stained with his own blood. I wished they'd washed his beard, as I slumped against the wall in the morgue, looking at him. Police waited outside with forms and frowns and nods and hellos. I'd been to high school with one of the coppers and wanted to hug him and say sorry for his racing bike whose gears I'd derailed and destroyed in the 1990s.

There was an insect like a midgie flying around the face, around the bloodied bandages and his skin and his tattoos and the cardiovac stickers stuck onto his chest where they'd tried to save him. I like to think he'd brought that midgie in from the bush and it had stayed with him. We kept trying to shoo this bug away and it wouldn't go away. 

We met later in the hospital cafe. All of us were thinking Fuck. and now ... what to do. What do we do next? What do we do?