(the awful duty)
It is not given to us to know the minute when the story will end or change.
The phone rings, and your cheery “hello…” is met with a somber silence, and pehaps you hear the caller sruggle to catch a breath, and you learn in rushed words, that someone has been taken, or passed, or whatever euphamism you find easiest.
Shock. That is first reaction, shock with disbelief, then you realise that your friend on the phone has already had to face this, and then extrernalise it to tell you. Maybe you find it to share words of comfort, maybe a shared silence, maybe you can only try to take the information and fit it inside your head.
We tend not to speak of duty much, but assuredly friendship comes with it’s own set of duties that are owed, some enjoyable, some harsh, some, simply awful, but the bonds of friendship require that we recognise and honour even the awful duty. Now we in turn must think who else needs to know, and how to spread the dreadful word, and find a way to stay composed long enough to “say the words” and in so doing make the thing real.
Then when the calls are done, there will be other final duties to come, but none perhaps as harrowing as that initial exchange.
I call it “the awful duty” for so it is, for caller and recipient, and yet, yet for all it’s horror, there is a hidden germ of comfort – I am now not alone in my grief.
Worse, so much worse, if there were none to call.
…
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 