It’s hard to savour every moment when everyone is fussing so much. Honestly, did half the ward of nurses really need to come? They buzz around me like polyester flies.
My daughter adjusts the deckchair, almost tipping me over in the process, asking me again and again if I’m ok.
‘The tide’s coming in, Mum, so you can’t stay here long. Are you sure you don’t want me to sit with you?’
I sigh. ‘I’m fine. You can leave me now.’
‘We’ll just be over there, ok?’
I nod, too tired to reply.
The waves lap against my feet, fizzing gently. I can feel my life draining away as fast as the sand sliding between my toes. Death awaits, like the shadowy coastline barely visible across the ocean.
I wish I could say that I have reached a state of acceptance. But the truth is, I feel as though my egg-timer tipped over one day and spilled several decades straight down the drain. One moment I was thirty, the next, eighty.
What mark have I left on the world? What do I have to show for this life? I had talents. A way with words, a musical ear. All wasted.
I long to see my great-grandchildren grow up. To fall in love again, perhaps. I loved Roy, still feel the aching chasm of his loss deep within my heart. But don’t I get a second chance? Why not? Other people do.
Oh, now is not the time for this. In these final hours, I should think peaceful thoughts. I focus on the glistening sea as it basks in the sun’s glow. Try to send my bitterness out into the water. Yet I am filled with anger. How dare the sun taunt me like this? How dare it rise again tomorrow, bright as ever, without me?
Then I see her. A young woman gliding along the shore towards me, her floaty white skirt billowing in the breeze. No doubt she’s just woken up, squandering the morning away with a frivolous disregard for time.
It’s like watching new people arrive on the last day of your holiday, hazy days stretching out before them while you sit beside your suitcases. Sickening. Envy burns through every fibre of my body. She sprays sand and water with each footstep, tossing droplets of youth and excess time with abandon. Flaunting it in front of me.
There’s something familiar about her. The languid gait, the elegant sweep of her swan-like neck. She could almost be a young me. I want to run to her, jump back into my skin and live it all again, this time more meaningfully.
She flashes me a wide, carefree smile as she passes, then stops and turns. From this direction her face is silhouetted against a halo of shimmering light.
‘It’s ok,’ she says softly. ‘You don’t have to do it all this time. You get more than one holiday.’
With a flick of her hair, she’s gone.
Peace washes over me.
