Deaths "To do" List...
Bex went out last night with a few friends and had a good night by all accounts, I was asking her about it today when she told me something Annabel had said: Annabel, who works in an old peoples home, is continually upset at the (very practical) books they keep. Of the two books she mentioned, one contains a list of people waiting for rooms in the home (recorded against their addresses?), the other contains a list of people currently in the home, recorded against their room numbers and (possibly) the date they're admitted to the home. Both books are hundreds of (filled) pages long.
If you looked through the book of people in the home from the beginning, you would notice that every name is crossed out, until you got to the last few pages perhaps when names that are not crossed out stand amongst those that are: listen: a person comes in, and is admitted to a room. A person dies and is crossed out, and the next person on the waiting list is contacted, to be moved into the newly available room-possibly moving in (as attested to by Annabel) on the same day.
The cold logic of this list merely reflects the cold logic of death, doesn't it? Imagine your name on that list, the list gradually filling up with names after you, and the names around you being crossed out one after the other...I imagined it, and wrote up my own list below. I suppose I get L Davies room in March '43 and K Humphries gets my room after me, in July '43. I'm not in long: 4 Months. That's better than some though. Notice there's no date out. Is that because I don't really leave?
Sit down and write your name down. Pause. Then cross it out. It feels really weird, in the context of the above. Who's room will you get? Who's going to cross out your name? Who's going to get your room? What do you want to make sure of before the crossing out day comes? What do you want to have done, what do you want to know, what do you want to feel and believe, before you vacate your room? You better had do it now, whilst you're still on his "to do" list...
If you looked through the book of people in the home from the beginning, you would notice that every name is crossed out, until you got to the last few pages perhaps when names that are not crossed out stand amongst those that are: listen: a person comes in, and is admitted to a room. A person dies and is crossed out, and the next person on the waiting list is contacted, to be moved into the newly available room-possibly moving in (as attested to by Annabel) on the same day.
The cold logic of this list merely reflects the cold logic of death, doesn't it? Imagine your name on that list, the list gradually filling up with names after you, and the names around you being crossed out one after the other...I imagined it, and wrote up my own list below. I suppose I get L Davies room in March '43 and K Humphries gets my room after me, in July '43. I'm not in long: 4 Months. That's better than some though. Notice there's no date out. Is that because I don't really leave?
Sit down and write your name down. Pause. Then cross it out. It feels really weird, in the context of the above. Who's room will you get? Who's going to cross out your name? Who's going to get your room? What do you want to make sure of before the crossing out day comes? What do you want to have done, what do you want to know, what do you want to feel and believe, before you vacate your room? You better had do it now, whilst you're still on his "to do" list...
posted by John Doran-Armstrong at 3:39 PM
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