The all seeing I

2020 has been a year to knock all previous years into a cocked hat. At least in my lifetime, and I’m really old.

First, my mum died, and then Covid happened, actually they happened around the same time, although they weren’t necessarily related (even though I have some doubts). My mum had underlying causes, that’s for sure, and at the time that was good enough for the death certificate, at least for them that writes death certificates.

“What’s your job?”
“I’m a Death Certificate writer”
“I noticed you capitalised ‘Death’ and ‘Certificate’, why?”
“It’s my job, jobs get capitalised”
“Only if the job precedes a person’s name, e.g, President Obama, not after, e.g, Barack Obama, president of the United States”
“Wow, did you just make that up?”
“Not exactly, Trump is president, but Obama was president – President Obama”
“Wow, I think you’ve just set a precedent there with your use of grammar”
“Precedent? Or President?”

When mum died it made me and my brother parentless. Some might say it made ‘my brother and I’ parentless, but they wouldn’t say that without receiving a right slap across the chops.

This particular event was a first, obviously, because you don’t get parentless BEFORE a parent dies *rollseyes*. And so we’re next on the conveyor belt of life, in one way scary, and in another, exhilarating. This is it, and like David Blaine hanging from a balloon, there’s only two ways this can play out, one way is much less stark than the other.

We don’t know what’s next, it might pass us whilst we sleep …

“I’m tired”, I said
“You always look tired”, she said
“I’m admired”, I said”
“You always look tired”, she said

She knew.