It was a Friday in May. It had been, ever since Thursday, midnight, had ticked past. I’d been awake for every second of Friday so far, and it was still the same day, which felt as if it had gone on forever, and it was not even light yet.
Time seems malleable sometimes, as if “24 hours” has no fixed meaning.
I rose at 6.30am, since I couldn’t sleep and it seemed pointless to keep on trying. There are many things one can achieve in a morning if one rises early. I put on my mother’s dressing gown and walked to the kitchen. I put the coffee pot on the stove. Below the kitchen window, the town was still shrouded in darkness, although the sky was pale.
As I stared out the window, cockatoos began to rise together from the trees along the creek, bleating their high-pitched squawks, and gather into flocks that moved together, wheeling and circling and shrieking, noisily, over the roof of the house. I ran outside to watch. I didn’t know why they were doing this and I’d never seen them do this here before, but the drama and spectacle seemed right for the occasion.
One can achieve so much in a morning, when one rises early. When the cockatoos had settled in the trees, I went inside, ate breakfast and cleaned up. I showered and dressed and set about the task I’d set myself that morning. I spent the next few hours hauling a heap of items that many would describe as junk, out of a bedroom, through the house and outside, into the bin, or even further, through the back yard and down the steps to the shed. I got my mother’s old vacuum and vacuumed the floor, and bits of carpet, turned into loose particles by moths, came away and were sucked in, leaving only the hessian underlay. I turned the vacuum onto the walls and ceiling, and it sucked in dust and thick, matted, dangling spider webs.
All I was aiming for was to get the room to a state where I could tolerate sleeping in it, although I didn’t know, then, that I’d be there for the next five months.
Did I think, back then, that I might be there a week? Possibly. Denial is a survival tactic sometimes. More likely, I avoided thinking about how long I might be there for. There was too much else to occupy my thoughts, just then.
According to a few hastily scribbled notes written that day, I made carrot and pumpkin soup for lunch, hoping my mother would be able to eat it. And in the afternoon, I drove to the hospital to bring my father home.
Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash
Blathering About Nothing 
Blather away!