Brian's Last Words

 I’ve seen death. I’ve heard death. My paternal grandfather died six years before I was born yet dominated my childhood.  My maternal grandfather died hours after my first Scotland game, when I was ten.  I once saw a man murdered in front of me – his last words may have been “don’t” but he didn’t know they were his last words and he didn’t die that night. I’ve twice fought to stop the same happening to me - once the police saved me, once I saved myself. All I issued was threats. I’ve never said and I’ve never heard what we all mean by someone’s dying words.

Translucent but non-transparent, textured but clear, the front door of our former house was fully glazed. It had to be. Otherwise, the layout confined within this singularly undistinguished 1960s terrace of indistinguishable small homes for small families, would mean no natural light directly into what the estate agents had called, fourteen years earlier, “the hallway”.

It composed a tiny first floor landing - onto two bedrooms, one box room full of football tat and a bathroom the exact length of a bath in which I could only sit – and a thin staircase, down the western party wall, to the doormat-sized “reception area”, on which I now stood, knowing exactly to who I was about to open that revealing front door:

Brian’s grandsons. 

The boys had never looked taller. Through the height of dappled glass, interrupted only by its waist-high belt of white UPVC, they could see me fumbling for my front door keys as well as I could see the eldest - the taller of the two - stand back respectfully off the front door step, re-joining his younger sibling on the path. All as the ring – the single, modest toll of that door’s bell - clung to this carpeted ante-chamber for all it was worth.

They were clearly carrying a gift. This was too much. These boys shouldn’t have to do this. Not now.

I faltered with my key as I worried what I could say – delaying for want of a compassionate word while simultaneously hurried by an overpowering abundance of compassion for those solemn children made men too soon. Their grandfather’s words to me – whispered and stilted yet ringing in my head for a week now - suddenly echoed far louder than even the TV I’d left blaring in the adjacent front room, its far wall shared with our eastern neighbour.

The cold blasted in, enveloping my suddenly nervous body with yet more chills as I was drawn into their youthful yet austere gaze and immediately realised the resemblance with their grandfather’s eyes as I had held him, seven days earlier, slumped against the back wheel of his car, on the road directly behind where his pride and joy stood now, offering me the most unnecessary thanks of my life.

What a contrast - this bleak, biting winter’s evening – with the sunlit mid-morning of the previous week, as I strolled naively up that little path of ours, past the Subbuteo pitch-sized patch of grass I’d again let grow to giant redwood heights, and onto the quiet, cul-de-sac road. Naïve for thinking my brisk walk would do anything to alleviate the litres of beer, wine and port I quaffed each weekend or the kilos of cheese, chicken and chocolate I consumed on an hourly basis.

Naïve for thinking life goes on.

I watched as a nonagenarian, who installed Browning .303s into the wings of Spitfires, stared from his deathbed at the blank wall behind me, asking who that was coming to get him. I visited my friend four days before and we said what we had to say to each other. But he had the hospice, briefly, and his family, always. I’ve written and delivered eulogies at family funerals. But I have never, ever, heard someone’s last words.

I saw before me only Brian, the retired man from three doors down, leaving the driver’s seat of his freshly parked car, turning to make for his boot. Without needing to be in any way as psychotically nosey as the retired ladies living in one of the shoeboxes between us, I knew Brian had just arrived back from a bit of shopping.

That box room of mine also contained my desk on which had sat, over the last 15 years or so, a variety of ever-shrinking home computers then laptops. In a fit of artistic pretension, when the double glazing guy came round to measure up, I asked for a single pane of glass for that room – a moveable picture window if you like – to let as much view as possible into what I wanted to look like a garret but have the light of a studio.

But all I got was a window way too heavy for its mounting when I tried to open it and an unexpurgated view of our street.

Across the road from our terraced row of two-storey houses were three-storeyed apartment blocks. Not characterful old sandstone, redbrick or brownstone Glasgow tenements. No, just another mass-produced 1960s stab at the utilitarian - rotting wood blandishments denying them even Bauhausian chic. And these flats stood further up the hill across which our street ran. Thus they loomed over our tiny, sun-bathed front gardens. At night their communal entrance lights shone down, through our front door, onto our doormat reception area, like the spotlight on a Berlin Wall machine gun nest.

Brian’s car was on the far side of the street. It was a sunny day but he was in the shade of the flats as he alighted his vehicle. I immediately slowed. I didn’t really want to talk to him. I didn’t really know him. But he’d always instinctively seemed like a great guy and part of that was he just said hello, smiled and carried on. No nosiness. I like neighbours who are polite yet keep themselves to themselves and my biggest fear, always, is I might seem lacking in either respect.

A nod and, perhaps, a mention of the weather: Then keep moving.

Brian’s wife, who I once met through, of course, her being out when a parcel was delivered, seemed more outgoing. Isn’t it always the way with the stereotypical “proper” working class couples, like my own mum and dad. The wives are more outgoing, thus fitter, thus live longer. From that big box room window I’d watched Brian go from working man – I imagined a foreman or skilled technician - to retired man, and I’d seen those young lads go from primary school to secondary school age. I’d seen them being made to wash their grandparents’ car and tidy their front garden.

Most of all, Having also passed and nodded to Brian with that joyful hue in his round cheeks and swagger in his badge-strewn blazer, as he returned from a good day and night at the local bowling club, I assumed he was the kinda guy – a worker and a socialiser who wanted his grandkids to have the same ethics that got him and his wife this lovely wee home in this lovely wee street and his daughter an even better life somewhere out of Glasgow - who would have no truck with, no respect for someone my age, size, and gender who was known to be “working from home”.

Months previously, while busily not writing something on one of those keyboards, I saw those boys leaving their grandparents’ house in their suits, looking painfully smart in only the way grandchildren can, and I saw black ties and my heart fell and then, as I got up and left the desk so neither they nor the ever-vigilant flats across the way, would see me snooping, I glimpsed Brian emerging from the house also in black tie. The West of Scotland working man, retired, was alive. Thank god. He was just insuring and ensuring his legacy again – making those boys realise their responsibilities, that death was a part of life, by taking them to the funeral of an old friend or a distant relative. They had to learn.  

Nod and keep walking. Brian’s okay.

And he certainly wouldn’t want me to have noticed him stagger a bit, as he did when I hit the top of my path that day a week earlier. Guy’s like Brian are proud. Late 60s, early 70s, no matter the age – the pride that has powered their life, to the point it lives on in their grandkids, does not go away. I deliberately noticed nothing. Let Brian get his shopping into the house. I had seen nothing.

Until he stumbled down onto one knee, on to the ground, puzzlement on his face, hands instinctively outstretched, fearing a full-on trip.

Brian dropped his car keys as he went down and looked up and saw me as he reached for them on bended knee and smiled embarrassedly on the middle of a road thankfully quiet at that time of day and I immediately jogged towards him with a host of “you can help me next time I’m staggering home from Byres Road” quips ready to soften any male hurt. He laughed and I got a hand on one of his arms as he made to pull himself back up on to both feet and then, just as I was about to jape about boozing and being jealous, he went completely. His eyes closed, his body went limp and I had to quickly reach under both his arms to support him.  This wasn’t a stumble or a trip or a fall. This was maybe it.

I hoped his wife couldn’t see this. Their house was directly opposite. I was glad they didn’t have a window like mine.  I swung him round, his back to his car, me between him and his house, before she spotted him or, worse, opened the door to let him in with their shopping and saw… well, frankly, saw what may soon be his corpse, lying on the street.

I couldn’t go in to see my gran. Couldn’t take the chance that’s how I’d remember her. I was shown my girlfriend’s unrecognisable father, his duvet pulled back, just an hour after death. Next day I sat eating, and watching the Rugby World Cup, in the same room in which he lay, his face exactly as it was in life, in the open coffin. I’ve seen our lollipop man under a tarp on the middle of the high road, surrounded by glass and hysteria. But I’ve never heard anyone’s last words, their dying words.

If I’m good for nothing else it’s lifting. But I didn’t know what I was lifting or to where. Right now I was dragging… dragging who, or what? But then Brian was mumbling and sweating and obviously not dead – yet - but that cheery, reddened face was now greyer than the flats consuming the sun and I didn’t know to do anything other than lean him against his car.

Like a miracle, a nice neighbour from the flats appeared. She wasn’t one of the border guards but one, like my wife and I, always looking over the wall to freedom. I said something to her about getting Brian’s wife to open the door to their house. And this nice neighbour told me Brian’s wife had died.

It had been her funeral. That’s why the grandkids were there. West of Scotland man? West of Scotland woman. I’d just assumed she would be following Brian and his grandkids out that door when I’d spied-cum-glimpsed the males leaving their house that day. I’d had no idea. It was Brian’s wife’s funeral. When you don’t engage in the street gossip this is what happens. You don’t know who’s dead and who’s living. Nod, smile and keep walking.

Brian was wheezing but he was a dead weight. Nice neighbour lady took his keys and opened his front door. She was the same age as, and old friends with Brian’s daughter, the mother of the young lads, and phoned her after she’d phoned an ambulance.  I carried Brian from the road, down his path, across his doormat-sized reception area and onto his sofa leaned against the wall corresponding with ours in our duplicate house. A lusher carpet, nicer furniture, a cosier home – pictures of a wife and a daughter and a son-in-law and grandchildren.

This was before the ambulance people told me you shouldn’t move people who’ve collapsed. Before they arrived and told me you should never give liquid to someone who’s collapsed, Brian’s eyes opened. Even damper of brow - more green now than grey – he muttered something inaudible, the only sound dry lips patting together.

I went in close. What is it, Brian? You okay? Sorry to come into your house like this. The ambulance is on its way. Nice neighbour is phoning your daughter now (Christ, please let her get here even quicker than the ambulance. This is not my place, literally).

“Pat. Pat.”

What’s that, mate? Sorry?

“Patt. Patt.”

Sorry, Brian? What.

“Wat. Ter.”

Into his kitchen, where our kitchen is in our house. Better units. Nicer flooring. Drinking glasses in a different cupboard. A variation on the design of glass we’d drink from. Nice neighbour continues to stand in the middle of the living room floor while Brian passes in and out of consciousness on the sofa and I press the glass to his lips and he sips like he would sip the last drink of life and then, as I try to return to an upright position he grabs at my neck, my collar - he wants to pull me close, is desperate to tell me something. He wants to tell me to my face, look into my eyes as he says it to check it’s registered. He needs to know I heard and understood what he’s about to say.

All I really know is I shouldn’t be the one he’s telling whatever he’s about to tell.

It won’t be “Kiss me, Hardy”. It won’t be “Bugger Bognor”. But the lack of celebrity and fame makes it all the more intimate and so much more inappropriate that it should only be me hearing this man’s last wish, thought, feeling or regret. This is a proper man – a real man. This is the kind of man who wants only a job and a love and then only for his family to be safe – everything else is just a guid day at the bowling.  This, in short, is the kind of man who lives life rather than paraphrases or surfs it; it’s doubly important he is heard by those he did it all for.

Yet as Brian turns to alabaster before me – as time and life dissolve at their most acutely inexorable for him - the least I can do is man up, look him in the face, and receive what he has to say with the mournful reverence it deserves. I will have to tell his daughter, perhaps his grandchildren. I will almost certainly have to pass this on to someone whose heart it will break to hear.

Or maybe he has something to say which only a comparative stranger should hear, something for the ears of someone blissfully ignorant of the particulars of his life – just a fellow man who knows what it is to live as such.

Either way, my ears are the ones closest at this fatally singular moment. I will do my duty. Yes, Brian. What is it? Speak to me, my friend.

“There. There. There is…

No, Brian. It’s too much. Save your energy. The ambulance will be here any moment. You’ll be fine.

“No. It can’t wait;” He sees I’m shirking my responsibility. He knows no ambulance will get here in time. He fastens his gaze. Even at a time like this, he’s working – he’s filling me with the same sense of duty he imparted to his offspring. I have to listen. I must listen. It’s now or never. I shut up. I look him in the eye. He pulls me closer:

“There’s a microwave lasagne in the boot of the car. Could you get it and shove it in the freezer for me.”

I did. Brian was fine. I’ve moved now but still see him when I’m out my daily walks. He’s usually overtaking me, after the doctors told him to take it easy on the grub and do a bit more exercise, the skinny bastard.

He had to put his feet up for a couple of weeks first though. So he sent his grandkids along to ours with a bottle of wine to say thanks. Which he really didn’t have to. That was too much. After all, what else are neighbours for.