Around boxing day Midge and her brother, for some reason beyond my grasp, conspired to tell the world she had passed away. She had 'died' once before. In her dementia and denial a belief grew that this lie was white and protective of those of us worrying about her final suffering. I used AL-LAD in sacrament and communed with her spirit.
This lie was unturned around new year. Since then her life has gradually evaporated. Two days ago the chief nurse estimated she had 72 hours to live. Last week me and my partner wrote her long letters explaining what she had given us, how her influence and ideas were like a stone thrown in to a still lake and the ripples would carry on eternally. Energy never goes, just alters form, matter particles of her will roam the universe. As an atheist I have none of the rituals nor processes that provide a plan of how to get on, no what to do. Lately my atheism has taken some beatings from spiritual aspects of the psychedelic experience. For a time we can see beyond the veil, an opening allowing us a peep out of the reality our naked senses permit. What is for sure our visible or accessible reality is a small portion of something much greater. Knowing how much my dog is not party to suggests our small view is not of a much greater awareness. None of us know the deeper details. We see shadows out of view that firelight permits us knowing what is there is so much more than a human mind can comprehend.
My partner has had the task of getting her accepting her deaths imminence. Midge has fought authorities from care homes as a child, through jail, and her trust in what the doctors told her was slim. Other responsibilities have been thrust on to my partners frail shoulders. Informing a fraternity of freinds, spread across the world. Most disturbing for her has been informing distant freinds Midges end was nigh whilst still talking to her on an evening. This split teality gave her a feeling of guilt, even deception she has been braver than I have ever known a human be.
Today she rang and at first the nurses wouldn't allow her to talk as Midge can no longer speak at all clearly, but they finally agree to hold the receiver to her ear. She was able to tell her she loved her. How her influence and outlook had given her a framework for her own morality and sense of right and wrong. My partner was kicked out of home at 15 and lived homeless until travellers tooth her under their wing and taught her how to live on no money. Then Midge stepped in. Became a surrogate mother to her. Each time she drifted in to wrong crowds or dangerous habits, Midge would hunt her down, with a posse of bikers and steal her away. There was no hiding from Midge.
I was lucky to meet her before alcohol had stolen her looks. Midge was a warrior queen, a highlander, ted auburn hair and magical green eyes. Her first love died in a motorcycle accident. Her second great love left himself suspended from a noose for her to find. Understandably Midge drank to accommodate the bad hand she had been dealt.
Theo's drinking was what shortened her life to 57 years but, by God, she lived. Some spend their life working solely to extend it, in doing so they forget life is to be lived. There is more than a joke in the george best tail of being found on a bed of money with a miss world and champagne bottles littering the room. "Where did it all go wrong,George?".
Who is to say George's life, the most naturally talented player of his generation, crammed with excess and adventure. A life worthy of many a book. Who is to say that taking that choice, to live life to the full is in anyway worse than the countless lives of limited events, lasting long, without a single tail to leave the world.
Midge is hours from death. I hope she is comfortable as possible. I,so glad my partner got toto say goodbye, to let her know how much she had learned from her, how much she was loved. This godsend, to be told your life was of value. And to be told they'd meet again. As an agnostic I can not say, but if there is a fraction of a chance, these two will find each other, perhaps as particles in space, perhaps in ways we know nothing of yet.
This is an early orbituary. We love you forever Midge.
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