Pause for Breath

©Janet Henderson 2016

In the space between two lives
the room draws breath.
Soon the house-keeping team
will come with vacuums
and mops and coded cloths to dust.
But now all is quiet.

Carers have been with boxes
and instructions from the family,
'Keep the Lladro china she loved,
received as a retirement gift,
testimony to thirty years' 
careful care of others.

'Bubble-wrap her photographs -
weddings, grandchildren, babies,
earnest young nurses with
porcelain skin and starched caps
who did not run in emergencies
and knew how to sterilise a clamp.

'Throw away the trinket boxes, 
Christmas gifts from grandsons working abroad,
crammed with cotton buds and nail files,
tiny pots of face cream - all the paraphernalia
of a ninety-year beauty regime
that drew admiration in its day.'

The room breathes, inhaling
the receding scent of four years' living,
preparing itself for the blitzing
with pine and polish and new paint
that announces a fresh
approach to living in care.

Out on the drive a four-by-four pulls up,
disgorging wheelchair, fame and boxes
all neatly cleaned and labelled,
packed with hope and apprehension,
tears of regret and anticipation 
of a safer, supported place to be.

©Janet Henderson March 2018