The Sun Sets into the Sea

Somewhere an old woman sits in a room looking out of the window, a window with a sea view, and there she thinks about all the years that have passed and wonders how many are left. The vast expanse of time behind her and the smaller stretch in front. She was young and then older and then old, and her memories mix together; some are unclear, some are almost gone completely, some twist themselves around like dreams. The strange thing is that sometimes in memories things seem to almost happen simultaneously and time dissolves and the feelings are all the same, and in a memory the order of things seems much less relevant than it does right now in the room with the sea view where the woman is thinking about time more than she is thinking about the sea.

Her husband died four years ago and in many ways it seems longer, in many ways infinitely shorter. And the sadness has not gone away. Was he ever really there at all, and when he was gone, was he ever really gone? Now he is back in the earth and his physicality is gone, the woman sometimes wonders how something so real can vanish so irreparably and forever. No one comes back from the dead, people just carry on joining them; therein lies the faint hope of reconciliation. Sometimes at night when she is about to fall asleep she is sure he is there, beside her. He couldn't be, but life is a mystery and much stranger than anything conceivable to the human brain, so why couldn't something simple like that be true?

I always think it's odd how I get so used to brushing my teeth in the exact same mirror and I find that fact comforting and safe, when all this could be gone in seconds.

The old woman's husband had been a soldier in the war, as many his age had and he'd seen friends die in awful ways; he'd been a part of something so terrible and huge that it was a very overwhelming, gigantic thing to deal with. After it was all over he moved home, a small bungalow in the countryside, and for a while everything seemed absurd to him, brushing his teeth in the same mirror every day took on both magical and almost grotesque qualities, in a most peculiar way. His wife gossiped with neighbours about the weather and weddings, and all he could think was how fragile life is, how it doesn't make any sense. He stopped going to church. They had children, which gave him some meaning. Through the meaning they gave him, he became able to live a little more assuredly and he lived a good life, although the shadows of those who didn't make it home always lurked in the corners of his dreams.

Perhaps time simply doesn't exist. When I think about this I imagine all the people who have ever lived sitting together somewhere, enjoying a feast and commenting on one anothers' peculiar style of dress and weaponry. I wonder why we have the capacity to question what we will never understand. This, I am sure, accounts for millions of sleepless nights all over the world.

The old woman in the sea view room gets up and walks into the kitchen where she makes herself a cup of Earl Grey tea, which she brings into the hall where the telephone is. While she drinks her tea she dials her daughter's telephone number and they discuss the weather and how her Grandchildren are doing at school. After their conversation she returns to her seat and watches the sun set into the sea, imagines it sinking, sinking into the water.

When a star dies, it grows even brighter. When our sun eventually dies, it will take up the entire horizon.