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    Looking Back: Shortz!Series
    Looking Back: Shortz!Series
    Looking Back: Shortz!Series
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    Looking Back: Shortz!Series

    By DAVID PHILLIPS

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    About this ebook

    Shortz!Series - A novella in the Settlement of Australia Series.

    A life in the 1900's in the growing country of Australia. Feel the joys of the good times and the heartache of loss; the pleasures of peace and the horrors of war; the bounties of good seasons and the devastation of drought.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavidRPhillips
    Release dateSep 4, 2016
    ISBN9781536533446
    Looking Back: Shortz!Series
    Author

    DAVID PHILLIPS

    David Phillips, FCPA (ret.) is in his mid-seventies and lives just out of Melbourne, Australia. He began writing in his early seventies and found an enjoyment in putting ideas together with research to come up with stories, often linked to historical events of interest. He finds writing a labour of love and spends some time every day at his keyboards.

    Read more from David Phillips

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      Book preview

      Looking Back - DAVID PHILLIPS

      The Nineties

      I had been sure that I was dying. I remember collapsing, in agonising pain, and an ambulance ride with siren blaring; a bustling trolley with people talking urgently and all at once; then it was black, all black, except for the light.

      The light was bright at the start and then it moved away from me, slowly, certainly, and I was thereupon resolved to meet my maker and place myself at his mercy. It became so that I could barely discern it at all and, in my semi-conscious state, I was sure that this was to be my final moment. Then, strangely, the light began to approach, slowly, haltingly, brightening as on it came toward me.

      I felt the gentle touch on my arm and found myself looking into the kindest blue eyes I could have imagined and I wondered, for just a second or two, before she spoke.

      Well, well, you're back with us. You've had a nasty turn but we've got all your numbers back within reason. We'll look after you, don't worry, just lie there and relax.

      Easy for her to say. I had just died and came back to life as far as I was concerned. Relax? I could feel the pounding of my heart which, no doubt, was the cause of her satisfaction but I could also feel death calling, albeit from a distance farther than a short time earlier.

      Numbers? I tried to remember the number. I had always known the number. I should be able to recall it at least for my last birthday. I was ninety-five and the number was? What was that number? Oh!  Yes! 34,698. Days, including leap years. Fancy remembering that after nearly dying. Very strange.

      Mind you, it's time. Time for me to go. The last five years have been so awful, so lonely, so heartbreakingly, day-after-day lonesome. I have just missed her so much, every day, every one of the 1,837 days at last reckoning. When you meet, court, marry, have kids, you never think of one of you being alone for 1,837 days. If you did think of it would it make any difference, would you still go ahead? I guess you would. You don’t think of these sorts of numbers when you are young.

      Ellen was such a sweet, gentle soul. I worshipped her even in the latter times when she didn't know me. So sad to lose the love of your life but I'm glad that she went first and didn't have to cope with me going and being on her own. Will we meet again? Is there a hereafter? I almost had the answer.

      The times we had! So many wonderful moments, so few down times. We had our faith and it was such a strength to our family in the early years, the years before the kids 'saw the light' and gave the church the flick.

      Can't say as I blame them, although at the time I was unhappy about it but, to be honest, the clergy we had were the most boring, one-track-minded old fuddy-duddies. The kids wanted movement, exciting verse and prose, not some dull old bugger spouting the oldest stories ever told in a monotone. And they'd studied and knew the works of Charles Darwin that cast disbelief on the fables of Adam and Eve and that lot and so blurred any of the truths that were delivered from the pulpit.

      Just the same, we held to our beliefs and it never hurt us and maybe even helped us to be the best we could be.

      We laughed the first few times she tried to 'poison' us by putting oven cleaner in the frying pan instead of oil even though we knew that it was serious. She knew where it was heading. She often touched her head, wonderingly. I'd find her writing her name, over and over, in the very same neat hand of which she had always been proud. She'd cover it up if she saw me coming, then take her hand away and let me look at the page. I'd kiss her on the top of her head and she'd put her hand up for me to fondle. It made me cry.

      I'd find her with the books of account, with more than fifty years of her immaculate figures and balances which, each year, received the plaudits of the tax agent who came to complete our returns. She no longer understood any of it but, deep inside, she knew that it was her work. She would turn the pages, the details nonsense now but the sense of the past there for her in every page. She was reading the pictures without the words.

      The dear woman became frail as the final years ground her down and helping her was beyond my capacity. She'd look at me and smile and say 'Hello' and it would help me to feel that she knew me, but she didn't. In those last years I never left the nursing home without a tear on my cheek. I felt so helpless. I couldn't do anything to help her. She needed full-time professional attention and I was useless to her. I'd try to feed her and catch the bits that came out of her mouth with the spoon and I'd lose heart in my sadness and incompetence.

      I'd catch the bus home with a heavy heart and prepare myself to be ready for my visit on the morrow. I guess I was like the man who, when asked why he visited so often when his wife no longer knew him, said: Because I know her.

      She passed. My Ellen Alice looked deep into my eyes as if trying to be sure there was someone sitting across from her. I tell myself that she saw me. She raised her hand to her shoulder as she had so often in the past and I reached over and held it ever so gently. She smiled and she died. Thank God I was there for her, that special once, for the last time. I sat there crying until a nurse came, saw the tears, and quickly went for her supervisor.

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