Berberis' World

By the end, they will have been married for nearly fifty years. For almost thirty of those years, he will have shared his wife with another man, watched as they kissed and canoodled with each other, and allowed this other man to become part of their lives together.

At the end, he will have realised that this other man has become an almost indispensable part of the marriage. He will have accepted him as a brother figure, a replacement for the sisters he has not seen in twenty years. He will have accepted, quite openly, that he is unable to provide for his wife what this other man does.

Not love, you understand. Oh no. By the end, he will have understood that she needed him and much as he needed her; that fact will have been obvious to both of them for some time, but it will have taken his demise to make them admit it. He will have loved her as best he could, and she will have loved him as much as she was able. It will have been enough, for them, at the end.

There will, of course, have been the children to consider. Their inattention to their offspring will not have been something of which they were proud. Not at the end. They will have seen that the interloper has brought something other than affection to her, and companionship to him; they will have realised that he brought dissention to the house. They will have seen how his presence disrupted the normal balance of family life.

If it were to have happened now, perhaps, they might have been divorced. Legally separated. Living apart. She might have taken the children and set up home with the other man, leaving the cuckolded husband to fend for himself. Which, of course, he could never have done; in her opinion, he was useless, hopeless, unable to even boil an egg or open a tin.

By the end, she will have realised that he could do all of these things and more, and that she had never really given him the chance to show that he could. By the time he dies, she will have realised that he knows this, too. She might even have realised that he forgave her a long time ago, realising that he was not the one she should have married.

Oddly enough, they will, by the end, not have managed to get a divorce. He will have stood before a judge and, when asked, will have not been able to say that she did no washing or cooking or cleaning for him. This first, and only, attempt at ending their marriage had failed. It might have been wisdom, or lack of it, which will have prevented them making another attempt.

So, at the end, when he dies, it will still be as man and wife. Despite her three decades living as another’s wife – in common law at least – she will have said her goodbyes to him as a widow, rather than an ex-wife. Whether or not this will have made a difference only she can say, but she does not. Perhaps she never will.

The children of their union will have said their farewells in their own unique ways. The eldest son will have delivered the eulogy in stoic fashion, not shedding a tear, not even with a quavering voice. The youngest son will have been comforted by his partner, shed some tears in private. The middle child, a daughter, will have wept from the time she set eyes on the coffin as it sat in the hearse until the time the service was over, and then again in the pub where they drank a toast to celebrate his life.

Even then, it will not be over. He will have been cremated; his choice presumably, but not one his wife will have disagreed with. He will have been reduced to a mound of grey ashes, as indistinguishable in death as he was unique in life. A pile of grey dust in a small hole, prepared by those who will have reduced him to this state.

They will all have gathered in the warm and windy cemetery, as they had done five months earlier, to witness his laying to rest. They will have shared the carrying of the urn from the impersonal office to the nondescript piece of pseudo meadow into which a man with a spade will have dug a hole, 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 foot, or thereabouts. A small piece of astro turf will have been placed before the hole to allow them to pour him in without getting their feet wet, or dirty.

This will have seemed strange to her, the daughter, seeing as the one place is his life he was happiest was his allotment. Where he will have got his feet wet and dirty and not given a stuff about it. He will have relinquished this plot of land when he became too old, in his opinion, to work it to his satisfaction.

He will have realised, soon after this, that it was a mistake. Had he kept on going down to his allotment he would have had the exercise he so badly needed. Because, at the end, it will be his heart that will give out. His heart that will succumb to the exertion of surgery. Not that he will have had to exert himself; he will have been peacefully asleep when they tried to repair the damage a lifetime of dependence on cigarettes had done to his system.

His heart, unused to having to work that hard, will finally, during the second procedure, decide that enough was enough. And it will have stopped at some point the following morning. Most of his family will have been with him, to say goodbye, to wish him God speed, because he did believe, despite the apparent lack of attendance at church.

At the end, then, he will have fallen asleep, passed on, been delivered unto God, died, at peace with himself, and his life, as far as anyone will have been able to tell. His life may not have been the best life, the most fulfilling life. His death may not have been the most pleasant or the most expected. But his future, he will have imagined, at the end, would be perfect.