When Childhood Ends
The rain on the pavements
From a crack in
the sky
The watery
remnants
Of how you once
cried
It drains through
your being
Like the death of
a friend
And I think
you’ll find your childhood must end
I wrote those words more than
twenty-five years ago. I was a young man then, still in my early
twenties. To be honest, I’ve slightly changed one line as I
decided my original attempt wasn’t good enough. I’m not sure
that any of it’s particularly good anyway – including the
melody I wrote for it (it’s a song) – but this is it, for what
it’s worth.
There was a particular incident that
prompted me to write those words. A work colleague of mine (a little
older than me, but still a young man) had recently left our employer
and taken up another position – his dream job! – elsewhere in the
country. A few weeks after he left, the message came back that he
had suffered a severe head injury in a road accident. I can’t
remember for certain, but I think he may have been a pedestrian
rather than a car-driver or passenger.
Over the coming days and weeks reports
continued to filter back about his condition. Eventually the news
came that he had died.
I’m sorry to say I can’t remember
his name – this wasn’t quite the ‘death of a friend’ that I
wrote about in my song. The truth is, this man hadn’t been an
especially close friend of mine, but he had been a friendly,
likeable colleague. Other colleagues of mine who had known him
better and for longer were, of course, devastated.
This left me with the luxury – if you
can call it a luxury – of being able to step back and reflect on
what had happened in a way that the more deeply bereaved couldn’t.
And so I thought about how a man of a similar age to myself had moved
away to follow the career he wanted. This was a very positive thing,
something to be celebrated. But in what seemed like no time at all,
it was all over. He only got to experience his dream for a short
time before his life came to a tragic end, his last few weeks lived
in unconsciousness.
While pondering all this, I also
thought of another young man I knew who had died a few years earlier
(he had been slightly younger than me). His name was Chris. He was
still in his teens when he lost his life to meningitis.
Again, he wasn’t an especially close friend of mine,
but he was a friend nonetheless (we went to the same youth club).
Chris had been on my mind when I wrote some earlier verses –
Frozen
water
Iced
out, glassed out
Has
melted, washed away
– but
he was still on my mind when I wrote the words about ‘rain on the
pavements’ and ‘a crack in the sky’.
Is
there a point to all this gloomy recollection? Well, yes. I think the
point is that, one way or another, childhood and youth come to an
end. Innocence of endings comes to an end. Such things
can come to an end in sudden tragedy or they can just slip away
gradually, almost unnoticed. Adulthood, if it is achieved, also comes
to an end.
But
a legacy remains from anything that comes to an end. For those of us
who still live, legacies remain a part of our personal existence; for
those of us who no longer live, legacies remain for others.
Given
that endings cannot be avoided, maybe we should work harder to make
those legacies good ones – challenging though that may be. Perhaps
we can work towards discovering the childhood happiness that wasn’t
known in life, while also celebrating and maintaining something of
the childhood happiness that was.
____________
Delivered
Unto Lions by David
Austin is published by CheckPoint Press
ISBN
978-1-906628-21-5
For
more information visit www.davidaustin.eu
No comments:
Post a Comment