Departures

I thought I would try something different with my blog today, because hey it’s my blog, and so I’m allowed. Spurred on by an article I read on the BBC News website I thought I would allow my imagination to run riot. Here goes.

It appears that Heathrow Airport is to have a Writer-in-Residence. The novelist and journalist Tony Parsons is taking on this role and will it seems roam the terminals talking to travellers and staff. His plan is to publish a collection of short stories which will be called ‘Departures’.

Parsons said, “Airports are places of extreme emotion where people come and go and experiences begin and end. Often when we travel we find ourselves in such a hurry to get to our end destination that we fail to appreciate the individual stories and moment happening before us”.

Well I thought I would give it a go and write my own story about a departure…….

She sat uncomfortably in the trendy modern chairs in the departure lounge sensing agitation at the prospect of waiting for her flight to board and feeling somewhat annoyed for leaving the house so early this morning. Having not travelled much she felt unfamiliar with the new security systems in airports these days. Sensibly, she thought, she had allowed herself more than ample time to join the queue snaking into the maze set up to manage the mass of travellers passing through security. She felt displaced now that it had all been so effortless.

To relieve the nagging doubt that she had forgotten something important she didn’t resist the urge to check in her handbag again. Everything was there, as she knew it would be. Settling back in the uncomfortable chair she tried to project a more relaxed, ‘I can do this’ attitude. She wasn’t convinced. The lady opposite smiled at her and returned her attention to her book.

She knew deep down that it hadn’t really been her concerns about navigating her way through security that had prompted her to leave home early that morning. It was the reason for her trip that made it such a daunting prospect and she had allowed it to fuel her anxiety and impatience. This was not a trip she had expected to be making. She thought back to the phone call and her stomach lurched.

The pleasant man’s voice at the end of the phone had surprised her. She didn’t get many calls and assumed he was selling one of the many things she didn’t have and didn’t want. She listened politely, confirming that she was in fact Mary MacDonald. It was then that her world changed. She fidgeted again in the chair feeling a powerful surge of emotions she could neither cope with nor understand.

She remembered how people talked about time standing still, or things happening in slow motion. She had never understood why that would be so, but she did now. She reflected on how the world felt like it had stopped turning as the caller informed her that her father had passed away. She could feel the thudding of her heart in her chest and all she could hear was her own breathing. A passenger announcement over the tannoy jerked her back to reality.

Departure lounges were strange places she thought. People bustled about, groups gathering, excited couples going on honeymoon, agitated parents trying to control irritable children – was there a category for her she wondered? She doubted that anyone else was travelling half way across the world to bury a father that they’d had no contact from for twenty years. Even in death he had made her angry and sad. She contemplated that there was something so profoundly heart-rendering and tragic about having to make a this trip to say goodbye to someone who, by their leaving, had inflicted grief twenty years before it was time for her to grieve. She was lost in her thoughts as time quietly passed by.

She picked up the discarded newspaper lying on the chair next to her. Skimming through the news articles she felt a wave of exasperation at the state of the world, the ineffectual politicians and the scandals, even mother-nature it seemed was inflicting destruction and devastation with little disregard to the outcome.

An elderly couple settled down beside her, the gentleman struggling with his wife’s wheelchair. She nodded politely. She was always polite, even when she knew he was leaving she had been polite. She wished back then that she had shouted and screamed, giving vent to her despair. Did he know, she wondered, how hard it was, even as an adult, to not have a Dad in your life?

She noticed the elderly gentleman place his hand gently over his wife’s hand, such a simple and perfect little gesture of comfort. She felt a pang of loneliness, anger and guilt wash over her. Politely she offered the couple the newspaper to read before checking in her handbag again and gathering her things together for her journey.

25/8/10 – I thought today I would seize the moment and come back and add a little bit of important information to this blog. You see tonight I start an evening class in creative writing and was doing a bit of research about what are some of the key things to bring to your writing. Be honest, write about what you know are some of the suggestions.

I think therefore it might be appropriate to ‘be honest’. The story in this post ‘Departures’ isn’t about a fictional character Mary MacDonald it’s about me. One day, perhaps, I will be that person sitting nervously in the departure lounge. I don’t know where my Dad is (and have lived with this for a long time). This post is a reflection what that feels like, then, now, and perhaps in the future – with whatever it presents.