An uneasy sense of an ending has surrounded me. It’s followed me around, or perhaps led me, for some time now, but completely enveloped me over the weekend.
The Sense of an Ending is a beautifully written book by Julian Barnes, its main character examining and reappraising his own past, and reaching some uncomfortable conclusions.
Michael Morrison did the same in my book The Choreography of Ghosts, so it perhaps shouldn’t have hit me so hard that it’s happening to me.
I had been to the Celebration of Life of a former work colleague, who died suddenly and was just a year older than me. While there I learned the gruesome story behind the death of another ex-journalist I worked with.
The celebration was a lovely event, bringing people together who perhaps hadn’t seen each other in decades. Enjoyed isn’t the appropriate word, but I found some solace in that aspect. The same with the performances of the male voice choir and barbershop singers, both collectives based in places in which I used to live.
We all recalled times that seem so much closer than they actually are, and some had retained certain memories more than others. It’s strange what we remember and how we frame those memories. Time gives us that, and time takes it away.
On the way home I drove through places I hadn’t been in a good while and thought about days and nights I had spent in them, events that had happened, should have happened and usually didn’t.
I stayed in that night, thinking of what I’d learned that day, the people I had met, what they had done with their lives and what I had and hadn’t. It’s not a competition though, is it? Or at least it shouldn’t be.
The next morning I walked past the house in which I grew up and glanced through the window. We’re not all around now, those of us who spent thousands of hours in front of the TV in that small living room, but that place certainly had some impact on our lives.
Up on the main street, I remembered the no-longer there and spotted the new, the changes from the days when the village seemed to be made up of various sweet shops, newsagents, tobacconists, a couple of banks, bakeries, butchers and grocers, and two general stores. It’s not the same now, but in many ways it is.
I passed the homes of former friends, some no longer alive, the chapel where I didn’t go, the working men’s club - founded to provide a private, members-only space for recreation, camaraderie, and community - outside which it was very nearly much more than the sense of an ending when I missed the top step on leaving one Christmas Eve, and cracked my head on the cold stone.
The club closed recently and it’s now being developed as flats, which will house the ghosts of more than 100 years of drinkers, its first patrons perhaps those tortured souls who had returned from the First World War. I first went as an adult in 1985. It was busy every night back then, packed at the weekends, but each year its numbers got fewer, and now no-one drinks there at all.
I didn’t walk back past the old house or the cricket and football pitches, which always add more endings. Beginnings too. I didn’t pass the bowling green – from football, cricket, running to walking, bowling and bingo, seems to be life’s trajectory – either. I couldn’t.
I did recognise someone I hadn’t seen in years though and he recognised me. It was nice to catch up. He talked ailments and mentioned that ‘something always gets you in the end.”“The village has changed a lot,” he offered, waving a hand.
Maybe. Maybe not. Or perhaps it’s just the people in it. If our values and interests die with us and are replaced by new ones, then the same happens to the fabric of a place. New beginnings. Not endings.
I try to believe that as I head on to my destination, but the sense of an ending is all around me.