After The Event
The doctor listened sympathetically and told me to maybe take a holiday and to think about my diet and to exercise. She recommended that I take up a hobby. Join a club perhaps. Maybe I could think about yoga or meditation. Above all be positive and nurture my inner strength. She recommended I get in touch with old friends and renew family links. Talk to them, be open, be honest. Then she took my hand in hers and leaned towards me and said that actually what happens is that people cross the road to avoid you or run into shops when they see you coming because they don’t know what to say. She said that in the end there are certain things we just have to come to terms with. That we have to be resilient because after the event things can never go back to how they were before, they can never be the same again, and there’s always only ever that pain.
James Coffey is a civil servant who indulges a liking for ideas and words by occasionally writing short stories and less occasionally submitting them to e-zines.