Chapter 20

Death

 

 

Dying, is a serious business. There is no room for laughter. Only horrible panic, as all you have in the world finally slips away. There was no room for Lala. She hid herself. In the way an alcoholic, a sex addict, a person suffering from a mental illness, might hide behind the walls of denial until the illness refuses to let itself be ignored, she hid from Teddy’s dying, guiltily and ashamed, because she could not begin to accept the finiteness of mortality.

It was far too late anyway for Teddy to fret and worry about who was what and where, or who would dare to care. It was time for fear, which, as it must, affects those devoid of meaning when facing the final outcome of a life’s adventure, to play its cruel, insidious part in the time Teddy had remaining.

That, and those casting eyes of regret. Lala had asked him, in one of those beautiful, shared, inebriated moments, when their thoughts rode tandem,

‘Do you have regrets, Teddy, my old Teddy, my tuppen