No moment too unremarkable

I’m haunted by something I experienced early this morning in Fawkner Park just across from the Alfred Hospital.

I was out with Morris, taking a slow walk around the oval, enjoying the sun on my back. My plans for the day unfurled from the knot of dreams from last night. I yawned. I stretched. I noticed the first red leaves from the fig trees. I smiled at Morris’ expectant face. I threw the ball for him. He shot off for the fetch.

And a woman’s wail shot back to me, through the park.

It was loud, it was heaving, it was animal. It had a structure unlike any cry I’d heard before. A moan, hoarse and desperate and crescendoing — a gasp for air — a tremulous, weakened exhale. As soon as I placed the sound as a cry, I spun around and spotted the crying woman about fifty metres away. She looked in her mid 60s, dressed in the sort of bright clothing you’d expect to see draping a history teacher or one of your mum’s kooky friends. Her walk was plodding, hobbling: a stagger. Her steps were wider than seemed right, uneven, like she could buckle at any moment. She held her arms out rigid from her sides, corpse-like. She walked and she wailed. And wailed. And wailed. A friend or family member followed her tentatively, silently, maintaining a distance of three or four metres behind, and saying nothing.

The howling woman walked on, reached the centre of the oval and fell to her knees. She rose, took a few steps more and collapsed again. Her crying grew guttural and savage — a batshit crazy upward scream at everything. Her friend was still there, three or four metres behind, hands clasped and gaze to the ground, letting the cry happen.

I could only guess that moments before all this, as I was clipping the leash on Morris, this poor woman was at the Alfred Hospital having delivered to her the worst news of her life. And what for me was an inconsequential thirty seconds was for this woman the specific point in her existence to date at which everything fell apart.

I’m sharing this because my experience this morning was an uncomfortable but probably necessary reminder at how quickly life can turn to ruin. When it’s the morning. When you’re wearing your colourful clothes. When the dogs are fetching balls. When the joggers are jogging. When the fig leaves are turning red. When it’s sunny outside. When you were happy.

I don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone, ever. I don’t think anyone does. But because tragedies have happened, do happen, and will happen, it seems prudent to tell you that if you’re reading this, I care about you and think you’re excellent.

And I’m going to tell the people I love that I love them. And I’m going to do it more regularly. Not because of any delusions that love guards against the risk of suffering; it doesn’t and it can’t. But because I figure that it’s as important to say as it is important to hear. There’s no such thing as being too busy to say I love you, and there’s no moment too unremarkable.