Pack Up the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

Grief is selfish. Grief counsellors will tell you that there are five stages in
    the grief process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. I think that there are six: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, guilt and then finally acceptance.
     
    Denial
    I didn’t think about anyone else. I didn’t think. I lived in my own past. Locked in my own head, rerunning my life thus far. I had been given four weeks’ compassionate leave. Four weeks to mourn a lifetime. I stayed mostly in my room, hiding under my duvet, listening to my grandmother’s antique clock tick through time. I slept and slept and slept and when my eyes would force me to
    wake I would hug my pillow and talk to John.
    “Remember when we told my parents we were
    moving in together? Remember how insane they went?
     
    Even Noel got it in the neck. Remember? My mother used the word ‘Christ’. Noel chastised her and she ate him. You calmed her down though. Even Dad was against it and he’s usually easygoing. You were brilliant. I was screaming like a fourteen-year-old but you sorted it all out. You were always good at arguing. You could have been a barrister if you’d wanted. You could have been anything.”
    I could hear the hailstorm outside. The hailstones battering against the window didn’t move me. It was a cat screaming on the windowsill that eventually pushed me to
    get up. I dragged myself to the curtain and pulled it back roughly, disgusted that reality was interrupting a pleasant conversation. I looked out at the hailstones battering down on the concreted backyard. The shed door was swinging wildly, its hinges screaming for relief. The plant pots were rolling, spilling their contents with every spin. It was a few seconds before I remembered the sound that had drawn
    me to the window. The cat cried out in desperation at the lunatic staring into the middle distance. If cats could talk, I think the words “Let me in, you fucking thick!” would have been uttered. I opened the window, shocked at the sight of the tiniest little kitten clinging on to the windowsill
    with its underdeveloped claws. I picked up this little sopping creature, who really was just a little pair of petrified eyes surrounded by fur, and lifted him carefully inside. I could feel his little heart beating wildly in my hands. I ran to the bathroom and wrapped him in a towel. I sat on the side of the bath carefully patting him dry.
    “You’re only a baby. Look at this, John! A little kitten.”
    I looked into his little face. You could tell he was a boy instantly. He had a boy’s face, oval black eyes, black fur that
     
    stood straight up despite being soaking wet and a little white
    smig under his chin. In fact the longer I looked at him the more he reminded me of John’s third-year science partner, Leonard Foley. Leonard had the black oval eyes and a black shock of gravity-defying hair. He didn’t have the white smig or the fur, but everything else was pretty much eerily the same. Leonard had made many attempts to sedate his mane — however, in the end the only option other than a skinhead was to gel it to the shape of a mohawk. He looked like an alien, but then he was a big fan of Star Trek and thought looking like an alien was cool and because he was lead
    guitarist of the only band in the whole school, we had all agreed that indeed it was cool. I played with the kitten’s head-fur, shaping it into a mohawk. He looked up at me cautiously while rubbing his ass against the towel. He was looking more like Leonard.
    “Hi, Leonard? How’s the music business? Got a deal yet?”
    The kitten wasn’t much interested in my rambling. Now dry, his cries suggested that he was intent on being fed. I took him downstairs and into the kitchen, sitting him on the counter while I looked for an appropriate
    bowl. Once out of my grasp he instantly began to move although he stopped short at the edge of the sink. He looked down at the floor far below and backed up