A Painting called Life

Staring out the window of her room at Paul Gerber Hospice, Margret Scott knew this morning would be her last. She knew, not as a fact, but as an impalpable prescience, that the sun would not set for her eyes again.

A cough rattled through her chest. She wiped away the bloody mucus with the cloth handkerchief she kept close for that purpose.

In the early stages — about a year ago, a time she barely remembered now — devastation had been all she felt. That clawing, scratching monster of self-pity, always searching for someone to blame, eager to feed on the doctors’ empty reassurances, had instead fed on her, some days even greedier than the cancer itself.

Time, she had released, was both relative and paradoxical. In that past year, it had moved faster and slower than ever before: certain minutes stretching into days, some weeks slipping through her lifetime’s running out hourglass like seconds.

Panic had seized her at those distortions — at the realization of regret. Not merely for wasted minutes and days, but for a wasted life — an expanse so vast it swallowed everything she had once imagined joyful or fulfilling.

She had searched for an anchor then — something to mark the passing hours as her own. She had wished to preserve what remained, but most of all, what had been. At last, she had found something to colour those grey evenings at the hospice with remembering and understanding. The room had seamed lit anew, painted in bright colours of purpose.

Now in those final hours, it was silent save for her heavy breathing — the rattle in her lungs that would stop only when her heart did too.

A human spends countless days of their life waiting. Waiting in line, waiting for a reply, waiting for tomorrow. Margret believed she was one of the few who waited for their death.

She had ordered that no lunch or dinner be delivered today, had readied her room for a new occupant: the bed neatly made, the rubbish taken out, the toothbrush replaced. She wouldn’t need any of that again.

This final light had also brought with it acceptance of her far-too-early death.

Left was only that last trace of personality: the stack of letters on the desk — Margret’s anchor. Some were only notes, others a page long, and some were securely concealed in envelopes.

Only with trembling hands, Margret had managed to draw the fountain pen across the cream-white paper. Life, she thought, had a crooked sense of humour. There had been a time when producing words at all would have been the challenge. Now, when words were all she had left, her hands would not let them pass onto the page — too weak, their grey too stark a contrast against the white.

But her will had been too great. Word by word, the pages had filled themselves with life.

From the window, Margret turned to face those letters — a glimpse into the life she had lived, and the life she once regretted not having lived. Words that should have been spoken long ago, apologies folded into envelopes.

There were moments of Margret’s life that she remembered now with striking clarity. Moments of joy, moments of pride, moments of pain. All of them were preserved on those cream-white pages.

Some had been easy to write despite her frailty — the words flowing like water down a stream. Others had made her set the pen aside, returning to them only days later when the pain had ebbed away.

Yet among the stack was one letter that had cost her the most — the one to herself.

Dear Margret,

It was 1995. You were — I was — twenty-one years old.

The summer of 1995. In many ways, these few months would come to define our life from there on — a pivotal moment of before and after.

In February, there had been fame, a promise of grandeur. By late July, I saw a girl with a cigarette in one hand and a list of bad ideas in the other.

I remember an early morning — or rather, a never-ending night — sitting on the floor at that filthy train station in Middletown. It was fifteen minutes before the train’s arrival, and as I stubbed out my first cigarette of the day, I realized with horror that I was entirely alone.

On the opposite wall hung a clock, a forgotten antiquity — its face yellowed, the glass milky. Each second dragged like a blade across my nerves. The ticking was too slow, the hands only inching forward. Time wasn’t moving. It was holding me in place, keeping me captive in my own cell called mind. I reached for my back pocket, grasping only air where the pack of cigarettes should have been.

The problem with time — time spent alone — was that my brain filled it with thoughts. Thinking was bad. Looking back was worse. Yet both were carved into me as permanently as the scars on my arms.

Those were the moments I tried to push out — staying up late, collapsing into bed like the dead, for a sleep ruled by exhaustion rather than dreams. No matter my resistance, without distraction memories would come rushing in — colours, shapes. Even after all those weeks, I couldn’t forget the rusty, metallic scent of blood.

My hand automatically reached for my right knee, searching for the pain that had consumed me not long ago. It was not the pain that haunted me most — it was the memory.

I saw the tennis racket flying, my opponent’s face twisted in fury. She had been standing too close.

The next thing I felt was the racket’s frame — not shattering against the umpire’s chair, but stuck in my leg like a grotesque piece of modern art. Blood gushed out – along with my prospects of turning pro. At that moment, my future, my dreams, my work had been shattered, exactly like that racket. You could not have found for a more perfect simile.

In a way, I died that day. The only person I knew, the only person I had aspired to be, had vanished into nothingness. And as a woman newly born, I decided to live as though I could never die again.

I called the drugs and parties freedom, though I knew they weren’t. I called my lovers boyfriends, though there wasn’t love. I called the pain my stimulant, though I only numbed myself.

Every name I gave was a lie. To everyone but me to see, I was a woman held prisoner by regret and grief.

When the doctors finally called off my career for good, I blamed the circumstances, the tournament, the injustice. I ignored the missed calls from trainers and friends, declined offers to teach young protégées, just as I once had been.

Life was coming at me, or so I thought.

Armed with my strongest defences ignorance, hurt and always having someone to blame, my friends became fewer, my days lonelier.

I used to resent you. Most definitely in the years to that followed, when I made you responsible for the person I became, by the time I was diagnosed with metastasized lung cancer. I resented you then, yes, but deep down, I also resented you back in 1995. I resented myself for the coward I was, for how carelessly I threw away my time.

Coming back from that memory — the racket still stuck in my knee before my eyes — I felt my cheeks wet, my body strangely hollow. In the distant, the train rumbled in.

I was broken. A body deformed. A mind shattered.

My eyes fell on the phone screen. Three messages from a boy whose name I could barely remember. A bank alert about another overdrawn account. There were no calls, no messages from people I had called friends not long ago.

At that moment, I wanted to call them. The button was only centimetres away from my thumb, yet the distance was far greater. It was like standing on opposite sides of a valley, the bridges burned. When I looked down, it was my hands holding the lighter.

I had been replaced. And the worst part was that I understood why. I knew I had no talents other than causing trouble, being someone others had to care for. I was of no use. A burden.

When I looked around, all was filth.

There was grime on the tiled floor, grease covering the walls, bits of vomit sticking to the side of a bin. Not out of reach lay the shattered pieces of a half-empty syringe, blood splattered around it.

It was appalling. A still life of human decay. A place to get away from.

My breath hitched. With a gut-twisting realization, I understood — that was who I was. I was humanity’s lowest. And the worst part was, I couldn’t run from that. I couldn’t run from myself.

“I don’t care.” The words rang in my ears — me screaming them at the doctors, trying to walk when they had forbidden me. I felt the cold, creeping fingers of panic closing around me.

I kept repeating it. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I didn’t care.

I had lived by that mantra.

But I did care.

I cared about the shattered leg. I cared about the broken friendships. I cared about myself.

That realization broke something open inside me.

The world darkened at the edges. My fingers went numb against the floor. My ears rang.

It was too late. The damage irreparable.

The noise rose to an unbearable ringing. The train was near.

I knew what to do. It would be so easy. I could imagine that, with my eyes closed, it wouldn’t even hurt — like falling. I wouldn’t even have to do anything.

Just stand up. Take the first step. Then the second. Walk to the edge.

I imagined looking down at the dark tracks, to the white boundary line.

The white boundary line of the tennis court.

The tennis court.

I heard the racket again. The impact. The shatter.

The pain flared up again. My lungs constricted. I was seizing.

The train rolled in. It was five past five.

The doors opened. I couldn’t move.

The doors closed.

The train rolled off. It was six past five.

And I was left sitting on the floor at that filthy train station in Middletown.

Written on a yet-to-be-placed tombstone stands a date. For some, it’s only a faint indent. For others, it’s carved deep into the stone, settled there with unchanging certainty.

Every human lives with that end in mind. Yet, caught in their fear of dying, they forget to live.

I had thought my life was over after the accident. In the time I spent denying, blaming, and — most sadly — punishing myself, I too forgot to live. I wanted to end that life before I had the chance to realize what it still held.

The universe is change. Life is opinion. Marcus Aurelius once said.

I hold a different opinion on life now.

I see beauty in and around me. I laugh when I discover the first strands of grey hair.

Life is wonder.

My morning coffee tastes of the sunshine that ripened the beans. Whenever I can, I dance in the rain.

Life is experiencing.

I’ve stumbled over more sticks and stones. I’ve faced darker times than that day in 1995. I’ve been hurt worse than on that tennis court.

Life is living.

Now, in writing you, I cannot change what happened. This letter can never reach you, of course. But in writing it, I find acceptance. Forgiveness.

I’ve learned that regret is just another form of grief — for the version of ourselves we never met.

Today, I no longer grieve.

I am lucky to have seen so many selves: the tennis star, the tragically fallen protégée, the addict. They are part of this messy painting called Life.

Today, I see that canvas in its entirety.

The fine lines and balanced forms are pleasing — but it’s the rough strokes that draw me in, the wild specks of colour that make me smile.

Without them, it’s just a painting. With them, I see art.

In 1995, you got to paint in black.

I am forever grateful that you stayed at that train station to hand me the brush.

I’ll sign the piece today.

And in the final hours before dying, I realize: I am glad to have been given the life I had.

Love always,

Margret