Still Life

Here's a Still Life. I am calling it The Communist: Still Life.

Ironic, of course - - because if there was still life, my mother wouldn't have given me all of these to look after/sort out/throw away.

The French for Still Life, if you didn't know, is Nature Morte.

Passport, driving licence, Metro card, blood transfusion card, disabled parking notice, poll card - - that kind of thing. And lots of diaries. The Communist wrote everything that he planned to do in his diary, which he always carried with him. Things like "We are going to Dorothy's for two hours". Dorothy was his sister - - seven years younger than the Communist, but she died a couple of years before he did. He kept going because of determination and being thran, to borrow a word from Silverback.

My mother had thrown the diaries in the bin. I fished them out again, because I'm astonished that never again will I tell him something ("I've booked the theatre tickets for Thursday") and watch him write it in his diary.

There's no point in keeping any of this stuff. It's not the Communist, after all - - it's just the paraphernalia.

I'm keeping the lot.