Life in Three Dimensions by Bill Cox

Most people look like shadows to me, cyphers, non-player characters just going to and fro, there to add a little movement in the background of my grey existence. Some few stand out though and I watch them each lunchtime from the comfort of my car, as I chew my way through a bland supermarket sandwich.

I park across the road from the charity shop to watch these special people come and go. The charity shop sits on the High Street, squeezed between a bookies and a mobile phone shop, a little slice of compassion sandwiched between two profit-hungry corporate giants.

The people I’m looking for aren’t just silhouettes, but rather stand out in three wretched dimensions. I spot them when they park their cars or get off the bus. Like everyone else, they carry their donations in black bags, the suitcase of choice for sending unwanted things on their final journey.

You ask me what the telltale signs are and I can’t tell you of anything concrete, but it’s there nonetheless, in a thousand subtle unconscious cues; that aura of mourning and loss that hangs over them, like the proverbial black cloud. These people aren’t just disposing of unwanted Christmas gifts or clothes that no longer fit. No. They’re disposing of a person. A person that meant something to them.

When I see them go into the charity shop, I wonder whose clothes are in the bags that weigh them down so? Perhaps an elderly parent, now dressed in their forever outfit? Or a middle-aged spouse, convinced up until the last moment that they were too young to die?

What makes these people stand out from the shadow figures around them? What pushes them out from their comfortable flat lives into three jarring, destabilising dimensions? I can tell you, from experience. The answer is pain.

They say that there are five stages of grief, but there’s actually only one and it’s pain. The pain of a loss never goes away. There is no recovery from grief, just a before and an after and a decision as to whether or not you can go on living in the after.

I became a three-dimensional man two years ago. I still have her clothes in the boot of my car, tucked away in two black bags. All those little bibs, booties, onesies and sleepsuits she never got to wear.

All those memories that were never made, where do you think they go? I’ll tell you where they go. They hide in that brief moment that occurs, just as you wake up, before your dreams fade, before awful reality impinges again on your mind. In those seconds you can experience that other life, until memory returns and pain stamps your face back into the dirt.

Anyway, I sit in my car each lunchtime and eat my sandwich. One day, when I’m ready, I’ll get out, take the bags out of the boot and walk into that shop.

But not today.

Bill Cox lives in Aberdeen, Scotland with his partner Hilary and their daughter Catherine. Writing was a childhood sweetheart that he lost contact with after he left school, only to rekindle the romance in his fourth decade. He writes poetry and short fiction and his work can be found in various places, if you look hard enough.

Photo by robin phoenix on Unsplash

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