When he’d say to me, ‘I’m not ready to die yet’, I’d just smile. Nervously - what can you say to that?

My mind would go to the water, I can picture myself standing there, still like a sheet of glass, shimmering a little in the sunlight.

With a pensive watching, I’d feel the wash of the breeze on my arms, a light tickling and repress the urge to laugh, or maybe to shudder.

The present hangs on me, it’s a permanent feature, a tapestry loading down a wall. It’s beautiful, but it’s heavy and the sense of feeling safe and being stifled switches like the turn of a ratchet gear.

It’s not peace that I find. It’s the effervescent pull of the waves, the endless timeless motion, that makes me feel that it can’t ever end.

‘So you won’t die’ I reply, ‘You will be suspending, even though the world will seem like it is still turning’.

We will feel like we are moving, even when we have stopped.