Phantom Limb

PHANTOM LIMB 

by 

Aloysius Mapani

 It was an old friend, one who had always been there. It was the only friend he truly missed —the only memories that were still intact. 

ONE

The old man sat by the large glass doors of his hillside home, entranced by the overseeing eye of the moon. These last few months he had been spending more time up here than anywhere else. It was the only place where he found true solace. Here, he would wander into timeless retrospection on his favourite rocking chair until his caretaker walked in. 

Lina or Laura might have been her name. Today, he had timed it; every six hours she brought with her tablets: that, ‘apparently’ he had been taking for over a year now. Pills to swallow with water and one for under the tongue. At night she tucked him in ordering him with motherly mean to lay on his left side. "Helps with the acid reflux" she would reiterate. Earlier, Lina or Laura asked why, after their walks around the estate, the old man preferred sitting in the study all alone. 

She wouldn’t understand anyway. Understand the tranquil demands of the heart when one had lived as long as he. Up here, his demands were met in silence, sometimes in old books and some in thought. There was no television or radio to distract him from these thoughts save for that beautiful view outside the glass doors. Still, even the magnificent view of bird over flora from on high could save him from those streaming thoughts. They were transcendent thoughts. Thoughts of dreams and hope, concepts that might seem strange for an old codger.  And one day, perhaps soon, he might die up here in the study and maybe that wouldn't be just as well. 

The night’s rain drizzled spatially onto the deck’s roof trickling off its slope down to the ground floor of Sunside Hill house culminating into a soothing movement that he had grown fond of hearing. 

As Gascoigne rocked the plywood chair, the old man thought about how much his brain could still register. He still had all motor functions still, and just last week his family doctor had said for a ninety-five year old he was fairly healthy. Gascoigne wondered if he could still pick up painting like in the old days when he still had his left arm. 

The old man lived a long life and had accomplished a lot, he knew he had. The mansion alone was a testament to that. He reminisced of the time he had spent with Tabitha at the house. On that chair, in the early November night, Gascoigne scowled as he tried with all his will to remember his wife’s likeness but he failed yet again. He felt his heart tighten at this. Reaching for his breast pocket he drew from it a photograph of her. A tear fell down his cheek. 

All he remembered of his wife were the memories they had shared together. But now, even those were not safe from the memory decay. Her likeness had all but faded from his thoughts. Even in his dreams Tabitha's face was denied him. She would smile too, that same smile he had fallen in love with. The kind of smile where if it was behind your back you would still feel it's warm embrace. The kind of smile where you can feel its presence in a dream even if you can not see it.

Yet without looking at a photograph he couldn't remember her.

Remembering! Wasn’t that the most important proof of life? Knowing: the people who you had celebrated the most prominent times of your life with, the people you had accomplished so much with. All those pictures, the videos and the stories his grandson would tell, lately he would forget some of those too. What was the point of a long life if there were no memories to show for it? 

But these were the ides of time, his time at least. It was the price to pay if you had lived long enough, detachment from your own memories. It was a slow death before true death he thought. The rain kept on. It was even gentler now, making calming taps as it came in contact with the grooves on the deck. 

TWO

The dominant left arm had almost lived for as long as its owner. Phillip Gascoigne was left handed for eighty-five years of his life, the last ten he had spent without his left arm due to an excision that rid his body of a bone sarcoma. The transition to using the right hand to doing basic day to day activities had proven strenuous to say the least. He had stopped painting altogether. 

The amputation left Gascoigne with recurring phantom pain. The missing arm would itch in the first years. The feeling of having a neuropathic itch was unbearable. It would stop and resume at its own leisure without remorse. Just as Gascoigne grew used to ignoring the itches, the phantom arm started sending pain signals. Some times the old man could swear his amputated arm was sending pain signals of old. Like the pain he felt just below the elbow –or where the left elbow would have been if the arm had been there. It was a pain he had felt in his twenties when a shard of glass had dug deep into his flesh after a work accident. That same pain registered still in his brain some sixty years later from the missing limb. 

Gradually the old man learned to endure the pain, putting his mind off it as much as he could but time and time again his phantom arm would relay different kinds of pain, some familiar and some entirely foreign. It was the strange sensations that baffled him. He couldn't explain it, it was as if the sensations were present. 

It really felt like his phantom limb was communicating with him at those strange times, as if to ask “Do you still remember me?” In this regard he no longer minded a little phantom pain now and then. The old man stood up from his rocking chair, marvelling at how strong his other limbs still were. He walked to the glass doors and slid them open, incidentally letting a draft of scented mud and wet gum tree leaves into the study. Rain droplets fell on his shoulders as he walked out on to the deck and eventually onto the balustrade that surrounded it. 

The full moon illuminated beyond the plains which extended for miles away from the estate into the horizon. Phillip Gascoigne stretched his right arm out into the air letting the rain fall on his skin. Goosebumps had formed on  it and the rain trickled down it. Squeezing his eyes shut now, he raised the stump where his left arm used to be and imagined it –his old friend– there, stretched out into the rain. 

There was nothing . . .  for but a moment.

Then... a drop, then a second one fell onto his phantom arm. Then another.

Eventually the rain was trickling down his invisible hand. With his eyes still closed Gascoigne rotated his phantom arm letting the November rain fall on it.

He had never felt a truer sensation! His left arm was a part of him still. It was there. Not here. Not in the flesh. Not in this plane of existence. But it was a part of him still. 

The old man smiled. 

The End