Tea

Tea “Can I get you a cup of tea, Sylvia?’ An old woman, old in years, but not in spirit, silently curses her body as she lays there, betrayed. Why couldn’t it have held on a little longer? There were so many things still left undone. Letters to write, friends to call, paintings to finish. The popular theory, that your life flashes before you is incorrect, or maybe, maybe she’s not dying after all. There’s no flashing going on; her mind is stuck in a moment. A moment so long ago, she had to pause to count the decades. …… six, no seven, A young man with a crooked smile, wavy brown hair and a guitar, tried to kiss her. What would her life have been if she hadn’t chosen that moment to turn away? Would love have grown from friendship? Would she have danced through life, dressed in multi-coloured, billowing skirts, bare-faced, long hair bedecked with daisies, surrounded by laughing, curly haired children? Would they have lived happily as hippies in a commune? Would he have serenaded her each morning, kissed her each night, written songs about their ideal life? Or would she have succumbed to the cancer in her twenties, unable to combat the illness with herbal teas? Tea, hundreds of cups, no, tens of thousands of cups of tea swirl past; tea at weddings, tea at funerals, tea at birthday parties, tea with friends, tea alone, tea in waiting rooms. China cups with matching saucers, steaming mugs with biscuits and paper cups all filled with tea. The tea cups dance and spin around a distant vortex. A life-time written in tea leaves. “No! Not now.” she shouts in her mind. The words leave her lips as a sigh. “Maybe later,” says the nurse, though Sylvia is already gone.