Regrets of the Dying: Stories and Wisdom That Remind Us How to Live by Georgina Scull

Author:Georgina Scull [Scull, Georgina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-Help, Death; Grief; Bereavement, General, Aging, Psychology, Developmental, Lifespan Development, Grief & Loss, Social Science, Death & Dying
ISBN: 9781802794397
Google: vEhmEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Welbeck
Published: 2022-05-03T21:29:22+00:00

Missing the Opportunity of a Lifetime

ANNIE

The cruise ship was leaving the UK to sail around the Caribbean for six months. A floating city that would island hop around some of the most beautiful places in the world, supported by flanks of workers below deck. Cooks, cleaners, waiting staff – and hairdressers. Hairdressers like Annie. It was the 1960s. A brief moment in English employment history when people could leave one job in the morning and find themselves in another by the afternoon. It was the time to take chances. To try out new things before marriage and babies wedded you to expectation and mortgage repayments.

But, as that boat sailed out of British waters, Annie knew she had made a mistake. Because it left without her. And 50 years on, she still asks herself why.

Annie is 73 now. She lives on a nice street, in a nice house with large bi-fold doors that lead out on to an even larger garden. Her home is full of books, her kitchen is spotlessly clean and her humour is a touch on the dry side, but many years ago she found herself living a very different life. And it was that life that led her to choose not to be on that boat.

Raised in the south of England she was a post-war baby, born into a small family of understated love and cups of sweet hot tea. Annie became a hairdresser by default. She started doing her mother’s hair when she was 12, so when she left school three years later it seemed like an obvious career choice. She began an apprenticeship, met Pam and together they learnt the trade: lining up at the back of the salon, all dressed up in matching pale – mauve roll-necks and tight flared skirts, waiting to be called on to pass hairpins or sweep the floor. In time, Annie and Pam would go from being friends to godparents to each other’s children, but until then, they graduated from their course and found jobs at the same hairdresser’s.

Then, one day, Pam heard that a cruise ship was recruiting staff. It was the opportunity of a lifetime: months of travelling and meeting new people, a way for a blue-collared girl to earn a living and sample a slice of the world.

Pam told Annie that she had applied and suggested that she apply too. At first Annie said yes, but then she thought, No, I’ll lose him.

The ‘him’ she was talking about was Michael. She hadn’t known him for long, but they had already become very serious. He was different in all the ways that can turn us from who we really are. Because Michael wasn’t a 9-to-5 man. He wasn’t an office suit. He was an artist from London who was in her hometown temporarily to make some extra money.

He loved art and jazz and late nights. And she loved him.

‘It’s funny when you meet somebody that is so outside of your comfort zone. I’d never met anybody who painted pictures before.

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