Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
When my uncle Mark died there were four of us in the room; the neighbour, Michael who happened to be a nurse, my aunt Jane who is also a nurse, my uncle Damian and me. Damian had always been the master of mix tapes and his selection of songs at Mark’s deathbed proved to be no exception. We had been talking quietly out on the deck when he had leaped up like a man possessed and made his way as quickly as possible to Mark’s bedroom. It was as though, in that moment, he had come to the full realisation that hearing is the last sense to go and he knew exactly what to do. My grandparents were sitting by Mark’s bedside, praying the rosary. Somehow, Damian’s entrance to the room shook them from their vigil and they left the room, suddenly desperate for a sandwich.
We played a number of songs in that twilight time. The Police “Walking on the Moon” and “Message in a Bottle” and songs by Bon Iver and Boy and Bear. Damian’s arthritic fingers were too stiff to navigate the iPad, so I served as his trusty assistant, plugging the songs into the Mog site as he thought of them with an ever increasing sense of urgency. Mark’s breathing was becoming more and more intermittent and it seemed as though every breath he drew could be his last. Damian sat facing him, looking lovingly at his baby brother while Jane and Michael were having an intense conversation about pain medication and weren’t really paying attention to what was going on by Mark’s bedside.
The songs continued. “There’s a song”, Damian said, “It’s by Lou Reed…I’m so free?” I dutifully played “I’m so free”. We could feel we were close but hadn’t quite got there. Then Damian remembered, “The Velvet Underground, I’m Set Free”. I tapped the song into Mog. The music wafted out from the electronic device. The words “I’m set free to find a new illusion” hitting us with all of their power and resonance. At the exact conclusion of the song Mark breathed his final breath, a private moment shared between him and his big brother, and died.