The Passenger – Chapter One

I was born on a Tuesday in the August of 1933. On the Wednesday, my mother died. My father died too on a Wednesday, twelve years later. In lieu of them, I became aimless and senseless, and lived out my years with a twin chasm of absence and vague loss. I carried that loss to all places and into all relations. Perhaps this is the key to understanding a man such as myself; self-raised and educated by error. And now, in my expiring embers – as I dwindle and flicker, and the cancer spreads – I seem to know myself truly at last. Now, at death’s door, with all in the rear-view – wisdom is so very easy to come across. And amidst a host of other revelations, one is written in bold italics. For when, at last, a life is confined entirely to memories, and no more can be made, then he who has lived shall become one with his recollections, for memory is the only evidence of life.

A life is but the creation of memory.

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The rest of this article features in our August 2024 print issue, available to subscribers.

S D Wickett’s The Passenger is also available to purchase here.