You'd Look Better as a Ghost

by Joanna Wallace

That tenth plate, poised somewhere between precarious and reckless, lies smashed on the ground, together with the other nine.

The Dad I knew left this world years before his heart failed. Early onset dementia, that was his fate, waiting for him after decades of kindness and hard work. A merciless disease,

He was detained under the Mental Health Act by a society that has lost its way. A society that allows us to destroy our pets as soon as they start shitting indoors but demands that humans be kept alive at any cost. A society that pretends to care about dignity and quality of life but no longer understands the meaning of either.

If life was a film, we’d all sit chastised at this point, guiltily regretting all those cruel misconceptions about Jemma. But life isn’t a film and in the real world people listen carefully to rhetoric but are rarely persuaded to change their minds.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a serial killer.” Returning the smile, I get in the car and wonder how many serial killers in the history of serial killing have used that line. I might try it.