Incomplete Puzzles

Incomplete Puzzles

Where does one go with the unanswered questions when a loved one leaves suddenly?

No opportunity for a last goodbye

They just open the door and without a second glance back go through it and lock it behind them so that you will not be able to call out after them

And when I thought about it, the last words she said were, “Leave the door open.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. It’s safe. I won’t be able to get up to unlock when the carer arrives.”

But the next morning. The door was locked. 

She who had left the door open only the day before had locked it. 

She left on her own terms. 

She took no bags this time. 

No extra pyjamas. 

She had laughed when she told me the day before how she had not actually needed the pyjamas I’d brought her. 

But she had finished the book I’d packed in. 

Past Tense by Lee Childs

And now whenever we spoke of her, it would be in the past tense

She had finished everything.

Everything was perfectly finished. The most organised person I knew

No pet fur on the furniture. No Black Dog 

She locked the door. Left the key in the lock so that no one could push it out. 

She wrote a brief and unemotional note. No explanation. No goodbye.

And we were left with this hole, this uncertainty, this no man’s land where everything we do and say sounds hollow

Each of us trying to fit pieces into some insane puzzle wondering if someone else has hidden that missing piece under the table 

Can there be anything more frustrating than being within two pieces of completing a puzzle to find  one or both pieces missing. This is why I no longer swop or borrow puzzles. There’s just no explaining the sense of incompleteness one experiences staring at the almost complete puzzle, searching the box, searching under the table

Maybe there’s some sense in that. The incomplete puzzle.

Maybe we were never meant to be in possession of all the pieces.

Maybe we were meant to keep connected, plugged in to others so they could help us fill in the missing pieces.

The best puzzles I’ve done have been those which have sat on some table for days, sometimes untouched for hours and sometimes drawing everyone in the household all vying for the last piece. My grandfather was notorious for hiding a piece in his pocket until the very end just so that he could be the one to complete the puzzle. 

For a number of years during summer holidays, I used to camp with friends on the South Coast of New South Wales in Australia at a secluded spot on Berringer Lake. Someone always had a crossword puzzle going and every few hours, as the sunburnt bodies returned from the day on the beach, a few of us would gather in the common area pondering over the clues. A wonderful lighthearted camaraderie  would develop. Someone would call out from his or her tent the answer to 7 across or 51 down. A missing word might come to you in the shower or lying under a tree in the cool of the afternoon and if you were lucky, you could casually sneak over the table and quietly fill it in. The person who next sat at the table would bellow out: “Who filled in 51 down?!” If exhibitionistic displays of victory had been permitted one could dance a little victory dance in one’s bathing costume, but it was generally accepted such displays of oneupmanship were not appreciated as the wounds ran deep in those who had not been able to figure out the clues. 

But this puzzle will remain incomplete. 

Some of us may have a few pieces. Still there will be too many unanswered questions. 

There will always be the person who sits with one or two pieces hidden under the table but without connecting with the others, they will also remain with an incomplete puzzle 

For those of us left behind, the closest we can come to peace is to choose to live with unanswered questions

Dedicated to the memory of Mary-Anne Calvert (née Jacobs) 8/8/1959 - 25/6/2020

RIP My friend