Death Storage.


The subtlety with which my dad dropped the A-word into conversation yesterday was astounding. 

We were both staring into my airing cupboard, when he tapped the piece of material screwed to the back of the door and said, “That’s probably asbestos”. If my life were a film, it would have cut to one of those shots where the person stays in the centre of frame while the background zooms out behind them. If my face was animated by Terry Gilliam, my bottom jaw would have disengaged completely. My cupboard was giving me cancer.

All my closet-related memories flashed by me in an instant: the countless times I’d hung towels up in there to dry, then innocently rubbed them into my face the following morning. I didn’t know they were contaminated. I hadn’t an inkling.

It wasn’t just my towels. Every item of clothing and bed sheet in my house has rested against the back of that door at some point. I may as well have broken into a factory built in the 1950s, dislodged some lagging from the roof and rolled myself up in it.

My dad assured me there was nothing to worry about. I wasn’t convinced. Henceforth, my hallway cupboard is a no-go zone. I’m also going to have myself fumigated. With it comes to health, you can’t be too careful.

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