Steve Brett

dad picked up granny on his way back from work and we had pumpkin soup for lunch. she had bought the times in windsor for some reason and so we had a look at the crossword together. there was a ‘quick cryptic’ which we did a few clues on, and i got SADOMASOCHISTIC on the regular cryptic. she said she liked my new jumper. 

we drove back over to sunningdale. grandad’s ashes were in a blue box in what looked like a giant wine bottle gift bag. we walked around to the base of the redwood tree in the churchyard. it is on quite a big hillock now, which i guess must be from all of the years of dropped leaves. granny’s mum’s ashes were scattered here in 1986. the paper bag inside the box was stapled shut. we all took turns to scatter them: first granny, then dad, jane, me and mum, and then granny again. i think granny said something to grandad as she was scattering them. jane and i cried and i put my arm around her.

we went to the nags. i still wish that they hadn’t ripped so much out when they refurbished. it would have been nice to keep the old feel of the pub. we had some family chats and i think i managed to inject some empathy into some of the poison with which the daily telegraph slurries the local area.

How she had slept — usually not very well unless she had taken a sleeping pill; going into Windsor on the White Bus; clipping back shrubs in the garden; the snooker and the rugby and the football results; my aunt visiting with groceries or to dismiss a fraudulent call; having scrambled eggs for tea; drinks down the pub with her friends; the chair yoga she was going to: it was all just simple minutiae of her day to help her remember the small stuff.

Obviously I really wanted to see what she had written about me. I was there for her birthday meal, Christmas and scattering Grandad’s ashes a fortnight ago. On my birthday she wrote that she had called me and I sounded cheerful. I wondered if she had noticed that I had not been so cheerful last year. There was nothing about how she felt at all, really, which is what I had really wanted to talk to her about.

The day after my birthday she watched the lunar eclipse. I could picture her there, sat on the bed in the back bedroom — the room where I slept, where my dad slept, where my great-grandmother died, where my dad and aunt were born — looking out at the moonlight falling on the garden at four in the morning, quiet and alone.

This is what my aunt said to me when we were hugging and crying in the kitchen of number 7 the morning after it had happened. “She was so proud of you, and she thought about you every single day. She was probably thinking about you in the morning just before she died.”

it’s a cold clear morning, and that means the racing pigeons are circling the chimney pots outside my bedroom with sudden flurries of beating wings.

i’ve just got back from the most emotionally intense and enjoyable week of my life. this morning i’ve been trying to process and articulate with my pals some of what we’ve experienced at two big singing conventions and a week of learning at camp.

it has been so good to be given a space to reflect on life, death, grief, love, friendship, community, sexuality, morality, trust, vulnerability... pretty much anything. a space to reflect.

we use the words of others to express how we feel, words that are hundreds of years old or that have only just been spoken. we have a shared emotional language, and our singing is the sound of unconditional love.

it’s a space for me to be myself, and a space for me to be absolutely nothing, just the air. it’s a space left open by those that came before me, and a space that i too will pass on.

“once i wished to leave a trace; now all i hope to leave is space, in some maintained and fertile place”

here i am in my purest form, with a true friend

i feel the warmth beneath, a new breath on my cheek      waiting for the moment to speak to wash the dirt away at the end of the day      a moment to be helpless and weak

scattered ashes, splintered branches late evening harvest i swear to leave this world behind settled embers, mid-september late evening harvest is something of a goodbye

we found out how to live, saw the true form of love      your ideals mean nothing to us pulling up the roots, the dirt crumbles away      from and soon to be in the clay

free from all sense and fear, suddenly drawing near      closer to the timeless things this is our language now, the whispers within      you still don’t know what you’re doing

scattered ashes, splintered branches late evening harvest i swear to leave this world behind settled embers, mid-september late evening harvest is something of a goodbye

truly honest / endless forest reject everything you’ve been told there is nothing at all you are owed

in some parts the poet finn (the honey-voiced finn, sweet his word to me, and his stories good for the telling!) relates at length the old Irish story of mad sweeny, cursed for killing a priest to turn into a bird and live in a tree, eating only cresses and berries and being continuously pricked by leaves.