Sunday 3 October 2021

Happy Birthday Vicky. 91 years old today.

 

My mother’s ashes are scattered near the lighthouse on the hill at the edge of my world.  I think of her there sometimes, as I am falling asleep, or just waking up.  Her strong elephant legs or her firm hands that made the lightest pastry, now as a fine dust that covers the bramble bushes in that quiet place.  The waves swish over the rocks there, the peregrine falcons glide overhead, and the nibbled grass waits for the odd picnicker, but people rarely go there, it is a wonderfully forgotten place.  Ships far out at sea feel comforted by the flashing light of the white lighthouse, and the shipwrecks lie on the ocean bed with their cargoes of rum, coconut and turtles all disintegrated.  The wind exhales and there is no sound of traffic.  My mother is there for eternity and I will go and pick purple blackberries at the end of August to make sweet syrupy jam like she used to.