mdm

The First Year This day last year as kettles were boiling for tea up and down the country,  the Matron placed her fingers on my Mothers neck and called it. 5.31pm  -  End of Life . One announces a birth, one pronounces a death, but one rarely actually speaks about the process of either. The panting pains as a new human arrives to scream a lungful of air - The chain stoking rattle as another empties their lungs forever. The first breath -  the last gasp. Grief is a funny thing. The way you think about it, imagine it, dread it. It’s never what you expect. The balance beam of my place in the world snapped a chain, and swung loose.  Months with bent head braced waiting for a Guillotine of Grief to fall.  Not in a crash of blood and bone, but rather a slowly sliding scale of blade that chafes and cuts. People confiding on wet windy corners,  under inside - out umbrellas, the bag of logs dripping at your feet, red rimme...