The quote is from a longer piece about my grandparents who both passed away some ten years ago. They appear in several pieces in my collection. The book was written in reflection on a period of my personal life which they played a significant role in, and much of the writing took place as their memory passed from the near to mid distance and I began to live a very different life.
I wrote a lot about them in abstract forms, organically and therapeutically, in large part as a emotional reflex. To thank and bid farewell, though their place in my heart—as in the collection—is as a living, precious presence.
Sea Sores is an epitaph for a particular time and place – my grandparents—like a golden thread—run through the tapestry of events, stages, and obstacles, which make up the landscape of earlier years.
This piece refers to how once the person you love is no longer there, that most fundamental of sentiments remains loyal. It seeks out by day and dream the missing part. Searching about the world, keeping them alive in the obscure places, songs, and scents, which remain coupled in hope and memory, to object of your grief.
Loss teaches us love lives on in many forms. Through the dull ache of gratitude and inaudible drum beat of grief—is taught that once ignited and fostered to endure. That in the final sum of things, we are no more than the love we leave in those we leave behind.
My grandmother would stand on the steps in the dining room, then look out the front window as we ate lunch, inspecting the northward looking heavens and the opposing rooftops. She’d often remark, ‘It’s dark over the close.’ meaning the clouds might bring rain, which more often than not, they never did.
My love for them is unchanged, remaining as full to this day as the ones we lived side by side. Without getting too overly sentimental, it’s because they offered selfless love.
It is a wonderful thing to feel them there in my chest, undimmed or diminished, a kindly illusion perhaps, but a demonstration of the universal truth to adhere to what a magical and miraculous entity ‘Love’ is.
‘It’s Dark Over the Close Bill’ page 72 of ‘Sea sores – a Brightonian Book.’ Available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Check out the link in bio if you would like a copy.
Get a paper back, kindle or audio book of Sea Sores here.
LIGHT ON LIGHT 