Good Grief 309

Willow Herb and sloes ... 2 years on (plus one day)
Seeing the Willow Herb against the fading October light in timeless places has seared itself into my mind.
What a mix.
I've been wanting to come back here for a long time. I was trying to recall when it was that I was last here - I was taken aback to realise it was 2014 (11 July and 27sept14) but then not surprised, given the all consuming time that it was and that followed on for the next two years and more.
Last weekend I was thwarted by traffic.
The pull was strong and yet it was pretty stupid. I'd left it late. I'd given faithful F a wash and fitted her out with some more camping gas. It was a longish drive and when I'm tired enough already but as we trundled along we were at least together...both missing him together and, absurd as at may sound, I am utterly wedded to her.

As I drove I remembered the moment of telling mum that dad had died. That day two years ago. In the sitting room. It was like watching a lightning bolt strike through the brain. It rent her memory open and hauled it briefly and shockingly into the present and a moment of profound awful realisation. Shock felled her. And then the curtain drew back across her mind, and she forgot. For a while, each time we told her was a fresh terrible re-recognition, out of the blue, until we stopped telling her. It felt unkind and unnecessary. And the next day she sat quietly with me and pricked sloe berries to make some festive gin.

Driving on, with the pull back to the place where I scattered some of P's ashes on the 17/6/13, the first anniversary. I thought what a relief it must be to not remember. The eternal sunshine ...and all that.

The motorway seemed a slow motion backdrop to the flock of lapwings that swept and circled above and the two buzzards glided across the carriageways. We all passed through the moment.

It's such an unusually wild and beautiful place, so relatively close to home. We used to visit a lot. Our first camping trip and often to this spot when he was poorly and he could sit and enjoy the view and read as I wandered.

I walked up to the rock headland kissed the rock and sobbed. Grief hasn't finished with me yet and maybe she never will.