Service

There are three Christmas trees arranged by the altar. The church is old and beautiful with a vaulted ceiling, crammed against a rather smart hotel and shopping district in London's Knightsbridge. The jolly red and green tags tied to the trees seem at odds with their purpose, part of me wants black paper tied to a blasted twig. But I'm obviously in the minority as the jolly trees stand up at the front. And I suppose my alternative isn't going to cheer or comfort anyone.

There are more people than I would have imagined. Although fewer than I know could have attended. There is some comfort in the democratic nature of bad luck, of tragedy. That which seemed so unfair, in this place, rights itself and shows the inherent fairness of its nature. Like blind justice. Unfeeling. The finger simply happened to point at me. At her. They'll do for our purposes. Those two. 

We are slightly early, I queue for the toilet. As ever, there is a line for the ladies. I suggest using the gents which is empty. Twas ever thus. An older lady kindly offers to keep watch on my behalf, to ensure that none of the intended users walk in on me. My friend tells me that she jovially chased a man away. So kind, so twinkly. But I know why we are here. Me. My friend. The lady who guards the toilet door for me. The man guarded against. 

We are here for the dead. To remember the dead. 

I can't help staring. I stare and stare. And sometimes the sheer volume of 'us' makes me panic. Sends my mind soaring to the roof. Because it seems impossible that one building could contain so much pain. Or so much love.

My eyes snag on certain people. A young couple. So young that I could be the mother of one of them. A young blonde girl in a bright red coat, leaning against her dark haired partner who, if I had met him on the street I'm certain I would have called a boy, but here . . here he has to be described as a man. They lean together, inward, like an upside down V. 

The lady in front of me. Her head is bowed. 

I want to ask. Who is it? Who is it that you miss? But I don't. Because, even here, where we are all the same, all missing. It seems too bold. Almost rude. 

We cry. We light candles. We emerge into the cold night air.

Suddenly everything seems full of meaning, full of significance. As though a thousand, thousand people were whispering to me, each imparting a secret, words of importance, lips pressed against my ears. But their voices are just slightly too quiet for me to hear. 

It is an overwhelming sensation. A sensation of almost being under attack. A feeling of urgency, that if only I can grasp this, all will be revealed. 

We descend to the underground. I notice the feet of the woman opposite. She has pretty feet, beautiful shoes. I look up and see her face has been scarred. She is carrying a bag with the slogan, "looking for a smile, well, look no further!"

A beautiful girl is flirting and fighting with an extremely tall, far older man. She is so light, she seems hardly to touch the ground. He is abashed and flattered. Eager. She holds all the cards.

Once, I might have wanted to be her. But now, I sit back in my seat. Content to be myself. My feet suddenly seem to be more firmly planted on the floor, denser, stronger, attached to the soil, to the worms and the dirt. Despite being in a train. I feel strangely giddy and golden, as I imagine I would on drinking a double brandy. Although I've never even had a sip. The light, beautiful girl and the burnt woman and the tree labels and the church all spin around and make a horrible, perfect sense. I feel that everything is as it should be. 

Which I might as well. I might as well feel that everything is as it should be. Perhaps this is what resignation feels like. 

***

A poem, written by H.D., loved by a long past sixteen year old me and forgotten about until I heard an extract from it on the radio last week. 

H.D. has been described as an Imagiste - writing about the image, a radiant node or cluster, from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.

It is odd how this description, of a thing preternaturally dense, radiant, alive, rushing, reminds me so very much of my dead daughter. I think of her as a small set of images, superimposed upon one another, again and again, so that she becomes something so definitive, so very much herself. A super concentrated being, like a dying, collapsing star.

By comparison, my many incarnations, my comparatively long life, becomes something hopelessly fuzzy and chaotic. Because I've been so many different things. Sometimes I'm not sure that I was, or am, any of them at all.

Rose, harsh rose,

marred and with stint of petals,

meagre flower, thin,

sparse of leaf,

more precious

than a wet rose

single on a stem -

you are caught in the drift.

Marred, stint, meagre, thin, sparse. And yet precious. So precious. Dear child. 

***

And, as if this long ramble were insufficient, I'm also at Glow writing about good grief.