Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
After 18 years of remembering someone I’ve lost, it no longer feels like it’s only about remembering. Sarah’s presence in my life hasn’t gone away, so she continues to interact with the things that I do. I wonder what she’d think about the music I’m listening to, then I know her answer. I wonder if she’d have played the LARPs I did at the weekend, and I know she would. I wonder if she’d have written one with me, and I hear her say she’d rather play. And of course, after this year, I wonder what she’d have said about how cancer touched my life this year, how it touched us both, but very differently. That last one, I don’t know – I can’t hear her voice talking about it, even though I feel her close and supportive.
Because cancer, and death, bring so much fear, so much grief to our lives – and one grief never prepares you for another. With my own health, I am lucky to only be grieving some loss of fitness, some loss of choices – it hit Sarah, and others, so much harder.
But I do remember constantly – I remember music, driving, waterfalls and rocks in the middle of fields. I remember poetry, and magic, and sunlight. I remember whisky and motorbikes and falling over in the snow. I remember the roles she played in games, the plays and films she took me to see. I remember the experiences I introduced her to, and the ones she introduced me to. I remember life. Her life, and the times we spent together. And that’s what she asked me to do, to remember her, to never forget. As if I could.
But memory is, when we can make it so, ritual. To drive the same route I did that night. To keep a tree lit until tonight. To raise a glass of whisky. This season is so much more complicated now, after other losses, but the rituals, and the memories remain, even as they are layered with other losses, other times to remember too.
I play the same song. And new ones to share with Sarah. And I remember.
Thig crìoch air an t-saoghal, ach mairidh gaol is ceòl
(The world may come to an end, but love and music will last for ever)
Other posts about Sarah:
For those that didn’t know her, this is what I wrote after she died: https://www.skirnir.com/seolta/sarah/
All my posts about Sarah are saved here now: https://www.skirnir.com/seolta/