Thursday 10 March 2016

Today was a bit of a weird day. Having survived the 'Mothers Day' of mourning I had completely forgotten that I had posted here about my mother passing away until, during a debate about genderism in the arts, a student on my creative writing course mentioned it.

There's a thing!

Ironically I'd just been reading into a docudrama combining diaries, written testimony, research, imagination and a whole heap more surrounding a summer in the lives of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley - so seeing my own scribblings here alluded to seemed somehow fitting.

Enough of that. What of the mother thing you might ask. Well, to the best of my knowledge she is buried and as I know not where or when I have not the least closure on the matter. Perhaps that was the idea. Nothing would surprise me. Culturally speaking a section of my family would say that you should be buried or at least laid out during a Nine-Nights celebration, by your birth tree - one planted over your birth string (also known as an umbilical chord) and a tape measure. Yes, I do understand how bizarre that sounds but perhaps no less bizarre than announcing a death on Facebook and then simply refusing to have further contact.

In an effort to make things better my daughter suggested having a ceremony with some ash from our wood stove. Interesting and suitably out there! Whilst I mixed a totally lethal cocktail in unsubtle shades of purple, of which my mother would have been proud, and I even pretended to enjoy it. I've also been indulged with a day out in London at the V&A lost myself in Botticelli Reimagined and a fantastic amount of religious and glass artefacts.... and pretended not to notice the small willies on the statues - all of which would have met with Mum's amusement and approval I'm sure.

Ah well, onwards and upwards!