If you could drop a pin on the map of your grief, where would you travel to? In the early days of mine, I would have motioned you to the toilet in my bathroom where I heaved on my knees, again and again, into the bowl below. Six months later, I would have swapped that room’s lino flooring for grass, walking you down to the banks of the River Thames. We’d head to the bend in the water where I scattered my husband’s ashes in a boat, marvelling at the patterns he made, watching him spiral and swirl.
These days, four years on from his death, the question of “where” to locate my grief isn’t an easy one to answer. There isn’t a cursor to follow, nor is there a grid reference to share. I suspect that this ambiguity, at least in part, reflects the intangible quality of the water in which I released his ashes. For many years, I pondered whether a headstone would have given me the sense of stability I so desperately craved. The regular pilgrimage to a rooted headstone can give a sense of direction and sanctuary to many people in their grief. A visible conduit between two disparate worlds. But, as time goes on, the distance between “then” and “now” widens – and with it, my own understanding of what transience and permanence actually mean.
