I’ve been thinking a lot about death recently. Dreaming a lot about death. Do you want to talk about it with me?
Sure.
Okay. I know it’s cliché to talk about waking up from a dream and it being all a dream, but that is how it happened last night. I was standing in an empty graveyard, with my entire family. And, one by one, they all started to disappear and turn into graves. Not literally turn into graves, but they would disappear and in their place there would be a headstone. It happened to my entire family before it was my turn, and then I woke up. I texted my parents to make sure that they were okay and when they didn’t respond, within half an hour I’d told myself this entire story about what would happen if they’d died. Before I even thought about calling them, I had thought about the path that my grief would take. And how I think I wouldn’t be able to cope with it. But, then, when I realised I should probably just call to check on them, even though it was two in the morning, oh my god, the relief, when I heard my mum’s voice down the phone! It was a tidal wave. She spoke as though she recognised my pain. I know that she recognised my pain. It must’ve come from somewhere, this feeling. I think someone gave it to her and I think she gave it to me. It’s a gift, really. It’s something we can share. But I also don’t know how to put it down. It’s like I’ve been born with this ancestral wound that doesn’t even cut that deep but it just keeps on cutting. It feels as though it’s travelled so far through my bloodline and it’s out to get me with a vengeance.
That sounds pretty rough. Are you okay?
Well, yes, because I went on a walk along the coastal path the other day. It’s this beautiful stretch of land which is about two miles long, three miles if you listen to the signposts. Anyway, I was walking along the path and I was looking out to sea, trying to resist the wind, it was furious that day, and I saw all of these waves building and crashing. Over and over again, building and crashing, building up until they couldn’t build up anymore and then crashing back down. And I had this sort of revelation that felt profound at the time but now not so much. I thought that those waves in the bay were such an accurate representation of life. Big thoughts to be having on just a little walk, I know. I stopped walking, I didn’t really have anywhere to be anyway, I lodged my boot into a rock that was jutting out of the ground so I wouldn’t fall over, and I stopped and looked. I imagined the bay as the space between the thumb and forefinger on my right hand. I even remember looking down and envisioning my own hand as part of the landscape. I thought about how we’re all swimming from one finger to another, through the waves and the vicious sea, and that the waves sometimes pull someone beneath the surface and they don’t come out again, or sometimes they do. Not everyone makes it to the other side of the bay. Imagining that journey though, from one end of the bay to the other, it gave me such comfort. We’re all swimming through life, and I think that this feeling I’m carrying with me right now, it might just be one huge wave. I can swim through it.
Shall we go on a walk?
