Far from the Tree

I lived in 14 different houses before I was seven;

Always a new salt in the earth,

Always a new taste in the water.

My steadiest home was 10 Cumberland Road

Where the ornaments never changed

And my mother’s mother always had my favourite

Cake waiting on top of the microwave

Where I could go up the apples and pears

As late as I wanted when my mother wasn’t there

Until one day my mother’s mother could no longer get up the stairs

And then she couldn’t get up out of the hospital bed.

Losing my mother’s mother was a pain only remedied

By her daughter. By the wonderful woman she raised,

The same wonderful woman she helped to raise me.

Because loss is made easier by kin, and my mother is so much like her mother that she’s never really gone.

As long as I have my mother, my grandmother lives on.

So many houses. My dad was like a tree who could never find the perfect earth,

Except his roots in Maryport where, on January 17, his sweet, kind mother gave birth.

I didn’t see him much. He’d settled for now in the East.

I’d see him briefly at my doorstep

Once every two weeks.

My dad was healthy, he wasn’t old,

He still had half his life,

So when we got the phone call, a part of me died.

I died for the camping trip he had planned, for the plane to Greece he’d never board,

But I survived for his spirit, still alive within his mother we both adored.

She’s got his sense of humour, his hair, traces of his laugh, his thoughtful way of giving,

Her kindness reminds me that despite our fights,

I know I was forgiven.

The most difficult thing about the loss of a parent is accepting that they’re gone,

Thumbing through old photos and shirts and turning everything to past tense, thinking that’s all that’s left of who they are.

But if you look to your grandparents or their children, or within your own heart,

You’ll realise their fire lives on.