I put my awake-but-sleepy child in her cradle, tucked her up cosy and warm, put on some music and left to make a warming drink. She gurgled and complained and fell asleep by herself a few minutes later. I had heard of these mythical Falling Asleep By Themselves children before, but wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't just witnessed it ( Read more... )

It's been bittersweet watching my son grow, seeing in his blond beaming face the equally blond countenaces of all the dead little boys, the ballast of loss passed down with heirlooms through the generations, the passel of small ghosts that haunt my family line ( Read more... )

Mourning changes frequency; it alters shape and texture and the force of its grip around your throat, but it never ceases ( Read more... )

If you look at the bright sky and the golden trees, the fall of light and leaves in the park it is easy to think - what a lovely day ( Read more... )

Podgorica Airport smells of smoke. I am wearing my favourite summer travelling outfit- long black cotton shirt and strappy bright vest, with a wide belt, short-sleeved cardigan and gladiator sandals. On this journey it earns me a seat in Podgorica’s tiny airport café (miraculous), a free upgrade to business class (delightful) and a wink from the ( Read more... )

Sometimes the loss of you gleams like a crack in the world, and each beautiful place that I see is only a postcard of my grief.

Parenthood seems like a daily embodiment of Stockholm Syndrome, in which you passionately love your tormentor even though they wish you never to sleep, eat, use the bathroom or have sex in peace as long as they can help it. And you, sad tool, grow to like it or at least stop questioning it as something intrinsically wrong so that when you find ( Read more... )

Sometimes the only cure for a blinding headache is to eat trifle at 2am. Now you know ( Read more... )

My father has been dead for twenty years. Having lived with it for so long, in certain ways his absence is a relief. It is nice to be able to live out my life without worrying about the apoplexy that would follow every visible piercing or boyfriend and without the constant flux of his vanishings and reappearances ( Read more... )

( 3 pictures - my grandmother aged 4, 18 and at the end of her long life )