This one's not very jokey

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Sorry for the lack of posts, but we were doing the Christmas thing in England.

There was a tree with beautiful lights, and turkey at both sets of parents, presents twinkling with expectation. There was Emma, who got lots of attention from her cousins, but most enjoyed rustling and munching at discarded wrapping paper. My Dad said my blog was "too jokey" and my Mother asked whether a bottle of pear liqueur given her by my Catholic aunt was actually holy water. My mother-in-law got a nasty nosebleed. We went for a magical walk with my sister and her family across a big field with purple sky, where a blood red sunset met the moon on the rise. We played Monopoly. I lost. The Queen talked about tolerance, and looked small and frail.

We had a good time. Emma even slept on the plane. And yet, and yet. The gaps and the silences, where so much is not said, where solace is taken in the washing up, the clearing away, the TV. The voice inside repeating, "something is missing" and the beat of a heart that longs to connect in a place beyond the leftovers and the afternoon film.

Far away, the next day, there were children on a beach where the breeze was warm. They were looking for shells or playing 'it'. Some boys might have stopped to poke a jellyfish with a stick. And in a terrible moment, all that was over. And my world is so small, my worries so trivial when I think of the grief and the shock and the rage and the simple fact that I am here and they were there.

It was never meant to be like this.