83 months is enough of a stretch since El died – but I’ve been getting ahead of myself … for some reason I wrote `90 months’ in last month’s Ellie post … whatever, it’s a lot of months. And the reverberations quiver forth from the day she died as vividly as the concentric ripples from a stone dropped in a mill-pond just thirty seconds ago and show no signs of letting up.Lockdown has intensified the weird compression and collaboration of tenses past and present between then and now. Driving through Bristol earlier, I passed signs for the Arnolfini art gallery, and realised that it might as well be Paris: both are places I last visited with El, and have not returned to since. Though I feel her with me every day, there is a particular weight to revisiting these places I last visited with her. To return to either will take full attention. But El makes her presence felt wherever I am. Today whilst sitting outside in Clark’s Village, delighting in a cardboard cup of Cornish Bakery Cappuccino (wow!), I heard a woman with a baby telling her friend that this baby wouldn’t be allowed to watch Peppa Pig: Peppa Pig’s got attitude. El loved Peppa Pig. Carrying her coffin from the field to the crematorium, we took a break to divide between us all some packets of vegetarian pink Percy Pig sweets. El had attitude. What to do apart from blame myself? I was out teaching yoga while El watched Peppa Pig. Evidently my maternal neglect allowed her to fall prey to unsavoury influences without my realising. No. I know I am guilty of allowing her to be her own unique self: caring, mysterious, funny, complicated, straightforward, an excellent conversationalist and naturally curious. I don’t blame my mother for my own teenage transgressions – they’re all mine. And El had her own path. It’s just such a shame that unlike the thousands of other kids who take Ketamine and alcohol together … she died.Iona found some short pieces of El kissing the cats, Stormy and Tiger. All three are now on the other side of this great conference of souls we call life … and we are all drops of water in that pond, all of us being endlessly rolled and recycled in a never-ending pulse of improvisation. I miss El and yet … she is aways with us. The Arnolfini and Paris will revive a torrent of memories, but the present is saturated with her presence too. What does it matter – 83 months or 90 or ten million … Love is infinite. Love to all. Wx
