On vanity and forgetting

Last Friday I messaged my family’s group chat, sending love to my mum because it was my grandma’s and my mum’s partner’s birthdays. My grandma and my mum’s partner are dead. I was a bit hungover; I’d been on a date the night before and I was trying to work out how I felt about it. I chatted to friends, I made a nice pasta sauce, I started to paint the inside of a cupboard in living room, I watched Traitors. Just before I went to bed a close friend messaged me saying it was hard to believe it was 5 years since our friend Roddy died. I’d totally forgotten it was the anniversary of his death. I felt the blow of forgetting – as though I’d been complacent and let him down.

Over the past few years I’ve made a point of posting a poem of his, but it was late, and I found myself looking at photos of us together – I added some to my Instagram stories. I couldn’t let myself miss the anniversary in its entirety but who was that for? Certainly no one was out there monitoring my socials to determine if I still cared. It might just be I had to post to try to keep up the habit, the act a promise not to forget next time. But also, a tiny, calloused part of me worries if I just want to be seen as a good mourner. Impeccable in my grief.

In one of Roddy’s poems he wrote ‘desire has a coast’. It was instantly memorable to me, and I instinctively felt that it was true, desire is an edge we move towards or away from. I imagined drawing a fingertip across someone’s naked body, the shoreline of themselves, wondering how deep I’d go out to sea with them. I think of that poem now because I wonder if grief has a coastline too. Sometimes I skirt the edges of it, aware of the scale of the horizon to be found there – I don’t want to look directly at it, but it colours all my vision, nonetheless. Other times I’m inland, and grief is like the vague scent a bay leaf might lend a stew. It’s hard to determine what particular character it is adding to my days.

But then there are the occasions I choose to stand right in it, let grief’s elements come at me from all directions so I feel every contour of absence and loss. I watch the video clips. I look through chat history. I read his poems and talk back to them.

Writing this I went to check the poem, so that I could quote it correctly and found I’d misremembered the title, and it was another poem entirely. Not one I thought was called ‘Sea Air’, but another – in fact the poem I tell myself is my favourite of his – ‘Terrific Melancholy’. It troubles me that there might be a vanity present in grief. Because it was a vain thought I had when I discovered I was wrong.

---

Before I go – some news. I’m turning on the option for paid subscriptions. I’ll always post some newsletters for free but there’s some content I’d like to keep to a smaller group, where I can experiment a bit more and also offer some exclusive content. More on this soon!