Waves

The full weight of an experience's significance is never realised until, at some point in the distant future, before the memory descends into the listless swathes of the subconscious and after your internal camera has been dismantled, cleaned and reassembled, it can be viewed through the swooping panorama of a vulture's bird's-eye.

What you remember of beautiful seascape- the sun that bleached even the bluest of skies a gentle cream, the soft swash of waves- images almost cinematic in your mind now, is shadowed with the sobering truth that the day in Bournemouth almost three years ago now, spent in blissful ignorance of what the future could hold, was the last day you were to spend with the grandmother of your best friend.

It was also the first time you were to meet her, an introduction with an unspoken goodbye. She was ill; you drank tea, ate ice creams, accidentally got very, very wet, and then drove back that evening to a nursing home.

The death and your abstract connection, fragile and nonsensical, still remains as thread in your life. You can't really say you miss someone that your never knew, but you can see the ripples that still reverberate.