Still here, after all these years. I touch the edge and feel the grain under my fingertips. Our bench. The warm burnt-umber tones have given way to weathered silver, but it is unmistakeably the bench. The plaque is still here:

In memory of Dad.

So Much Lost Time

The memory of her warm body comes crashing back. From here the world is as it was, a pocket in time, she and I together, our nerves exposed and sensitive to the touch. The rush of memory paralyses me. I realise finally that she and everything she was, and all that she was promised to be, is gone.

And I sink.

Sitting on the bench, I feel a knot in my stomach being stretched taut. Here she is, next to me, warm and real, against all of this cold everywhere. Before I can control it, I am crying. And it’s as if I’m being pulled across every second of my life and being burned by it.

When the tears finally peter out, I find myself sitting on the grass and leaning against the seat. I press my hands into the ground to lever myself upright, but the sensation of the damp soil between my fingers triggers something. In the memory I have, I am digging. Clawing into the earth with my fingers. There, just behind the bench. I know it is here. Whatever it is.

And so now I move behind the seat and crouch. There are walkers nearby but they look away, afraid, as if I am about to do something unthinkable. I plunge my hand into the ground and dig. I scrape away a handful of wet, hard soil. Then, before I know what is happening I am digging desperately. One after another clumps of soil are hooked out of the ground. I dig as though beneath this foot of grass, there is a treasure or a life or some precious thing that needs air. I claw again and again but I don’t quite understand why.

Through the damp soil my hands touch plastic and I stop. The corner of something smooth and plastic is poking through the ground but it’s too far below ground to see. I tug at it and it slides out before catching in the mud. Another pull dislodges more earth and finally it comes free, cascading damp earth as it does.

I lay it on the ground and stare at it, as if a dream has suddenly taken on form. I remember this thing. A clear plastic sack. Thick. Inside there is something that has been carefully wrapped in newspaper. Something that I have carefully wrapped in newspaper. At the very outer threshold of my mind I remember this. It comes now in an avalanche. I remember wrapping these things. I recall the nervousness I’d felt as I did it. This has to do with Grace.