May 28th 2022
The night before visiting Felix I patrol the garden in search of flowers to bring him. It’s the ‘May Gap’ and there doesn’t, on the face of it, appear to be much to pick. I wander around, looking closely at the plants, letting my mind wander back to when Felix was a child. I come to the white climbing rose that we planted a couple of years ago, a mass of greenery against the wall, and then realise, to my delight, it is starting to bloom. I pick three of the newly forming flowers, petals still quite tightly packed, and then some white Astrantia. Finally, I pick some Sweet Cicely. This herb, with its strong taste of aniseed, used to grow at our previous home. I remember Felix and Lucian, when they were small, used to like to nibble on its sweet leaves. They would stand by the plant, grazing.
The alarm goes at 4:15. As I leave the house the birds are singing extravagantly and there is not a single cloud in the not-yet-bright sky. At the Green Hill, I push on the gate and walk through into the field, which is saturated with an orange glow. Over to the left, the glow is the strongest. The sun has moved to its summer position. I stare at the spot on the horizon where I know that, in minutes, it will appear. This happens to be right behind the firepit, which now looks rather dramatic, backlit by the rising sun.
I walk over to Felix’s grave, where every single grass is illuminated by the soft dawn light. I kneel down and trim the grass around his headstone which grows so quickly at this time of year. Then I wash it, using an old toothbrush to clean the dirt out of the letters spelling out his name and dates. I return to the firepit. Here, in this circle, at the dawning of the day, time seems to stop, and I sense myself dissolve.
The Green Hill 