Loss

“Hope there’s someone

Who’ll take care of me

When I die, will I go”

It’s the first song on the iPod that lives in my car. Antony and The Johnsons are the alphabetically dominant band when the ignition brings to life the vehicle. The opening lines are irresistible and I feel compelled to hear the whole song once these lines break. 

Today is the 19th September 2022, the day of the funeral of Elizabeth II.  It is quiet on the roads as I head to my place of work. The small church near the beach, where we’ve been rehearsing, has a small car park that is strikingly empty this morning. There is an autumnal solemnity. The air is cooler, the sky different shades of grey and it is breathless, totally still.

And there it is, that feeling.

Mournful. I can feel it. Today as the morning unfolds I inhale a sense of loss. Not for the Queen, or her family, but from a hole that I feel inside me. I have lost some close friends over the last couple of years. They are not dead. They are just not my friends anymore. Each of these losses felt sudden, something suddenly broke and where a bond had held us over weeks, months and years, now we have drifted far beyond any communication channel. 

“Hope there’s someone

Who’ll set my heart free

Nice to hold, when I’m tired”

I feel it. Today. As if there is a collective consciousness pulling me towards grief. As I am the first to arrive at the little church I take a stroll to the pebble shoreline and look across the channel. Even this tyrannical tide seems placid, reverent even. The finality of losing someone is when letting go is all there is. It doesn’t make matters better but simply redefines a relationship. It is over. Today as I heard these words I thought of painful endings. How I slipped out of favour, how I recalibrate, readdress or forget and carry on, sometimes limping.

How I hope… hope there’s someone.

It hung for a while this feeling. Then slowly others began to arrive at the little church and we were charged with our task to prepare for work. We are united in our common goal. We smile at each other. Then we sang, we moved, we laughed.

 There are people.

There is someone.

“There’s a ghost on the horizon

When I, go to bed

How can I fall asleep at night

How will I rest my head”