Still Alive

My Grandmother still creeps around in her corpse. She wont be forgotten by the world, she holds on. We buried her on a dark day, but wood and soil won't restrain her. We see her sometimes, but it feels like a hollow dream. She walks through the forests looking for things to think about, foraging for an identity beyond the grave. She has a house somewhere obscure and its deathly cold and houses a vicious cat, untended fireplaces and strange odours that rise like steam in a cemetery. Its not her ancestral home, and she's used to better, but her unhappy soul clings on. She is the undead.

I always knew she couldn't die, I hang on happily to my childhood memories of her visits. She would bring me presents and talk up my confidence, my gifts, my propensity towards insanity and would sometimes whisper the tragedies of my father to me. A plot to conceal his hopelessness, despite his beauty and his artistic vision. He was lost, tangled in those hospitals, rooted in concealing his emotions and endless romance in his poems.

Before she lost herself to dementia, she gave me a painting of his, of Joan of Arc, dying in the flames. I kept it with me though it burned. I even visited her in her flat in St Johns Wood to giggle at all the whisky and her collection of owls. But she wasn't expecting me. That was the first day she ran cold. I had been forgotten. She couldn't ever explain herself again. Ill Grandma now, no restaurants, no pictures, no gifted heirlooms. Even the 'You're bloody lucky to be part of this family Michael's disappeared. Though Michael cooked and adored and took care of My Aunt.

So she disappeared a long time ago. But is always there, and when I dream it is as real and clear as polished silver. She lives a half life, a ghosts life but she won't take that final whisky and leave. She is trapped by her own indomitable will, holding her to the earth. I think she honestly thinks there is nothing left but her shattered dreams and the pull of the grave.

Demise is a thing my family is used to, since all the money was gambled away. We are heavy drama queens, and wave our walking sticks like sceptres. Hopeless, lost, romantic. The stars guide our days, as well as nights and we creep into the ethers of my grandmothers world in our slumber, living with her in the shadows for a while.

When October appears, and with it the dark, you can see her in a navy blue dress, wandering the streets. Getting her exercise as she's stuffed up in that pokey old house of the undead. I'm not sure if the even the cat is truly alive. Her gnarled grey feet pound the pavements and smoke drifts around her. Her eyes seethe with curses and forgotten laughter. Her mouth is a toothless gape. She is a spectacle and a spectre, and no one really notices her in October. Its an early Halloween in the Nelson abode. She is probably keeping herself alive with spells.

At Christmas, you can see her footprints in the snow, and strangely dressed twigs and berries by the glittering tree, probably suffocated in magic. She has a way of opening doors, but leaves the chimney to Santa as she doesn't want soot on her dresses, those ripped tangled garments she wears. I wish I could hold her hand, take her up where the light belongs so she can breathe freely and be with her own kind. She just won't let go, she thinks her soul is too blackened and rotted to meet her loved ones. That's the real problem, and she won't leave the cat.

The house where she hides is strictly no visitors, so I can't even light a fire for her. She is so cold, so drunk and in the wrong place. Her radio buzzes in the background, follows her about. I miss my grandmother, she has become this creature, this absentee that walks the dark paths. I wish her to be better soon as we walk into Autumn. Sometimes she'll dance on the dead leaves, crunching and crisping the amber, swiping the indigo sky.

One day, she will feel the call, the song that invites her into the light and I can fall asleep and visit her there. She has to be ready though, you can't drag a dark spirit there kicking and screaming. Spirituality is a long path, filled with much heart break and forgetfulness. The darkest realms possess a corpse that won't let go, the peeling physicality, the nightmares involuntarily spat out into the night, the sensitivity to the ebb and flow of the moon, declaring all lunacy. She must make her way to the cross roads, meet her demons, tussle with goddesses, drink whisky. Run after joy, in a wicked, spirited state. Meet an angel willing to walk into such a mess.

Yet the summers we spent together were alive. Uncursed by cold and the waning sun. Wherever she walks, I would follow her there. Her dementia was a nightmare for all of us, but especially for her. She told me to eat lots of meat, but i am strictly vegetarian. She told me whisky was the most important thing, yet I am happiest when sober. Yet I have walked in those places. Perhaps remembering is the quickest way to the heartbeat of the Universe. Remembering, personal memories, soul memories. Most people think of death as the darkness descending, I see it as an opening to the light. One day it will be written out of nature and the greatest mystery will be known.

Maybe my grandmother can feel the light approaching her. Maybe it is my dream, my night terror.....Ever since I lost her, and she lost herself, we have walked this way in the dream world. Maybe old ghosts have a way of reappearing even when they are already somewhere else. Darkness has shrouded my family, the black of the age of an old family written in blood.

I watched her dying in her hospital bed, and I know that she was watching something beautiful.