Four Thousand Four Hundred and Thirty Saturdays

Recently I’ve been measuring time: It’s been three years and three months that Mlle. F. has been in my life.  It’s been nine months since I wrote for myself, and ten since I posted a photo.  Grandma has been dead for twelve days and it’s been fourteen since I last saw her.  She lived for four thousand four hundred and thirty Saturdays.  I’ve listened to nineteen songs by The National today, shot ten frames of film and thought about logging into my Tumblr so many times I can’t begin to estimate a measure.

I sobbed, squawked and squealed my way through a memorial at my Grandma’s funeral, there’s a simile about a baby bird there somewhere, and I still feel like that was a dishonour, so I’m going to type what I wanted to say, but couldn’t.  I was born with four grandparents, one great-grandparent and cherished great-aunts.  I’ve seen them all interred and my Grandma was the last.  I feel like an epoch is gone with her, and this is what I miss.

Thank you Grandma for being a corrective, supportive and counselling Grandma, and for teaching me, truly, virtues.  You extolled everyday these five ways of living:

  1. Felicity - happiness, true happiness and exacting expression of it.  You had the most shrewd and generous sense of humour and while I lied and told the funeral I’ve never seen you unhappy, you only ever let your guard down around me once, and I’ll cherish that weak moment in your kitchen as an exception that proved a a rule.
  2. Charity - not in the giving things away sense, but of a true kindness, love, tolerance and generosity of spirit towards mankind.  You never went anywhere empty handed and I’ve never heard you speak an ill word of anyone.
  3. Prudence - that cautiousness of another world and time.  You had no vices, and you’d always greet me with welcome and immediate query of “are you working?” because in and of your time, to not work was to, probably, perish.
  4. Verity - True and irrefutable principles.  I’ve never known you to think, nor do anything that could be considered anything other than totally moral.  You were immovable.
  5. Beauty.

I love you.

Clive