Please note: this piece contains content that some readers may find upsetting.
The cobbles reminded me of horses, clopping in days unencumbered with memories, when troubles were young and gladly forgotten. Yards from busy roads, remote as a rolling sea, the lane had long settled, like a wise old friend snug in his armchair, watching the world sail by.
It was a blue day. Bright and clear. If air could be water, it was a mountain stream that afternoon. But clouds had blackened my morning, sitting heavy with fears that multiplied in the imagination of weariness. I was meeting a friend for lunch, but couldn’t yet face the cacophony and had drifted to the calm to still for a moment the noise and impatience of city bustle.
Wheelie bins stood to attention against the weathered brick walls bordering the lane. Beyond, tenement buildings rose rusty and forbearing, their back greens jungles of unkempt grass where washing lines hung limp with laundry and hopes of a warming breeze.
Spring always brought hope. This one no different. We didn’t know that the shutters were about to slam shut. That life and lunches would stop in their tracks. That we would be locked down in a parallel universe. Perhaps that day, had I known, I would have walked with the spring of Spring footsteps and not with the sadness swirling heavy with memories in the haunting blue of the skies.
As I walked, a sense of anticipation grew…
… and then, out of the corner of my eye… a robin…
He stood on a stone basin which lay half-buried like flotsam in a sea of weeds. The basin was cold, forlorn… slung out years before, no doubt, for a stainless-steel clone. Now, the weeds embraced it, sheltering its treasure of yesterday’s rain which serviced less fussy creatures.
The robin hopped, nodded, flittered on his perch, puffing out his chest to show me his waistcoat, brazen and braw in the chill. The rascal. I stopped to watch him, the Christmas card brought to life, as if Robert himself had sent a message of glad tidings…. always a robin from Robert at Christmas…
I smiled… Robert… the pain of his loss still raw…
A generous man, full of kindness. Had he been alive when lockdown started he would have joined the volunteers knocking on elderly doors with groceries and a smile. Was he trying to tell me something that day? Warning me to heed the beauty, soak in the small things before the months of ‘Stay at Home’? Despite the sunshine, the world was not sitting comfortably on my shoulders. Thoughts of Robert enwrapped me and I didn’t know why.
… of all the things in this big-hearted man to fail, it had been his heart... he had given so much of it there was none left for himself… and he had collapsed… on the pavement… thankfully… for he had lived by himself and would otherwise have lain cold and alone in his flat for days… instead, Karma sent compassion… people who stopped, who caressed his fading moments…
I don’t know the exact time he took his last breath, but I had woken with a start in the early hours of the night he died and didn’t know why… until the police arrived at my door… such a sudden warping on an ordinary day…
The robin skipped off through the gate to his tenement kingdom. I walked on. The lane undulated in humps and hollows, its cobbles polished and round like rocks on a riverbed, buffeted for years by fast-running water. Victorian footsteps, Edwardian boots, horse-drawn carts, rain, ice, snow… bicycles, rubbish trucks, schoolboy shoes… the lane’s own rushing tides smoothing off rough edges and keeping in check the weeds taking root among the cobblestones…
But, like driftwood on a beach, untamed grasses, ferns, nettles and hardy wildflowers found root along the shores of the lane, bringing life to the brooding temperance of the tenement garden walls.
I was stepping softly, mesmerised by the rivers of green, when, round a slow corner, ribbons of bluebells burst in waves through the tangles of grass. Billowing… genteel… unexpected companions on the way to boorish reality. I heard my intake of breath…
‘Remember, the bluebells are always blue,’ Robert had said, on every card, at every goodbye. It was his mantra to still a crazy world, to raise the spirits of those he loved.
I breathed in the sight of the gems pulsing like an ocean in the quiet of a hidden paradise. My cobble-stoned friend held no end of magical secrets…
A knowing washed over me. Those who are gone are never gone. You carry them with you. Surprising moments bring joy, reminders of good times. We are born into the world and small things in it remind us we are of it. We just need to notice them. That day, the lane embraced me, reset my perspective, showed me the vibrant hopes of Spring, the rainbow colours hidden even in ordinary places.
I had looked after Robert when he died, asked what he would like - his place of peace - for he hadn’t said. It was my final thank-you for my gentle big bear of a brother. I had put some of his favourite things in the room where he lay… a letter he cherished, photos of family, his beloved Scottish flag. He hadn’t expected to die at fifty-seven. I had to guess a lot of things - what he would have chosen.
I don’t know why, on that clear Spring day, the solace of the lane so beckoned. But there it was, under my feet, smiling and at peace, putting the literal spring back in my step. It spread before me reminders of a beloved brother, surrounded me with love, as only true friends can…
The robin stood sentinel, the bluebells were blue, Robert took my hand and I heard him say… Don’t worry, I’m here - I’m looking after you today.
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