I haven't written very much this year, or sent much for publication but I will leave this little memoire from childhood to round off the year and wish you all a Happy and Healthful 2023.
A resurrection in raspberries.
As we spilled out of the town hall, ears tingling with carols, jollity followed us, trinkled along wet streets and trickled in rainbow hues down slushy gutters. Friends, strangers, even old enemies it seemed, greeted one another with Christmas cheer.
Church Street, criss-crossed in multi-coloured bulbs, glowed with pride, its shops festooned with holly wreaths. Even the Brother Archie’s plate glass window bristled with festive sprigs among the Stanley knives, glass baubles glinting out among saws and planes. All was a-sparkle of splintery tinsel and fairy lights. Outside grocery shops, recently cut trees awaited another incarnation, an indoor, scented life among the tangerines and puddings.
As light faded to a glimmer, a single gap in the commerce reined in all sound. The old churchyard lowered black, sucking the celebration from the street. In there was full of people so long dead, they were deaf to Christmas bustle and their dark absence made the lights seem all unreal. I quickened my pace past those wrought iron gates where no tomorrow ever comes. And soon enough the town centre dwindled to narrower streets and darker lanes, and I felt suddenly alone and hurried homeward all happed up in hope.
But I knew life would return to that dank place of runkled graves and dilapidated stones, whose illustrious names, time had all but erased. When the sun was once more at its height, a little taste of heaven would spring up out of decay. We’d walk there, and our eager little hands would reach in through the black surround of the old grave by the crumbling tower, and we’d fill our Sunday hats with soft, ripe fruits, and buy ice cream on the way home, to share the biggest, sweetest raspberries you’ve ever seen. Though, it might have scunnered some to know where we came by them, sure, the grave is silent and we didn’t have to tell. Year after year, this miracle occurred. I never knew his name, our benefactor, but I have never forgot the lessons in hope his grave taught:
True light shines brightest in the darkest times.
The greatest gifts are always freely given and received.
Each day we live’s a little taste of heaven.
Oonah V Joslin 2022
