NARRATIVE
A brief in which a memory is re-born within the form of a book.
The gradual deteriation and loss of a grandfather, a story touching upon the fragile nature of a childs perspective. Life being cut off, stage by stage, untill nothing exists, not even a surviving vein.
It took hold of him, gradually pulled him away from us.
A body of tremors, without speech, an expression of emptiness and soul aching loneliness. Through my young, naive eyes I knew not what this was; to behold his degeneration in this light, I never came to the conclusion of loss. The loss of something so real yet fragile, and the replacement into something so empty but so easy to forget.
Sunday was our day, and we walked. The canal lay next to us, connecting the regions of Nantwich and Chester, the two places where our hearts and homes lay, a bridging line to him. The water, glinting at us, flowing next to us, felt like our canal. Narrowboats often drifted past, their painted hulls I marvelled at, wondering if life could ever be so serene as one of those cherished boats. But then they would abandon us, leave us behind to a troubled world, which I couldn’t possibly understand. His feet shuffled like dry leaves in the wind, held steady by my small frame, squinting in the glare of the sun with unreadable eyes. The grey mittens, plucked with age and spotted with stains, guarded our hands from touching; a struggle for both parties, the quivering sometimes became to much, and I'd have to let go. His grasp of my hand was loose, like his distorted perception of the world. I read his hands and saw the thin veil of skin covering a body ready to let go. Blemishes marking a story, with each flaw a chapter gone by, forgotten, but known to have been.
Gradually the memories fade, I had no hold on them, like clutching at flumes of smoke, there's now nothing there. All I have left are relics of memories; the canal, the narrowboats, the mittens. These are embedded in me through what I've been told, not what I remember. He didn't remember me and I don’t remember him.
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