When A Day Of Death Became A Bridge

It is now fourteen years since that day. R.I.P X

City Jackdaw

My Dad died ten years ago today. Although we mark it, the day itself is not significant.

There were days when he was here, then there are days when he is not. There is just a before and after.

Time appears cyclical to me, when I view the seasons, married to the differing stages of our lives, but we chart things in a linear fashion. That day ten years ago perhaps became a bridge, where plans/hopes/dreams pass by memories/regrets/hindsight , each moving in opposite directions.

What is known of us, that which survives us, becomes less and less as memories fade along with the number of storytellers.

The personalities and stories behind the details, enshrined in the remembrance of others.

I was going to publish some photographs here, reducing a full life to a handful of images, but instead I have decided the best way to honour him and the…

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No More. On The Death Of My Father.

This poem appeared in my book, Heading North. Although in it I don’t explicitly say so, ‘No More’ was written after the death of my father, which was thirteen years ago today.

No More

No more. No more bleaching white
the nicotine stained flesh
of your fingers,
picking at the sterile 
veneer of cordiality 
amidst the well-thumbed
scattered deserts
from which ruins strive to rise.

No more counting down the markers,
elbows jostling territorially,
courting, sequential swans
rising in toasts, triumphant.
Your slow, inexorable withdrawal 
left behind a vacuum,
the equilibrium of a table
out of kilter.

No longer the trumpeted parading 
of the heir apparent,
the tedious repetition 
of vine and tongue,
reproduced seasoned lines 
framing the true inheritance 
and held to likeness.
Casual comparity no more. No more.



©Andrew James Murray

When A Day Of Death Became A Bridge

My Dad died ten years ago today. Although we mark it, the day itself is not significant.

There were days when he was here, then there are days when he is not. There is just a before and after.

Time appears cyclical to me, when I view the seasons, married to the differing stages of our lives, but we chart things in a linear fashion. That day ten years ago perhaps became a bridge, where plans/hopes/dreams pass by memories/regrets/hindsight , each moving in opposite directions.

What is known of us, that which survives us, becomes less and less as memories fade along with the number of storytellers.

The personalities and stories behind the details, enshrined in the remembrance of others.

I was going to publish some photographs here, reducing a full life to a handful of images, but instead I have decided the best way to honour him and the role he played in my life is to continue telling his story to my children.

That is the best way of keeping my Dad alive.