GRIEF, GRAVITY AND VERTIGO

Notes for an animated short film

My mum was always already floating away

As a child I clung to her legs

Ballast

In the end she was tethered to an oxygen tank

Bird bones

Lighter than air

She flew away

My sister saw a robin.

 

Covid happened

Grief became the norm

I could not watch the news in case they mentioned loneliness, the elderly, care homes, relatives who couldn’t touch the bodies they had loved, while living or when dead

I still cry whenever they talk about that

 

A close friend lost three members of her family to Covid, including her father.

We walk a little of the road together

It’s nice to have companions

 

I am always thinking about gravity

Invisible forces that pull at us

That , for a while, hold us to the planet

Inertia and centrifugal force are kin

All these invisible weights and flows

 

My best friend says the definition of family is that which binds, with ties either acknowledged or unacknowledged

 

On the anniversary of my mum’s death I had an attack of vertigo

Half past midnight it happened while lying in bed

Stone cold sober

The room span

I called an ambulance from the floor, trying to reach the window, convinced I was poisoned, afraid I would not last the night

 

Down and up have lost authority

Gravity and I are in dispute

My body will go its own way – apparently my ears will have a say in things too

 

Crystals of calcium carbonate are on the move

They are found in shells and in our shell-likes

There is a stone in the semi-circular canal

 

Funny that a stone can make you float