Rooted

When we bought our house, the home you only lived in for four short days, Sylvie-Rose, we intended it to be the last house we lived in. A nice big family home with a large south-facing garden, ideal for children, lots of children.

Just as well. You are buried just a little way up the road in a plot in the local graveyard. We call it your garden, mainly because "grave" sounds wrong for a little child.  I visit your garden every other day. In the beginning it was every single day. I like to tend your garden, I have learned a lot about gardening since you died. I have learned that plants will only grow in conditions that suit them, that some can't stand the exposure to the wind in that graveyard, that mulching is needed in Spring, that some plants look tiny and delicate to begin with but then grow too tall for your little garden,

You have a small lawn that needs to be strimmed in summer, you have fairy houses and figurines, porcelain toadstools and mostly small alpine  plants, a few dwarf evergreen shrubs with bright berries for colour in autumn and winter,  There are solar lights which work in summer but in winter I rely on sanctuary candles which burn for seven days. I never like your garden to be dark.

And I know now that I can never move too far away from your garden. Even when I return from a week-long holiday, I hate the way it begins to look unkempt. This village will always be my home now. This need to put down roots was never in my nature. Your grandfather loved to travel and so did I.  I liked the idea of wandering from place to place, of perhaps retiring in another part of the world. That won't happen now. I am rooted where you are in a little plot,  8 foot squared in a village in Ireland. And that is how it will be.