What might have been

It is interesting to note those moments in your life that have a watercolour effect across your soul. When outwardly you are you, but you are undertaking some metamorphic transformation and you simultaneously step outside the chrysalis to watch the struggle for release from a shaded branch above. And you watch your priorities subside, a grainy cascade between spreadeagled fingers, and you are left staring at an empty, hopeful palm. Pain is pumped devoutly through your bloodstream and the effect is a sky that's infinitely bluer, a city pulsatingly more vibrant. Life itself is more pungent. It's like the nauseating whiff of a sickly sweet lily.

An awareness. A stillness that is reflection and a huge poignant swallow from a bitter cup. A lower lip that is heavier, eyes become deep set dishes, even the usually vociferous palate misplaces its zest. And there is desire. An indigo flamed desire to move and keep moving.

I have been to a few funerals. I have been to my mother's funeral and enjoyed it. I have been to a funeral of a school friend who committed suicide, and I watched the boys from the 1st XV cry like babies. But the saddest was the funeral of a stillborn baby, my mum had watched her futile entry into the world. At the funeral I watched her mother, who was the same age as me, stand with incredible courage and explain that this was so much harder than losing her mother to cancer. Because (in so many words) she was mourning not the person that she loved and lost, with memories to assuage the pain. Instead she mourned the person she would never knew.

How to mourn that amorphous what might have been?