Above the Clouds of Pompeii
Today I saw my grandma again. I looked at my grandma's old bungalow on Google maps street view, the house where she lived for over twenty years of her life. It says 'Image captured July 2011'. There is a window open in her bedroom. It is still her bungalow, she is still alive, I am still living next door to her in the old grey hall she lived in before me, and I will cross the invisible border between our gardens through the dirt path I'd carved out over the years in the shrubbery. And when I arrive she will be sitting in her armchair in her living room, the patio door already slid open to let me in, smiling and waving and maybe a little bit smaller than she was a couple of years ago. We will eat her raisin shortbread biscuits and play Boggle and drink her homemade lemonade and there will have been no pandemic, no other deaths, no unsteady feet. And I won't know how perfect it is and I won't go back and say, even if I could, because sometimes it's best not t...