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 to know.

I take a screen print of the bungalow, with the bedroom window open, because it won't last forever, and one day the Google van will come back down that road and replace her bungalow with Lorraine's and though there may be an open window to that room, it won't be her. 

I still see her bungalow every time I go back home. But there is no bird bath on the front lawn or her old tin rain gauge, no more crosswords in the living room or lemonade in the pantry. Even the bungalow's name is no longer the same. 

But I look at that image now, almost ten years after it was taken, and if I zoom in carefully, I can see her in the kitchen window, washing up and watching the birds at her bird table like she always did. I smile at her, knowing she is on the other side of the glass, frozen in time forever. 

Above the Clouds of Pompeii ~ Bear's Den