May 29

Today is the second anniversary of my mum's death.  I think of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay: Time does not bring relief; you all have lied.  Looking back on the last two years, life has been a struggle.  If you know that feeling of struggling awake in the morning and trying hard to get out of bed, you will know how I feel when I say that's what my whole life seems like.  Of course you go on after someone's death; you laugh, you have really good days; you plan for the future, but the pain is always there.

I have not been to my mum's grave since her funeral for a number of reasons.  One of them is that I do not believe she is dead.  I don't believe people just die and that's it.  I prefer to think of her in some beautiful place, most likely a garden or looking in to see what my sisters and my dad are doing.  A grave emphasises death, and I don't think many people would find a graveyard a happy place.

However, today I decide to visit her grave and I buy her favourite flowers, which are brown, gold and yellow chrysanthemums and carnations and John, Ellie and I go out to the cemetery.  We tidy the grave and leave the flowers.  Sian and Ellie also made up posies of their own from flowers in the garden.  The cemetery has filled up a fair bit, and, very sadly, looking at the gravestones, many of the people who have died are under sixty.

Before we leave, I have a few minutes of silence by myself and get the distinct feeling my mum is standing beside me and saying, 'I'm not there.  You do not know that, don't you?  I've got far too much to do.'

The cemetery is right on the edge of town, near State House.  This is the area in which King Lobengula had his Bulawayo which he burnt to the ground when he heard that he had been defeated by the whites.  Nearby is a place known as Dawson's store and we stop here to have a look.  Dawson was a trader, one of the few whites allowed into Lobengula's territory and he lived in an area known as White Man's Camp.  There were very few white men in the area at the time.  One was William Usher who had jumped ship at Cape Town and made his way up to Matabeleland where he was given permission to enter by King Lobengula and ended up marrying one of his daughters.  On the night that Bulawayo burned to the ground, Usher and a man called James Fairburn sat on the roof of Dawson's store, believing it was the safest place to be.

A hotel called The Grange was built at the same site and operated by Leander Starr Jameson for some time.  Parts of it are really run down and quite dangerous - rotten floorboards and caved-in ceilings.  Yet the garden is beautiful and well kept.  I wonder how many ghosts walk round it at night.