Your hands and feet are cold? I’ll rub them and warm them. I’ll do it every day That way, you won’t grow old. Is your ’fridge white? Let me paint it for you. I shall paint it red, Make laughter in the night. I baked a walnut cake. Are there tall rushes? Is the grass too long? Today I pulled the weeds from where I buried your ashes.

Family Ties Trigger warning: deals with death of a mother, with adoption-related trauma. * At the funeral they played Always look on the bright side of life; my older brother joined in on the whistling. She’d have loved that, even though I think they only ever met once.   There’s a part of every mother’s soul that is poured into a new-born child and never returns, and there’s a bond between mother and child that can never be broken. Should never be broken.*   The music in the pub at lunch that first day was distorted but I made out What is it that we are part of, and what is it that we are? On the ’plane comin