SIBBS Newsletter, Spring 2021

SIBBS Newsletter, Spring 2021 | www.tcf.org.uk 4 My precious, only, younger sister, George, died of an unfeasibly aggressive bowel cancer at the start of December 2019. Left behind her were her husband and their 3 children aged 10, 8 and 6. Our parents, almost in their 80s. A loving and close wider family of cousins, aunts and uncles, and a huge circle of friends. And me. We stumbled through the darkest Christmas ever, and told ourselves that in the spring we’d feel better. Things would start to make some kind of sense. A new normal would start to emerge...like blossom and bulbs. (Little did we imagine that ‘normal’ was about to shift unimaginably again.) My parents were given a cherry tree to plant in honour of George, and seemed to find some solace in the idea of a living, planted thing. Her husband planted a cypress tree on a hill near their home. Both of these trees are lovely, but are planted about 200 miles from where I live with my family. And try as I might, I can’t find comfort or meaning in either. I’d always thought planting a tree was a lovely, symbolic thing to do in remembrance of someone gone...and I still do! Maybe one day I’ll plant a tree for her too, and feel somehow soothed by its rootedness, its present and future life. But in the months after her death (and still now, to be honest), these two trees just made me angry and sad! We lost George...so we planted a TREE?!?! How in any way could that make anyone feel better?!? If I could have The Orange Tree By Alex Swinton