Four women

I noticed this group of four postcards on the wall in front of where Teleri used to have her desk. She put them there. It occurred to me that this is perhaps the last remaining arrangement of objects in the house which were placed in position by her hand - you may have noticed that I've implied that I've already moved her desk. I can well understand why some people leave a room untouched after a bereavement: I used to think it was creepy but now I see that it's a way of trying to maintain the fragile presence of the person who died.

I have to live here, accommodate my stuff, make space for my family and a new baby granddaughter, welcome M into my life, and so I've changed things, rearranged the books and the pictures and the furniture. But it's also a marker of how change is inevitable. We leave such transient, temporary marks upon the world, and when our being goes, our presence ceases to place a book, a plant, a pen just so and the physical space ceases to reflect us. Like most people, I find it hard to adapt to the fading, the decay, the transformation of things I love, and bereavement is such a sudden and massive change.

Now I've photographed the cards, I feel free to move them.