Things that last longer than flesh

I am wearing my great-grandmother's wedding ring, a ring my grandmother wore too, a ring that now I will wear, forever. I am holding something older than any person I know; it is a thin bronze band, I am wearing it on my right hand. It feels heavy, like it is trying to remind me it is there; it wants me to remember, always, the fact that I am part of a long line of women, women who made the world slightly different with their lives lived quietly and not so quietly. Women who, I think, are forever now the other, behind the looking glass, static, in photographs of worlds long gone, and the ones who came before cameras, who we can never see. The past which was once the future, my great-grandmother's future, her great-grandmother's future, until that future became swallowed up, the string shortened, and they disappeared forever, and became the past. I wonder what their lives were like, the lives now typified by these things, these heirlooms, dusted off, memories I never had, but a reverence for them nevertheless.

And I think, if jewellery had ears.

If jewellery had ears I'd have to watch my language.

I imagine my life twisting ahead of me and the things that will last longer than however many years I am lucky to have. And the tiny changes I will make while I am here, even if I consider myself a failure at times. And suddenly I wish not for success, or anything at all, but for life, in its many colours, and I wonder if there is a point, and I conclude probably not, apart from maybe taking step after step after step, and doing your best.

(for Helen, 1931-2011)