For Toby

I buried Toby today, out in the woods. The rain fell like too many tears and made the clay on my spade heavy, filling up the small trench where he was to rest. He was seventeen and too ill to carry on. My wife's mother was loathed to lose him, maybe because he used to sit with her late husband and it was like letting go of another part of him. She said goodbye to him and left me to cover him over.
I buried him at the foot of Ella's grave. I stopped a while amongst the trees and remembered Ella and the day she died. I'd never felt anything like that before. People die and you grieve, but to choose the day they die, carry them in your arms to their resting place, dig a hole, lay them down and cover them over with dirt, watching it fall on their face and leave them there, it's not an everyday experience. It's not that I dwell on it, just that it took me by surprise how it made me feel.

I have no pictures of Toby so here is Ella as I remember her.