I do not know where my mother’s ashes are entombed. I could not lead you there. I like to think she isn’t there either, that she could not be trapped like that in unforgiving marble and polished glass and gold. That was not the way of my mother in life. I doubt somehow that death could hold her down.

All through my own long years, I melted sand to make glass that sang like crystalline roses, on a journey custom-made for me, and I never questioned why.

Now, as old age bends my bones, as fire and smoke take the sight from my eyes, sand rushes through my fingers, miniature boulders turning to glass the colour of long-ago roses, works of art crafted by the sun, stolen from the earth. And now I know where my journey leads.

While I work, I sing a song of sand and roses, the memory of a childhood garden, fragrant and warm, my mother’s work of art. The roses there were palest pink, their blossoms gentle against a carpet of Dusty Miller grey.

 My mother made her life like that – her home, inside and out, was palest pink floating on a sea of grey that was nothing like my mother herself, who was a blazing red flame leaping forth from a molten floor that smouldered yellow and black and yet more red, this red deeper, hotter even than the one she showed to the startled air.

I have always wondered why this volcanic woman surrounded herself with paleness, with dullness. Perhaps she knew how hot she was, how explosive, how dangerous. Perhaps she laid a blanket of calm over her life in a vain attempt to hold the fire at bay.

But there was no stopping that fire.

It burned through her lives, one after another, until there were none left, until it melted her, reduced her to ash, to sand, to smoke.

She did love her roses, though. Perhaps when she bent to breathe their fragrance, when she touched their velvet petals, she cooled the fire within her for just a moment.

Perhaps she found some peace there. I hope so.

I do not know where my mother’s ashes lie, but I hope that someone, some time, remembers – and lays roses of palest pink on her empty tomb.

Written by By Sandra Leigh

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