Napoleon Dozier's Dabbler's Hand

Over the last weekend I went to a memorial service for two souls who are believed to have lost their mortal lives in the Grenfell Tower fire. Their premature death, or life, depending on how one perceives life and death, has been politicised as is par for the course these ominous days. They have become symbols of the wealth and class disparity in Tory Britain. If one was to reach into conspiracy territory, they are sacrifices for the status quo. I’m aware that it is a loaded perspective and sensitive to speak of such things at this time. I had met the woman at the heart of this trajedy in the weeks prior to the apocalypse that met her and her son, two floors above the ladder’s summit. Her big and beautiful brown eyes held all the mystery and vitality of the Sun that replenishes what the grey of life’s trials is so adept in sucking out of us. I’m also ashamed to admit that I stayed outside during portions of the service for no good reason other than perhaps the trauma of knowing, only to later learn more about what happened in their attempts to escape. It turned out to be far worse than I imagined. And yet to hear that there was a valiant fight in vain to survive and not merely succomb to the flames and poisonous fumes is in keeping with the  character of one who had overcome so much, and fought to the end. As of my writing of these words, they have not yet found the body of the mother and child. They will not find their spirits either. Their remains, if found, can not testify of a mother’s love but her story lives in the memories of a transformed life that beat some great odds in earlier chapters. In her final moments it was her faith that stood between her and the figurative September. The new term ceased upon her life like the old enemy it has always been. Death has no friends but faith, hope and love are its foe.

On Monday evening I ventured on my way to one of London’s prettiest cinemas, The Electric on Portebello road, to watch a documentary film about the demise of one of the great vocalists of our time. Along the way I saw posters of the missing people of Grenfell in all kinds of places. I moved between Kensington and Ladbroke Grove and had to stop every so often to look at a face stuck on a highstreet shop window or wall with a name in bold. I was struck by the image of a little girl on a poster attached to a pole. The face of the little girl was open. A blank page of possibility. Then I remembered that on the bus I took to Notting Hill, there was a woman carrying a picture of a girl who looked similar to the one that had caught my attention and brought my footsteps to a halt. I stared at both faces, the one in front of me and the cloudy image in my faltering memory. It may very well have been the same girl. It dawned on me that the woman on the bus might have been out on the streets searching for any strands of information. She was not giving up hope of finding the dead or alive body of a little blank book of a life yet to be written, amidst a seemingly hopeless circumstance. Perhaps in time we who live to remember will reason that the fire stole many lives but it did not consume all of our hope. Pain is timeless but so is the hope that one day pain will be no more. This is the burden we carry from one heartbreak to another, with a wry smile alongside the tracks of our tears.