Memories are an act of creation. We piece them together from disparate fragments and imaginings until it feels like that’s how we always remembered it.
I’m a young boy, seven or eight, and I’m holding the red cord attached to the corner of the coffin as the men lower it into the grave. Around me an overbearing huddle of black and grey woolen coats, men with leather gloves and sombre Sunday-best hats: women go to the Kirk, but not the cemetery. I am trying to reconcile the pale wooden coffin with my grandmother, who, I am told, is inside it.
