A train to Leeds

Can’t sleep, head spinning after an encounter I had earlier today. trying to make some sense of it.

I’m on a train heading north today alone. Silent carriage, got a table seat to myself, settled in for the duration. Train stops and an old woman with a walking stick and a small dog is helped to her seat by a woman in her late 40’s. Tense atmosphere between them, I get up, offer to help but the younger woman gets her sat down and then gets off the train. As it pulls away the older woman waves half heart’dly back at what I presume is her daughter and another woman looking grimly back. Once the train has left the old woman shuts her eyes and whispers “oh God” to herself. I’m thinking that she’s seen her daughter and there’s been some major family disagreement and her daughter’s put her mother on the train back up north, maybe she’s reeling from the argument. We catch eyes and I say her dog is very well behaved as its quietly curled up on her lap. She says he’s very good on trains and i go back to my iPad. I get out a paperback book on the recording of Lomdon Calling by The Clash and read a bit. I pick it up and down and do that attention deficit thing of glancing at facebook, email, Twitter, book, phone, iPad more notifications…

I look up and notice her looking at my book. She asks me out of the blue am I a musician? I say no but I do play a bit of guitar for fun, why? She says almost in a throw away way, I noticed your book and my son was, he was a wonderful musician. He died suddenly last week of a massive brain hemmorage at the age of 56 and we buried him yesterday. She then spoke gently, without tears about her son playing music his whole life, his partner and her absolute lack of understanding about why he had suddenly died.

What I had mistook for anger and upset, was sheer grief between her and her daughter in law. She tells me about his love of music, the people who came from America, Australia and Europe for the funeral, what a lovely couple him and his partner were, how she spoke to him on the Saturday about where they were all going to eat when he came up to Cleethorpes the following weekend. She didn’t cry but ive only seen total sadness in someone like that a very few times in my life and it’s always been down to shock, loss and grief.

She got up to get off at the next stop and the last thing she said at the table was its just all so unfair. I didn’t know what to say to her. I took her dog and waited with her while the train pulled in and we made some small talk about Cleethorpes, then she got off.

In the end all we have is the day ahead of us, people we trust and love and memories in our heads. All the rest is really just noise.