One of the most beautiful songs

Sunset on Mum's last day, June 2018

Around the northern hemisphere summer solstice, I get a little introspective. My mum died six years ago at this time of year, and even now I still miss her, maybe I always will. Better that one's parents go first certainly, but she wasn't even seventy, shite!

Recently the band Camera Obscura released an album, their first since 2013 and the first since their keyboardist Carey Lander died of osteosarcoma in 2015. My husband put the digital files on my computer and yesterday I listened to some of the.... It's not a record, like in vinyl, but Look to the East, Look to the West is an album, and on it is "Sugar Almond", the tenth of eleven songs, a tune Tracyanne Campbell wrote for Lander.

I'm listening to it now, Campbell's melancholy vocals enhanced only by a piano, probably played by Donna Maciocia who was brought into the band for a gig alongside Belle and Sebastian in their Boaty Weekender cruise. Maciocia became Camera Obscura's new keyboardist, as well as providing backing vocals as Lander had. Carey Lander was thirty-three when she passed.

In Tracyanne's haunting yet uplifting song, Lander feels still alive, perhaps like how my mum seems vibrant, if missing. Where did these women go, far too soon for the likings of all who loved them. I believe Mum's with my dad in heaven, and I guess I think Carey is there too, but probably not hanging out with my parents, unless heaven is like that, slips of memory or whatever we become flitting just past where we corporeal slugs can grasp them so tightly, they would never be lost.

Maybe that's all life after death is, floating around where they can't be seen, except at certain times of the year, birthdays and deathdays belonging to them, and to others tugging on our heartstrings.

Because in "Sugar Almond", a little part of myself warbles along with Tracyanne. While I won't proffer lyrics in this post, they can be found here. Please give them a read, they're truly amazing. And if you can, listen to the song, the notes of which pop up and down like how it is when moving on from someone so beloved within your life. Even six years later I'm a little maudlin, especially on a gray day as Humboldt is giving us today, a day the same colour as Carey's eyes, according to Campbell, the same hue as a Glasgow sky.