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There’s a memory I have from when I was very little: it’s Mum’s funeral.

Gram says Mum’s funeral was quite a small affair, but in my memory it’s not. I guess that’s because we all like to think of our mums and dads as really important, and a small event wouldn’t fit that image, would it?

Anyway, we’re in a big church, but instead of organ music there’s rock music. Loud, thrashing rock music, and lots of people, all eating Haribos.

(This is not a dream by the way – at least, I don’t think so. It’s definitely a memory, but maybe it’s mixed up with other stuff because you wouldn’t normally have loud rock music at a funeral, although there were Haribos, so I don’t know for sure.)

Gram is with me, and I think Great-gran as well, in a wheelchair. And Gram is angry, though not with me.

Not sad: just angry. Her face is cold and hard, like the sea on a Whitley Bay winter’s day.

That’s the memory. It’s a weird one, eh?

It’s not much, but bear with me.

Now, I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but did you know that when we talk about a dead person’s ashes, they’re not really ashes? It’s ground-up bone. Bone is pretty much all that is left after a cremation, which is when you burn the body of a dead person rather than bury it, and you get given the ashes to bury yourself or to throw in the sea or something. It’s what happens to most people nowadays, says Gram.

How did I get on to this? I know it sounds creepy, but I’ll be done soon. The reason is this: my mum does not have a grave.

You see, I’ve watched films and read books that people die in, and dead people always have graves. The living person – usually a husband or girlfriend or something – then goes to the grave and talks to the dead person and tells them about their life. Then they usually place some flowers there, or touch the headstone, and it’s sweet and sad and I often cry in these bits.

But I can’t do that – visit a grave – because Mum was cremated.

I don’t even know what happened to Mum’s ashes, now that I think about it. I’ll have to ask Gram.

Why am I telling you this now?

I think I am punishing myself. The Boydy thing has upset me, and I deserve to feel bad by thinking of my mum.

Most people in my situation would try to be happy when they remember their mum. Not me.

At least, not unless I’m looking through my shoebox of Mum stuff.

(And even then, I don’t feel exactly happy.)

It stays with me, though, that feeling of sadness and guilt, and is one of the reasons that I end up becoming invisible again.

Which is – to say the very least – inadvisable.