liz x

Why are aniversaries so hard?

I think about Liz from time to time, little things remind me of her and I just feel a warm glow of remembrance. But today I just feel weepy, and every memory threatens to set off a crying jag. I've been trying to go on, organising things, keeping busy, but I just can't.

ILX has mostly been strangely quiet today, like the memory of her death is the Elephant In The Room that everyone is thinking about, but no one can really discuss. I'm scared of saying the wrong thing, or worse, nothing at all. But talking about her just brings up the grief like a well of tears.

Liz is just woven into the fabric of ILX, of our little community, in so many ways. So many memories. The cakes - everyone remembers her cakes, because they were like works of art. The experimental mint cake that she made for my birthday, which we ate on a lock in the middle of the River Lee or Lea. Dancing at Poptimism. Her holding court on the couches at The Chapel Bar. Egging each other on to get more and more pitchers of some foul liquor concoction at a bar in Brixton. Magnus and I making arrows out of her breadsticks and cupcake wrappers at her and Rob's housewarming. Sag Paneer after the canal walk to Southall. Exchanging squealy fangirl text messages after she helped Bobby G carry his dirty dronerock baby up the stairs at Kings Cross.

All that girlish glee cut short by an explosion just South of Kings Cross, a year ago.

This post isn't about politics. Like many people, I actually think that the bomber that took her life was as much a victim as she was - a victim of institutionalised racism, of power-hungry fanatics masked in religion, of empire-building, whatever. I'm not bitter. Of all the things that Liz was, I never knew her to be bitter.

I'm just sad. And I miss her.