Christmas morning 2021

We gathered when the sun was still too weak to punch through the grey sky.    
   
Her children, the three of them, fussed around flowers, straightened the poetry and trinkets then raked the blue pebbles level with their fingers so when the sun  broke through they shone like a calm blue sea    
   
then we stood around in silence, our heads down each of us wrapped in our memories.    
   
I poured her a drink, sucked the life from my cigarette, then spoke of mine, they theirs    
   
some of us laughed, some of us cried, then we looked down again and fell silent.