Notes on the Ocean on my dad's birthday
14th July 2025
I’ve come down to black rock to say happy birthday. 60 years ago today you were born, just up the road from here. But you never even made it to 50. I come here to try and feel connected to you. Your ashes float around in this spot, but maybe not so much anymore. Maybe if I come back in 100 years you will be a shell washed up on the shore. I had a plan to come for a swim here, Meme sent me off with my keffiyeh and swimmers and told me to not get blown away. But the red flags are up so I think my desire to stay alive and warm is deeper than my desire to connect my toes to your ghostly sea dwelling soul. It has worked before. In the past I’ve come here and sunk my skin into the cold English Channel and had full blown conversations with you while wiggling my toes around in circular motions and flapping my arms up and down. For some reason today the sea feels sad.
Brighton feels sad.
Walking through the streets today - everything was different but also exactly the same. My bodily memory took hold. My feet took me through well trodden paths rather than the planned route from the station to Meme’s house. These were the paths I have wandered for years while I was grieving and depressed and young. 21, 22, 23, 24 … 25? Heart broken from your death that had just suddenly hit us like a tonne of bricks out of no where, even though now looking back it’s kind of understandable. I was heart broken by a young boy who didn’t know how to treat my fragile broken heart. Over there I cried lots. Didn’t get a job there. Retail therapy, retail therapy, it doesn’t work. That pub, that bar, that club I got rat-arsed in and then cried for a week after.
It’s funny that the sea feels so restorative and so sad at the same time. So many times I’ve looked out onto these crashing waves and felt so isolated. Against the sea - you are insignificant. And depending on your mental state that can either give you hope or send you spiralling. Just two weeks ago I was I was swimming in the most beautiful ocean with my love in Lisbon feeling so recharged, re-loved and restored. Today I sit by the sea trying to wish you a happy birthday but feeling distant from you.
I’ve just moved back to the house, but maybe you know that. I saw Mita on Thursday, she knocked on the door to get a package and gave me a big hug saying how glad she was that I was back home … she asked me when exactly I moved in. I said Tuesday. She said oh my god well that explains it then…
‘on Tuesday night the foxes were making a bloody racket. I couldn’t see them properly so I got my phone out to see if I could see what they were up to through my phone screen. I saw them having a little party as usual, but I also saw this little ball of light. An orb. It was dancing between your mums front door and then across the road. Literally vibrating with excitement. Since then I’ve read up about these orbs. They are spirits! It was Martin!’
Maybe you lost me for a bit because I wasn’t home and now I’m home so you can look over me. I do feel more connected to you there than anywhere else. The house has memories of you living. Our childhood. Our every day rituals. Now, here in Brighton, even though you were born here, raised here, became a person here, this place is your death. And my grief. This particular sea is my sadness.
\\ Notes on El Bras (my business, my baby, my life) //
I’m back to sharing my grief on here. Learning through the trauma of suicide that doing something physical, practical and mindful (sewing) in order to be in my body, whether that was to feel embodied in the mechanical meditation of sewing or to feel embodied through sex or dancing while I wore the things I made. In a time when I couldn’t read words on a page, or find purpose in learning or working, I found sewing, and the power of clothes. It was such a formative time even though it was so bleak. El Bras was born out of chaos and it is wholeheartedly how I am able to survive in this world without my dad. Im so glad I’ve got my needles and threads and also my ability to read back. And also the ability to do a bit of typing too. Hoping this is the start of my writing it all down proper.
Love
El x
