The floors and ceilings of Cathedrals are often paved and highlighted with tombs as the sleeping dead form the foundations for holding a church together. In Norwich Cathedral on Saturday I walk in and skirt my feet delicately around the black marbled edge of a tombstone. They may be the fabric of the church, but I cannot walk on them. I never could. I take a moment to read every tombstone I walk past, noting the name, the inscription, the dates, the ages that they lived their lives to.

The cathedral in Norwich is fantastic, with an open air cloisters driven off of the entrance. The set-up is confusing-the rectory and pulpit are sat square in the middle of the church and there are wings to the sides in which to take a private moment of quiet. The center of the church is rushed with the raised ceiling that reaches up, I suspect, to where the architects dreamt the feet of God would be.

I walk to the wings and jiggle the change in my pocket. I never enter a church without the change. I may not be religious, but my superstition lives on, my need to make a gesture. I find what I am seeking and take the thick and heavy pound coin out of my pocket and slide it into the collection box. My hand reaches forward and in my fingers I grasp four of the cheap and thin utility candles, waxy pencil mouthpieces to thoughts and hopes of the fingertips that touch them.

I take one in my hand and light it from a sputtering candle nearby.

"For you, Grandpa." I say, and plant it in the sand of the candleabra. I take another and shift it to my left hand. "For you, Kim." I say, and plant it next to my Grandfather's. The last two I take in each hand and light simultaneously. "For you, Egg and Bacon," I murmur as I plant them on a higher shelf of the candleabra, as they would want a higher shelf so that they would be able to see more. I imagine them sitting on my grandfather's lap and drooling gleefully.

In my visions of them, they grow older each year, their memory becoming their age. They can walk now. They can recognize and yearn. They would fit squarely and perfectly within the reach of my arms.

I smile at my four candles. "Take care, you guys." I whisper, not needing any more words than that, and as I turn to walk away someone else's candle sputters out and dies and finally whisks their wishes away.

I walk quietly to the center area again, to the carved wooden pews strewn with cushions hand-sewn by trembling fingers. The church is silent, isolated, as people walk in other parts of the cathedral and run their fingers over the marbled walls. Angus is somewhere down one of the wings, and my hands itch to have him close to me. I sit down in one of the pews, easing myself quietly onto the hard wooden surface.

"It's nice that you take notice." comes a voice beside me, and I turn to see the soft complexion of a woman next to me, who smells of violets and reminds me of gently rubbed velveteen. "It's nice that you take a moment to read the final resting places of the dead." Her fingers worry the braiding of her skirt. "We are often forgotten."

"I don't forget." I say softly. "It may not mean I know what to do with the memories, but I don't forget."

"Yes, that's the problem. I mean, it's not so much an issue for us," she says, moving her arm to indicate the entire Cathedral. "Most of us have lost everyone anyway. I passed in 1781, and none of my extended family survived into the 1800's."

"I'm sorry." I tell her. And I am. "I would've grieved for you. I grieve for my loved ones. I grieve for the ones I've lost."

"I noticed." she said, smiling from the side of her mouth. "And yet you seem to have moved on."

I look down at my shoe, noting the shoelace is untied. I am ashamed that I may not seem to be missing them as much as I sometimes do, I am embarassed that I linger on and they don't. I rub the seam of my jeans with the nail of my thumb. "That doesn't mean I don't miss them."

"No no." she agrees, hastily. "I know you do. I think it's good that you've let it out and moved on."

We sit there in silence for a moment as a priest walks past us, his black robes billowing out around his legs. He keeps his head down and I note a shiny bald patch creeping onto the back of his head. I take a deep breath and soak in the scent of violets.

"What happened to you?" I ask quietly.

"I died in childbirth." she said sadly, looking at her hands in her lap. "It was our first. My husband died soon after of smallpox."

"I'm so sorry." I reply, thinking that the loss of a child seems to pervade every inch of space in the world. "Do you get to see your child now?"

Taking a deep sigh she looks up, straight ahead. "No, it doesn't work like that." She doesn't explain and, feeling intrusive, I don't ask.

"I would loan you my two if I could, if it worked like that." I say, thinking of the two slender candles.

"That's kind of you. I would've taken care of them, I promise."

"What is it like here? Staying here, I mean?" I ask her.

"You see a lot of sadness. People come in with their hearts on their sleeves. It's the ravaged ones in the private prayer area that we like to hover around-they don't notice us as they're too soaked in their pain, but we like to think it helps. There are a fair amount of people that come through just to see the Cathedral, folks that travel around the world collecting mental images of Cathedrals. Then there are people like you that didn't really have a purpose and just come in to take a moment to look up. For most people, it's the looking up that's important."

I look up at the vaulted ceiling studded with arches and stained glass images of saints and heroes. I watch the patches of blue light trickle down onto the marble and highlight the burnished brass of an organ hidden in the upper eaves, a spider in a web of pipes. I think that Angus might be looking for me, so I smile at her. "I have to go, I have to find my boyfriend. I have to tell you, I don't find the looking up to be so important. It's looking down to see where we're going. To make sure I'm not walking on anyone."

She smiles at me, and I think she was once so beautiful. "Thank you for taking moments to remember us, to pay attention."

I stand and tuck my hands up inside the sleeves of my sweater. "I am always paying attention. I just don't know that my attention gets me anywhere." I stand and place my hands on the carved ends of the pew.

"They hear you." she said, not turning her head.

"I'm sorry?" I ask, wondering if I mis-heard.

She turns then, and smiles at me. "You wouldn't light candles for them if you didn't think they could hear you."

I smile back at her, wondering if my candles are for them or for me. As I walk through the church I look at the rows and rows of ghosts sitting there calmly, translucent in the sunlight drifting through the stained glass windows. I walk to the entrance to meet Angus, to continue our day in the sunshine and the air.

And as I go I read every single one of the tombstones at my feet.

-H.

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