Writing the names for All Souls

Every October our parish leaves a book at the back of the church for All Souls. You write the names of the people you've lost, and on the evening of the 2nd they're read aloud at the requiem, one by one, while a candle burns on the altar.

Today I wrote my mother's name for the fifth year. My handwriting has got steadier each time. This year I added my old choir director, who taught me to breathe from the belly and never, ever to go flat on a descant.

There's something about seeing her name on a page with a hundred others, in a hundred different hands. Grief is so private, and then for one evening it isn't.