A stack of photographs.

Sam on a skateboard.

Sam’s mother cuddling a baby.

A blonde-haired girl smiling beside a snowman.

She wore bright yellow mittens and a pair of shiny red shoes.

Then she remembered (the deaths)

The faint sigh of a ‘no!’

‘Not too far, sweetheart.’

A blue butterfly.

Beautiful and strange amidst the chill of winter.

She rushed onto the frozen lake, determined to touch the winged beauty fluttering abouve the center.

‘Look!’ she cried ‘See!’

then the ice cracked and the butterfly flew away.

‘they all dies because of me.’

‘no, they loved you very much.’

‘But that doesn’t matter. None of it does.

Not love, not anything. Everything is lost.’

She looked up at the huge letters carved into a grey stone.

Tears flowed from her eyes till she could no longer read the words.

‘Know this, love cannot be destroyed.the things that mattr will stay with you always.’



Jack Palmer
1968-2005

Sally Palmer

1970-2005

Samuel Palmer

1991-2005

Poppy Palmer

2001-2005


fell through the ice

31st December 2005

-Suffer little children to come unto me-



A solitary teardrop falls.

Sense the subtle hint of frost from the melting snowdrops and the lingering dismay of a little girl.

Hear his words.

‘Just because something changes, doesn’t mean that it is lost.

Like melting snow, it simply becomes somehting else.