As I sat in a park during the pandemic, listening to the Evermore album on my headphones, one song finally released the grief that I’d pent up for five years
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hen the pandemic hit in 2020, it had been five years since my sister, Emily, had died. She had lived with cystic fibrosis her whole life, yet we were a close, tactile family. We laughed, hugged and sang often. When Emily died, relatively suddenly, aged 30 (I was 27), I coped with it as well as anyone could. In fact, I prided myself on how outwardly resilient I seemed: I spoke to a therapist, started a new job. I poured myself into a packed diary and a big city.
It wasn’t until time stopped, in a way, in 2020, that I really sat with my grief. I was forced to – made redundant like so many others that summer, my days had no shape. Like many people living in city flatshares, my one little freedom was a daily walk.
Taylor Swift’s Evermore album came out that December and, like its predecessor, Folklore, was quickly on heavy rotation as I strolled about my south London neighbourhood, waiting for something to change. I walked mainly around Tooting Common, taking the same comforting route: past the athletics track, along the tennis courts, looping around the small lake. Here I would pause to sit on “my” bench, staring at the ducks rippling the water.
