Heartfelt Spaces

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Please don't give me that smug 'knowing' superiority - you know, the line about 'Victorian mawkishness'. Not when looking at her darling little face, poised and restful as if she might just somehow stir - and yet she lies, so cold... so very cold, and still.... 

In the busy workaday world of the living the piece was conceived and commissioned. The artist took coin to buy bread and ale, and stood staring at the block of inert marble, trusting to find the soft folds and lines of a child's form. Taking coin, but pouring love and talent into their work.  

From this distance in time, our 'eye' is forensic - merely part of a 'visitor experience'. A family's pain and agony beyond our comprehension. So much emotion invested and felt here; here in this place where I now stand, perusing. In the time between us, the mother gently strokes the cold cheek, thinking,

"It should've been me..."

If we have a heart, then these are not dead spaces.