The roundhouse viewed through a willow bower Photo: Photo courtesy of Liz Rothschild
Kicking the bucket
Liz Rothschild writes about the background to the forthcoming ‘Kicking the Bucket Festival’ in Oxford
‘Why are you obsessed with all this?’ my old friend Helen asked the other day. ‘Not obsessed’, I said, ‘passionate’. The first knowing Death. I have travelled with it from an early age, not through traumatic loss but it has just jostled into view. When I was fifteen, I used to visit an old lady who lived near the bus stop close to my school. After a while she got ill and ended up in hospital and I visited her there. Once I came and entered her little room, and realised that she had died. No-one had noticed. I always feel how lucky I was to encounter death that way. Not in the way that cuts you off at the knees because the loss is so traumatic and shocking – but quiet and close. Someone I was very fond of but not bereft without. The first knowing.
