Moon gazing

It's 5.12 a.m and silent outside. You are just over 30 minutes old, today 12th November, 12 years ago, curling in my arms and crying your offshore cry.

"It's a girl!" they called from far away , the words that found my ears as if from another country. The disbelief - how can I deserve her?

Your eyes were dark impenetrable moons the first night our worlds were joined, and I think I stared at you , faces side to side, all night long , and wondered if I were looking at god for the first time. The eternal Now. There's holy gravity in those first hours, when you are not a babe with naked nothing, but you are all wisdom and knowing in one solemn, unflinching gaze. You can't smile yet because you don't need to. And smiling, so gratifying for your earthly parents, desparate to connect, was something that brought the relief that returned you to the visceral world. In time. For you, in 4 months, March 1998.

She's not quite here yet, as if between 2 worlds" said the osteopath, 3 weeks later. How were we to know that you were always to inhabit 2 worlds, and were to return to the one from which you arrived just 7 and a half years later.

My beautiful girl. Happy Birth Day.

"This ain't no way to live.."

In Oxford on Sunday it was yellow, everywhere. The light was falling over everything it could in a drunken spilling. It leaked, and there was nothing other to do other than lie flat in it and let it pour over me. You, my lovely boy, with your ripe , open face told me excitedly that you had found the golden pathway, and we walked in red and yellow leaves over the flat evening lawn to find another child's bench, illuminated as if on a plinth. Evening sun blazed on our faces obliterating everything into blackness around it. Then it disappeared, no melting away. Heat then nothing. Silence but for the papery falling of a curled leaf.

I woke up last night suddenly, trying to pin down exactly what feels different- I thought that by now, four and a half years in (or out?) , I had it covered, had felt everything there was to feel. But I hadn't considered nothingness.

In the early months and years, it was all strong, it was perfectly possible to feel your presence and your absence in one seething cauldron, simultaneous and eviscerating. Then, other swings of the pendulum brought disconnectedness. Then , there were almost holy glimpses of you, us , it, all being alright, and much bigger, more expanded in love than I had ever felt possible. I could relax a bit in that afternoon light. I felt foolish, like it was only by my limitations that there had been the veil of death between us.

But, when I woke up last night, I thought- it's like being in a horrific accident, but you don't die. Everything feels like you're not going to make it, and the only limit on the horizon is your own death. But - you survive - and then you wake up blinking, with pins holding your body together, and you are still breathing.

So now what.

And the next horizon that yawns ahead is - forever.

"What Foever means after the Death of your Child" seemed like a clumsy and obvious title when I first saw it on the bereavement shelves in the bookshop but..this forever fills me with a flattening despair, and alongside it, the bleakest fury.

Cups that crack can go straight in the bin.

Doors with broken handles can be kicked open.

Towels with stains can be ripped into floorcloths.

Optimism seems exhausting. Even being in the present takes too much energy.

Hey, come little boy. Seeing your blue sky face and your wheaty skin is the absolute pleasure of my day at 3.30.. I'll see you later x

Rock-a-tot

Today I took your rock-a-tot car-seat on a tour of second hand shops. I knew that many would turn me away in the name of Health and Safety -" in what respect?" I asked. "Well, if there was something wrong with it, say it had been in a car smash, and there was an accident, then we would be in trouble." Oh. That.
But maybe not in quite so much trouble as the little baby who inhabited this little seat, the little baby who happily swung in it from my arm, smiled and clapped her hands from it whilst catching my attention in the car. Who made many a sickly trip in it from home to hospital. No - there's nothing wrong with the seat - it's the poor child that was in trouble.
As I swung out of the car door again, I was pretending, relishing that oh-so-familiar feeling of old, (swinging baby on crook of arm nonchalantly, whilst grabbing keys, phone , purse) How i used to enjoy that ease and everyday-ness that I knew would always be cut short, through death and not through you growing up.
At the next shop I showed up and defensively slammed the seat on the counter. " I suppose you will tell me you don't want this - for Health and Safety". The lady blinked in incomprehension. "No - well - er I don't think so." (Looks at colleague for reinforcement) "We'd love to have it".
"Well, there's nothing wrong with it. My two babies used this. It belonged to my daughter and I lost her, so, I want it to go to a good home". Bang Wham. Throat hot and eyes burning. Lady looked sympathetic. Afterthought - I hope she didn't think I lost her in a car-smash and damaged the car-seat as well, thus causing aforementioned Health and Safety concerns.
I forgot to take a picture of it - but you can see it there now, on the shelf, empty, rocking- and -totting. There, my darling. It's not easy , is it.

Lost In Death

As I said, your beautiful brother knows. He made this picture as part of his school art project on Andy Goldsworthy. Some people were intrigued as to his title, " What does he mean by that?"others smiled at it, others asked me "What have you Done to that Boy?"

Lake

I know it's a long time since I spoke to you. Is this really what life is like without you? I am hanging on, feeling forever that I am incomplete, and yet with your brother filling me with love , what choices do I have? I don't think anyone gets, T said to me the other day, the Power of Love you feel in Caring. Caring for you and loving you and bending each day against the odds so that you could make it til the next day. How it stretches your heart to breaking point and beyond , into the biggest love you could possibly feel.

Now you are gone and today the love reservoir sits, lake-still and deep.

Your beautiful brother, he knows. And he knows.

...if in doubt make cupcakes..

.. i forgot to say - i made lavender cupcakes for a favourite little girl's 6th birthday yesterday. She is delicate and fine-boned and winged as a bird and so they gave me pleasure to make ...

Beethoven

I know it's a very difficult time of year, dear Little. I seem to have lost all glimpse of last autumns' peace , the sense that you and me, we had arrived somewhere at last together. I am missing you desperately again, and I notice, this 4th year, no new feelings that have not been felt before, just generally more taciturn grumpiness. So it was with relish that we heard Jean- Bernard Pommier at King's Place, slamming out uncompromisingly all the power, passion, fire, love and anger of the Beethoven Sonata's. Yes, that's what I need, I thought, as he delved into the piano; You can afford to be very grumpy if you can release art like that.

So. I have been practising, very slowly and painfully (in every sense) my Hanon, and the first beautiful and sad chords of the slow movement of the Appassionata. At least, I can make the song for you.

I listened to Glenn Gould play it in the car this evening, and I thought, how alike that D flat phrase - that unfurls into tentative and faltering variation - how alike it is to the last 4 years of doing life without you and trying to make sense of it .

Challan, your secret name, and Challen, mine.

breathless

It is may the first 4 years since you departed my fiery little dancer. The weight on my chest is making me breathless. Your little brother had your special hair conditioner on his hair tonight. I rubbed it into my hands and sank beneath the water inhaling you and your tangled wet hair. How can anyone think this would ever fade? The only thing that changes is that the pain management improves. Palliative care for the soul.

As I write this I can hardly breathe. Laden with uncried tears.

forget me not

'April is the cruellest month'. And so it is. As I prepare yet again for your departure 4 years ago. The garden is full of blue, the colour that represents you and your deepest soul. The innocent blue, tea-blue of the forget me not, so childlike in shape and yet so profound in its shade. The serious grey/violet of the bluebell, older, sadder, ancient.

These are now all that is there of your form in tiny forms, repeating and repeating you, everywhere. Letting you go from my arms into the abundant garden was something I could never have been able to envisage, or practice.

Your little brother says I am lucky, I have one child in heaven and one on earth. Heaven is in space, his favourite place.

Let me lay down

my body

next to yours

Both stone

we can close

our eyes

amd gaze sightless at skies

I'm tired

to carry on

and not

carry you

dear sweetness,

my Littlefeet,

today is a step too far

for me

let me lie down with you

(29/3/09)

I forgot..

I forgot to say that hillcroft college is an amazing place, women only, that runs all sorts of courses, in a lovely old house. It's the sort of place you can go and be as anonymous or as chatty as you want, a bit of space and respect. This is a photo of one of the bathrooms - gives you an idea of the place

dawn, dusk and night

We went on a photography course at Hillcroft College, and learned all about light, and how light falls and changes things. It was good to have the space together, and the time to really look at everything in detail. The interior of this church was especially peacefull and mellow

snow people melting ...

I missed last weeks' snow in todays' cold rain. It's like everyone had shut up shop again, no speaking or smiling at strangers today. Last Monday, your little brother had become really upset when someone meddled with his snow sculpture. He didn't want to make a snowman he said. He wanted to make a snow family. Of 3. Which is what he did. Where were you, I wondered.

i am here

I felt you say this..

"I don't know how to do this, . . but i want to speak, in words and sometimes not (as I always did)

I just wanted to say I am here, and these days, you will find me in the smallest of forms. I loved the snow, it seemed to expand everyone and everything, to curve the surface of the earth into a white falling softness.

I found a small pink blossom that had a big cold shock, but I crept in there anyway. "