November 12th 2014

The intersection of time and timelessness
That's where we live
Bone-clean
thank you

 

Floored


floored
november 12th
an angry day
sugar sculptures seem pointless
an excitement to create seems petty
you're 15
but you're not here
it's as simple as that

you my boy asked for sushi
candles and film
so there we saw you two
playing - you  cried
as you saw and heard your stable father's pain
miss you

floored
so its true
it never goes away
and you are always missing,
especially on your birth
day

where are you..?

i looked for you in autumn bunting

set alight - ('the death of a child is a fire in the mind' Stephen Levine)

left your mark...

an imp above the ghoul .. (death will not wear the face of my child)

a leaf above the atlas

a trace

we will always miss you

Those who cannot imagine

May be less lacking in imagination

Than refusing to contemplate

a force that flings them apart

from the desparation

of life's clinging

to itself

But those for whom imagination is no longer the choice

(the soft and luxurious malingering)

see how completely their imaginings vaporise

The veil between this world and that not torn or wrenched away

simply lifted clean

without a whisper

We are relieved of one human agony and compelled to another

I am glad

Not to bend

and arch the brain in wondering

on ceaseless unbearable imaginings

that stretch and burst and strain at the seams of the mind

But -

the relaxation of that tension means -

the unimaginable happened

slipped through that net

both sudden and shocking

yet simple,

making easy fools of us

April 5th 23:46 The dying night

The last night that she lived,

It was a common night,

Except the dying; this to us

Made nature different.

We noticed smallest things, - -

Things overlooked before,

By this great light upon our minds

Italicized, as 't were.

That others could exist

While she must finish quite,

A jealousy for her arose

So nearly infinite.

We waited while she passed;

It was a narrow time,

Too jostled were our souls to speak,

At length the notice came.

She mentioned, and forgot;

Then lightly as a reed

Bent to the water, shivered scarce,

Consented, and was dead.

And we, we placed the hair,

And drew the head erect;

And then an awful leisure was,

Our faith to regulate.

Emily Dickenson

Mothers Day Again April 3rd 2011

making confectionary they were like your little dresses, the ones we brought with us, for your funeral and never used, baking these biscuits for make-believe girls never-to-be, i wanted to drown in the downiness, the marshmallow world sweet peas and sugared almonds, of lilacs, lavender and golds, picking off the petals, this for you, this for her, this for him this for me, this for them (those tiny two), that never even made it to daylight

13.12.11.10.

13.12.11.10.

Your 13th birthday, on 12th of November 2010

A descent, a plaintive sound in any key.

A pattern, like you, that will never be repeated.

Yet, I notice I find solace in the order, as if it were written in the stars

Challan

Did you know that Challan is an Irish girl's name meaning

spirited little fairy dancer

welcome to congruence, commitment, passion, fragility and determination
and welcome to knowing how it all goes, being seen as a total waste of space,

a drain on resources,

a beautiful human being,

a beautiful divine being,

one that waits patiently whilst we crank up our understanding.

A little one, a frail one, a fiery one, a dying one, a living one, an eternal one.

Leaving Home

Hello darling

I just wanted to record that today I felt, for the first time, the possibility that we might leave home. That I might scoop you and your little brother up and take us right away from here. And I felt a breeze of possibility and excitement.

To bring you to a new place. Tryarnon is in my heart, and Constantine Bay. Sand twice-daily rinsed, rock pools emptied and refilled. And the flat, flaky grey slates calling to soles of young feet. And the strange spongy turf that softens my step at the cliff's sheer edge. We could all be happy here, we could leave the shell of our lives behind. I thought I could never contemplate it, but, today , I feel a glimmer.

And like a mussel clamped shut, I will await the next time I dare.

Good Friday

..the darkest day of the christian calendar.
and the day, 5 years ago, when we knew the time had come for us , weary with dread, to pack ourselves up for the end. In your room, packing everything you need for a journey from which you will never return. Your new clothes unworn but too pretty to leave behind. Tiny beautiful dresses - that may be wearable for your funeral. Toys, books, candles, wind-chimes, fairy lights, all to make your last days as close to home as we can.
The terrible knowledge of knowing what we are doing; the only unknown is 'how long', not 'what if.'
The unbearable part? wrapping you in a tiny bundle and saying goodbye to your cat, who eyed us with uncertainty and suspicion as we left ...
And into the beloved blue car, where you sat only days before as we drove you under easter blossom and winter jasmine.
Driving in silence, your little brother in the boot-seat, you and I on the back seat, our Third man beside us, as we try desparate late attempts to keep your throat clear. Your quiet father drives us to our last destination.
On arrival, the relief of the staff nurse leaked more than she knew and filled me with chill. With outstretched arms she reached to us, "You're here now!" - Oh that's ok then. Here,to be held to the breast of death. I really knew then, that we were never taking you home in any other form than dust.
Good Friday. Good Dark Friday. Unlike the biblical story, we were allowed four days with you before you left us. But the stone that guards your tomb has been too monumental to roll away. It has been inched, feebly maybe, and you have been released from the dark cave in radiant glimpses. It is true, my girl, that in fact you have always been resurrected; from the moment of your birth you seemed to live in a different dimension. But it is my stone, that I have struggled to move, to fill my own cavern with your light. Your divine brother is the angel that appears at your grave and says to me "Woman, why are you weeping?" He tells me constantly that you live in the sun, and shine on us every day. You are two breathtaking children, and we, your parents, are the infants here.

April Fool's Day

i'm running, i'm running

Towards you, breathless, arms outstretched to catch you,

again, before you fall

Again, racing against the time to intercept your falling

Do i think I can save you?

No, just want to hurl myself into you

Throw myself round you and be there for you again

5 years since you fell,

And now, more urgent than before

Racing like the tide, to
Find that place where the surf fills every space

for a few seconds, before

leaving you again

Letting go

is the trauma

that is so hard to visit each year

reliving itself,
before leaving again.

it would have to be the moon
that drags me from you in this universal pull
each calendar form teetering in man-made frailty

so - my girl - i am nearly with you

for our foaming annual embrace

Mother's Day

You, little boy, are the exquisite creation continually shaped by the honing and whittling, the white bone picked clean. The importance of you Staying Here. Yes, you are more than fully aware of your job, as your innocent and knowing message says. I am only deeply sorry to you that I have laid this enormous burden upon your very young and beautiful determined shoulders.

It's as if the very d.n.a of me knows that it is mother's day and turned upside down, it is a day when I sorely miss having you both, my children, here to squeeze. In remembering my mother, I am full of gratitude and know what I have been handed down. But - the hinge upon which my mother and my two children swing - has a few screws loose.

Blue as ever, little girl, your father sends your love in a card that can only be you - you , in this, are the hinge that attaches the wings. A much better place to be in.

Love to my children, ever keeping me together today.

Restored , Returned

Warm are the still and lucky miles,
White shores of longing stretch away,
The light of recognition fills
The whole great day, and bright

The tiny world of lover's arms.

Silence invades the breathing wood

Where drowsy limbs a treasure keep,

Now greenly falls the learned shade

Across the sleeping brows

And stirs their secret to a smile.

Restored! Returned! the lost are borne

On seas of shipwreck home at last:

See! in the fire of praising burns

The dry dumb past, and we

The life -day long shall part no more.

W.H. Auden

..a few words..

I was asked to write a few words on child bereavement for a programme, hence the less personal style, but nevertheless, you are there in every word

...When your child dies your world is changed forever. Your heart is broken in a way you could never imagine possible. You will never return to the person that you were before your child died, and the process of coming to terms the death of your child involves irreversible life changes for you, for your family and for all those around you. This can cause others to feel mystified and shut- out. They seem to grieve the person you were “before”. But the most important thing is that you are able to get as much support that you can find, along with the necessary time and space for you to grieve in your own way. There is no map, and no right way, and there is no short cut. There are no recognisable neat patterns and there is nothing clean about it. There will never be a day that it will feel “acceptable” to you that your child’s life was cut short and that you outlived them. Life has been thrown into unrecognizable turmoil, and you find yourself in a bleak and lonely world that feels completely alien.
Becoming accustomed to the reality of your life without your child physically in it, growing alongside you, is a slow and painful process. In our high- speed world people want solutions fast. Often others close to you who love you may want you to “recover” quickly or come to terms with your loss. They may feel frustrated with how long it is all taking and they may offer advice or well-meaning comments that feel hurtful and inappropriate. They may also have their own opinions as to how you are coping, or not, and may express these without invitation. Sometimes you sense a feeling of barely disguised relief from those around you when, in their eyes, you make one tiny step, apparently forwards. However, for you, it may be that you just got through the last day relatively unscathed by the demons of grief, and it can feel like a hollow victory. (“So What. My child is still Not Here”). You may battle with guilt and try to appease, after all, you know that it is all well-intentioned and loving. All this can make a bereaved parent’s heart hurt even more. You may feel pressured to hide your true feelings, and you can often feel extremely isolated.

The grief that follows the death of your child unfolds in a way that others find hard to imagine. In the early weeks and months, you may feel raw with grief, in deep shock and after-shock, inconsolable and unable to imagine a life without your child. It is extremely common to feel that you want to join your dead child, or to feel that you cannot focus on your other children, if there are any. You may experience confusion, memory loss and inability to concentrate on anything going on around you. You may also feel so physically exhausted that you are unable to move, as if you are physically weighted down. You may be desperate to sleep but unable to. Answering the telephone, and dealing with the mail can seem like mountainous tasks, all requiring you to speak words to people that you are barely able to say to yourself – that your child is gone for ever. Most social events fill you with dread as they inevitably revolve around conversation about children. It is very important for those around you to be gentle, and to allow you time and space to spend thinking about your child and being with them, wherever you feel and sense that they are.

If you are supporting a bereaved parent, don’t expect them to plan too much further than the present day, or sometimes, the present hour. Offer a quiet place for them to feel they can express themselves if they need to. Sometimes, silence can be most comforting, as bereaved parents often feel crowded by other people’s opinions. Don’t give them advice, or suggest how they should feel. It is inappropriate - you’re most important act is to listen, be patient, and walk beside them in this most terrible experience. Don’t be tempted to offer advice on how they should deal with their child’s belongings, or what they should do with their child’s bedroom. These are all deeply personal choices, and it is up to the parents alone to decide, in their own time, how to best deal with these things. Most importantly don’t feel afraid to mention their child’s name, for fear of “upsetting” them or “reminding” them – they are upset already, and will not have forgotten! You can be sure that their child’s name is never further than a breath away for them. It is always in their heart and mind, and on their lips. To speak or to hear the name of the child they love so much and miss so desperately, and to know that the world has not forgotten, is a great relief. Be sensitive around birthdays, anniversaries and annual events such as Christmas and New Year. A Happy New Year is often a painful reminder of another year further from the life they spent with their child. These events can throw bereaved parents into the grips of grief, no matter how long after a child has died.
In the later months and first few years after your child dies, other feelings may emerge, such as prolonged feelings of bleakness, depression and the realization that your child really is never coming back. Often at this point, family and friends may be wondering if you will ever be able to resume a life with any happiness in, and they may despair themselves. If you are supporting a bereaved parent, be patient, and be there for the long haul.

It is important to remember in these later months and years that this is not a permanent state, and often the support of other bereaved parents can be invaluable at this time, when it feels as if the rest of the world has peeled off. Though it feels that you will never feel colour in your life again, it is still an important part of the grieving process. Slowly we find different things that have meaning. We find we are slowly moving, inching into a phase of our life where we may feel the presence of our lost child even more profoundly guiding us. We sometimes find a way to work or live that honours our child and their gift to us, and can rebuild a life that feels meaningful. We know that life will never feel the same again, but it can begin to offer us different values, and different strengths, and different relationships, and most importantly, a deep and continuing relationship with our beloved child who has died. Our hearts were broken and the love inside is deeper than ever. We have not “moved on” from our child, we have “moved with” our child. They may not have grown alongside us in life as we dreamed of and expected, but we have grown alongside them in love and grief, and they will be with us and inside us for ever.

You'll never walk alone

I 've been aware, over the last eighteen months, that a different light is emerging. At first it came in glimpses and glimmers. I began to grasp the edges of you that had defeated my imagination. As the light bled into a stony dawn, it was if I understand colour for the first time, as each brick became rosy and the garden grew alive and opened like a flower. Colour grew stronger and i sensed that you were really there, just the other side of the veil between us. As if my bony skull clamped shut my view of the stars and the limitless universe, with you in it everywhere. So. It was me that was stopping you being with me. Grief and total despair restraining me. And like a dream fast running away as you chase it at dawn, those moments were gone again, impossible to recapture, leaving me deflated and disbelieving.

Now, those shafts of emerging light are longer and they stay awhile, illuminating everything in a different way - and that is to say , - you, my beautiful girl, are walking alongside me. It's the most incredible feeling. And I don't have to hold my breath. We are relaxed. You are present even when I'm not trying to soak every drop of you up. It's somehow as if we have both grown, dimensionally. We are expanded and we can do anything.

A matter of life and death

Restored and returned, precious children.

On the eve of your birth, my beautiful son, celebrating the moment as if it still awaits me. Lavender oil bath, an opulent bubble in the starkness of the UCH nhs delivery 'suite' - sounding more like a hotel every moment..

You arrived next day, with a determined look that you still wear. You mean business. A precious timeless few hours in the delivery room, you, in my arms. The room floats and gently nudges the edges of the frame like a screensaver, soft and soundless. That incredible jesus woman, lowest rank probably in the scheme of things, who washed me as if in an act of devotion. I always wanted to thank her for that. We name you and tell you of your awaiting sister. You keep my gaze. And have done so ever since, steadily underlining the rational, the reason, the matter and fact of it all. Keeping me on the straight and narrow.

And you, my sweet girl, I feel I am at last with you. Aligned, and in line, with you. And in that, yes I am happy - a word I vowed I would never use again. I can never be happier than at those moments, when I had the two of you in my life, in my arms. The moment when you came to the hospital to see your baby brother, no sibling rivalry there. You were proud, excited, benignly generous in your immediate acceptance of him, you understood the place of things without any need for explanation. You were like a wise old thing. Without a doubt, I will never be happier. That's ok with me. Until I feel anything else , that is how it sits, and everything else is a bonus.

so - solitary and connected at the same time. Learning how to walk with you even though you are out of my physical sight. That, to get here, has burst my heart and brain to breaking point. And here I am now, in a sort of calm lake, cradling you both. So - here I am, verging on my half-century, with two children who both, in this life , are 7 years old....

Your mother in love,

xx

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?"