Grief

Early autumn

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How can people not know that their coat buttons are misaligned and one side is hanging lower than the other? One buttonhole is so very obviously exposed at the top, middle or at the bottom. And one button hanging loose somewhere along that vertical line. How can they not notice before they leave their front door? I used to be baffled when I saw patients like this in the hospital or random people on the streets, oblivious of this blatant asymmetry.

This afternoon, I went walking around my neighbourhood, taking delight in the profusion of red oval rosehips on roadside bushes and the yellowish-brown tinge starting to appear at the edges of leaves. Dense clouds were threatening to break open and fall on my head while my head was in the past. A few years ago, this date would have been a busy one for me.

10th of September – World Suicide Prevention Day

Not today. After years of searching for answers, raising awareness and trying to change the narrative, I have stepped back from it all. I accept the mystery that is life and death. I have slowed right down and found this to be the right way to live, for me.

Death is not a defeat or a failure. It’s not caused by a weakness or a flaw. It simply is. Its timing is its own. It has a wide range of imaginative excuses to visit. We like to impose a timing on it but it is a free agent.

Yesterday, a friend asked “I would love to show you my boy’s wedding album but it must be hard for you to see things like that because your son … Do you ever wonder how things might have been if he was alive?” After a brief silence, I replied “Every time my mind wants to go there I point out the one big assumption it’s making – if he was alive he would be in good health. I don’t know that. In fact, I don’t know much about anything at all. That allows me to live in awe, in wonder. I would love to see your boy’s wedding album.”

As I ambled along the empty streets this afternoon, I felt we are all dying a little bit every moment of every day, amidst celebrations and conversations, hopes and aspirations. Just then I noticed that the right side of my shirt-dress was hanging three inches lower than the left. The top button on the left side of my neck was hanging loose.

Resource: Online support for bereaved parents: Circle of Remembrance: http://www.core-community.com

Pure Absence

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What would
the radiant
sound of
a Red-winged
Blackbird be,
without the
extraordinary
power of your ears?

What would
the pale,
sailing moon
look like
without your
astonishing eyes?

What would your love
even know
what to do
with itself,
without
the ache
you intuit
in inevitable loss?

And who is it
comes to life
in you again
and again,
and every time
as a new miracle,
on the other side
of grief?

And then
there is this:
if you had
not come
into this world
just as you are,
and just in the way
you came,
could anyone
anywhere
ever
have lived your life
in your stead?

And then the question
toward the end
that might be
no end at all,

is there anything
or anyone
you meet
after death
you will
recognize?

No easy answer
to the
really, really beautiful
questions
of life,

they are just
the everyday
hidden invitations
that have always been
made to you,
something beckoning
you to understand
through every day
of your living
and your dying,

no possible
resolution
you could
ever make sense of,
except
to begin every
question
in wonder.

As Meister Eckhart was
at some pains to tell us.

What you seek,
is nowhere to be found
by answering
questions.

God’s full presence
felt
only in the absolute
essence
of absence.                          
                              - David Whyte

PS: Happy to me! Birthday. David Whyte’s words are a gift.

The Wednesday Group.

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Dear Saagar,

Ten is a strange one. Who knew an innocent, round, even number like this could inflict such pain on one. The last note I had from you was ten years ago. It turned each moment of each day into an unwanted debt, heavily owed to God-knows-who. Potential decades stretched out before me like a horizon-less dark desert. I wished they would disappear. Time became the enemy, unfolding in fits and starts in wiggly circular patterns, etching lines of blood and tears on the surface of mighty oceans.  

Now, this gone decade demands recognition. It wants to be acknowledged in some way, however small. It deserves a pat on the back for braving through such turmoil and finally becoming a friend.

Hugo, Azin, Phoebe and some other friends, yours and ours came over for a Sunday lunch in early August and brought their friends along. Many of them, musicians. Remember Corinne Bailey Rae? You bought me her CD, Girl put your records on one Christmas? Remember how I sang along to it in the kitchen while cooking? On Sunday, we sang that song together. The Dock of the Bay and Ain’t no sunshine and Stand by me too.

We cut a chocolate cake for everyone who turned thirty this year. We were together for five glorious hours. Tens of sun-flowers smiled in vases dotted around the room and the sun shone on us as we talked and laughed and sang, just like the old times.

You won’t believe this but I resigned from my job recently. I know. I was so proud of it. I got so much from it. It meant so much to me but I feel liberated. Now someone else can do that lovely job while I work with my unique gift. In a world increasingly obsessed with labels, I am happy to lighten myself and shed a few.  

Last weekend, Si and I hosted a retreat for eleven bereaved parents. It was The Wednesday Group of the Circle of Remembrance that had started meeting online in May 2022. For more than two years we met for an hour and a half online every fortnight, sharing the most personal of things. This was the first occasion for us to meet in person as a group. It was divine.

One brown butterfly alighted on the left side of Si’s chest and rested on his white shirt peacefully for quite a while as we all talked and laughed and sipped our teas and coffees.

After returning home, one mum wrote to say,

“…this weekend has reminded me of who I am and what I am capable of as I continue to navigate this life I never expected or wanted to have.” 

What could be better?

I am blessed. Thank you for being my son.

Your essence remains here, with us.

Love you my darling.

Mamma. xxx

(Please visit http://www.core-community.com and contact us to join our loving and understanding community or recommend it to anyone who might find peer support after child loss helpful.)

(A handmade patchwork wall-piece for the home of CORe)

It’s a story. It’s not a story.

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Last weekend I was part of a team of volunteers. The Compassionate Friends hosted a summer retreat for parents who have lost a child to suicide or substance use. We expected seventy parents to arrive, some as couples, some by themselves. Many of us drove for many miles through road works and traffic jams. Some changed trains more than once and persevered through serious delays due to fatalities on the tracks on two successive days. Even though their own hearts ached, they traveled from all over the UK to Leeds.

The venue was a new one, Hinsley Hall. It was true to the pictures on its website – majestic. Having never worked there before, many of us arrived a day prior, to familiarise ourselves with the space and allocate rooms to activities depending on their size and suitability, getting to know the staff and setting out folders, notice boards and programes.

The job at hand was to belong to those who attended and have them belong to us. I went up to my room and drew the curtain. I gasped at the view. My window looked over a deep-green lawn with dark old trees and two parallel hedges with patches of yellow.

As the participants arrived through the gates, we welcomed and escorted them despite their visible anxiety and fatigue, a reluctance to acknowledge their eligibility to be here, attending this retreat. Slowly, cups of tea, coffee and glasses of water loosened the atmosphere.

At the Writing workshop, words like ‘disassembled’ and ‘brown silt’ were shared and felt. A bronze sculpture of a young woman in the courtyard, standing with her arms wide open was a constant encouragement to open our hearts.

Over the next couple of days, each of us felt seen, listened to, acknowledged and our grief felt witnessed. Friendships were born. There was much laughter and many tears flowing through truck-loads of memories. Grace was at work. It was allowing something within us to soften and relax.

At the end, one mum said she met some lovely people and found much comfort and connection. Another said, she met herself, this time with gentleness.

Being there, volunteering, was a good way to honour Saagar’s  life and mine.  What better way to spend our days than to hold our kids, ourselves and each other in a warm embrace?

I am here. He is here.

A Blessing.

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Someone shows you the mirror without knowing he’s doing it

God knows now and then you need to look into it

Who holds you as if our very existence depended on it

Who is willing to lose the world as if all that mattered was you

Who arrives from another town in the wee hours of the morning, lighting you up

Whose voice and touch form the rhythms of your life as you listen with your eyes closed

Who sings with you believing he can’t sing not knowing he’s doing a sterling job

Who anticipates the little things you worry about like the eggs running out

Who reminds you to take your meds in time

Who steps on an unknown path with you without a doubt that everything will be fine

Who gives his breath to your voice so you can be heard far and wide

Who sees all your brave attempts at hiding the things that hurt

Who says thank you to the green mint before picking a few leaves from it

Who chooses to walk beside you as if regardless of terrain life was a long walk

Who holds your hands in his knowing the precious gems of another love inside your fist

Who knows these gems bring sparkling tears and you will never let them go

Who loves you back as if you were the only woman in the world

As if love was the only substance the world was made of

Some say God gives with one hand and takes away with another.

I see Her giving with both hands open, leaning into me