He described himself not as a revolutionary writer but one born into a revolutionary situation. He was born out of wedlock in the USA a hundred years ago – black, poor, despised by his adoptive father, the eldest of nine siblings and to top it all, a homosexual. His name was James Baldwin. He knew the meaning of suffering and could talk and write about it with striking beauty.
“I can only tell you about yourself, as much as I can face about myself.
As it happens to everybody who’s tried to live. You go through your life for a long time and you think that no one has ever suffered the way I’ve suffered. My God! My God! Then you read something, you hear something and you realise that your suffering does not isolate you.
Your suffering is your bridge. It tells you that many people have suffered before you, that many people are suffering around you and always will.
All you can do is hopefully bring a little light into that suffering. Enough light so the person who is suffering can begin to comprehend his suffering. Begin to live with it and begin to change it.
We don’t change anything. All we can do is invest people with the morale to change it for themselves.”
Indeed. We can and we do. Thank you for your light, James Baldwin. Happy centenary.
[ CORe: Bringing light to those who have been unfortunate enough to lose a child.]
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.
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 onone 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)
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?
One little girl arrived with bare feet on the site. May be six years old. Tiny. The odd one, out of place. Unflinchingly prancing about on the dry prickly ground, then sitting quietly, watching her dad clear the tall brown grass with his strimmer. Not a word from her. No toys. No books. No company. No food. Simply watching men working with their tractors and JCBs and one woman watching the men do their thing. Six egrets curiously dancing about the Hitachi and whatever else.
I wondered what her bright little eyes picked up on. I wondered what went on in her little head. What did she think about? School? Mum and Dad? Brothers? Friends? TV last night? Did her family have a TV? Who decided what to watch? What did she have for dinner last night? Where were her slippers? Her father said she forget to wear them as they left home in a hurry. Was that the real reason?
I wanted to talk to her and listen to her but wasn’t sure if that would be okay. As I walked past her I smiled lightly and waved my right hand at her. She gauged me as she turned her head to look in my direction. I continued waving my hand as she considered her response. After eight waves from me, she finally waved back once and I think I detected a hint of a smile.
For today, that was enough.
An excerpt from the poem ‘Kindness’ by Naomi Shihab Nye:
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
