Remedy

I take a pill
to lift my spirits during the day
but at night
they raise spirits in my dreams
that leave me exhausted by morning
and add to the conveyor belt of dreams
of you dying and living and dying again.
"Your brain needs time to heal," she said.
I lie in a bath
waiting for the salt to sink in between my bones
but it can't seem to find its healing way in
to the pain in my heart
that lies wounded in its own salty sting.
I wrap my arms
around a little sleeping body
to try and fill the aching space in front of me
but it doesn't stop them from reaching invisibly
for you every morning.
I swallow potions
because the labels say
they will stop me from fighting and flying
now that there's nothing left to fight
but they don't hold enough magic
to lift the lid off the sky
so that I can see your face.

Thirty six at four

I have thirty six hours alone and as I walk along the sand, able to think, I can only think:

My beloved is gone and I'm losing a friendship and the world appears to be made only of lovers walking hand in hand, and the breaking waves are pure perfection.

Four years, all that, and today this is all I know.

Motel after midnight

I'm stuck in a motel room and this pain inside of me is as big as the city we're staying in, and the one who was keeping me afloat (and more) is no longer interested in being a boat. I silence the sounds of pain and sit and listen instead to my kids' breathing, their limbs sliding out of bed on this hot night, and I try not to think of the words that describe the feelings, and hope that the pain in my belly isn't caused by this city-sized, multi-storied-now grief... and I never was made to leave midnight far behind me.

(Written mid January, NP)

It still does

My arm stretches out across the place where you used to lie
and I can't understand how it can reach across
the entire breadth and being of a man.
You used to be alive
in the space of my one small arm.
You used to hear my hand reaching
out across the sheets in the dark,
and know that it needed yours. 

(Written mid January, NP)

The future

Hi love.

It's me.

I'm in the future.

The future, this one that terrified me so much it made my head spin out. I'm here and I'm doing it.

The best news is, I'm surviving. I have survived the last few years. My heart seems to still be beating, and life is bursting around me. There are happy things. Our children, of course. My grief for their loss burns up my insides, but them - they are explosions of fun and laughter and life and delight. As you know. We have a lovely home and there are beautiful trees outside our windows. My friends care so much for me and I know they would do anything they can to make my life easier or happier. They have shed tears for me and that has shared my load. I have an old friend, you know the one, who makes me laugh and laugh, and even sometimes, you'll be pleased to know, snort. There is good conversation in my life too, good ideas, and maybe even some dreams, though I tiptoe around those. After some time, I even started enjoying food again and, can you believe, I had a curry just last night. Mum and Dad have been amazing of course. They will do anything. They do do anything. I need them so much, though I do get a little pissed off with them at times too, and I often think it was not them I chose to marry. It can get a little complicated, having them in my life to such an intense degree. I sometimes remember you telling me and Mum to play nicely.

It seems the church has forgotten me though. I wasn't expecting that. Most of those who represent the church have never spoken a word about God to me in 4 years. A couple have, and it has been incredibly painful for me, so I don't know what approach I need, but I am certainly surprised at the silence. It's the same silence of God Himself. I always believed He pursued and pursued the lost. But not this one. I think I've been left in the church's too hard basket, or perhaps it seems I have made my choice not to turn up and noone is keen to change my mind. Entering fully in to my story - our story -  puts ones faith at risk, I believe, so it's better to just create your own interpretation about it and leave me to one side. I guess there are millions of us, over to one side.

The pain has been immense Kent. I have a whole blog here where I have tried to put it in to words, so I won't try again now. But perhaps you don't need the words, perhaps you have seen it? I don't know how that works, how you can be in a place where there is all joy and no tears, yet know of the fires that have ripped through my insides these last few years, seen all the bits of me that have been changed forever, all the worst parts of me erupting to the surface, and all the bits that have turned to nothing but cinders and memory. The pain is different now, here in this part of the future. It is no less intense, but it is kind enough to wait below the surface a little. Letting me breath around it. My daily struggles are around doing all the work on my own, managing that undefinable anxiety, still a desperate loneliness at certain times of the day, that can't be filled by anyone who doesn't live in my home, and the complete disappearance of that huge part of me that was a wife, a lover and a best friend. I try to work myself up to being happier, but then it often comes crashing down and I realise my foundation seems to be unhappy. So I'm working on the idea of just having happy moments, never mind the overall feeling, just having some happy things in my day. I like to think about those happy moments increasing, and starting to hold hands with each other, though I admit I then get distracted by the idea of hand holding...

I told you once, when you were worried about me, that I would be happy again. I have regretted it many times. What was I thinking? I've wanted you to know that was such a load of bullshit. But I'll keep trying, because I know that's what you want. I've tried to be my best defender against myself too, as you are not here to do it for me. I've done it on your behalf. That's got a bit wobbly, as I have thought of the likelihood that I will be alone for the rest of my life, and the reasons why, but I keep trying to hear your voice. There's one thing I haven't been able to manage. Do you remember many, many years ago, before we knew of this future, you told me I was to never cry alone? I was always to come and find you? You're nowhere to be found now sweetheart and I have done nothing but cry alone.

Paris was attacked this week. Gunmen opening fire. Not randomly, specifically. There is so much searing pain in that city right now. I feel it so much for them. I wonder how people can feel in just a few moments all that I felt as I watched you die in slow motion. I guess that's what shock is for - they say that without it, we, the observers, would die too.  And oh, what they have ahead of them! There may be pain now, but what pain there is to come! It has been hard not to put us in Paris. Perhaps because we have been there. I imagine us getting up from our cafe table and running, or I see you being one of the ones not able to get up and run. I long for us to have been able to get up and run from that which was after you. I remember the joy of riding our bikes through Paris, and the desolation of having them stolen. I remember me doing all the talking (of course) on our long walk back to the camp site that evening, making plans for how we would live when we returned home. I remember, I always remember, you lying in bed that night quietly, thinking about your bike. "I just can't believe it's gone," you said. Can you feel that feeling again, a million-fold? That's a bit what it's like baby. Even now.

Tonight and yesterday

Tonight we will eat and drink

to remember and honour,

kissing each other on the cheek,

checking in my eyes

to see if I'm OK.

We'll make good conversation

and admire the children,

and catch glimpses of another face in theirs

and wish, wish that there was

another chair full.

How different to the other kind

of remembering, just yesterday,

stretched out flat

on a rectangle piece of grass

dropping tears down to bones,

cracking the blue sky

with the sound of a pain

that time doesn't take,

and asking him to make sure

that he's the first one there to meet me

when I arrive.

Thank you, my dear friends...

'If you're brave enough to live it, the least I can do is listen.'

- Cynthia Bond,

If I hadn't seen such riches

"Now I'm relieved to hear
That you've been to some far out places
It's hard to carry on
When you feel all alone
Now I've swung back down again
It's worse than it was before
If I hadn't seen such riches
I could live with being poor
Oh sit down
Sit down next to me
Sit down, down, down, down, down
In sympathy"

Stone and Harris

The crying

I said once that the crying is not for writing about.

But it is part of the story, of course. Now that this event is behind me, I feel comfortable sharing this piece, and I feel that the whole story must be told. Written in my journal in January 2013. 

This is the core of my grief. 


I'm lying on the floor on my side, my knees pulled up to my chest and my glasses on the carpet beside me. Tears and sobs flood my body, and the room is filled with the sound of pain. For a long time the world around me disappears. I sit up, and for the first time in a year of crying, nearly vomit.

I need company. Real company with breath and skin. I sit beside her cot, lean my head on the rails and reach through to feel her little body rising and falling. She stirs, and relief comes as her arm stretches out towards me. I reach down and hold her hand. No, actually - she holds mine.

Sweet relief

I thought I'd be alright you know. I'm only on a half dose, and while it seems to have made a difference, surely coming off them for a while to see how it goes wouldn't be too big a deal. When I went on them I was selling my home and hadn't found a new one, and I was pretty down about that, along with everything else. Now we have a very happy home and I am finding a little more in my life.

But just three drug-free days found me wretched and sobbing on the floor, the little guy crying nearby, the little girl crouching down quietly next to me, stroking and stroking my arm, retrieving my abandoned glasses unbidden, and putting them silently within my reach. Making me better.

I may not have found my sanity in that unbearable few days, but I did find, once again, a most extraordinary heart. A sweet little mouse with a lion's heart, bursting with love, concern, tenderness. Sometimes, knowing that she is here with me, and will be here with me, is such relief.

17 January, again.

I went to the cemetery on my own today, which is how I wanted it. It was hard, hard, hard, and again I am amazed at what a powerful place it is, and what can happen there that can be kept tucked away in other places. 

These days the pain has stayed tucked away a lot - something I have been thinking about and may write about some more. But as so often happens, the longer you go without letting it out, the bigger the hurt when it comes. It seems I am not the only one to know this.

There were no photos there today, but we did take a few when we visited on Christmas Eve. 

It's always hard to know what to do on these days. It seems that when I don't know what to do, I bake, and so, as has happened before, we made a cake for Daddy. We're working on commemoration vs celebration - cakes are a little confusing I admit, and today I was asked, 'will we be singing Happy Birthday?" We didn't do that, but we did sing, and light candles, and held on tight. I have loved those kids even more today. 

The little guy spent much of the day doing jobs-around-the house with Grandad while the girls spent some of it baking a cake together. It seems that those of us who are alive, the best way to survive is to get on and do the things you love. We'll have to keep trying that.

This girl has a cake instead of a father. Good grief.

 

 

 

Flowers from a friend whose heartache kept mine company today.

These have been my songs, and words (excerpts), for today. Turned up really loud they are hard to drive to, but they speak the pain.  Click on the titles to listen.

All by Brooke Fraser.

Flags

Reality has left you reeling

All facts and no feeling

No faith and all fear

I don't know why a good man will fall 

While a wicked one stands

I don't know why the innocents fall

While the monsters still stand

You who mourn will be comforted

You who hunger will hunger no more

All the last shall be first

Of this I am sure

You who weep now will laugh again

All you lonely be lonely no more

Yes the last shall be first

Of this I am sure

Orphans, Kingdoms

Eat and drink for tomorrow we die,

We will look our Maker in the eye.

Raise a flagon and drink to your health,

Who is He that can conquer Himself?

Ice on her Lashes

I will think of you each time I see the sun

I didn't want a day without

but somehow I've lived through another one

I will think of you each time I see the sun

I didn't want a year without you

but somehow I've lived through another one

Did you find it hard to breathe at first?

Were you wounded and in disbelief at how much it hurt?

Now the ache's still burning

but the world's still turning, isn't it?

I will think of you each time I see the sun

I didn't want a life without you

but here I am living one

Young widow grieves for her fallen husband, Albuquerque, NM

Our babies, up the path from Woodward Street

Me: "Look at them, just look at them!"

"I look at them every day."

Just a moment

I had one of those movie-moments the other day.

The little one was playing in the lounge and came running in to see me, saying, I thought, "I'm getting married." She arrived, and I said, "Pardon? Can you say that again?" How does she know about white dresses and getting married?

"I'm getting married," she said.

The stereo was on in the kitchen, and while I picked up the camera to take a photo of our sweet, sweet girl, Emmylou sang, "see what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world."

Just breath

I've been dealing with some immense pain lately. The kind that comes in waves, and is sometimes crippling. Other times it sits quietly lurking in the background, reminding you it will be back. It is especially bad in the dark, and I arrive in my bedroom at night with that uneasy feeling of knowing what I have ahead of me, and what will mess with my sleep. In the mornings it makes me snap at my children and falter through my day.

But no! I'm not talking about grief! For better or worse, this time I am talking about physical pain. I have Thoracic Outlet Syndrome - a nerve/blood vessel compression problem that stems from the neck, and creates pain through the shoulders and arms. For me (and most) the pain comes on at night due to the position of lying down, combined with the lack of movement.

I've had minor versions of this in the past, sometimes bad enough to visit an osteopath for a while (with no diagnosis before now) and sometimes it can be controlled with a massage or two. But this time it's hit me harder than I knew was possible. For many, many mornings I have woken with a pain in my shoulder so intense that I can't move it or touch it for about an hour, sometimes in the night as well, and a couple of times have nearly thrown up because of the pain. I have been stunned that it is possible to experience such pain, especially without having been in any kind of accident, and the morning before I first visited my chiropractor I was ready to check myself in to hospital. I've become a little scared of what my body can do to me. I have tried (no, not all together) regular panadol, voltaren, codeine, herbal anti-inflammatories, low dosage anti-depressants (often used in pain relief to help dampen down hyper-sensitive nerve endings), magnesium (to relax the muscles), epsom salts (another version of magnesium), acupuncture, chiropractic work, osteopathy, wheat packs, and a bucket load of hot showers. The pain killers haven't touched the sides; I have stopped taking them, though I continue to take voltaren in the hope that it is doing its anti-inflammatory work, and I'm currently waiting the two-three weeks for the anti-d's to kick in. 

Thoracic Outlet Syndrome is normally caused by accident/injury or repetitive strain injury, and sometimes by abnormalities/enlargements or spasms. However I, and all the people working with me, believe it has been caused by bad breathing. Yes - breathing!

To breathe properly you need to breathe through your nose (not mouth) and deep into your stomach, not your chest. Getting it wrong can lead to a remarkable amount of distress, and stress on the body. Have a look at the Breathing Works website if you are interested. I read a book called Breathe to Succeed many years ago, and met with the author, physiotherapist Tania Clifton-Smith, a number of times in the years following. I have been a chronic over-breather, and have had to learn to breath well, especially in times of stress. Just prior to my current shoulder pain coming on, I experienced a few days of chronic over-breathing which leads to an appalling breathing technique, where I suck air in to my upper chest area and feel the strain in my shoulders and neck. It becomes a vicious cycle and it's hard to get out.

So yes. I think I am talking about grief after all. I have long been fascinated by the impact of mental health on physical health, and don't believe it should be underestimated. Over the past few years I have almost expected grief and strain to have an impact on my physical wellbeing, particularly my breathing, and have been pleased to have made it through so far. When my shoulder pain came on I had been in a good space, mentally, and almost felt as though grief, rather annoyingly, was just finding another outlet. Will it never leave me alone?

This kind of pain strikes me as another part of the grief journey, and I'm trying to just ride with it and know I will get to the other end. I am working now with an outstanding osteopath and acupuncturist who has been good to me over many years. When he told me that in eastern medicine, lungs are the organ of grief, well, it took my breath away. He and I are making progress, I think I have the right mix of medication, and I'm practicing my breathing. These days still find me regularly lying on the floor looking at the ceiling, but instead of being accompanied by tears, I'm accompanied by nice steady breathing. Sometimes all you have to do is just breath.

Breathe! By Marcelo Jimenez

But not alone

(I missed the bit about going camping. And the cliche about watching the stars. But a girl had better not ask for too much.)

I want to sit outside in the evening,
 smell the garden at dusk
 and watch the sky change colour.

I want to drive long, dark roads,
 fish and chips passed to the driver
 and kids snuggled in the back.

I want to catch a movie and dinner,
 go to the ballet, check out some gig
 and walk the night time streets
     in my good clothes.

I want to fall in to bed
 with perfume staining my pillow
 and feel the feeling
     of skin between sheets.

And I want to soak long in the sea,
and feel it heal me.

I want to sit on the sofa,
and watch some great TV.

I want to see the fiords, and Fiji,
and anywhere that's new for me.

I'd like to ride through streets again,
 know that I can be strong,
 and remember what it feels like to fly.

I'd like to make a grown ups' meal,
 just once in a while
 and leave the dishes until morning.

I'd like to have late night conversation,
 fill the silence with talking
 and laugh out loud in bed.

I'd like to play this game again,
 instead of watching,
 and after so much losing, win.

I want to soak long in the sea,
and feel it heal me.

I want to sit on the sofa,
and watch some great TV.

I want to see the fiords, and Fiji,
and anywhere that's new for me.

Icecream

I bought them icecreams today
and tried not to count the teaspoons.
I saw that wry look of yours on his face
when he asked her for another lick,
and she said no.
Memories of childhood icecreams at the beach
blurred with the memory of those icecreams at the beach
that you asked for, while I worried like crazy
about how bad it was for you,
as though a giant icecream could tip the already tipping balance
between life and death.
My eyes blurred and I saw your freckles
on his knuckles,
and I saw you sitting down with us,
wiping the pink gently from her face,
and I wondered,
why on earth are you not here? 

Me too

I remember that girl
  She really knew how to love
  in that kind of way.

I miss that girl
  I wonder where she has gone
  and how so much of a person
  could just disappear like that.

My movie

We went to Kindy Gym yesterday morning, as we always do on a Tuesday, and the little one decided she needed some sustenance before she got started. So I found myself sitting out in the rec centre corridor while she nibbled away on her early morning tea and I gazed off in to the distance.

In the distance was a group of elderly people doing some exercises. Pumping their arms in to the air, sitting on chairs and lifting their feet. They looked, well, old. Tired, worn out, but grabbing at life. I struggle very much now with the way our lives so often seem to end. With a loss of function, with exhaustion, with a loss of dignity. Amazing, competent, full, complete lives that can fade in such harsh ways. I seem to be hyper-aware of the cycle of life - and the speed with which it goes. As I watched these elderly people in one room, I could feel the lives in the room just behind me. Fresh and new little bodies, just beginning to explore all the magnificent things they are capable of. And across the loud speaker came the music, "to everything turn turn turn, there is a season turn turn turn, and a time to every purpose under Heaven. A time to be born, a time to die..." The song finished and I tried to break out of the place I had landed in, but the next song followed. The song that I was singing to my children at the moment Kent died, "how wonderful life is, while you're in the world." I plummeted back in to my thoughts until our girl was ready to take me back in to Kindy Gym, and give me a hug.

*

I can't tell you how any moments I have had like this over the last couple of years. In fact I wish I had told you, I wish I had recorded them, though often they have been too intangible and acutely beautiful to know how to record. I often feel like I am living in a movie. Not just because of the big story, but all the little stories that happen along the way. Wow, you couldn't have *written* it better than this. Not better in a good way, this is not generally a good story, but the moments, the coincidences, the coming together of things. It has been extraordinary. I really seem to be living in a movie. I think what's supposed to happen next is that I open a chocolate shop and a handsome man arrives and falls wildly in love with me.

I'm not too sure about that, but the credits aren't rolling on this extraordinary life of mine. Ordinary seems to have gone forever.

Prescription ladders

-I wrote this late last year, soon after I wrote "Grief and the Black Dog,"
and soon after that I got myself a ladder-

I seem to be lost

Somewhere inside of me

Grasping and clawing

Under a heavy black blanket

Send down a ladder

So I can find me again.

I saw his face

I saw his face in my dreams last night. As so often I do, but this time, unusually, it was healthy. Perhaps it was only a dream, I have had so many powerful ones that have become nothing but broken.

It was beautiful, of course. Crystal clear, his features sharp and face glowing, more than I have ever seen in this life. "I love you so much," he said, with his smile. Thank you love, I know you do, I know.

Please come and tell the kids one day (night) too.