Keep

It's like this - just keep getting up in the morning, just keep going to bed at night. Hear the cry of the curlew even when you cannot see it. Remember how at last you felt understood, acknowledged in that old persistent pain, even though that deep connection is now in the past. Keep listening, keep remembering, keep looking at the pink sky at night. Even when it all seems meaningless, keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep cooking good food, keep turning up for each day, keep lighting fires, keep going for walks, keep talking to friends, even when there seems no point, no hope, no purpose. Keep on keeping on. Keep faith that the spirit will return.

Magic

In my singing group tonight, a woman who reminded me of G. In fact the mother of E, the young woman who leads the group. Something about her energy, her stance, the tilt of her head, something subtle in the arrangement of her features. I don't even think you'd say she resembled her, and she was a bit younger, but she evoked G's presence so powerfully for me, it was at times hard to know whether to stare or look away or try not to stare or try not to look away. I kept breathing and kept singing and I was alright. It was like a kind of terrible magic.

The evidently loving relationship between this woman and her daughter, and nine-year old grandson, who came to the first little while of the group before heading for bed, so moving, so alive. G's daughter and granddaughter were, I knew so important to her, and I saw them at the funeral, faces pinched with shock and grief. I am so happy for this family that they are safe and together, so envious, so angry, so - I don't even know what all these emotions are.

Seeking

Can't make things join up. Fragmented. Dead daffodils. Carbonated Natural English Mineral Water.  My house and the things in it. My head and the noises in it. The pasts. The present. Having no idea what to say but wanting to say something. Driving to work and home from work, endless temporary traffic lights, endless passing of the same pubs - The Saw, The Old Packhorse, The New Packhorse. And always G is there, as she was all those months I was trying to cope with the job when it was new and I couldn't sleep. She hovers over every drive to school and much of the drive home. She hovers over everything. And that is alright. But I am not and can't seem to be. I think it's having to work with other people's need and distress and I think ideally I wouldn't be right now. Blessing coming soon - two weeks off. If not for that I would be worried. More worried. Believe me I am seeking out things that help me, heal me. Massage, singing, friends who actually understand. Better for a while, I keep submerging again under the dark waters of despair. Panic.

Out

We made it out early evening for a meal and wine in Nelson's our local wine bar. Mexican pancakes, tongue-burningly hot and took about half an hour to arrive, but nonetheless there was pleasure in the familiar wooden-floored basement, friendly bar staff and reliable wine and veggie food. It was in fact the first time we'd been there since it reopened after being massively damaged in the 2012 flooding. More shocking to realise this was the first time I'd been out in the evening since G died apart from two weeks ago to the pub up the road, and a few weeks before that to a friend's party, which at first so overwhelmed me I thought I'd have to turn straight round and leave, but actually managed a couple of hours, a drink, a chat a little dance... Oh yes, I did also go to the pictures once... What is so disconcerting is to realise that is more than three months of barely going out in the evening, and it has not even occurred to me to notice. Going back to work has been such a major undertaking in the realms of being 'back in circulation'. Time is just so strange this year. And there we were in Nelson's considering our summer holiday options. I can still only barely comprehend that we are out of December, out of winter, into the third month of the year. It is hard to explain. Part of me still sitting on the sofa hearing the news of G's death, looking at the rug I grew up with that we had just brought back here from my mother's. Now I look at it every day and grow more used to it being here, more used to the way the days keep passing, keep taking me further and further from the last time I saw G.

Tomorrow

I am fairly sure that tomorrow morning early I will board a train down to London to visit my mother, and later board another one home again. I haven't seen her since G died, more than three months now. It's going to be a long day. I'll take music, book, notebook and pen and various edible goodies. Tonight I am slightly drunk and tearful, after a stressful day at work. I gather a bunch of photographs to show my Mum, will buy the paper so we can tackle the crossword together as ever.

Song

On the way to therapy, over and over...

you remind me of something
a song that I am and you
sing me back into myself


 

How Are You?

I hate this question at the best of times. But since G died it has almost become a phobia. Maybe I'm just too honest for my own good but I never mastered the art of the generic 'I'm fine'. Lately I tend to say, if I must answer this question at all 'mixed' or 'changeable' or 'up and down'. Or maybe 'I don't know'.

Grief is not linear. This I can testify. Sometimes I feel chatty and lively, enjoy myself for a while. Or I just feel ordinary. Ordinary driving, ordinary cooking. And it is such a gift. And it leaves as it came. And returns. But in between, the depth of the grief actually seems to get deeper and I didn't think it possible. At those times it is as if it will never end, as if there is no bearing it, no way to live with this reality of G's murder. The terrible tragedy and waste of it, and the loss for me of her in my life. Also for many others, and I do think of them too. But she was my therapist, and that means I don't know her close people, those with whose feelings I most strongly resonate. Can only imagine. And picture them as I saw them at the funeral. Helpless with grief. Utterly bemused to be saying good bye to a pale wicker coffin.

I can't explain therapy, least of all my own. I was privileged to have a profoundly intimate and healing relationship, with someone whose patience amazed me, but who was never afraid to challenge me either, in ways no one else ever has. To be more of myself. To grow. And she allowed me to allow her to become many people to me, as well as simply herself, in all her humanity, wonderful and flawed as are we all. So I grieve for all of these. And although I am not alone, truly truly not, at the same time, I grieve alone.