A Dream...

Early today I dreamed of you.
Calling you, holding your favourite books.
I wanted you near. I wanted to hold you.
But you were far away.
So far away.
'Come on, let's read', I said.
And I held up the books, I waved them so you could see:
Each Peach Pear Plum
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
The Snail and the Whale
You heard me, you turned.
You smiled. Such a smile!
And you came, running.
Running!
Running, running, running, in a pair of shorts, a t-shirt..in the plastic splints that helped you to stay balanced.
But running!
Up a steep hill. Fast and strong and eager.
And SO determined.
Weaving and dodging.
In joy.
How did you not fall, stumble?
You scared me. 'Steady, slow down!', I cried.
But then, in my arms. With such a force.
Smiling. In joy.
I felt your warmth.
For a moment, in my arms,
In my arms.
In my arms.
In my arms.

About death

September 2, 2015

The other day I listened to a frank and refreshing interview between Robert Peston and Julian Barnes. They were talking on Radio 4, discussing the grief they felt after the deaths of their wives. Why refreshing?

Well, we don’t talk about death, do we? We shy away from it, we run away from people in the throes of it because we don’t know what to say... And even years after the death of an individual, some people would still rather pretend the person never existed for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing.
How do I know this? Having lost my own son, Thomas, eight years ago, I’m kind of an expert, I guess. “What do you want of people?” Eddie Mair asked Peston, and it made me think; what do I want? I want: People to speak my boy’s name. Speak it and you will never upset me. Never. Watch me – my heart and eyes will fill with joy.
Speak his name and I will KNOW that he existed; that he isn’t just a beautiful angel in my dreams, a little boy I just made up. Don’t be afraid of asking me questions. I will answer them. Ask away. Please ask.
If you don’t know me – and ask whether I have any children – you will find yourself mortified. Don’t worry. I’m used to it (the deep breath, the “OK, here we go, I’m about to make things very awkward for a sec” bit).
Just don’t clam up and change the subject and regret having asked. It’s OK. Really it is. I love talking about your children, but please, PLEASE ask me about mine. And don’t crease your face with pity when I say I gave birth to no other child.
My boy was all, everything and the world to me. He was, is, all I ever needed. Don’t make me justify this or make me feel as if I have somehow failed, in some way, because I don’t have a second to fall back on. (How ridiculous, really, the very assumption that a second child would ease the loss of a first).
When you discover that he had special needs, don’t change the tone of your voice as if “ohhhh, that explains it”; as if his death was some kind of blessing. It wasn’t. And don’t imagine you know what he was like because of those wretched words “special needs”.
I hate them. I hate using the damned phrase. Because I see people form an image in their mind that is inevitably totally, utterly wrong – and then they become almost become relieved for me.
There is no such relief. Know this. My heart is, was and always will be, broken. That’s OK by me, by the way. Don’t say I’m brave. I’m not. To be brave is to have a choice. One thing I learned is how bloody-minded the biological urge to survive actually is. You go on. You go on. You go on. That’s fine by me too.
Don’t ask how I can be so OK “bearing in mind what’s happened”. (They mean bearing in mind my son is dead. Dead. Roll it round your mouth. Say it, for god’s sake. It wasn’t a “passing” or a “crossing over” it was a death. Thomas is dead).
My life is full, wonderful and filled with love because he was in the world and he inspires me and walks by my side in everything I 
do.
You might see me cry, but not so much now. The tidal waves don’t consume me as they once did, but play me a piece of music that was special for him, for me, and I might not be able to stop the tears.
This is also fine. Just hand me a tissue and give me a hug. Also, please understand, grief is something that never goes away. It 
isn’t to be “got over”. Why would I want it to be over – when love is the cause of it?
Here’s a truth: the grief doesn’t hurt half as much as the people, so fearful of death, of talking about death, of upsetting someone bereaved, they would prefer (albeit unintentionally) to deny my boy to me over and over again. That’s what I want.

The gale

January 11, 2017

It woke me up.

But then, it woke everyone up, I think.

You only really find out the secrets of a new house in the dark hours during a roaring gale.

Alone, half afraid, as doors creaked and shut, creaked and shut, and the loft hatch lifted and clattered, and the windows shuddered (as if poor Cathy were at the window), I realised I’d been dreaming of you.

You escaped too quickly for me to catch you, a fleeting remembrance of a little soul but then gone; carried away on the nor-wester.

As ever, oh yes, as ever and ever, that overwhelming sense of guilt. Wracking, heart-tugging gut wrenching guilt. Somehow, in the dream, I’d failed you again. Oh poor, exhausted unconscious mind that just won’t let things be.

Sleepless hours later and a compulsion to be part of the force that was felling trees, hurling trampolines into cars and being the general topic of conversation on the happychatty local radio stations, was overwhelming.

A mind thick and overflowing and anxious and searching needs something to focus on. So be it.

Such sound! With eyes closed it might have been the roar of the sea, a wild sea; a crashing sea; metallic spume-tipped and powerful.

It howled through the telegraph wires, and cast birds and carrier bags to the skies, and the oozy muddy sucky path was strewn with a carpet of lichen-covered branches whipped from their moorings on high.

There were starlings and a grey squirrel, a robin and a coal tit and curious magpies soaring from tree to tree, always one tree ahead of me. What were they waiting  for?

Breathtaking, it was, Thomas. Truly. Literally. Cowed and hunkered, every step  towards the gusts a weighted, heavy one. Tears ripped from the eyes. Real tears? Involuntary and shed willingly and joyously.

Muscles ached and beneath the layers a heart pumping hard and deeply and healthily. Oh, breathe!

From the glittering blue, a buzzard soared overhead, carried onwards onwards without a flap of his wings.

The stream in the deep heart of the steep valley was mucky and murky and the colour of weak, milky coffee; damned in parts with leaf debris. Too deep for wellington boots. And on the other side, in a lee by a mossy wall, a great pile of leaves, hip high. The temptation to plunge into it and throw them into the air for you almost too great.

Sometimes, where the wind forced wood upon wood, it squeaked and creaked, and the sense of walking amongst dancing fairies as dry leaves whipped from the ground went frittering and tittering past, the gust at my back pushing me to join them.

From the valley bottom back up the hill and a pause, against a suitably angled solid tree to, catch the breath.

Its trunk was thick and solid and it must have been centuries old and as I leant against it, face to the sun flinking between the branches, it moved; a rocking motion - imperceptible to look at - but profound to feel. Anchored in the deep, deep earth, swaying to the motion of its wind-whipped canopy. Comforting, Comforted. A wrapping up and a wrapping round and a soulfulness. Old tree.

Pressing onwards and upwards, squelching and squerching, towards the still-rising sun which warmed and welcomed on the brow of the hill.

And then, a few short steps to home. Past the farm with the healthy pong and the road which means you’ve arrived.

The wind howls still. And snow is forecast. And the dream of you still won’t reveal itself. But so be it.

Nature, the circle of life, the cycle of life, its beginnings and its ends and the forces that surround us; that play with us that render us but motes in a big big sky. All this is reassuring. It is how it was, how it is, how it will ever be.

It’s water bottle warm in the central heated house.

And the bedroom is stifling.

Go fly then, my boy, my dream, go fly.

I open the window and the wind rushes in to claim you.