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.
Showing posts with label bereavement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bereavement. Show all posts
Wednesday, 28 June 2017
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.
Friday, 3 May 2013
Ice and Fire....
Not sure how I ended up here. It wasn't the plan when I set off today.
Alone in a heaving restaurant in Strasbourg in February.
It was partly the cold: minus 10 and dropping - a walk in that kind of cold can only last so long before it becomes an endurance test.
And partly something else. A thought that needed....that needed, well, thought. Something that struck me in the middle of a frost-bitten park where early-arrival storks clattered beaks in noisy mating rituals and we slipped and slid on paths of sheer ice under a low, blinding sun.
A thought that shocked me into stillness.
They found me a table, squeezed me in, between a greying man in a suit reading a French-language newspaper and a couple in love, feeding each other spaghetti.
It is noisy and busy and people are devouring jugs of wine, steaming plates of choucroute, baeckeoffe, shining steaks, perspex bowls greasy with salted frites.
They have their coats and bobble hats and scarves on as they tumble inside, into the heat of the restaurant, into sanctuary from the kind of weather outside that eats you up, that turns you inside out, that keeps your eyes on the pavement so you can keep your nose in your coat. The kind of bitter that scratches your face, hunkers you down, the kind of cold you can't imagine on a summer July day.
In here we turn ruddy-cheeked.
There are old ladies gesticulating wildly across the table - one has her hair in plaited pigtails wound over the top of her head. There are business meetings, business cards exchanged, ipads and Macbooks showing flow charts and Excel sheets, tourists chaotic with shopping bags and cameras.
Conversations rise and fall, the kitchen clatters, the waiters are a smart, efficient blur of black and white. There is a small kerfuffle at the next table as one of the young lovers knocks over his glass of red in his eagerness to reach out and touch the face of his girlfriend.
The strong, hot, milky, foaming coffee is bitter.
Any place would have done...a place with a table to write on. Because sometimes the urge is unbearable, unstoppable like the foam-tipped waves that suck and surge around the sheer cliffs at Flamborough.
I chose your coffin.
That was my thought in the park. That came out of nowhere and hit the solar plexus like a boxer's right hook.
I want to say it out loud. Perhaps to stop the world in its tracks, perhaps because it carries on regardless.
Why now? Why think of it now? Cursed mind with its own secret ponderings throwing things up to spoil the day.
I chose your coffin.
The black-suited, black-tied, funeral director; stiffly formal, trying to be informal, with his click-shut folder, A4 pages stuffed into plastic holders, each page a different option, a colour, a finish, handles and whatnot.
Light, dark, elaborate, plain, fancy-handled, varnished; page upon page upon page upon page, getting grander and grander, more elaborate. And he carefully, gently, lifts and turns, lifts and turns, each time smoothing down the plastic with a sweep of his hand, not meeting my eye..noting the descriptions, the finish, as if we're choosing a bookcase.
Until I put out my own hand and I said 'Stop. Please'. And I turned the pages back, right back, to the first one. To the plainest simplest one, made of light oak - or was it beech? 'That one' I said.
Yes, that one. The box that will carry my dead child on his final journey. Decision made. How simply done. How easy I must have made it for that kind, awkward man. No weeping, no wailing, no tearing of hair or gnashing of teeth. Just 'That one'.
I remember the thought process. You were a child; a child of simple pleasures, a child of light and joy and the very thought of....of what? Of you being encased in heavy, swathed grandeur? Yes, that's it. It didn't fit. It wasn't you, I thought.
And we moved on.
I see the moment in the park for what it is. An aftershock. Unexpected. Landed from nowhere. One of the 'waves' that those who are paid to know these things tell you about.
They come and they come, these waves...sometimes gentle, joyous ripples of memory in a sparkling sea, sometimes seismic spume-tipped breakers that wash you away, and there is nothing to be done but let them carry you to where they will...to ditch you on a shore where you emerge battered, storm-tossed, but alive...alive!...and able, somehow, to carry on.
Because that's what happens....it's not bravery....or strength...it's just what we're genetically programmed to do, to crack on.
So I don't do what I want to do which is to sweep away the tray, the coffee cup, the teaspoon, sugar, the silly little wrapped-up lump of nougat they always put on the saucer; to sweep away the steak and chips of the fella next to me, sweep away his wine and the table and the spaghetti and the sucking, spooning lovers and crawl under the table and weep and weep.
I don't do that. And it passes as I watch people enjoying their lunch. Wondering, as I always do, what waves may engulf them, too, from time to time.
Five years and this still happens. Not as much, not half as much, but it does.
And inevitably, one wave brings another, brings another. And when the waiter brings the bill I'm surprised because I'm splashing with you in the fountains at Alnwick Castle gardens, walking the desolate beaches at Bamburgh, staggering and stepping back to keep our balance, to hold you up, when the tide briefly catches up with us and the water covers our shoes, marching in time, like soldiers, back to the cottage over windswept dunes, drizzle in our hair, fingers numb with cold.
Watching your Mary Poppins DVD; taking that last photo, us together, holding the phone away towards us in my right hand, the image blurry as a result; me all red nose and heavy cold, you with your rosy plump cheeks and Dr Who tee-shirt.
The picture is still on my mobile phone and I fumble for it and my heart lurches at it. So I write and write and it is as if steam pours from the pen.
Ice and fire made up your last day: a bitter, bitter February and you, consumed by the crackling, spitting logs in the open fire of Alnwick's Barter Books, rosy cheeks redder and redder. You watched in wonder.
Ice and fire. Ice and fire. Our last day together. And a few days later I chose your coffin.
Could I ever visit that place again? That place of vast, sweeping beaches, a great castle silhouetted against a wide sky, a place that is more myth, legend, to me now.
The dunes where I made calls to tell desperate faraway friends as the wind snatched my voice away. The dunes, the sand, the sea, the sky, over and over.
I chose your coffin.
There is wine and cheese and the man at the table next to me has left. My coffee was finished long ago and the waiter hovers, anxious to clear the way. All the languages of the world are here. People are cheery, busy, moving on, living.
I close my notebook, pay up.
Outside..and the sun has dipped lower and the freezing air whips our breath away in great foggy gasps of steam.
At the tram stop there is a noise from the skies, a huge skein of geese, flying high in a v shape, then another and another.
Their calls are clear, desolate, telling of far off places, of wild tundras.
They foretell longer, warmer days..they foretell spring.
xxxxx
Alone in a heaving restaurant in Strasbourg in February.
It was partly the cold: minus 10 and dropping - a walk in that kind of cold can only last so long before it becomes an endurance test.
And partly something else. A thought that needed....that needed, well, thought. Something that struck me in the middle of a frost-bitten park where early-arrival storks clattered beaks in noisy mating rituals and we slipped and slid on paths of sheer ice under a low, blinding sun.
A thought that shocked me into stillness.
They found me a table, squeezed me in, between a greying man in a suit reading a French-language newspaper and a couple in love, feeding each other spaghetti.
It is noisy and busy and people are devouring jugs of wine, steaming plates of choucroute, baeckeoffe, shining steaks, perspex bowls greasy with salted frites.
They have their coats and bobble hats and scarves on as they tumble inside, into the heat of the restaurant, into sanctuary from the kind of weather outside that eats you up, that turns you inside out, that keeps your eyes on the pavement so you can keep your nose in your coat. The kind of bitter that scratches your face, hunkers you down, the kind of cold you can't imagine on a summer July day.
In here we turn ruddy-cheeked.
There are old ladies gesticulating wildly across the table - one has her hair in plaited pigtails wound over the top of her head. There are business meetings, business cards exchanged, ipads and Macbooks showing flow charts and Excel sheets, tourists chaotic with shopping bags and cameras.
Conversations rise and fall, the kitchen clatters, the waiters are a smart, efficient blur of black and white. There is a small kerfuffle at the next table as one of the young lovers knocks over his glass of red in his eagerness to reach out and touch the face of his girlfriend.
The strong, hot, milky, foaming coffee is bitter.
Any place would have done...a place with a table to write on. Because sometimes the urge is unbearable, unstoppable like the foam-tipped waves that suck and surge around the sheer cliffs at Flamborough.
I chose your coffin.
That was my thought in the park. That came out of nowhere and hit the solar plexus like a boxer's right hook.
I want to say it out loud. Perhaps to stop the world in its tracks, perhaps because it carries on regardless.
Why now? Why think of it now? Cursed mind with its own secret ponderings throwing things up to spoil the day.
I chose your coffin.
The black-suited, black-tied, funeral director; stiffly formal, trying to be informal, with his click-shut folder, A4 pages stuffed into plastic holders, each page a different option, a colour, a finish, handles and whatnot.
Light, dark, elaborate, plain, fancy-handled, varnished; page upon page upon page upon page, getting grander and grander, more elaborate. And he carefully, gently, lifts and turns, lifts and turns, each time smoothing down the plastic with a sweep of his hand, not meeting my eye..noting the descriptions, the finish, as if we're choosing a bookcase.
Until I put out my own hand and I said 'Stop. Please'. And I turned the pages back, right back, to the first one. To the plainest simplest one, made of light oak - or was it beech? 'That one' I said.
Yes, that one. The box that will carry my dead child on his final journey. Decision made. How simply done. How easy I must have made it for that kind, awkward man. No weeping, no wailing, no tearing of hair or gnashing of teeth. Just 'That one'.
I remember the thought process. You were a child; a child of simple pleasures, a child of light and joy and the very thought of....of what? Of you being encased in heavy, swathed grandeur? Yes, that's it. It didn't fit. It wasn't you, I thought.
And we moved on.
I see the moment in the park for what it is. An aftershock. Unexpected. Landed from nowhere. One of the 'waves' that those who are paid to know these things tell you about.
They come and they come, these waves...sometimes gentle, joyous ripples of memory in a sparkling sea, sometimes seismic spume-tipped breakers that wash you away, and there is nothing to be done but let them carry you to where they will...to ditch you on a shore where you emerge battered, storm-tossed, but alive...alive!...and able, somehow, to carry on.
Because that's what happens....it's not bravery....or strength...it's just what we're genetically programmed to do, to crack on.
So I don't do what I want to do which is to sweep away the tray, the coffee cup, the teaspoon, sugar, the silly little wrapped-up lump of nougat they always put on the saucer; to sweep away the steak and chips of the fella next to me, sweep away his wine and the table and the spaghetti and the sucking, spooning lovers and crawl under the table and weep and weep.
I don't do that. And it passes as I watch people enjoying their lunch. Wondering, as I always do, what waves may engulf them, too, from time to time.
Five years and this still happens. Not as much, not half as much, but it does.
And inevitably, one wave brings another, brings another. And when the waiter brings the bill I'm surprised because I'm splashing with you in the fountains at Alnwick Castle gardens, walking the desolate beaches at Bamburgh, staggering and stepping back to keep our balance, to hold you up, when the tide briefly catches up with us and the water covers our shoes, marching in time, like soldiers, back to the cottage over windswept dunes, drizzle in our hair, fingers numb with cold.
Watching your Mary Poppins DVD; taking that last photo, us together, holding the phone away towards us in my right hand, the image blurry as a result; me all red nose and heavy cold, you with your rosy plump cheeks and Dr Who tee-shirt.
The picture is still on my mobile phone and I fumble for it and my heart lurches at it. So I write and write and it is as if steam pours from the pen.
Ice and fire made up your last day: a bitter, bitter February and you, consumed by the crackling, spitting logs in the open fire of Alnwick's Barter Books, rosy cheeks redder and redder. You watched in wonder.
Ice and fire. Ice and fire. Our last day together. And a few days later I chose your coffin.
Could I ever visit that place again? That place of vast, sweeping beaches, a great castle silhouetted against a wide sky, a place that is more myth, legend, to me now.
The dunes where I made calls to tell desperate faraway friends as the wind snatched my voice away. The dunes, the sand, the sea, the sky, over and over.
I chose your coffin.
There is wine and cheese and the man at the table next to me has left. My coffee was finished long ago and the waiter hovers, anxious to clear the way. All the languages of the world are here. People are cheery, busy, moving on, living.
I close my notebook, pay up.
Outside..and the sun has dipped lower and the freezing air whips our breath away in great foggy gasps of steam.
At the tram stop there is a noise from the skies, a huge skein of geese, flying high in a v shape, then another and another.
Their calls are clear, desolate, telling of far off places, of wild tundras.
They foretell longer, warmer days..they foretell spring.
xxxxx
Putting a Sock in it...
One of the best things I never did was go to Diana's funeral.
Quite extraordinary when you think about it. Imagine, a front row seat (kind of ) at one of the biggest events the world has ever seen..and I said no.
And people look at me with incredulity when I tell them. When I say that, instead, you and I sat at home, watching it on TV, and you took off your sock during the minute's silence and put it in your mouth. As if you knew there was no way you could keep quiet without it.
You were five then - though not five, not really. Still a baby who needed feeding, changing, pushing about in a push chair, prone to temper tantrums...and 5am waking.
I remember us in the front room of our little home, me on the floor, nose pretty much pressed to the TV, you on the couch in the sunshine surrounded by toys (you didn't move about much then - I could vac the whole house and mow the lawn and you'd still be there, an hour later, merrily beating up a playgym).
I remember sitting there and glancing at you as the Westminster Abbey choir reached its agonising, unbearable heart-rending crescendo. And you put one finger in your ear, shouted with what sounded like joy, and glugged from your juice cup. And as the world wept I knew, right then, that this would be one our most precious moments together.
A moment in time printed as if in tableau, as if painted, like a Leonardo fresco, on some deep part of the mind, but never losing colour, never losing light, no cracks appearing over long, interminable years without you.
The world fell silent and you put a sock in it. Worth all the tales I might have been able to tell about rubbing shoulders with the great and good, about being a player on this world stage...
Why did I decline? Because I had been away from you without you for two weeks, because Diana's death meant I'd spent another weekend in the office, another weekend away from you and I needed you with me. Does that make sense?
Precious hours.
I think I knew, you see. I think I always knew that we wouldn't have you forever. Don't tell me how I knew? I'm not even sure if I acknowledged it to myself. No doctor ever said your time on earth was limited. You were rarely ill, you were as strong as an ox.....
But sometimes in the quiet of an early morning, I would lie in bed, waiting, listening.
This is how it would go: first the thud as you negotiated yourself out of the bed and on to the floor, seconds of silence as you bottom-shuffled your way across the carpet and then the crash-bang-wallop as you started on your toy box. Emptying it all , picking out your favourite, and giving it hell for leather.
This until you got bored. Then you'd fumble your way round the bedroom door, bottom shuffle along the hallway to the kitchen, dragging along your best toy to the washing machine and bang it around inside.
But sometimes, this didn't happen. You would sleep in and I would lie there thinking...not today Thomas, not today. And it never was. Until it was.
Do you know how many times that happened? More than I can say. Do you know how many times I played over in my head while sitting at my desk, scenarios of how it might be...and what if I were far away?
Do all parents carry such dark morbid thoughts with them or was it my subconscious preparing me for something it knew would come?
I took so many videos of you, as other parents will do...but I took them thinking, I need to make sure I always have you....just in case.
So when I was asked to cover the funeral, that we had tickets to get into the Abbey, I think they were surprised. I surprised myself to be honest. But I never regretted it, sacrificing the chance of pomp and circumstance, to watch you putting a sock in it..
xxx
Quite extraordinary when you think about it. Imagine, a front row seat (kind of ) at one of the biggest events the world has ever seen..and I said no.
And people look at me with incredulity when I tell them. When I say that, instead, you and I sat at home, watching it on TV, and you took off your sock during the minute's silence and put it in your mouth. As if you knew there was no way you could keep quiet without it.
You were five then - though not five, not really. Still a baby who needed feeding, changing, pushing about in a push chair, prone to temper tantrums...and 5am waking.
I remember us in the front room of our little home, me on the floor, nose pretty much pressed to the TV, you on the couch in the sunshine surrounded by toys (you didn't move about much then - I could vac the whole house and mow the lawn and you'd still be there, an hour later, merrily beating up a playgym).
I remember sitting there and glancing at you as the Westminster Abbey choir reached its agonising, unbearable heart-rending crescendo. And you put one finger in your ear, shouted with what sounded like joy, and glugged from your juice cup. And as the world wept I knew, right then, that this would be one our most precious moments together.
A moment in time printed as if in tableau, as if painted, like a Leonardo fresco, on some deep part of the mind, but never losing colour, never losing light, no cracks appearing over long, interminable years without you.
The world fell silent and you put a sock in it. Worth all the tales I might have been able to tell about rubbing shoulders with the great and good, about being a player on this world stage...
Why did I decline? Because I had been away from you without you for two weeks, because Diana's death meant I'd spent another weekend in the office, another weekend away from you and I needed you with me. Does that make sense?
Precious hours.
I think I knew, you see. I think I always knew that we wouldn't have you forever. Don't tell me how I knew? I'm not even sure if I acknowledged it to myself. No doctor ever said your time on earth was limited. You were rarely ill, you were as strong as an ox.....
But sometimes in the quiet of an early morning, I would lie in bed, waiting, listening.
This is how it would go: first the thud as you negotiated yourself out of the bed and on to the floor, seconds of silence as you bottom-shuffled your way across the carpet and then the crash-bang-wallop as you started on your toy box. Emptying it all , picking out your favourite, and giving it hell for leather.
This until you got bored. Then you'd fumble your way round the bedroom door, bottom shuffle along the hallway to the kitchen, dragging along your best toy to the washing machine and bang it around inside.
But sometimes, this didn't happen. You would sleep in and I would lie there thinking...not today Thomas, not today. And it never was. Until it was.
Do you know how many times that happened? More than I can say. Do you know how many times I played over in my head while sitting at my desk, scenarios of how it might be...and what if I were far away?
Do all parents carry such dark morbid thoughts with them or was it my subconscious preparing me for something it knew would come?
I took so many videos of you, as other parents will do...but I took them thinking, I need to make sure I always have you....just in case.
So when I was asked to cover the funeral, that we had tickets to get into the Abbey, I think they were surprised. I surprised myself to be honest. But I never regretted it, sacrificing the chance of pomp and circumstance, to watch you putting a sock in it..
xxx
Sunday, 16 December 2012
Spinning Spheres
Dear Thomas,
The tree hasn't quite forgiven me, I think.
It sits there, glowering - if a tree can sit and glower - and I'm sure it sulks. Wishing, no doubt, it was in some brighter, grander place, surrounded by twinkly things and candlelight and merriment...and people who might actually love it a bit.
Poor thing. It didn't deserve this. Hauled home half-heartedly in a pull-along shopping trolley where it remained for days in the hall before I could muster the effort to bring it into daylight again.
There's nothing on it yet. The baubles need threading, and lights..we need to buy lights. At some point.
Worryingly I found myself talking to it. 'Hi tree,' I said. 'I'm sorry. I'm not much good at this. I used to be good at it, I used to be good at making the effort to be good at it. But this year...' and then I run out of things to say. A new level this! Talking to a Christmas tree, resenting it, because it doesn't know you, because it has nothing to do with you. As I say, poor thing.
I'm aware this is a tad bleak for Christmas, but it's how it is. I'll always tell you how it is. And how is it? Too quiet. The more noise the world makes preparing for Christmas the quieter it feels in here. Not lonely, just quiet.
The radiators creak and the woman in the flat upstairs has started playing music: 'As Time Goes By' from Casablanca. 'Now there's an irony,' I say to the tree, realising this must look a bit like Shirley Valentine talking to her wall (only my accent's a Yorkshire one). 'You must remember this....except you don't, do you? You don't remember any of it. How could you?'
Boxes spilling over with shiny sparkly things, cardboard tearing as we strain to cram them through the tiny door leading from the eaves, trying not to inhale dust and dead spiders or cut our fingers on bits of wood broken off from the door frame. Teetering down the stairs and bursting into the lounge, arms overflowing: 'Look Thomas! Christmas!'
You bang the boxes with the flat of your hands, shake the jingle bells and snatch at the tinsel we put on your head. You get glitter on the tip of your nose and it twinkles as you move. We play your special Christmas videos and sing 'the wind goes whoo in the middle of the night' or ' here we go round the Christmas tree allll daaaay long!' and give you your favourite toy while we begin the construction job on the tree, usually with a glass of fizzy stuff or make-it-from-a-sachet mulled wine.
The memory is a shimmering vision - blurred at the edges - noisy and bright, a shining ghost of Christmas past.
The smell of a real Christmas tree seems to fill the room. You can almost hear it greedily sucking water from our old gaudy crepe paper-covered pot that's somewhere in a storage unit in Derbyshire..along with all our other Christmas bits and pieces. Boxed up, put away.
This artificial one knows it is a poor second best.
Oh, despite the music upstairs it is still too quiet. Classic FM should do it, but the DJs are simpering and saccharine and listeners phone in requests, recounting scenes of jollity: 'ooh, we're so excited....all in the car travelling south to see our six grandchildren! Can you play Oh Come All Ye Faithful?!'. 'Oh sod off', I say to them, to the tree.
But I don't switch off. There's 'Oh Holy Night' and 'Away in a Manger', and as they play I sink where I stood for a moment, on to the hard parquet floor in this far away flat and I give in for a while, give into the music.
And I know I'm not alone in this, in remembering a past life, an overwhelming moment when the loss is too great. There are so many like us. It's my comfort, that...not being alone.
But let's not pretend our Christmases were ever everything we'd imagined they'd be Thomas. It was never easy. So many things defined your difference.
I would feed with envious eyes on the stories of 'normal' children. The letters to Santa, the hand-written cards, the imagination, the excitement, the advent calendar, the magic, the mystery, a filled pillowcase, frantic, excited: 'He's been! He's been!'...my own memories of it.
Christmas Day made you grumpy. Fancy...A child who doesn't like opening presents! But it's true. All the excitement, the noise, the flying paper, all those bright shiny new things to cope with all at once, picking up one thing, dropping it in a hurry to look at the next.
Too much for you.
And sometimes one of us would have to take you away and read you a favourite book - The Gruffalo, Bold Little Tiger, Guess How Much I Love You (to the moon and back again, by the way, in case you were wondering) while everyone else got on with trying to make it all...normal.
We racked our brains over ways of making the days special to you. No point in talking about Santa; if he ever popped round - a school party, a 'Santa steam special' - he'd be surrounded by children with shining eyes, and then there would be you, my angel, giving him an unimpressed, cursory glance. Who knows what you thought, but there was no wonder in your eyes. You saw right through him.
We'd pretend it was different, of course. 'Look Thomas, look, it's SANTA!' and we'd hold out your hand for him to shake and you ignored him, found something more interesting to look at, turned your wandering gaze to the flashing lights of a little boy's hi-tech trainers instead. Santa feeling a wee bit awkward, we could tell, not quite sure what to do. Us having to explain. The toy always something hugely inapproprite for you.
And the concerts and the nativities? The little ones, those who knew what they were doing, saying their lines; the towel-headed innkeeper, concentrating on his role, pointing angrily at Mary and Joseph: 'There is no oooom!'. The angels with wobbly coat-hanger halos; Mary, holding a Tiny Tears baby Jesus by the hair. And you, purple velour cape hanging off one shoulder, a teacher holding your hand to stop you huffily pulling off your crown (you never would keep a hat on), and holding on to your gold, frankincense, myrrh or whatever because you kept dropping it. You were a king, they said. But you didn't know it.
It broke my heart. There. I said it. Year after year after year...my little square peg in a Christmas-shaped hole............them, us, all of us, pretending.
The music upstairs has stopped. It's getting dark and the Christmas tree looks grumpier than ever. Outside, above the chimney pots and tiled rooftops, above the flat, grey concrete summits of office buildings, the eastern sky is a sharp, clear, piercing, bitter blue. There is one bright shining star.
It's barely gone four but the birds are roosting. Flocks of gulls and pigeons rise, fall, twist and about-turn. The white bellies of the gulls flying west are a dusky pink, reflecting the setting sun.
I hear shouts, look down, and on the street below a man and three children are lugging a huge net-swathed Christmas tree. The children, who must all be under 10 are plump, like little roly-polys in their puffer anoraks, bobble hats, wide scarves and too-big gloves. Their breath comes in sharp whispy blasts.
It's a large tree. Must be for a large room with a high ceiling, I think. Cornices, chandeliers, maybe a huge roaring fireplace swathed in holly where they'll be roasting chestnuts; there'll be halls decked and a piano in the corner around which they'll gather and sing carols. Maybe not. Dickens has a lot to answer for.
Had I forgotten how much you loved a Christmas tree? You would look and look at the lights. And you'd potter over..and plonk on to the floor, crossed legs, amid the already falling needles, right where the branches were thickest and longest.
I hang the heaviest, biggest, brightest baubles there. And you catch them between thumb and fingers..and twist them one way and then flick them back and spin them and spin them..and watch as they spin first this way, then that way, catching the light. Faster, faster; the glittery ones sprinkling a dust of gold or silver around you..and then slower and slower until you spin them again.
And if you a bit get too exuberant, and we move you away, you sit on the settee. And you gaze at the tree, taking it all in.
What are you thinking, Thomas? Those impenetrable nut-brown eyes with a glint of something that seem knowledgeable, wise, humouring. What do you know that we don't?
I must remember this Thomas - that your Christmas was special; filled with music, twinkly lights....and spinning spheres. That it was candlelight, snuggling up with a book, a party hat that never stayed on, a seat at the head of the table, the first plate to be cleared and always room for more. That on the night before Christmas I crept into your room as you slept and I would sit, watching you, and I would think about how, just at that moment, you were like any other child and I like any other mum.
Classic FM plays 'In the Bleak Mid Winter'.....to the proper tune, on a trumpet. It would be easy to sit here as night falls, and do nothing....wait until the tree in the corner becomes a dark, unhappy smudge.
But I think of you. How your joy was in the smallest, simplest things; how you were amazed by the shining baubles turning, turning....
There's a small, bright, gold, twirly-patterned star in a brown paper bag next to me, bought several days ago from heaving, chaotic, bursting at the seams Maison Du Monde. As I lift it out it drops glitter into my lap.
In the twilight I hold the bare branches of the unloved tree and, as the music switches to the gentle piano melody that is the beginning of 'Walking in the Air', I perch it on top.
A star for a star.
We can do this, I say.
xxxxx
The tree hasn't quite forgiven me, I think.
It sits there, glowering - if a tree can sit and glower - and I'm sure it sulks. Wishing, no doubt, it was in some brighter, grander place, surrounded by twinkly things and candlelight and merriment...and people who might actually love it a bit.
Poor thing. It didn't deserve this. Hauled home half-heartedly in a pull-along shopping trolley where it remained for days in the hall before I could muster the effort to bring it into daylight again.
There's nothing on it yet. The baubles need threading, and lights..we need to buy lights. At some point.
Worryingly I found myself talking to it. 'Hi tree,' I said. 'I'm sorry. I'm not much good at this. I used to be good at it, I used to be good at making the effort to be good at it. But this year...' and then I run out of things to say. A new level this! Talking to a Christmas tree, resenting it, because it doesn't know you, because it has nothing to do with you. As I say, poor thing.
I'm aware this is a tad bleak for Christmas, but it's how it is. I'll always tell you how it is. And how is it? Too quiet. The more noise the world makes preparing for Christmas the quieter it feels in here. Not lonely, just quiet.
The radiators creak and the woman in the flat upstairs has started playing music: 'As Time Goes By' from Casablanca. 'Now there's an irony,' I say to the tree, realising this must look a bit like Shirley Valentine talking to her wall (only my accent's a Yorkshire one). 'You must remember this....except you don't, do you? You don't remember any of it. How could you?'
Boxes spilling over with shiny sparkly things, cardboard tearing as we strain to cram them through the tiny door leading from the eaves, trying not to inhale dust and dead spiders or cut our fingers on bits of wood broken off from the door frame. Teetering down the stairs and bursting into the lounge, arms overflowing: 'Look Thomas! Christmas!'
You bang the boxes with the flat of your hands, shake the jingle bells and snatch at the tinsel we put on your head. You get glitter on the tip of your nose and it twinkles as you move. We play your special Christmas videos and sing 'the wind goes whoo in the middle of the night' or ' here we go round the Christmas tree allll daaaay long!' and give you your favourite toy while we begin the construction job on the tree, usually with a glass of fizzy stuff or make-it-from-a-sachet mulled wine.
The memory is a shimmering vision - blurred at the edges - noisy and bright, a shining ghost of Christmas past.
The smell of a real Christmas tree seems to fill the room. You can almost hear it greedily sucking water from our old gaudy crepe paper-covered pot that's somewhere in a storage unit in Derbyshire..along with all our other Christmas bits and pieces. Boxed up, put away.
This artificial one knows it is a poor second best.
Oh, despite the music upstairs it is still too quiet. Classic FM should do it, but the DJs are simpering and saccharine and listeners phone in requests, recounting scenes of jollity: 'ooh, we're so excited....all in the car travelling south to see our six grandchildren! Can you play Oh Come All Ye Faithful?!'. 'Oh sod off', I say to them, to the tree.
But I don't switch off. There's 'Oh Holy Night' and 'Away in a Manger', and as they play I sink where I stood for a moment, on to the hard parquet floor in this far away flat and I give in for a while, give into the music.
And I know I'm not alone in this, in remembering a past life, an overwhelming moment when the loss is too great. There are so many like us. It's my comfort, that...not being alone.
But let's not pretend our Christmases were ever everything we'd imagined they'd be Thomas. It was never easy. So many things defined your difference.
I would feed with envious eyes on the stories of 'normal' children. The letters to Santa, the hand-written cards, the imagination, the excitement, the advent calendar, the magic, the mystery, a filled pillowcase, frantic, excited: 'He's been! He's been!'...my own memories of it.
Christmas Day made you grumpy. Fancy...A child who doesn't like opening presents! But it's true. All the excitement, the noise, the flying paper, all those bright shiny new things to cope with all at once, picking up one thing, dropping it in a hurry to look at the next.
Too much for you.
And sometimes one of us would have to take you away and read you a favourite book - The Gruffalo, Bold Little Tiger, Guess How Much I Love You (to the moon and back again, by the way, in case you were wondering) while everyone else got on with trying to make it all...normal.
We racked our brains over ways of making the days special to you. No point in talking about Santa; if he ever popped round - a school party, a 'Santa steam special' - he'd be surrounded by children with shining eyes, and then there would be you, my angel, giving him an unimpressed, cursory glance. Who knows what you thought, but there was no wonder in your eyes. You saw right through him.
We'd pretend it was different, of course. 'Look Thomas, look, it's SANTA!' and we'd hold out your hand for him to shake and you ignored him, found something more interesting to look at, turned your wandering gaze to the flashing lights of a little boy's hi-tech trainers instead. Santa feeling a wee bit awkward, we could tell, not quite sure what to do. Us having to explain. The toy always something hugely inapproprite for you.
And the concerts and the nativities? The little ones, those who knew what they were doing, saying their lines; the towel-headed innkeeper, concentrating on his role, pointing angrily at Mary and Joseph: 'There is no oooom!'. The angels with wobbly coat-hanger halos; Mary, holding a Tiny Tears baby Jesus by the hair. And you, purple velour cape hanging off one shoulder, a teacher holding your hand to stop you huffily pulling off your crown (you never would keep a hat on), and holding on to your gold, frankincense, myrrh or whatever because you kept dropping it. You were a king, they said. But you didn't know it.
It broke my heart. There. I said it. Year after year after year...my little square peg in a Christmas-shaped hole............them, us, all of us, pretending.
The music upstairs has stopped. It's getting dark and the Christmas tree looks grumpier than ever. Outside, above the chimney pots and tiled rooftops, above the flat, grey concrete summits of office buildings, the eastern sky is a sharp, clear, piercing, bitter blue. There is one bright shining star.
It's barely gone four but the birds are roosting. Flocks of gulls and pigeons rise, fall, twist and about-turn. The white bellies of the gulls flying west are a dusky pink, reflecting the setting sun.
I hear shouts, look down, and on the street below a man and three children are lugging a huge net-swathed Christmas tree. The children, who must all be under 10 are plump, like little roly-polys in their puffer anoraks, bobble hats, wide scarves and too-big gloves. Their breath comes in sharp whispy blasts.
It's a large tree. Must be for a large room with a high ceiling, I think. Cornices, chandeliers, maybe a huge roaring fireplace swathed in holly where they'll be roasting chestnuts; there'll be halls decked and a piano in the corner around which they'll gather and sing carols. Maybe not. Dickens has a lot to answer for.
Had I forgotten how much you loved a Christmas tree? You would look and look at the lights. And you'd potter over..and plonk on to the floor, crossed legs, amid the already falling needles, right where the branches were thickest and longest.
I hang the heaviest, biggest, brightest baubles there. And you catch them between thumb and fingers..and twist them one way and then flick them back and spin them and spin them..and watch as they spin first this way, then that way, catching the light. Faster, faster; the glittery ones sprinkling a dust of gold or silver around you..and then slower and slower until you spin them again.
And if you a bit get too exuberant, and we move you away, you sit on the settee. And you gaze at the tree, taking it all in.
What are you thinking, Thomas? Those impenetrable nut-brown eyes with a glint of something that seem knowledgeable, wise, humouring. What do you know that we don't?
I must remember this Thomas - that your Christmas was special; filled with music, twinkly lights....and spinning spheres. That it was candlelight, snuggling up with a book, a party hat that never stayed on, a seat at the head of the table, the first plate to be cleared and always room for more. That on the night before Christmas I crept into your room as you slept and I would sit, watching you, and I would think about how, just at that moment, you were like any other child and I like any other mum.
Classic FM plays 'In the Bleak Mid Winter'.....to the proper tune, on a trumpet. It would be easy to sit here as night falls, and do nothing....wait until the tree in the corner becomes a dark, unhappy smudge.
But I think of you. How your joy was in the smallest, simplest things; how you were amazed by the shining baubles turning, turning....
There's a small, bright, gold, twirly-patterned star in a brown paper bag next to me, bought several days ago from heaving, chaotic, bursting at the seams Maison Du Monde. As I lift it out it drops glitter into my lap.
In the twilight I hold the bare branches of the unloved tree and, as the music switches to the gentle piano melody that is the beginning of 'Walking in the Air', I perch it on top.
A star for a star.
We can do this, I say.
xxxxx
Sunday, 18 March 2012
A different kind of Mother's Day
It was always such a bittersweet day, Mother's Day.
You never knew, of course, what day it was. Your busy little head full of other things.
But kind, thoughtful friends and family always made sure the day was marked.
A card with your signature scrawled across it, guided by an adult hand. A bunch of spring flowers beautifully tied, or perhaps my favourites, yellow fuscias, in their plastic wrapping.
They'd be put into your hand and you would be gently prodded in the back with an eager, excited 'go on Thomas, give it to mum'.
You would walk across to me, in your puppet-like way, and nearly drop them somewhere in the vicinity before turning your attention elsewhere, so I had to grab them quickly. And I would be effusive and so pleased but it always made me sad that you didn't really care one way or the other.
Sometimes I would get such a lot of cards!
In the early days, when it was just you and me, and my poor family didn't quite know what to do, different people would drop in a card just to make sure I got one: 'Thomas asked me to get you this,' they'd say.
And then, of course there'd be the card from school that you'd 'made yourself': folded card, green crayon stems and leaves and yellow tissue paper for daffodil petals.
Again, your messy 'Thomas' signature scrawled inside.
And I loved them and I treasure them. But each time it broke my heart because I wanted, wanted you to be able to do it all by yourself but you couldn't...and you never would be able to. And why were we pretending that this wasn't the case?
It was same with the pictures they sent home with you at the end of term. I know it was all from a teacher's hand. I know you'd have been bored to tears being made to faff about with felt or macaroni or crepe paper to make a collage of a tree or whatever. Creatively crafting was not your thing at all.
Now, a radiator and a wooden spoon to bang it with, that's more like it! A washing machine and something to clatter about inside it, now you're talking!
I hope this isn't making me seem ungrateful to the people who made the effort, for Mother's Day, on your behalf but I know they understand that the day made me a bit down. And they were sad too, behind their smiles. Sad for me, for you, appreciating that Mother's Day was difficult, different, not what it was supposed to be.
In truth though, every moment you 'cuddled in', every moment you giggled as I recited, off by heart, 'Room on the Broom', 'The Gruffalo', 'The Snail and the Whale', 'Bold Little Tiger', 'Chicken Licken', 'Monkey Puzzle' (my, what a repertoire!), was worth more than all the Mother's Day cards in the world to me.
Every time you said 'please' in Makaton sign language when I asked you if you wanted a sing-song, every time you sniggered as I made a bash at 'My Grandfather's Clock', 'Two Little Girls in Blue', 'Wouldn't it Be Loverrrly' and 'Moon River' (quite the virtuouso!), are moments so precious they were all the Mother's day presents I would ever need.
I still recite the stories, to make sure I don't forget. I still sing the songs too.
Now you're not here. And I'm in this new place, this new country, this new city, meeting new people. And I know I will have to face, so many times, 'The Question'. It's a question I dread, but I'm always braced for it - and I wait for it every time I'm introduced.
'Do you have children?' people ask.
And I breathe and smile and then I tell them. Smack 'em in the face with it, gently though.
'I had a Thomas,' I say. 'But he died.'.
And I can see the horror appear in their eyes and how they want to back off, run away, take back the question, they want the earth to swallow them up, they flounder, they stammer and they genuinely don't know what to do.
I try make it easy for them, of course I do. I pre-empt them. I tell them it's ok, that I'm ok, that all is well and that they must, please, not worry. But then they ask your age, they ask how you died and they express astonishment and I feel so terribly guilty when I tell them you had 'special needs', as if that explained your departure!
I wish I didn't have to because sometimes I see them almost relax as if I've suggested, in that case, perhaps it's not so bad.
But I can't deny you. I was your mum. I still am your mum. And I would shout your name from the rooftops every day if I could.
And on this day, this day that caused me so much mixed-up stuff when you were alive, I remember, above all things, how lucky I was to have had you at all.
You never knew, of course, what day it was. Your busy little head full of other things.
But kind, thoughtful friends and family always made sure the day was marked.
A card with your signature scrawled across it, guided by an adult hand. A bunch of spring flowers beautifully tied, or perhaps my favourites, yellow fuscias, in their plastic wrapping.
They'd be put into your hand and you would be gently prodded in the back with an eager, excited 'go on Thomas, give it to mum'.
You would walk across to me, in your puppet-like way, and nearly drop them somewhere in the vicinity before turning your attention elsewhere, so I had to grab them quickly. And I would be effusive and so pleased but it always made me sad that you didn't really care one way or the other.
Sometimes I would get such a lot of cards!
In the early days, when it was just you and me, and my poor family didn't quite know what to do, different people would drop in a card just to make sure I got one: 'Thomas asked me to get you this,' they'd say.
And then, of course there'd be the card from school that you'd 'made yourself': folded card, green crayon stems and leaves and yellow tissue paper for daffodil petals.
Again, your messy 'Thomas' signature scrawled inside.
And I loved them and I treasure them. But each time it broke my heart because I wanted, wanted you to be able to do it all by yourself but you couldn't...and you never would be able to. And why were we pretending that this wasn't the case?
It was same with the pictures they sent home with you at the end of term. I know it was all from a teacher's hand. I know you'd have been bored to tears being made to faff about with felt or macaroni or crepe paper to make a collage of a tree or whatever. Creatively crafting was not your thing at all.
Now, a radiator and a wooden spoon to bang it with, that's more like it! A washing machine and something to clatter about inside it, now you're talking!
I hope this isn't making me seem ungrateful to the people who made the effort, for Mother's Day, on your behalf but I know they understand that the day made me a bit down. And they were sad too, behind their smiles. Sad for me, for you, appreciating that Mother's Day was difficult, different, not what it was supposed to be.
In truth though, every moment you 'cuddled in', every moment you giggled as I recited, off by heart, 'Room on the Broom', 'The Gruffalo', 'The Snail and the Whale', 'Bold Little Tiger', 'Chicken Licken', 'Monkey Puzzle' (my, what a repertoire!), was worth more than all the Mother's Day cards in the world to me.
Every time you said 'please' in Makaton sign language when I asked you if you wanted a sing-song, every time you sniggered as I made a bash at 'My Grandfather's Clock', 'Two Little Girls in Blue', 'Wouldn't it Be Loverrrly' and 'Moon River' (quite the virtuouso!), are moments so precious they were all the Mother's day presents I would ever need.
I still recite the stories, to make sure I don't forget. I still sing the songs too.
Now you're not here. And I'm in this new place, this new country, this new city, meeting new people. And I know I will have to face, so many times, 'The Question'. It's a question I dread, but I'm always braced for it - and I wait for it every time I'm introduced.
'Do you have children?' people ask.
And I breathe and smile and then I tell them. Smack 'em in the face with it, gently though.
'I had a Thomas,' I say. 'But he died.'.
And I can see the horror appear in their eyes and how they want to back off, run away, take back the question, they want the earth to swallow them up, they flounder, they stammer and they genuinely don't know what to do.
I try make it easy for them, of course I do. I pre-empt them. I tell them it's ok, that I'm ok, that all is well and that they must, please, not worry. But then they ask your age, they ask how you died and they express astonishment and I feel so terribly guilty when I tell them you had 'special needs', as if that explained your departure!
I wish I didn't have to because sometimes I see them almost relax as if I've suggested, in that case, perhaps it's not so bad.
But I can't deny you. I was your mum. I still am your mum. And I would shout your name from the rooftops every day if I could.
And on this day, this day that caused me so much mixed-up stuff when you were alive, I remember, above all things, how lucky I was to have had you at all.
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