11. Jul, 2019

Hoping for hope

I’ve been hanging on too tight. So tight I can see and feel the scars left behind clinging onto my worn-out soul. It is pitted with the ups and downs of life.

The absence of your life and your love is as bitter and as tart to stomach as the green lemon hanging from a nearby tree. I wish I could move on and leave all my troubles behind, but now you are gone they stir around me like an unwelcome chilly breeze on a blue winter’s day.

You can’t hear me grieve because I am not done with you living. Reminders of your presence adorn and surround me and their presence make it impossible to mourn you, Mum.

Extremes of emotion continue to plague me. I am either numb to the core or swamped by unbridled anger that wells up until spill and then in a cascade it washes over me like the swell of a Tsunami.  Such extremes are as polar as love and hate and in an ironic twist, I realise that is what my anger means.  I only have love for others, but loathing for myself.

Something went wrong somewhere Mum. I feel faulty and in a way, incomplete.

My mind drifts…I am yelling obscenities at the man in the car ahead, who for no reason decides to drive twenty kilometres below the speed limit. I snap! Dislodged by an alternate reality.

The hole in the pit of my stomach widens and out pours shame and frustration…but flickering and sparking still, is the lit fuse of anger that won’t be blown out.

Eyes frozen, I daydream into a deep trance. Closing them I focus on my forehead and I am, in a moment flying twenty feet above. Looking down I sit in my chair, one leg crossed. The winter chill sees my feet stepped with tread, the boots supplying a defence against the cool cement beneath. For now, I am the calmest I have been in months. Sunlight shines brightly on this crisp clear day and it warms and reddens my skin. The dog barks at the garbo, calling his name I settle back in my camp recliner and write. The pen spewing illegible ink, the pen spewing unintelligible words.

But I still sense my disquiet, my discomfort; nothing is ever absolute. The neighbour disrupts the peace, the sound of the mower rumbles the earth. Drifting above I notice a jetliner off to the east, it is picked up by my astute radar and I twitch and yearn to hear only the sound of nature.

My skin sucks the sun’s rays in like osmosis. Tapping my forehead I re-centre to chase the stillness. I grin, mowers gone, rooster’s crow and birds chatter…tranquillity is restored. I settle back, the pen chases the page, the dog barks again and irritation builds “Ranger…no…sit!” I command. What a simple dog I think. The phone chimes and I fall back to earth. Peace, again so short-lived…shattered.

Reality doesn’t lie, you are not here. I miss you, my heart misses you, my eyes miss you, but your un-erased messages on the answering machine remind me I hear you, you are still here because you are in me…yes, you are in me.

You sent me a message this morning whilst I showered. Out of all the songs on my Spotify playlist you arranged them to speak to me to deliver a message from the heavens above. Your favourite song, The World of our Own played and I sang to you while recalling your life, your love, the life we shared and lastly your funeral, where we played it as a tribute, then rotated Empty Chairs by Don McLean, a hint and pointer to your physical absence and your passing, and thirdly Leo Sayer’s, When I Need You.

The experience felt like it came from a higher power – some kind of spiritual plain beyond the tangible. The lyric “when I need you, you are only a heartbeat away” struck me as being true, because your heart beats within me.

You were, I believe, in your infinite wisdom telling me that you are never absent.

Grief is a bitter pill, grief is a beast, and it has a personality of its own. When it surfaces it makes its presence felt harshly and when you think it is hidden, it is still present sucking life into a vortex leaving only emptiness and a ghostliness behind.

I have hoped for a message of hope. I will live for a continued message of hope in the hope easier days are ahead.

They say time will tell…well to be sure…time knows much more.