8 posts tagged “loss”

Her name was Helen.

The name means "light" and that's what she is. As I trod heavily through the cemetery this morning, clutching futile flowers and dragging my leaden feet and heart towards my sister's grave, I saw a pink star  balloon flipping and dancing on her place. It twirled to reaveal "Helen" written on one side and "our shining star" on the other.  For the first time in weeks of torrential, relentless rain, the sun warmed my face and heated my jeans so that they scorched my legs whilst I sat by her grave with its trinkets, buddhas, candles and clouds of pink, white and purple flowers (everyone has colour coordinated their flowers this year, by some happy accident, and I know Helen- the girl who couldn't sleep before her bedroom was immaculate- would approve). At her funeral we played "Here Comes the Sun", and come it did today, filtering through the leaves of the grand trees which fill the huge, peaceful cemetery. I watched the balloon bobbing for our shinining star and felt the hot rays dry the tears on my cheeks. I felt filled with Helen's light and the words of a poem came to my mind: she was my sun, my moon, my East, my West...

My words may appear hyperbolic, maybe cliched (the poem is a cliche since that scene in Four Weddings). From those who scorn grief and find the inflated emotions of the bereaved irksome- the kind of people who can't see the point in roadside memorials- we hear warnings about putting the deceased on a pedestal. Well, I always had Helen on a pedestal, since long before she died, from the moment that I saw her wriggling turtle-like head craning on its long neck minutes after she was born. I make no apologies for the fact that to me she was practically perfect. My love for her almost hurt because I knew somehow that she was too precious, too ephemeral. When I lugged her fat beanbag baby-body around, my own seven-year-old frame to small to carry her but desperate to play mummy; when I would catch her watching her older siblings' games silently,  smilingly, wobbling on legs which had just learned to stand and encased in a pea green babygro; when I walked her home from school, dusky eyes gazing from a pale face framed by a conker-shiny bob and then the hood of a red duffel coat; when I shouted in the face of the children who bullied her, and took her to see Harry Potter, and we ate Chinese takeaway in pyjamas (she liked it at my house because "you don't have to get dressed and you can watch TV all day"). As I watched her miraculously stretch and grow from a round little hobbit to a slender, willowy teenage beauty. When tears stung my eyes as I watched her dancing, flying across a stage. When tears of laughter ran down my face as she cracked me up with her jokes and one-liners. And when tears wouldn't come as I heard the words "we've lost her" and she spun away from me, worlds away in a millisecond.

Through it all she was nothing but light to me. She is the wonder that is keeping the stars apart. And to borrow someone else's words for the final time today: now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand.

I love you Helen, my sister.

I had a dream last night that my sister H hadn't died; she had been missing all this time and she came home.

In the dream I was with all my siblings and we were just yelling with joy. Then I wrote a blog post about it with the title: "Pleasure Beyond Measure".

Two things aside- a) that if she did come back, I would be too busy holding her to blog about it! and b) that the title of the post in my dream is a Mars advertising slogan which is a bit weird- those things aside, the title of the dream-blog says it all.

Pegging up clothes in the garden. Early evening sunlight illuminates young leaves, a light wind snatches at the clothes as I hang them on the line. I enjoy the feeling of stretching my arms up, and the methodical action of snapping on the pegs.

A shirt billows across my vision, back and forth. In the seconds between, I glimpse my garden, the pots I have cared for flourishing, leaves in shades of green against cream brick walls. One second brings contentment. The shirt blows in front of my eyes again and golden light streams through the cotton. The next second fills my body with a great shudder of sadness, as I look on all I have which my sister does not. The sadness paralyses me for moments as the clothes blow back and forth, my hands frozen above the washing line.

In my mind's eye her face turns toward me in slow motion with a flick of dark, dark hair and a glimpse of her sweet , wide smile.

The shirt blows before my face again and she is gone.

My life with all its activity and stress and work and fun, suddenly seems like so much noise. Not for the first time recently, I feel like a fool, for blustering on with life without stopping to listen to the roar of silence which marks her absence. I can't help but wonder: what must they think of me, all the people around me? To the outside world it might look like I don't care, by the way I continue to fill my world with the building blocks of normality: work, home, friends, family.

Why do I keep stacking up the blocks, eyes fixed to the future? Because I have to. Because if I don't, they'll all come tumbling down around me and I won't know how to build them up again. Because it's what she would want, and it's what I want too. But the memory of her runs through me like words through a stick of rock.

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart).

Show us something you did, made, saw or bought this past weekend.

More consumerism this weekend. I am writing this post sitting in our new tubby chair which we bought on sale at a bargainous price, from my best friend's partner's dad's company (still with me?). Click on the link especially if you live in north-west England, because Lounge Lizard's stuff is really very fine and handmade and beautiful, plus it's a family company. Buy!

Also, we got wifi. I just walked across the room to the tubby chair, carrying the laptop, whilst on the internet. I could run up and down the stairs, carrying the laptop, whilst on the internet. I could blog in the bath! Or perhaps not, after the white wine/laptop incident of 2006. Me + electricals +liquid = not so much.

Glancing back over my blog of late, it's all shopping and hair and braces and silly jokes. A whole heap of frippery. But I like it! I am not obsessed with shopping/looking in the mirror/brushing my teeth. But I am wholeheartedly glad that I am generating such flippant and materialistic, um, material. Because I can, and because my heart feels able.

My best friend has noticed it : I'm more upbeat these days. Grief has't got me by the balls quite as tightly as it did before. Now it's kind of hanging round my neck and sticking its claws into my heart from time to time. I was prompted into considering this when I saw yesterday's Question of the Day: What were you doing one year ago? I made haste to my diary, only to find that, one year ago, I seriously thought I was insane and was about to seek professional help for said madness. I didn't really want to carry on without my sister H (who died in July 2004) but knew I had to.
I decided not to blog about what I was doing this time last year.

Depite rather than because of the professional help (he wore a belt with a scorpion encased in the amber buckle, and hyptonised me without warning one day), these days I know I am not mad. I know I can carry on. Damn, I wish she were still here. But I really do exist much more in the real world these days. I can talk about, and care about, my teeth and my hair and clown clothes. I have fun. I laugh, I dance, and, unfortunately for those nearby, I sing.

In the very early days after we lost H so suddenly, I would search the faces of my family as we sat paralysed by shock and grief. "It won't always be like this", we would tell each other, not believing it for a second. "We won't always feel this way". The thought that we might made us desperate.  Even six months later I scribbled in my diary "help me please somebody or I will die of a broken heart". Each month for at least a year and a half, the 10th of each month would trip me up and I'd be sent sprawling back into the pit. Now, 32 months since she died, sometimes the 10th passes me by without that realisation.

I don't know what it is, because I'm not any less sad that she died. I don't miss her any less. I just... this is hard for me to say... I feel a lot better than I did.

And now I feel horribly guilty for expressing this. Part of me still feels as though I should spend my life not just grieving for, but in mourning for, the sister I have lost. And there's the difference. To me, grief is the emotion, the missing of her, the memories, the wishing, the love- pure and fierce.  Mourning is the physical symptoms- stomach ache, migraines, fatigue- and the inability to concentrate, the workplace breakdowns, the paralysis, the dread of company and the total loss of self-esteem, the being stuck in one awful moment and not moving forward.

 I'll always be grieving for her. How could I not? She was amazing. But am I still in mourning? Tentatively, although I dread posting this and admitting it, I would say I am not.

What's one thing you regret not doing? 
Submitted by Mr. Nice.

It was a Saturday in summer 2004, and on the spur of the moment I had decided to make the 90 minute journey to visit my dad and my 16-year-old sister H. I deliberately didn't tell H I was coming to visit- I wanted to surprise her.

When I arrived, she was shopping in town, buying things for her trip abroad. She was setting off in a couple of weeks, after her GCSEs were finished. I chatted with Dad over cups of tea and waited for her to come home. When she didn't roll up by 4pm or so I started to worry, as always (still not quite able to believe she was old enough to go to town- or anywhere- on her own). So I phoned her mobile and she answered in her surprised, eager squawk "oh hi, beast!" (my nickname). We had a brief conversation, and she said she was just walking home from the bus stop.

"See you in a few minutes then", I said.

"OK beast", and then, "what?!".

I remember her walking through the door, and I can honestly say she looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her. All grown up, even though it had only been a few weeks since my last visit. She was wearing a mint-coloured T-shirt which brought out her green eyes, and she was all glimmery and sparkly- shiny dark hair, lip gloss, shimmer on her eyelids. Her tall, willowy frame was loaded down with bags and she excitedly talked me through her purchases.

We shared our plans for that evening. She was babysitting on her own, and though she was too shy to ask outright if I wanted to come with her, I could tell from the massive hints she was dropping and the hopeful look in her eye that she wanted me to join her. But I wanted to go to the pub with my friends. I didn't even mention going babysitting with her, even though I knew she'd be bored on her own. Even though I knew she was feeling glum because some of her friends were going to a party and hadn't invited her. I went to the pub instead.

Before I went out, H wanted to do my hair for me with her straighteners (her prized possession). I sat in her bedroom on a chair in the middle of the room, and she put on her new CD- Outkast- and sang all the words as she danced around the chair, straightening my hair. I can see her now, so cute: she wouldn't sing swear words so when she was singing Roses she sang "I know you like to think your sh! don't stink", instead, raising her finger to her lips for the "sh!".   

I went to the pub, and she went babysitting and had a boring time on her own. The next day we went shopping for prom shoes for H, and then I went home.

I never saw her again. She died less than a month a later.

The one thing I regret not doing is spending that evening with H when all she wanted was to hang out with her big sister and watch TV.

I regret not doing that for her. Because now, I would give my life to make her happy.

I regret not doing it for me. Because the thought of five minutes, let alone a whole evening, with her, is more joy than I can imagine.

I know those words sound cliched but they are true.

Hug your siblings, please? Be nice to them.

Nineteen years ago today, I held my baby sister in my arms for the first time.
In June 2004 I held her for the last time.
It's the third birthday of hers that we have spent bereft of her smile.
She was light, she was a graceful dance and a cheeky laugh.
There aren't really any words today, so I'll hand over to EE Cummings.

I carry your heart with me(I carry it in
my heart)
I am never without it(anywhere
I go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
I wantno world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

If my sister were alive, she would be collecting her A-level results with her friends today. There would be celebrations, champagne, pride, smiles and plans for an exciting future.

Instead it is just another day. And she is forever sixteen.

Beauty

I was watching Hollyoaks today, of all things, and a scene stopped me in my tracks. The acting in Hollyoaks is never great, and neither is the writing (and I only watch the omnibus sometimes, on a Sunday morning, honest), but occassionally I think, somebody writing that programme has been through something so that they know. They know what it is like to lose someone that you love, and just occasionally this shows, and it cuts through from their heart (whoever they are) to mine, in that secret part which is sorrow.

The scene was three kids, teenagers, who had lost their mum (accidentally killed, it would seem, by another character who was in a drink-driving rage because his wife was having an affair with her sixteen-year-old pupil. Of course) . They were looking through a box of things that belonged to her, and the camera zoomed in on a hairbrush that the daughter was holding, and the shot only lasted a second but I saw the hairs on the hairbrush and I felt it: whoever put that into the script, they know how loud the silence is and how heavy an empty space can be when someone is gone.

I've held a hairbrush that my sister used, and wondered how her hairs could be tangled in its prongs and yet she is not here; I've run my fingers over her jars of cleanser and body lotion, I've stared at the grooves left in a pot of lip balm by her own fingers, and I haven't dared to destroy those markings; once, I even took cotton wool from her bedroom bin and traced my hand over the smudges of mascara where she took her make-up off once. The trail of little things that a sixteen-year-old leaves behind them- this is what she left behind.

But is this all we leave behind? Traces of the physical person we once were on the material things we can longer use? Can my sister in her loveliness and vitality, really be reduced to a few strands of hair in a brush,  a fingerprint on a mirror, a pair of glasses bent in the middle that she'll never wear again? Does the fact that she was beautiful mean anything now that she "is" not?

To other people it seems macabre, maybe even pathetic, to cling to these remnants. But sometimes the memories, the love and the thought of a smile aren't enough. For those left  behind when someone goes, every artefect, every fingernail left on the side of a sink, the home video with the only five seconds of their voice that you will ever hear again- those tiny material things are important.

Once I sat on my bed crying with my sister's woolly scarf wrapped around my head so I  could breathe in  her perfume that  was fading as the months went by. I looked ridiculous, and I felt her laughing at me, and I smiled. And for a second she hadn't gone.

The remnants matter.

I don't know whether this is too personal of a subject to post about in a blog; I don't even really know what a blog is for, really... But I can't write about what's in my head without writing about what's in my head all the time, every day. And this is what is in there.