It's that time of year. My thoughts are a mess.
Just recently - i told Sonny after his dad died, that the whole 'Time heals' thing is kinda bullshit. I know this is not so comforting but it's true for me. I'm a lot better at speaking truths i know, than i am at comforts. Luckily people who know me, know enough to be strangely comforted by this. At least i hope so.. hehe
Time made spaces, time gave distance. Time goes on and is a constant reminder that things end and begin and we just keep moving. Life pushes on. Loss stops bleeding, but the scar still aches as if it never had the time to properly heal.
I opened the book on my desk to the words:
It's never too late-
To Cry
Sometimes it catches you unawares,
tears welling up without warning.
No matter how long ago,
no matter how often,
if you have sadness and grief locked away
it will eat at you.
Let it out.
Release it.
"We need never be ashamed of our tears"
And on the opposite page
It's never too late...
To write
Your stories are like no other.
Your experience.
Your view.
Your hopes, loses, triumphs
are unique.
Record them.
Invent them.
Write them.
"You can only write about what bites you"
***************************
7 years ago on this day, i opened my eyes and all i could see was brick walls. Hear a computer humming in the background. I can't even remember if Zane was there- i was having one of those moments where i wasn't sure if things were real.
I knew where i was, but there was this odd disconnection between my self and my thoughts, my body was there, and my eyes were seeing.... My reality seemed to not make any sense. It was a strangeness of feeling a weird little excitement, disbelief, and the massive sense of not knowing. At the back of my mind, the same feeling i had after my first car accident, the replay- the how did, the split second where everything could have been different. The collision.
The sense that nothing could undo it now.
I didn't want to look at the phone. Tried not to think of the things i left behind. How for once i didn't want to make things right. Didn't have anything to say.
How i recall these things really vividly all these years later... they tell me something of myself.
They tell me i hold things. They tell me i'm not as okay with it as i thought - maybe.
Maybe it does bite. As much as i reconciled the reasons - it still feels like - i don't know what it feels like... a little like nothing. These days - Grief feels like a hole that's just there. Curious. Sad. No matter how small. It's there. A space in me that makes me... not incomplete. Just different.
I don't like the word Grief. I don't like the word sorry. Where grief feels too coarse for what it is representing, sorry feels soggy. These two things won't even balance each other out. They're just uncomfortable and awkward.
I realised, i skirt around the truth sometimes- and in all my writings about mum, i never mention this word- there's this one word, that i say... doesn't bother me... but it does... it bothers me because no one says it out loud, i don't write it because i'm afraid of it's consequences, of it's implications.
I say i've reconciled the reasons... but i steer away from the word. THE word.
Suicide.
Part of this, is because it's dramatic. I don't want the drama. But if you don't say it, it gives weight to it. If you don't call it by what it is, it becomes ... well Voldemort.
Hehe... yes, i joke still.
People laugh awkwardly. Heads shake.
That Vien... she's so inappropriate.
Sometimes, people say to me... could it have been an accident?
She left a note.
oh.
She did leave A letter i never read or wanted to read. Even now, what does that matter. It was one moment of how she felt. Now it's gone.
Someone told me it was about a range of things. Amongst it she apologised because she wouldn't be around to see the families we would have.
Sometimes these words echo in my head. And as i type, Stella is crawling on the floor meowing. Jacie chases her and specifies that he is a baby boy cat.
Che is stuck at the table. Still finishing breakfast because he slept in and woke up when everyone else was done.
Tivi went to school. Kynans gone to childcare.
Joshua, the only grandchild she knew - had his 8th birthday just weeks ago.
Every August, we have this month of celebration that is shadowed by memories no one gives a voice to.
It's a month of contradictions. We celebrated her birthday that year, and i remember it because i was emailing Zane, telling him of banana cake and siblings who didn't show.
Show for what- i guess - i don't know- it's funny how the shards of words and years of regret hung just above our heads, and quietly we 'celebrated' just because we should.
Twenty days later, it all came down anyway.
What happened, it can't be changed... and it isn't regret that makes me feel the way i do as the years wear on... it's the permanence of just ONE moment.
I walked away from much of the person i used to be that night. Like shedding skin. I always told mum, to trust us as adults. To let go and do what made her happy. We would be fine.
Sometimes i wonder what right i had to speak for anyone else but me. Haha, we are fine though. In some ways we are so much better. In others, in the quietness - we hide the ugly lines of doubt, jagged and raw and edged with shame and regret.
Less defiant because the questions and pity have long since gone, i'm left with only the hologram of what happened, the snapshots of events. A sequence played and replayed.
And on this day also, i say to Zane, Happy anniversary. He half laughs.
I wonder how he feels about it... the night i chose to come to his house, the night he and Dave tried to entertain me with jokes and drawn pictures and when Dave left we were silent for a long time.
It's the anniversary of our first kiss. The moment he and i became an 'us'.
(and for all you gutter folk... it was- just a kiss.. haha... he was still a gentleman back then).
Things were so new between us, i didn't ask him to come to the funeral. My mum had never met any of my boyfriends, why change that. :P
It's hard to know what we would have been if that night never happened. It makes no sense to think upon those things.
But here it is - a release.
She waited for me, i think she wanted me to take Vinnie. I was late coming home. I'm sorry i couldn't spare my 16 year old sister, the things she now will always live with. The what if's - the if onlys.
I remember asking her 'Mum? Mum, what did you take?' and she couldn't answer me. I walked out, past the panic on Vinnies face and rang the ambulance.
I remember the shirt i was wearing that night and how i refused to wear it again. The paramedics and their obscene smiles. The nervous young assistant who kept looking at me apologetically as one of them made jokes about something and laughed. I stood in the doorway, wishing i could just tell them to leave her alone. To just let her go.
I remember walking from the hospital. Talking to Zane on the phone. Strangely numb and empty and free.
When i came home the next day, they stared at me. Dad apologised and thought i blamed him. The only words i spoke were 'I'm not angry.'. How i became angry at the spectacle we were to strangers who intruded on our spaces as if it was their right.
The police interviews. The officer who questioned me, blonde and awkward. Asking me about my mother- asking me how i knew she'd done this to herself. Could it have been an accident? Probably not, she was pretty ... you know... sad. ANd he'd lower his eyes when i answered. And apologised when we were done.
The weeks of chanting and temples and vegetarian food.
The night my friends came over and sat there, listening as i recounted events. Phone calls that seemed surreal.
Friends came and stayed the night, some i left in my bed when it was time to run away. Marii talking and me answering and falling asleep mid sentence. The amazing flower arrangement she made for the coffin.
That funeral where people whispered and stared at us, decked out in our white headbands- standing kneeling, just being there but feeling strangely removed from it all.
The funeral where i also said goodbye to Tim for the last time. Another piece of my past that i left behind me.
All the apologies i couldn't make.
Phuong who stepped in and took over - as she'd always done when we were kids and our parents were busy.
All the days that blurred together.
Then - they were gone.
By the end of that November, the whispers of death were replaced with the scandal of new life. Tivianh was almost 2 months in the making. She swept it all up in a whirlwind of chaos. And the rest was history.
I started writing this just past 9am. Now it's heading towards 9pm.
The thoughts are distracted, disjointed. It is what it is.
I realised the reason why i probably think about this day more... is that for the first time in these 7 years, i'm not pregnant or chasing a bunch of toddlers. I'm not overseas with other things on my mind. It's been settled. Quiet.
Anyway, that year
this song was always on the radio and soundtracked my thoughts for ages:
And so - today the kids were cute, and they played superheros, and ran like crazies from eating too much sugar from Krispy Kreme donuts, the sun shone and we lived and laughed and the world moved on.
In the end, there's so much to be thankful for we all know this.
Still, it sucks when people die.
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