Author: sheilahjfrench

Longing

7 April 2018

I was 57 when you died, Vaughn. Now, five years later, I’m 62. I’ll be 67 at ten years; 72 when you’ve been gone for fifteen years; and 77 at twenty years. If I live to 82, you will have been gone for 25 years.

In my last year, whenever it is, I will be ready to see you.

I will be longing to see you.

Tsunami

29 March 2018

Another March 29 almost over.

This one’s been a beautiful sunny one. Insects glittering in the light as they search for the first unfolding flowers.

Leo is staggering about in a bit of a daze–I wasn’t sure he’d make it to today–and I’m feeling slightly dazed myself.

I said to Johnny last night, “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.” I guess I thought I’d have a tsunami as Tina calls them. But you can’t MAKE yourself have a tsunami, even if it’s the fifth anniversary of your child’s death and you think you really should have a tsunami.

Well I take that back:  I could probably bring on a tsunami by going over all the old stories about all the big and little things I did wrong, and about how this just shouldn’t have happened–how every unbelievable little thing seemed to add up and go against Vaughn. And I do still believe a lot of that–it’s not that it’s wrong per se–it’s more that it doesn’t really seem to matter.

What matters is now. Now for me is a culmination of everything that’s happened before. So in that way Vaughn and his loss is always a part of my now.

And always a part of my now anyway, because I so often think of Vaughn, picture him, and feel him with me.

If I reflect on the five years–such a marker–yes, it feels like a long long time. And my main thought, really, is that I’ve healed a lot since then.

I used to be afraid that my healing would leave Vaughn out–that I would be abandoning him. But it’s starting to feel more like I’ve healed AROUND him. Like a tree growing around something embedded in it–a nail? No, because that is something foreign and the tree has managed to wall it off–grow in spite of the object.

Whereas Vaughn is a PART of me. He has actually nourished my growth. Almost like a reverse birth–he went back inside and helped me to be reborn. He has sustained and supported my growth.

So…a weird kind of gift, yeah. One I would love to give back if I could. But also one I treasure, because my son gave it to me.

Dull

28 March 2018

Well I have spent the day dull. Dull and depressed I suppose, on this day before the 6th anniversary of Vaughn’s death. Anniversary–what a word–it sounds oddly celebratory. Did I think I should feel a certain way? All these norms. All these conditioned ideas. All this trying to control the experience.

And yet I have just been dull. As I am so familiarly on less momentous days. ‘I’ don’t know what ‘I’ should feel. As soon as ‘I’ get into it the performance begins.

I am just hearing the dregs of the raindrops fall from the branches. Finally the rain has stopped. A dove has ventured out from wherever it’s been sheltering all day and is emitting its hooting call

As though saying, “Yes, I am still here. The rain has cleared. And we resume.” And what else can I do but resume? I have no choice in the matter. I resume along with everything else–the plants growing and they will adjust to climate change or not. Either way they’ll die–maybe their progeny will survive awhile, maybe not.

I resume as part of all this. A human experiencing loss. A human trying to learn not to try–ha!

Vaughn is my son forever. He is real to me. Trying or not trying makes no difference to that.

I don’t want to walk through those last memories now, even though the date is inviting me to. We’ll see how tomorrow goes. Really I just want to be alone and be quiet.

And if I’m dull I’m dull.

Elephant

23 March 2018

Death is but a passage to another dimension so they say–

and some days I can believe that.

Many days I am almost sure I will see you again–

you have told me that yourself.

Some days I am close to accepting the unfathomable reality of your absence–

yet I am a human animal.

Like a mother elephant standing over her fallen calf, my body and all my senses will cry for you as long as  I live on this cruel and beautiful and thoroughly incomprehensible earth.

Burn

9 March 2018

The heat of this pain seems to reduce me to ashes. The inescapability of it. The ISNESS of it.

Shouldn’t it burn away all my pretenses?  My posturing? So I could rise, like a phoenix, free of illusions.

And yet the illusions persist.

So I must endure and accept the raw pain, and also somehow endure and accept this life of illusion, which I believe will always persist at some level.

Perhaps one can never be pure. One can only accept one’s impurity.

Pure

20 February, 2018

At dusk the wet sand turns pink, turns blue, even green. Just reflecting the sky.

The sea does the same.

No matter how many times we haul up a bucket of water to soak the tuatuas, seeing the water is clear, we still think the sea is blue, or pink, even green.

We think we are the thoughts and conditions we reflect.

But we are clear. We are pure.

Pierce

6 February 2018

My son died…

My son died…

That cannot be…

That cannot be!

Nearly five years now and still those same thoughts and feelings, those same exact word pierce my soul. This is a fact, and yet I cannot grasp it. Still.

My child–his body lifeless on the bed. No breath–no more breaths ever. No pulse.

How can this be? How will I ever understand?

I can’t. I just go on–not understanding. A chunk of my life removed. Like a calved glacier. It can’t be reattached. The part of me that goes forward, that lives, that can be happy and feel love–I don’t really understand that person. Surely it can’t be the same one who lost her child. She could never be happy. She is in everlasting pain. Everlasting horror and pain.