I'm not over all this, if that's what you're wondering. Is that even possible?! To be over the death of your child? I don't believe I'll ever be 'over it'.
My mum said it a certain way the other day... Saying you're over something isn't recognising it enough. 'Getting beyond' something implies manouvering around it, rather than it not being there at all; getting beyond it but knowing it's still there and will never go away! But still putting distance between it and you.
Mum was referring to this poem:
Starlings In Winter
“Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.”
- Mary Oliver
I like that idea of getting past something that I am still very much aware of. It's still there and always will be. I'm not 'over it' in the traditional sense but still...
I don't think I'm explaining myself very well.
I miss my amazingly beautiful daughter. I always will. But I can find happiness in my days now. I explain to people I no longer have bad days. Just sad moments in otherwise happy / normal / busy days. And those moments sometimes hit me like a sledgehammer. But I can cope with them now.
I will never be so far from this that I can no longer turn and still see it. I walk past it, tripping and stumbling as I go and it's always there. But I have to be able to carry on.
