Stay Safe

"Stay safe." I used to say to him. "Because if anything were to happen to you, I would cry forever."

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Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day

I wake, as I do most mornings, with a sinking sense of dread.

I try to slip back into sleep, but its too late. The dreams that are lurking there will give me no purchase. And if my brain has managed to process anything useful while I slept... let it keep its own counsel.

I am no longer surprised to find my eyes wet, my head pounding or my heart palpitating. I touch the corner of my eye to feel the wetness. Just for confirmation. Just to be sure. That’s just normal now. My heart heaves and sinks. It leaves the emptiness of my chest cavity and slips wetly and effortlessly through my ribcage. It bursts painlessly through the flesh on my back, flutters through the linen sheets and the goose-down topper on the bed. It navigates the springs inside the mattress, finds a gap in the floorboards and falls swiftly, a dead weight, through the empty room below. It cracks its way noisily through the foundations. Down and down, burrowing its way through layers of ancient bedrock til it is embedded in the earth’s core. It can fall no deeper. Perhaps it will be safe there, where I can’t reach it, it can’t break any further. Perhaps the heat will warm some life into it, so it can be useful once again.

I used to be good at sleeping. Now I am good at waking. I used to like sleep, it used to be a pleasurable past-time. Now it is a rocky thing I navigate. I go to sleep tired. I wake up tired. And the intervening hours give little respite.

I can tell that it is just before 6, even before I prize open an eye for confirmation from the little blue numbers on the bedside clock. A small black wooden cube, the size of a child’s building block. I bought it from one of those “fallen-off-the-back-of-a-truck” stalls that pop up like magic in the centre of the shopping mall. He, the man I bought from, and I, both know that I paid too much. But a guy has to make a buck, right? He was Chinese, he was middle-aged, he barely spoke English.

Its 5.40 am. I can tell its going to be a cold day, I can feel cool air brushing my feet where I’ve pushed them out from under the covers. The room smells gently of vanilla and bergamot and I can hear in the distance, the squish of rubber tyres on wet road. I don’t like rainy days. There is not the usual sound of birdsong, but I can hear gulls calling one another, perhaps that is what woke me, this time. There must be storms out to sea for them to be this far inland, though its not far, we are only 7kms from the beach.

It is still an hour and a half till the alarm sounds. I try to go back to sleep. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. I turn on my side and fold my arms across my heart, as if to hold dear that which has already gone. I curl up as small as I can and lay as quietly as I can. Thigh to thigh, knee to knee, calf to calf, heel to heel, ankle to ankle, toe to toe. And try to empty my mind. I recite a mantra. Sleep, don't think. Sleep, don't think. Sleep, don't think. I try to find the stillness and that intangible space between becoming asleep and falling awake.

Its no use, my mind becomes burdened by too many memories.

I think of the day ahead. I no longer look for the joy, but I search at least for something good. For a minute I think it is Sunday... Its Monday. No matter. They are all just days now. And Monday means I have a busy workload. I will be tired, but I will be distracted. It will be as good a day as I can wish for.

It is Remembrance Day. I remember. Lest we forget. Lest I remember. Lest I forget.

He hears me stir and pulls me into him and perhaps I will sleep some more.

To sleep perchance to dream.
To awake perchance to remember.
To remember perchance to forget.
To live perchance there will be joy.

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On the subject of loss...

On the subject of loss...

I was born with a mop of thick dark hair... Not surprising given my Welsh mother and Scottish father. My mother grew tired of people peeping into my pram when I was newly born and exclaiming “Oh, hasn’t she got a lot of hair.” Growing up in the Antipodes, my head was constantly kissed by the burning Australian sun, so I spent most of my childhood and early twenties as a honey blonde. And although I maintain the blonde these days, my natural colour has darkened with the passing of years.

Winter has finally struck in Sydney. We’ve had it too good for too long. There is a chill in the air and when the temperature dips to one digit, even I start to notice the cold. I stepped out of the car one morning last week, early, before the sun was up and I felt something I’d never felt before. I felt the cold on the back of my head. Not my whole head, not my nose, not my ears, just a little strip at the back of my head. Odd, because I’ve never felt the cold there before, not specifically and exclusively.

There are things they don’t tell you about grief. Things that I’d never considered. “Its so... complicated.” I said to my psychologist. “We have a name for it.” she said. “You are suffering from what we call ‘Complicated Grief’, tho’ we prefer not to use labels.” she hastily added. But I was ahead of her on that one. I knew from the start this was bigger than I could handle on my own, and far more complex than anyone could possibly imagine. That it would be more than I could bear. And on top of that, there is all the other stuff... the stuff they don’t tell you.

There are certain things I never thought I’d lose. I never thought I would lose a child. I never thought I’d lose my hair. But in April my hair started falling out, not in a patchy alopecia kind of way, just an all over thinning kind of way, and as disturbing as it sounds, I wasn’t overly concerned. There are worse things. Its a mantra, I say it all the time. There are worse things. And that’s another odd thing about grief. There are things I just don’t care about anymore. Loads of things. I call it the “Super Hero” effect. I can “see” what is important now, and what is not. It’s ironic that in losing him, I have become more like him with his laissez faire attitude.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really like the prospect of losing my hair. The thought of being a bald bride was leading me towards thoughts of wigs and turbans. And it was supplying Stan with a new source of humorous material. I can always rely on Stan to find the funny side. The master of turning a negative into a positive. “Never let bad taste get in the way of good joke” he always says.

I had lots of blood tests... just in case... but in the end my Doctor just said. “Stress.” and I just shrugged my shoulders and nodded in agreement.

“I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen out before now!” my hairdresser said, not very helpfully.

“It looks OK to me.” Stan said as he nonchalantly picked up a long blonde hair resting on top of his dinner plate. “I don’t have a problem if you go bald.” (He’s such a honey.)

“You have such thick hair anyway.” my friends all said in encouragement. But I could tell by the amount falling out that it wasn’t good. And when I pulled it into a ponytail it was only half the volume. Three winds of the elastic and not two.

So its stopped falling out now, and no-one but me can really tell the difference.

Its such an insignificant thing to lose or worry about in context of all that has happened.

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