Not Being Able to Talk To You
The hardest part of grief, I find, is not being able to physically hear my son’s voice. He used to call out, ‘Mum … I need you!’ a lot and I miss hearing that urgent little tone that would come warbling down the stairs or I’d see the message in a text or hear him at the end of the phone while we were in hospital.
It’s the sheer finality; the quiet; the stillness that fills the space where the shape of Ben once was. All the laughter, the annoying bickering, the shouting and giggling, is replaced now by an echo of a memory, a feeling, a wish and a hope of something we had and now don’t have anymore.
That’s not to say we are no longer a family of five. We will always be a family of five. I am a mum of three beautiful children and a bereaved mum of one. It’s still hard to say out loud.
Most days, I replay Ben’s last moments here on this earth, as if my doing so will help to recreate it all in a new way. In my ability as a writer, it’s wonderful to be able to imagine a happier ending; a different one to the one we got; the one where cancer crept into our lives unannounced and stole our son and brother.
Sometimes I am awoken from sleep in the middle of the night, fifteen months after Ben died and I know I have heard his voice. If you speak to many other parents, you will find similar stories.
Sometimes I think I see him out of the corner of my eye or in the sunlight when I’m walking. Sometimes, I swear I can feel him behind me or beside me. I feel that chill in the air building up from my feet, all the way up my body and the energy in the room changes. Sometimes, it’s as if Roobarb has been sent to me and he stays, looking me deep in the eyes, as if trying to communicate a message from somewhere far away.
Sometimes, I see Ben at different ages in my dreams. Once I couldn’t find him, as I’d often dreamed when he was here and I’d wake in a panic. I had one dream recently where he was a toddler and I found him in his cot in a different building and he reached up to me and held my face. We stared at each other and laughed and he spoke to me and told me, ‘Mummy, I’m here.’
Sometimes, I have felt a kiss on my forehead as I fall asleep.
All of these things, as much as they confirm his absence, they also confirm his presence somehow and although I cannot have a conversation with my son right now, I am always talking with him in my mind. I hear his voice laughing and see him rolling his eyes at some of my turns of phrase. I feel him encouraging me intuitively as I write and I hope somehow he knows how much I love him and wish things had been different.
And even in the darkest moments of stillness, the music that is my son, that is my girls, all together, continues to play within my heart as I put one foot in front of the other and remember what a wonderful life we have had and what blessings we have yet to come and Ben will always be a part of everything we are and everything we do.
