Rudderless
Some days there’s just this nothingness, this void and strange fatigue that seems to accompany my heart everywhere I go since becoming bereaved. Some days I wake up and I know it’s going to be one of ‘those days.’
I can’t get used to anything, or find focus and actually it’s in the mundane every day moments in life that I really feel the distance between my son and I and that just breaks me.
It’s no-one’s fault. I can sit with grief and try to find comfort, or I can try to run away from it; I can even distract myself for a time, but there comes a moment when getting out the five plates when I know it’s four now, is too heartbreaking not to do it. I just want to remember what it feels like to actively put out five plates and I want to see his plate with ours.
I started to look at some videos of Benny as part of a project I am hoping to put together, something I haven’t been able to do up until now and even over a year after he left us, I find watching movies of Ben, the most beautiful and heartbreaking reminder of a life lived'; a life loved and wanted so desperately and a new life, we as a family, are all finding it hard to adjust to.
Some videos I hadn’t seen for quite some time and I could feel my heart leaping and for a split second, I was thrown back in time to that moment, but a couple of minutes later, the reality of the moment being all we will have now, began to sink in and all I wanted to do was cry; quietly, for the future we’ll never get to have and appreciate.
You see, as a mum, I always hoped I would get to see my children, all three of them, grow up, find their passion, fall in love and live the life of their dreams and it’s hard to look to the future and all it has to hold, knowing that there is a very important part of your life’s puzzle missing. He will always be missing and that is one hell of an adjustment to try and make, when all Ben wanted to do was have the chance to live, like everyone else and that chance was interrupted and taken away by childhood cancer.
Yes, my goodness, we are so blessed with our son and girls and on some days, the future looks exciting (Covid notwithstanding). I am the eternal optimist and even in the darkest times, I will always look for the light and the rainbows, but I will always feel so sad for my daughters that they will not be bundling around as teenagers with their brother, something they used to laugh about and imagine; having fun, bickering, finding their way in life together, relying on each other and looking out for one another.
When Ben was poorly, we had been talking (before diagnosis) about how there would come a time when they would all rely on each other and that whatever happens in life, you always love your siblings ‘and one day,’ I’d said, ‘you’ll realise just how much you love your siblings.’
At the time, all three had scoffed and giggled, informing me they would never feel that way about each other, as they bickered about everything.
A few weeks later in hospital, Ben told me after the girls and his Dad had left one evening, ‘I understand what you mean now, mummy. I love my sisters very much.’
I believe, even in bereavement, love continues beyond this realm into the next and beyond. It just does.
I felt a little rudderless this morning and then I had a lovely walk with my eldest in the woods today and we chatted all about writing and characterisation and the importance of creating female characters with depth and edge.
My girls lift my spirits no end and I’m incredibly proud of them.
It’s very hard feeling rudderless and unconnected, but it’s so important to hold those moments of light, when we can find our loved ones are very much still with us; just in a different way and when I hear my eldest’s sharp wit and my youngest’s laugh and impressions, I know he’s with me, too and that helps me realise that I might not be quite as rudderless as I first thought and that gives me my anchor and my compass.
My three bears