Three of my close, dear friends are mourning this summer. One has lost her sister, the other her mother and the third her father. For him the funeral was yesterday.
I am at a loss for words. All I know to do is to give my baby girl for them to hold and cuddle. She is six kilos of gentle joy and comfort and even fun (the thing is that in my experience true grief however devastating will nonetheless allow for a sense of humour even though it seems incredibly paradox). Somehow we forget how to be like that as we grow up.
Ten years ago in the winter of 1998 one of these three was the one who called me and dragged me to walks with her. We'd talk and little by little as spring came it became a little easier to bear the grief of having lost my mother.
In the fall I woke up one morning went to the car to go somewhere and as I was opening the door it dawned on me that almost a year had passed and it still felt as if my mother had just died the day before. Time for me had stopped at 00.40 January 2nd, 1998.
Realizing that was also what got the clock ticking again. Time started to move again and now 10 years later I wish very much that my mother were here to enjoy her granddaughter but at the same time I have a hard time remembering how she was. And it grieves me.
But I believe that she is not far away. I know I sometimes get to see her in her sisters, my aunts, and I hear her in my own words to my child and to my husband. As I do my daily chores around the house she is there in the way I do so many things. The way I love is the way she loved.
I just wish I knew how to tell about her to her granddaughter.
I am at a loss for words. All I know to do is to give my baby girl for them to hold and cuddle. She is six kilos of gentle joy and comfort and even fun (the thing is that in my experience true grief however devastating will nonetheless allow for a sense of humour even though it seems incredibly paradox). Somehow we forget how to be like that as we grow up.
Ten years ago in the winter of 1998 one of these three was the one who called me and dragged me to walks with her. We'd talk and little by little as spring came it became a little easier to bear the grief of having lost my mother.
In the fall I woke up one morning went to the car to go somewhere and as I was opening the door it dawned on me that almost a year had passed and it still felt as if my mother had just died the day before. Time for me had stopped at 00.40 January 2nd, 1998.
Realizing that was also what got the clock ticking again. Time started to move again and now 10 years later I wish very much that my mother were here to enjoy her granddaughter but at the same time I have a hard time remembering how she was. And it grieves me.
But I believe that she is not far away. I know I sometimes get to see her in her sisters, my aunts, and I hear her in my own words to my child and to my husband. As I do my daily chores around the house she is there in the way I do so many things. The way I love is the way she loved.
I just wish I knew how to tell about her to her granddaughter.
2 comments:
My dad died 11 years ago (this month) and this summer has been especially hard for me -because I still miss him so.
I wish he'd seen his grandkids now they are teens. I wish he'd seen me graduate from Tallinn in June. I wish he still wrote those amazing letters to me - week after week -so often from interesting places with exotic stamps on the envelopes. I wish he were around to talk to - to tell those stories about his childhood, to spout his opinions about politics ... all that I wish and more.
But it's over.
Time didn't stop for me in August 1997, (my kids were too small for me to shut down) but a part of me died. And I hate that. Because he was my dad but he was also my best friend.
I am glad you are there for your friends because we need others to love us back to life when our nearest and dearest die.
"and I hear her in my own words to my child and to my husband. As I do my daily chores around the house she is there in the way I do so many things. The way I love is the way she loved."
I know what you mean. Each time I tell my baby daughter "Mommy will do it, Mommy is here" my own mother IS there, too.
I am glad you can just be there for your friends, words are not all that important in times like this.
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