It's a funny old place

It's a funny old place: the world.   Once it's been seriously rocked it's very hard to get one's footing.  Just as you think you're on slightly firmer ground; the thick black mud pulls you back down and it's like you never got out in the first place.

It's a funny old thing : grief.   Once it's been unleashed one never really knows where it's going.  It's really hard to get a handle on it.  So chaotic; so very unpredictable, so angry, so brutal.  A bit of a design fault on God's part; if I may be so bold as to say so.

Six months since my child died.  Six months of very strange emotions.  Six months of hell; even six months of heaven. Six months of spinning like a top and wanting the spinning never to stop.  If it does it reveals the deafening silence and that is definitely the worse thing about grief.  It strips you bare, isolates you from the world, makes life a thousand/ a million times more difficult - but it is the silence that is the hardest to bare.  Knowing I'll never hear her voice again, never be told to "get a life", that I'm "so embarrassing" that she wants a "shakeaway" just as I'm heading home.

Oh what I'd give for a minute/a second to hear her, to hold her hand to see her whisk off into the night with her friends - too much make up, half a bottle of my Channel tipped over her beautiful body, high heels, short skirt. The beauty of youth up against the hideousness of cancer. A real contrast that one.  

Not fair; but who's listening anyway.  It's a funny thing life.

And then just when you feel it's too dark to bare; some delicate shoots of hope tear little holes in the gloom.  I find if I nurture them they get a little stronger; a little less fragile.  I almost feel them taking root and showing a way that has some hope.  And with those little shoots come lovely gentle memories - like balm on the angry bloody sores of grief.  Such a beautiful, funny, tenacious, spirited young woman. I couldn't have been a prouder Mum.  And that's good. Isn't it?

On Monday I sailed down the river.  She was with me all the way.  I swear.  I feel her energy and it sits and stirs around my heart.  It's still restless, agitated and hurting - but the energy is there.  I guess the shoots will take hold when I allow the energy to rest quietly, softly in my heart.  Maybe then she can finally come back home.  Maybe we will both come home together and maybe, just maybe, that's where the peace will finally come.

Night night my lovely lovely Chloe x