Where there’s love there’s life
Exactly 5 years ago today, as I write this, there was a knock on my door. A young policeman stood there. My stomach burned and flipped. Sam. In trouble, in hospital, or…? As it turned out it was the final option.
“There was an incident at your son’s address and he passed away”. The information the policeman had was scanty and inaccurate, except for the bald fact that my son was dead. I had seen him just a week previously on my 60th birthday.
Last week on my birthday, the knock on my door was very different: to my utter surprise, there stood my daughter with my grandson in her arms. She had travelled all the way from Germany to help me create beautiful memories and lighten the shadow of my son’s death which always looms over this time. She did. At the gathering I had that day, my grandson discovered he had about 8 alternative grandmothers and the following day I was treated to afternoon tea at a beautiful art deco hotel on the coast, near to where I live. So much love….
A few days later, senior railcard in my hand, we were on the train to Bristol. My daughter had organised a 5 year memorial get together for my son- the three of us, his dad, girlfriend and a friend. We wrote on balloons and attached them to ‘his’ bench. (It’s not really his: his dad screwed a plaque to one years ago, which is in a spot on the waterfront where my son often sat, and when the council upgraded the benches they upgraded his plaque and reattached it – which would have tickled my son no end.) We put flowers on his locks on the bridge; we sheltered from the rain and had lunch near the gym where he had been a personal trainer; and dodging the showers, we spent time in the garden of St George’s Hall, where we’d held his service. An impromptu pilgrimage.
Were we miserable? I don’t think so. A little sad, pensive I think, remembering, telling stories, often funny ones because he was a very funny person. But in our midst we had a little curly haired boy, with soulful eyes, a sensitive nature and a stubborn streak, very different, but with unmistakable echoes, to our curly haired, sensitive, stubborn, soulful boy, now 5 years gone. Where there would have been absence and loss, there was new life and hope. Where love would have had no physical place to bestow itself, there was an open receptacle in this funny, little person.
Though we had all gone our own ways – to some extent our directions influenced by his death – my son and the love we have for him, drew us all back into connection with one another. Elizabeth Kubler Ross, in her stages of grief model, speaks of ‘acceptance’, a stage which Mirabai Starr calls ‘the return’. For me the key to this stage is ongoing love, ongoing connection, trust in life renewing.
I think this Creation is built out of love not fear – else how could love feel so very good, how could we love that sunset, birdsong, forest, ocean? When my decisions are based on fear, they are a compromise to my integrity and out of synch with life – my life just doesn’t work. When I choose love, love blooms around me. A broken heart hurts, a lot, yet through the cracks love reaches out, vulnerable, raw, aching, desperately longing for what has physically gone from here. People say it takes courage to keep loving after grief, and it does, but what is the alternative? Yes, our beloved has gone but the ability to love has not and in their absence, maybe something else will accept our love – a flower or a river, a dog or a child, a friend.
My loved ones who have died don’t just “live on in my memory” (not a phrase I find comforting); they are more than pictures in my brain or remembered stories. I continue to actively love them, cherish them, send out my gratitude for their lives, however painful those lives sometimes were and however painful parting from them has been. I’m no Polly Anna and I don’t wear rose tinted spectacles: some days are grey and cold and desolate; some days, only knowing the dog needs breakfast and a walk gets me out of bed in the morning. After my husband died within a year of my son, the truth is I didn’t want my life. I wasn’t about to cut it short but it stretched out endlessly barren, with only my daughter, a thousand miles away, for occasional lightness – and what a horrible responsibility to put on her. But I knew one thing: love is real. And what I have found is that where love is, life renews and with it hope.
With Love
Nickie
PS If you tried to contact me recently and failed, my apologies: the contact link broke. It has, I think and hope, now been fixed by my lovely techi woman. If it should fail again this time, please email me on [email protected]
NEWS
I am delighted to say that my in-person Wise Women Group starting in September is full and the waiting list is open.
I have had some enquiries about running an online group too. If you are interested, please do write to me here and if you could let me know whether you have a preference for starting this autumn or in the New Year, that would be very helpful. I look forward to hearing from you.
Dear Nicky thank you for telling your story’s chapter in your blog ‘where there’s love there’s life.’ On my chaplaincy days people may speak with me of their recent conversations with a love whose life has passed while love has not. And so everyone can know that their tapestry of voice is heard. Which brought me to meet some words of snow their joy and blanket warmth.
The smell of the air
just before it rains.
Warmer cloud-light
before damp snow flakes
long long awaited.
Their scent precedes
their floating descent.
I’m 300 feet,
away together.
The voice of their natures
not a word spoken.
Yet sensing is named
and may forever.
This invocation
and close tapestry
from my inner voice
tell of my dear love
beside me today.