The Door is Wide Open to the Pain of This Time of Year
This time of the year can be hard for so many and for so many reasons. I’ve never loved Christmas, perhaps because I’ve worked in hospo (and before that fast food) since I was 16. The service industry can be a bitch at any given time of the year, but my goodness does the lead up to Christmas make the majority of people batshit crazy, stressed, exhausted, irritated and overwhelmed to name just a few emotional states.
This time of the year is an extra tricky time when we have a significant loved one missing, add on top of that for us we’re now approaching Herb’s 3rd birthday. That means all the third anniversaries of everything going wrong. Three, I feel, is a big milestone for a living child, they are well and truly becoming who they are and will be in to the future. I remember Claude being incredibly determined, cheeky, intense with his lack of fear and ferocious need to be included in everything and anything. What might Herb have been like? I always imagined he’d be a quieter, gentler version of Claude, perhaps even more cunning and strategic. He would think and then do, rather than Claude’s desire to be the fastest at every possible thing he does, Herb would have sat and thought about it before making his move. Loss parents constantly wonder about who their little person might have been. I used to see and wonder this the moment we left the hospital without him. I’ve seen it now for years, particularly when I’m around a child of the same age as what he would have been. But, interestingly for James, he’s only recently begun to see this. He would respond and wonder for a moment if I raised the thought with him, but he would rarely independently wonder. Recently he has been struck by it, almost like a punch to the face a few times.
I might have written before about how there are certain times of the year that feel heavier, a bit more griefy and doom like than others. As time has gone on and the speed of life has surrounded us I’ve found all the details about his death and birth is almost shut away in boxes in a room where I can close the door – the memories, the feels, the guilt, the grief, the pain, the yearning, the smells, sounds, events, words, the trauma, everything. And then this time of the year; the weather, the light nights, the flurry of December, the smell of summer all make it feel like the door is now wide open, the boxes have been spilled out and there is light pouring from the room begging me to look in every time I walk past it. It’s as though I can keep the door to the room closed for the rest of the year but it’s gradually opened since about November. The door is now wide open. I try and avert my eyes, like I did when I saw a pregnant woman in the first 6-12 months after he died, or the baby shop I walk past almost every day. I can’t avert anymore though. Each day, the door has come ajar a fraction more and I can see and notice and remember, with increasingly clarity.
I find it fascinating how the griefy moments can come and smack you in ways you would never have assumed. I had Titanic the movie on in the background the other night while doing some emails. Sure, I’ve seen it over 100 times (this is no exaggeration, I probably watched it weekly when it came out on VHS a a kid! I diligently rewound the tape each time I’d watch it so it was ready for the next viewing) but despite the regular viewing of it, it leaves me in tears every. single. time. But these days, what I used to cry about when I was younger, has completely changed, which at the time was Jack dying. Fuck Jack now, he should have got on that bloody door, these days it’s the scene of the Mum tucking her kids in and telling them a story as the water comes up at her feet, it’s the woman asking where to go with her baby as almost all the boats have already left the ship, it’s the bloody scene where the one crew that go back and he pulls the woman with the baby in her arms up a little to see if they’re alive are the scenes which make me sob.
Music has helped me on and off through my grieving and healing. I was driving to Hobart the other day, the 2+ hour drive I do regularly for work and board meetings and had an old school playlist on of the tracks from my formative high school/college years that is always a comforting listen. These songs I can sing to without thinking which helps prevent me feeling sleepy on the long boring drive if I’m not in the mood for a podcast. I was singing along to one of my old favs – Lightning Crashes by Live. I know us millennials have in recent years really analysed the lyrics we’ve been mindlessly singing for decades (!) and this song, which I did a neo-classical solo when I was 13 (theatrical dancers; you can imagine the pained *reach out-grab-jump turn-jump turn- jeté-jeté*) left me sobbing in the car, let me remind you of the lyrics:
Lightning crashes
A new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door
…….
Lightning crashes
A new mother cries
This moment she’s been waiting for
The angel opens her eyes
Pale blue colored iris presents the circle
And puts the glory out to hide, hide
To me, and to my surprise after listening to it for decades, it was describing baby loss, a new mother loses the baby, the baby is the angel and confused why they are an angel looking down at the scene. I think about the next verse (there are other lyrics, which are relevant but these are the words that really hit me), “the moment that you’re waiting for”, for 9 months to give birth and meet your baby. All we wanted was for Herb to open his eyes when we spent those two days in hospital with him, we wanted to imagine his eyes were blue just like James’. I felt the lyrics down to my core, I wiped the tears and kept driving and later in the day I was able to look up the lyrics. Whilst I interpreted it about being about a baby dying it was actually about the bands close friend who was killed at the age of 19 by a drunk driver, she was an organ donor so the song was about the cycle of life, death and reincarnation. I think it’s important we interpret art and music in the way it makes us feel and the meaning it gives to us. I’ll forever listen to the song differently with a meaning that’s special to me.
I’ve been working on a little something I’ll be able to share soon and in my conversation with one very dear human who lost her Dad in her 20’s, then her Mum in her 40’s, I asked do you grieve differently at those stages of life? Yes, she said, there’s a naivety she had in her 20’s. In your 40’s there’s so much to lose, so much to grieve. I’ve had some very dear people in my life suffer awful and sudden losses recently, mostly of their parents. It really breaks my heart to see them hurt, I can only assume I have somewhat of an understanding of what they’re feeling, we all grieve differently and feel things differently, but there’s just a shared understanding when you’ve lost someone so significant in your life.
So back to this time of the year. It’s shitty, it’s full of societal pressures, family pressures, capitalist doom, overconsumption, anxiety and overwhelm, but I will choose to focus on those that mean the world to me, their company, my health, the roof over my head and that I’m surrounded by good people who are all battling along with me.
Happy holidays (cause Merry Christmas can EAD)
