Dealing with Grief –
part two
SILENCE, NO MORE
SHALL ROUSE
I screamed and sobbed into my son’s
arms when I was ashamed of my actions in my last blog, my explosion, and yet it
was not a relief, it was violent lava-hot spewing of guilt and self-hatred. It
burned.
I cried silent tears on the hour-long
journey to my parent’s old house. I was going there to give my health a break
from cat allergy, and to give my husband a break from me. I didn’t care that my
sight was blurred, I felt reckless, but a small part of me was cautious and drove
sensibly. When I entered the house I fell to the floor, curled up and wailed.
It didn’t help. It felt like self-pity, poor me. False. The tears and anguish exhausted
me. I had hit rock bottom and needed to find a way to crawl out.
The Art Journal helped. It
focussed my mind and allowed me to put things into perspective.
I was lucky. While living in my
mum-in-law’s house I went to an art demo. It was about loose watercolour
painting, but the artist also had her Art Journal with her. I had seen photos
on the internet of these journals but had never held one, seen the stories each
page told. The texture, the colours, the words. It felt like a treasure box. She
explained the practical side of using an old book, leaving three pages, and
taking out six, gluing the sets of three pages together and using paper tape to
reinforce the page centers. It was fantastic and I knew I was going to create
one.
I hadn’t realised the true value until
I needed somewhere to put my destructive emotions.
I have continued to use it to
express my grief journey.
Before I make the art, I write on
the pages, a loose flow of words, what I am feeling, a focus for the expression
to follow. Uncensored and raw.
This time it was about the
numbness that followed. A goodbye tribute to a strong woman who was a large
part of my life. I think because I am a writer, I cannot leave these words to
be covered and I keep a copy.
The Art expresses it all, but
only to me, so here is an extended version of the words beneath the page. An
exploration of my next step. I may not have recognised it as grief at the time.
Silence,
Passing tribute of a
sigh,
The closing eye,
The parting soul,
No more shall rouse.
I awake numb every day, dissociated
with the world. My mum-in-law has died. I feel nothing. It is as if my senses
had been removed. I am functioning as a human shell. A cracked, fire-blackened,
shell.
This numbness, a rejection of
grief and loss, is like a protection against the truth that I do and will miss
my mum-in-law.
We didn’t share hobbies, life experiences
or expectations for she was a competitive sports woman. She did create, she
loved cross-stitch and jigsaw puzzles, but it was always pre-prepared rather from
her soul. She walked alongside me for a while writing short stories of her life
and of fiction too. It was brave of her to try, and I was proud of her. Her
poems for her husband’s and her own funeral were simple and from her heart. I
was honoured to proof-read them.
In her last year she found
comfort and joy in a creative club for those with cancer. She explored several
forms of creativity, but my favourite was this one, made by choosing colours,
pouring paint, and tipping the canvas. It was the messiest, and less structured
one she did, and yet she loved it. I was so surprised. It is now in our
bedroom. It shows an unexpected talent for colour choice and composition, she chose
to leave some of the canvas white and it works so well.
It wasn’t what we did or believed
or our personalities that glued us, bonded us together. No, it was deeper than
that. It was our shared, profound, unlimited, unconditional, love for her son.
There are no tears for her in my
body, I am as flat as this piece of paper, flatter as this page is made of
three layers, and yet I know I shall miss her, greatly.
They say a robin is a loved one
who has passed, and a robin brought her comfort after my dad-in-law died just sixteen
months earlier. Will her robin find us in France, or will it be lost, blown
away on a gust of wind?
They say grief will have its place
in our lives however we deny it, but I don’t feel grief, only nothing.
Am I a horrid person who doesn’t
care? So selfish and inward thinking, too wrapped up in the battle of
self-disgust with myself, to feel?
Will my memories of her struggle
with cancer and the painful fight to the bitter end be replaced by her strength
and aliveness from the past thirty-one, almost thirty-two, years I have known
her? I hope so. For it was not a kind end.
Will this numbness, this cold
exterior of mine melt and heartache set in?
Will I dare allow emotions control my actions again?
So many questions that only another
day will answer.
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