I own a pair of glasses. Glasses that I, for reasons that even I am not entirely certain of, rarely actually wear. Despite the fact that I know that I can see more clearly when I am wearing them.
The world often appears slightly blurry to me. More so when I am tired.
I go to see Jessica perform in her nativity play. I lurk at the back, standing up so that I can see sheep number 4. I can't help but think that this may be a part reserved for those whose speech is . . . not the clearest. But maybe I'm paranoid. And her 'Baaaa' is amongst the most convincing I've ever heard if I do say so myself.
I stand and my eyes blur. The green programme names 'Georgina Walsh' - perhaps as a sheep, maybe a star.
A narrator? It's doubtful.
But in that world where she lives? Everything may be different and Jessica's speech is as clear as a bell. Perhaps she is out front, telling the whole tale.
But Georgina? She isn't a star. Or a sheep. She doesn't speak. She doesn't live.
She's dead. Still shocks me. I miss her. I miss my tiny, first baby so very much.
And I curse my slowness. Why so slow Catherine W.? After all this time?
Is it because you refuse to see properly? Silly, blurry you.
I commend you for finding time, sitting and writing and getting this out.
ReplyDeleteI do not know how your life must feel in the sense that you are now with 3 children at home, and your eldest daughter is missing - still, always missing...
but I feel I do know how it feels to need to sit and get out what is constantly swirling, racing, pounding, repeating, nudging, chanting... over and over again and again in your head to the point where you feel you might absolutely lose every useful part of your brain if you don't just get out all that needs exiting. To form some realness to the fluttering thoughts and surrender them to black and white and put them in their place.
Coming to this little corner of the internet, and reading your words makes me feel so connected to someone who I feel is living a little piece of my life - and emotionally understands everything that is swirling, racing, pounding, repeating in my own head.
It is all a blur. isn't it? When I brought Theo home and started going through the motions of life I saw everything with a blurred lens. I still do some days. But in those early weeks/months it's as if I was unable to see what was ACTUALLY happening around me. Living around me. REALLY REAL around me. I was lost in the land of what if's and all things Alexander. I often think about having another baby, and soaking all that new babyness in.. and in that I know I'll feel once again so connected to Alexander in the land of what if's and what should have been's. I can only imagine how it must feel to have Jessica and to have Georgina so evidently missing and living in only the land of what if's and what could have, what should have been.
Here reading, soaking you in. Sending love. Imagining Georgina Walsh with you
I worry too, about being 'so slow'. So stuck in anger and 'why why why'. The 'I just can't believe this happened to us'. All of it. Slow.
ReplyDeleteI guess the absence of our children will be forever felt in these big moments in our living children's lives. Nativity plays. New baby siblings. Prep transitions. Kinder graduations. 8th birthday parties. Slow? Just missing, I say. And forever missed at that.
xxx
I miss Georgina, too, Catherine. Maybe we choose to narrow our eyes so we don't see the huge gaping hole where they should be. Sending love your way. XO
ReplyDeleteChristine
So much love to you, Catherine. I'm slow, too. Slow like this, and I still wonder at it, that I can be taken by surprise when it feels like such an old and fortified grief. Though I'm not sure it's just slowness, at least in my case. Some of it appears to be stubbornness as well. Heart-deep, core-deep, intrinsic stubbornness.
ReplyDeleteI wish Georgina were there, that she was a sheep, or a star, or the donkey, which is what I always wanted to be in the nativity plays I grew up with.