Monday 25 August 2014

Six

I was busy extracting your sister's birthday presents from the depth of the wardrobe when I saw your box. Its deep pink ribbon caught my eye. I haven't opened it for years. It sits perched on top of two boxes of various baby clothes that I cannot bring myself to part with. All three of these sit on top of a box containing my wedding dress which has never been opened since I wore it.

Quite why I'm devoting all this storage space to boxes I never open I couldn't say.

I took out the presents. There didn't seem to be much. But there never seems to be enough. 

Your sister's main present this year was a bicycle and it seemed silly to save that until the end of August, the end of summer and the warm weather. 
So she had that. Spokies. A bell. A Hello Kitty helmet. Streamers for the handle bars. Because that sales lady knew a sucker when she saw one coming.

So I'm left with a few boxes of plastic stuff to wrap for tomorrow. A couple of books. 

We went out today. With your brother and your sister. Your uncle, your cousins. Your sister sulked over toys and not being able to make herself understood. She said to me, 'everything is harder than it looks.' I said, 'you're not wrong. Lots of things are harder than they look.' 'Go away,' she snapped. My advice was obviously useless to her. But she pretty much had it right. I wasn't going to lie and tell her that everything is a cakewalk.

Anyway I saw your box and opened it up. The bright yellow cloth bag with its cheery teddy bear print. It hadn't changed. The small woollen blanket wrapping the zip lock bag of ashes. Urn never bought. The ashes seemed fewer and finer than I remembered. I held them for a moment, hoping that I might somehow persuade you back to life. 

I looked at the few photographs I have of you. So tiny. Your blue eyes. Your tiny strands of hair. My own stupid eager face whilst you were alive. That was the photograph that shocked me the most. A full face portrait of me. I'm not wearing the same clothes I was on the day that you died so I guess it must have been taken before. I look so hopeful. Smudgy hopeful black and white me, developed in a hospital lab as the photographs were deemed too grim to send in to a conventional place. 

And looking at the photographs I have of you I see what a slim chance it was. An outside bet. I'd forgotten how many there were. Those photographs.

I also have the stabbing realisation of how very much you look like your sisters. Both of them. Not just your twin. So certainly one of us. A W. baby. I see that in your looks now I have had two of your siblings. For a brief moment Jessica and Alice share your fate as I lose focus. 

When I look at those photographs I hope that you got away. That you simply slipped out of this life and were set free. There isn't much to be gained. Mulling over the unknowable after all these years have passed but it is all I have left. I'm still concerned. I still love you. I miss you more than I could ever say.

And I still do not know. After all this time. If it is relief or grief that I feel for you.  

'I do not know' is the only true statement that the mind can make.
Nisargdatta Maharaj

10 comments:

  1. My own stupid eager face...yes, that's how I feel looking at my stupid self before Eva died.

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  2. Those freeze-frame items from Georgina's life. I know the way they leave us paralyzed, unable to comprehend, sort, catalog these precious somethings, that are really nothing (as compared to the daughter or son).

    Zachary looked so much like C.T. and B.W. All three, only subtle differences. And all very much like their mother. The vulnerability of C.T. to the fate of his brothers seems to be perpetually nagging at my subconscious.

    Thank you for sharing that quote with me, even before you used it here. It is spot on. What happened? Why? Will I ever..., see (her/him) again...., get some of myself back...? I don't know. So many questions that leave us chasing around in circles.

    I cannot imagine how difficult it is to experience all of Jessica's milestones in duplicate. Oh, how I wish Georgina were here to share in the sixth birthday celebration. And, since she is not, I hope she "got away" too.

    So much love and many hugs being sent your way...

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  3. "I held them for a moment, hoping that I might somehow persuade you back to life." Oh, my sweet and dear goodness, yes. Yes, my friend. So much love to you, dear one. Six years is so very, very long.

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  4. Sending lots of love your way. It must get more and more baffling each year as Jessica gets older and Georgina stays frozen in time, or at least what you know of her is unchanging.

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  5. So much love to you, Catherine. I've been thinking of you and your girls. I am still surprised by my face in some of the photos I have from just before Teddy was born and just after, too. I spend a lot of time hiding how I feel and to see everything I was feeling written so clearly on my face - that kind of hopeful and then despairing vulnerability - it makes me feel strange and distant and old but also vulnerable all over again.

    Six seems so strange - so young but growing up and embarking on so many adventures. I hope Jessica enjoyed her birthday. And your Georgiana - I hope she got away, too, but I also wish so much that there were two bicycles this year.

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  6. I hope you got away, Georgina.

    Although - it won't make grief any less. Relief for one pries relief from the grasp of the other.

    *****

    Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

    We both knew this. I had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine. The end of hers would be the coming-of-age of mine. We were setting out on different roads. This cold truth, this terrible traffic-regulation ("You, Madam, to the right -- you, Sir, to the left") is just the beginning of the separation which is death itself.

    {C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed}

    *****

    Terrible traffic-regulation - you, Mother, one way,

    Georgina -

    well, Georgina...

    which way you went

    how, where, why,

    is what you know

    but we don't.

    And will we?

    Waiting for the Day,

    CiM xoxo

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  7. I was mulling about putting a candle on my facebook page - didn't in the end, but thought about you all day. Your phrase "hoping that I might somehow persuade you back to life" is so vulnerable, so heartfelt, I can't but cry for you. Oh Catherine, what a life - and dear little Jess never means the go aways, it would so shake her if you actually did, may she please have a lighthearted life.

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  8. I can't add anything except that I felt every word you wrote. So much the same for us. Remembering Georgina always...

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  9. You wrote this a while ago and I read it over several times and thought about it and wanted to say something and never did. My E turns six in December. There is something about six. And for some reason I have been thinking of Anja turning six, too, even though she would only have been 2 and a half had she lived...and feeling just flabbergasted that she never will be six. I don't know what I'm trying to say here - I suppose just that as I think of my girls, I have been thinking of yours, too, and I have been wishing I'd written something more thoughtful here in August, and thank you for writing Catherine, for you always make me feel like I am not so alone. Remembering Georgina, six years and a bit gone, and yes, I hope she got away, too; I hope they all did.

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