Wise old owl

He seems like a nice chap. Wiry with gold rimmed glasses.

This is a relief as I do not much like asking for help.

He leans forward.

"So this was . . . when? When did you say? 2008?"

He taps his pen against his teeth and I look out of the window. It's raining.

"Well," he says, "when something awful happens, we have two choices. When soldiers come back from a war, some of them need to talk about it, some of them need to not talk about it. They only need to forget. What you need to do is to figure out which one of those two types of people you are. Talking or forgetting."

He looks over in a kindly fashion, as though I am a child. And maybe I am.
Perplexed over a book with no pictures or conversations in it.
Being the writing type is not mentioned.

"When your son died, something awful happened. And then, of course, your daughter was gravely ill for a very long time. It must have been very difficult."

The room spins slightly as my son dies.
But I only manage a small, squeezed, "yes."

It wasn't only awful, I want to tell him. It isn't the awfulness alone that keeps me pinned there. Awfulness doesn't keep me awake at night. Everything does. Love and curiosity and bafflement and worry and wonder and the need to take a long hard stare at the blackness.

If it had been only awful, I'd be the first in line for forgetfulness, for muteness.

But I don't. Because it would take too long to explain.

I just don't know. I no longer have any idea how to help myself. I thought that I was helping myself. I write about joy and happiness and I'm not lying. They are back, where I never, ever thought that they would be. But the thing with writing is that I have a tendency to reach right around with my long wordy arm and stab myself in the back.

There's a reason I work with numbers. Less potential for knifing. Particularly for impaling yourself. Nobody ever took their own eye out with a number 8, no sharp edges you see. You'd think you could stab yourself in the heart with a 4, but you can't. I've tried, he's too blunt despite his pointy appearance. But words, words are a different and a far more slippery matter.

Is that all I've done? Is that all I've achieved? All these hours crying in front of this computer? Although it's been so long that 'this' computer is, in fact, two different pieces of hardware.
Trying to trap her here with words. Trying to reach her with words. Because, as far as I know, nobody has ever yet managed to reach the dead with words. Shakespeare? Nope. Dickens? Nope. Murdoch? Nope. Atwood? Nope. Updike? Nope. H.D.? Nope. Even my dear MacNeice? Nope. Every Booker Prize-Nobel-Pulitzer winning author ever? Nope. Although you feel certain that they could, that they should. If this world happened to make any sense whatsoever.

She does not answer for them, my dear Georgina. Not matter what I read with tears streaming down my face. So, let's face it, she is not going to answer to my stumbling fumblings.
But the stubbornness in me won't give up. I'm more stubborn about this writing than I ever was back in 2008, when they floated the idea of withdrawing intensive care. Because I crumbled then. Before he did. Is it any wonder I'm a little stuck back there? The weak point.

Am I holding her up for witnesses when she was meant to be private and quiet? Dignified. Small and dry. Not this gushing on and on and on and on of emotion. Not for my sea rose daughter. Sparse. Bony. Too early to be the pudgy, chubby baby that I dreamt of.
Words that came to mean too much to me, that made me believe that they were her.
When they aren't. They are less than nothing. Just dust. From dust, to pixels, to dust.

As a teenager I longed for Dick Diver-like repose, for grace, for self containment, self restraint.
To be someone less messy, less garrulous, less of an embarrassment.
So I try. I try to keep the corners neatly folded, to keep everything tidy and small.
Gracious. Kindly.

But give me a keyboard and I can't seem to shut up.
Splurging, binging on all that I can't say during working hours.
Or to my husband.
Or to a three year old and a one year old.
RRRAAAGGGHHH!
And BBLLLUUURRRGGHHH!
And the fact that I'm still, actually, very sad.

I'm very, very sad that Georgina died. But not only sad.
Really, I could delete all of this rambling and just replace this blog with the previous two sentences.
If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here.
I wouldn't be trying to do something that I am ill, ill-equipped to do.

Perhaps I am the forgetting kind.
It wouldn't surprise me to find that I've misunderstood myself all along.
Perhaps I am the kind that is supposed to just shut the hell up.
To make like an owl.
A wise old owl.

A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?