Towards Silence

I was driving the children to the farm park. I flicked on the radio and heard a snatch of the documentary 'Hearing Ragas' which featured a piece of music, written by the composer John Tavener, about near death experiences called 'Towards Silence.' This documentary was so compelling that I may have, accidentally, taken a wrong turning so that I could finish listening. Ahem. I'm not a good mother at times.

Strangely, shortly after discussing his new composition with the violinist, Professor Paul Robertson, who he hoped would perform his new piece, the composer suffered a serious heart attack and was hospitalised. Shortly afterwards, Paul Robertson's aorta burst and he spent six weeks in a coma.

These two, composer and performer, who planned to write and play the near death experience out on stage, found themselves, noses pressed unwillingly, right up against their subject matter. Death.

Paul Robertson spoke about the visions that haunted him during his coma, about his fears of resurfacing to meet the consequences of his catastrophic health problems and the music that comforted him as he as hung, suspended, in that strange limbo. A place that I have never been but that I have a vested interest in. As both my daughters were there. Georgina for a few days, Jessica for a couple of months.

Two older men. Two tiny babies. Cast adrift. Cut loose from their mooring, joined to their physical bodies by mere skeins. Three come back as the ropes tighten, one snaps free.

But these men are speaking, they can articulate the experience. They are speaking from a place that I am desperate to know more about.

Paul Robertson said that he heard a comforting voice, singing to him. He heard Indian ragas. Which were, unbeknowst to him, the very basis of John Tavener's piece. About this very experience that he was himself going through. Close to death. Towards silence. How marvellous and strange.

He also experienced terrifying visions, in which he described hellish scenes, like something from Hieronymous Bosch.

And I wonder.

I hope she wasn't frightened. I hope that an adult brain, crammed with experiences, is the only type that can conjure up complex scenes that disturb and upset.

Did she hear my voice? Did her sister hear my voice?
Did it cut through all the drugs? All the invasive treatment of her tiny body? The alarms? The hiss and pump of the ventilator that took her breaths for her? What did it mean to those tiny brains who had not yet experienced anything except a warm and tilting sea. Inside me.

***

Years and year ago. I read a poem about awaking in heaven. Sadly, I can't remember who wrote it but it has stayed with me.

That you awaken. That you hear your parents talking downstairs. The clink of the dishes as they prepare the breakfast. The soft murmur and then, the voice calling up. To you. To come downstairs.

I hope it was a little like that. That she heard our voices, the only voices she might possibly, possibly have recognised. If I'm generous to the development of her auditory system.  I hope we called to her. That it was time to leave. To get up. To walk away from this. That she didn't have to come back.

Paul Robertson described slipping to a velvet darkness. I hope it was like that for her. That she wasn't afraid. But that she was surrounded by softness and comfort.

I hope she heard me. I hope she heard me tell her how very much I love her. Some things don't change. Some questions always keep me up at night. No matter how the years pass. I still miss her so very much. I ache with it.

Sometimes, I do wonder that other people cannot see it. That I don't have a growth over my heart or another arm sprouting out of my back. Some visible mark. Sometimes I feel that, surely, I must be deformed with it.

This tiny frail baby who I clutch at so fiercely. And I have been holding onto her so tightly, that she has grown weighty and dense, like a stone. I feel as though I have grown back around her, to restore her to where she once was. As though I could gift her with life for a second time. But I can't. I'm only holding a stone in my belly.

***

John Tavener and Paul Robertson both recovered. Slowly and painfully. Their piece was performed.

John Tavener's wife said that she was reluctant to let 'Towards Silence' be performed whilst her husband was in a coma. Traditionally, he would draw a double line. To signify in musical notation 'here is the end of the piece.'

He had not yet made this mark on 'Towards Silence' when he collapsed with a heart attack.

Subsequently she discovered that he did this because there is no end. Not to that silence to which the composition is addressed. That we all creep closer toward.

My sweet girl. My dear daughter who lives in that silence. That strange, echoing place without an end. I may well never know where you are, if you are anywhere at all, or what you might have experienced during that brief time that you were my daughter.

But I know a little of what it is like to live somewhere with no conclusion, incomplete and unfinished, with no double bar line to signify the end. And that, I hope, may bring us closer together somehow?

Sometimes I feel that not even my own death will stop a strange little echo of me persisting? Of a mother who is reaching out for a child that will never be returned. A piece of me, a piece of her, things that one were and cannot quite reach an ending. And so we linger.

I miss you terribly, my girl. I hope that whatever may be left of us at the end, whatever thin and fragile impressions remain of me, remain of you. That they will, inevitably, be drawn back together. And be left at peace. Silent.