That face

I don't listen to a great deal of music these days.

But.

But. I was driving to work earlier this week. And I wasn't, for once, listening to talk radio which has inspired many a blog post around these parts.

But. Instead listening to an album that I haven't heard for many years.

'After The Fall' by Mary Coughlan. Which came out in 1997. Bought by myself. For my mother.  When I was . . . 18? And my own mother was 47?

Interesting re-listen. Equidistant between 18 and 47 at 33.

There's a lot of revelation about womanhood in her voice, in that album.
It's a four bottles of vodka and a slug of Ribena album.
It's a desperate album.

I saw her sing live just last week. I was tired. I thought I might fall asleep. I didn't want to leave the children with my husband.

Until Mary Coughlan sang. Then my breath was stolen from me, just for a moment. Because her voice. No matter how well reproduced. Is a thousand and one times better in person.

She asked the audience to call out songs they wanted her to sing. And I wish I had been bold enough to ask for this one.

'That Face'

'That Face,' is what I would have called out. Had I been cut from bolder cloth.

But the woman seated next to me called out for another song and I couldn't bring myself to compete.

Because I would have asked her. To sing it for us. Us here.

***

I often wake up and feel that I can't do this again. I used to feel that the defining word for Georgina's death was 'sorrow' but now, four years later, it is 'exhaustion.'

The morning holds no mystery. And the night. Well, as the song says, it holds only dread for me. That I am simply dragging myself through hour and hour and day and night. On and on.

Children who live. They keep you up at night. Children who die. They keep you at night too. Until you are ready to stroll downtown to the drowning places yourself.

But.

But I hear this song and I think of the faces that I've seen here. The photographs that I've seen here. The words that I've read here.

Photographs of a particular child. Their child.
So very, very different. From every other photograph I've seen. Or will ever see. A glimpse into something that I can't really understand. It makes me want to bless them. Or genuflect. Bow my head. Cross myself. Gather the remnants of the only holy that I have left, to myself.

Although I've been a member of that ensemble myself.

I will never publish a photograph of my husband and I looking at Georgina. It's been too long. But I do have those photographs.

Of myself. Of my husband.

With that face.

That face.

That face that restores all my faith in the mystery of the morning. That takes away the dread. That means I can keep walking.

That is like a tiny silvery thread of light and hope in a place that often seems unbearable.

Because in a world that holds such gentleness. Such tenderness. Such love.

Such a world. Could it be totally awry? All wrong? Utterly hopeless and cruel? Surely not.

Even though they are dead.
Even though that makes no sense.

The love. Brings the light.

Look at the love upon that face.
Look at the light she throws around this darkened place.
Look at the world that bore her.
Look at the hands before her.
Look at the love upon that face.