I joined group, a writing group for bereaved parents, specifically ones who lost a child to brain cancer. I wasn’t sure where it would go but knew that I should do this. The time came and we all gathered on zoom. About a dozen of us shared who we were, who our child was, & why we were there. Some parents were very new in the journey & others had been on the road for some time. Some weren’t sure if writing was for them but figured they would give it a try. Why not? Isn’t that what we always hear? “Keep a journal. Write it out. It will help process your grief.” First of all the idea of processing implies an end result & there is no end result in child loss. That said, I do believe writing can help (clears throat while writing her own blog …) My “why” was that I have been painfully absent from my writing and I’m hoping the group will help me re-establish some momentum.
But here is what actually happened this week. After reading the given poem, “On the Death of the Beloved”, we were posed with a prompt: Complete the sentence “I think of you when I see_______.” We were to do this ahead of time & so I sat at my kitchen table yesterday afternoon to put pen to paper. I pulled out the nice journal & gel pen the facilitator had gifted each of us and many items began filling my thoughts. But where to start? I didn’t want to make a list, though some did. I wanted to go a little deeper, to give the why behind the what. As I sat with a chill at my back I spied all TJ’s things in the two rooms I could see, I began to think of the memories that tag along with each item. There were also objects that weren’t his but were given to me in his memory- a beautiful painted wooden sunflower, a stack of playing cards with his picture on them, a crystal wrapped in a scarlet cloth.
I began to gather my thoughts & piece together the words that felt right to me. Three pages later I brought my meanderings to the conclusion that TJ is as dependable now in his afterlife as he was as a twelve year old boy, always thinking of his Mama and giving me his special brand of love.
After a late dinner I saw it was quickly approaching Zoom-time. I grabbed my journal and headed to my laptop. After those brief introductions our leader asked the group what we thought of the poem. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt on the surface until she read this stanza:
“We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.”
I couldn’t put my finger on it perfectly, but it struck a chord. We went on to talk for a while and started another “in-class” prompt, which is story for another day. Afterwards I scrolled through Facebook & was sucked into memory lane when my blog from five years ago, “He is NOT His Things” came up in my feed. I didn’t need to read it. I remembered full well what it was about, the title saying it all!
And then it hit me- AGAIN, because, as I said, I wrote on this topic five years ago. Memories are good and needed, in fact. We can no longer make new ones & so we cling to the old ones. However, TJ is not there. He is HERE. He is in breath, in wind, in smells, and is NEXT to me. The veil between this world and the next is thin, so very thin! All the stuff of his that is tucked into every nook and cranny is not him, it was his belongings.
I am fairly certain that if he were still on earth he would have long since gotten rid of the vast majority of all these pieces of his I have ALL over the house. I am also fairly certain that his older siblings have extremely few holdovers from their childhood (hmmm, note to self: ask the kids what childhood possessions they still have. I think I have more of their things than they do!) With this, I’ll call quasi-knowledge because it can not be validated and the profound understanding and acknowledgement that he is still with me, it stands to reason that I may be able to release a few more of his belongings. I did end up finally having a quilt made from his t-shirts and it has brought me great joy. Mind you, it took until this past Fall to be able to send the precious cargo off to the seamstress. I shed more than a few tears that day. But OH THE JOY when it arrived back, safe and sound, and this time wrapped around my arms instead of in a box under my bed.
~On a side note, I find it interesting that I started writing this entry after the group meeting & finding the old blog post yesterday, March 8th, but it wasn’t until today, March 9th (“another 9th”), that I am finishing this. Actually, I was locked out of my editing tool until today & couldn’t even find the admin page of my blog to do anything. I thought it was lost. Until today, exactly 86 months after he left this plane. I’ll take that as a sign from my boy that I should get back to more steady writing.~
TJ’s T’s forever with me, keeping me warm.
