The quiet silence extends throughout the house, as we await the funeral director’s visit to plan the funeral. Non speaking relatives line up at the side screen door, loaded with cakes and casseroles, exhibiting a notion of ‘helping’. The silence continues, not because of the grief, but because no one in the huddle knew how to communicate such intense emotion. I recall the linoleum on the floor and the wild 70’s Laminex on the kitchen benches. Allegedly, I was supposed to cry but, owing to the emotion free domestic space, I sensed a numbness approaching fast. The funeral passes quickly and all I recall is, post ceremony, my mother breaking down and exclaiming…..”She won’t be there to talk to when I come home”.
It has now been thirty years since I have ‘physically’ spoken to her. I talk to her daily and see her every morning when making my pot of tea, I look at her photograph which, somehow dangles in its oval silver ‘family tree’ frame from the kitchen cupboard handle. I think of the good [and the bad] news I have missed her commenting on. Her inclusion in a wider family framework is not missed. We talk of her often and humorously reflect on her existence before she departed the physical planet aged twenty eight. The next generation will have no memory of her and I gift objects of hers to my second generation post death. It is a tug of war between what she has missed and what we have forgotten, mistaken and the observation of a life from different perspectives.
I search for the emergency procedures card [usually in my plane seat pocket], describing how to deal with loss and, most importantly, how to communicate the enormity of grief in an ‘acceptable’ way.
It has now been thirty years since I have ‘physically’ spoken to her. I talk to her daily and see her every morning when making my pot of tea, I look at her photograph which, somehow dangles in its oval silver ‘family tree’ frame from the kitchen cupboard handle. I think of the good [and the bad] news I have missed her commenting on. Her inclusion in a wider family framework is not missed. We talk of her often and humorously reflect on her existence before she departed the physical planet aged twenty eight. The next generation will have no memory of her and I gift objects of hers to my second generation post death. It is a tug of war between what she has missed and what we have forgotten, mistaken and the observation of a life from different perspectives.
I search for the emergency procedures card [usually in my plane seat pocket], describing how to deal with loss and, most importantly, how to communicate the enormity of grief in an ‘acceptable’ way.
No comments:
Post a Comment