Situation Vacant

Our lives can be shaped by so many things, our experiences in this life are what makes up our own story.  Both good and bad experiences shape us in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. They can raise us up to become bigger than we thought imaginable or knock us to our knees in a single moment. Grief is one example, people we love suffering or losing a fight we are powerless to stop. All we can do is go through it with them if we are able, be there when we can and deal with the loss as it comes. To quote the old saying “there are two certainties in this life, death and taxes” does not make it any easier when it happens. Sometimes there are no warnings, someone we love can be there one minute and the next you are getting a phone call and your whole world changes. Grief is individual much like writing, it is your story to tell and only you can know how the next chapter begins and ends.

The death of a child is something that no one should ever have to face but it happens far too often. As someone who has joined that horrible elite club you some how learn to get through it, you are forever changed, the world is no longer the same. You find yourself going through the motions of life, after all the world keeps turning no matter how much you want to get off at the next stop but to do that would somehow be an insult to the life that has been taken too early. There are constant reminders all around you, you only have to see someone taking their child to school to be reminded of the steps you aren’t taking, the homework you aren’t helping with, the Christmas presents you will never get to wrap or the school plays you will never get to sit through.

Grief is now your battle, your fight. You blink back the tears and you put one foot in front of the other, because otherwise what else do you do? You stop living, you stop being you, you get lost in the sadness, the sorrow, the darkness that has enveloped you swallows you whole and it becomes so difficult to see daylight again.

Nothing kills conversation like death but it shouldn’t. Without it, we would not cherish that which we have all the more, we would not be thankful for those who are still with us. Without death maybe we would not have the courage to suddenly do things because time suddenly seems so short.

We mourn the passing of those we love every single day, there is a permanent vacant hole that nothing seems to fill and it shouldn’t, it’s the scar we carry to say we loved someone who has gone but have survived and we can go on. It might involve just sticking a plaster over it and putting one foot in front of the other, taking every day one step at a time because some days that is all you can do, all you can cope with and that is okay.

Some might say time heals all wounds. I hate to tell you that it doesn’t, not all wounds are heal-able but what it does give you is a kind of pain relief. The ache you feel is dulled but it will always be there. Sometimes you will have to rip off that plaster and have a good cry at everything you have lost, that is okay too, you are human but you have to put that plaster back on again and carry on.

If someone had said to me a few years ago I would go through everything I have and come out the other side, I would have said noway, not this girl, but grief makes you learn things about yourself you didn’t know. Where has this strength come from? How on earth do I even get up some mornings and go out the door? I really can’t answer that question, all I know is I do and I do it for Emily. I do it for me and for those who love me who are still here because I do not want them to go through this experience.

Even though it has made me stronger and made me strive for the things I would not have had the strength to do before it, for others there should be another way. Another path that leads you to have faith in yourselves, to get up and do all those things you have wanted to do before but never done, life is short. Live it for those you are already missing, live it for you before it becomes a distant memory and another path you never dared tread. Put one foot in front of the other and begin.

SITUATION VACANT

Looking without seeing

blurred faces

through tear-stained eyes

best foot forward

seems a distant dream.

A nightmare without end

the beginning a memory passed,

but never forgotten.

Stolen hope resides with faith

long since missing

how to fill this hollow heart?

situation vacant.

M J Fletcher August 2012