Untold Stories

There are many stories left untold, the ones we keep to ourselves, the stories of our lives, our memories of loved ones, the good and the bad, sometimes we keep these clutched tightly to our hearts as if sharing them will some how make us forget, make them slip from our grasps into the ether, distant memories that lose their shape and vanish as if they were never there to begin with. For example, I cannot remember what my dad’s voice sounded like, what he smelt like, how he acted… the things that made him, him have gone from my memories. All I have left is a picture of us when I was young. The only memories I have now are a random collection..the memory of him driving a double decker bus, staying at his flat above a music shop and watching Super Gran and Star Wars and over hearing the end of a conversation my mum was having with another parent the day she picked me up from school and told me he was dead. Yet nothing else comes to me no matter how hard I try to remember. Perhaps my memories of him were so tainted by things he did that I  forced myself to forget him, yet this part of me wishes I could remember more, that now his story is lost forever.

It makes me wonder what memories I will still have as the years tick by of other loved ones? Will I always remember my mum’s voice, how she smells? the way she talks to the tv, how much she loves her garden and Barry Manilow and the look on her face when I took her to see him in concert.

The memories I have of Emily, those first few days when I was thinking of all the embarrassing photos we were going to take of her to show future boyfriends and retell the story of how much she scared us when she was born, the worst outcome never even entering our heads as a possibility. That second day clutching my first lot of breast milk, worrying it wasn’t enough but feeling how it was more precious than gold, taking that walk down the corridor, down the lift to the baby unit, not really caring that I was wondering around in my PJ’s in a busy hospital.

The memory of being so upset when the first few photos I had were spoiled by water when a health care accidentally knocked it over, somehow seeing it as an omen, that even then in the pit of my stomach I knew that life would not turn out the way I wanted it to.  Those roller coaster days where beeps and alarms became the norm, watching cpr being performed on your child and feeling helpless, but the roller coaster wasn’t over and just when there appeared to be a chink of light and hope had returned,  I remember the phone call to come quickly and the knowing looks I saw pass between the nurses as I hurried downstairs. I remember THAT conversation, looking at my beautiful little girl and knowing that time was slipping away from us. I remember watching the SATS monitor, not really knowing what any of it meant back then, but watching her SAT number slowly getting lower and lower and knowing in my heart that this was it. Holding it all together, feeling numb, like this was happening to someone else and not to us. I remember it all and for these 12 days in July the box I keep them firmly shut in opens despite many attempts to keep it closed. Some days are worse than others, sometimes I can, to borrow a friend’s saying “paint the smile on my face and get on with it” sometimes it’s all I can do just to get up.

This is not the story I wanted to tell.

The untold story that will never be, the one where Emily became a precocious little girl with a stubborn streak and tantrums galore, just like her mum when she was younger (because it seemed fair that I would have to suffer the same as my mum did) The years tick by and still I walk her untold story as well as my own. I wonder what 6 year old Emily would be like? Would she be Unicorn obsessed or would she be a tom boy like I was and be more interested in her car mat and cars than anything girly.

Why am I telling you this? This part of my story which is precious and painfully heart wrenching, which some days leaves me wondering how on earth I am getting by every day? I don’t know, perhaps I am so afraid that I will lose these memories no matter how painful they are, I want others to maybe remember it too? Perhaps it means others who may have been through similar things know they are not alone in their grief, that there are others out there who have stories that they keep locked away inside. Their untold stories, the stories that they live with day in, day out, the stories that make them who they are.

As a writer I look at others and wonder about their stories, who have they loved? who have they lost? Who brings the smile to their face, I guess it means I get to live a little through their eyes, that every story shared is something Emily hears too and she gets to see the wonder of the world through my memories, through the words I write, the stories that sit in my mind waiting to be put to paper. Because she is always with me, every single day, sharing in my story, her story, like so many of my own is not yet finished.

We are all stories in the end don’t let yours go unheard or untold.