| Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
Posts: 550
Points: 10,198.27 Bank: 13,177.29 Total Points: 23,375.56 |  An open letter
I miss you. I miss knowing that you and I shared the most wonderful secret. That we used to laugh inside at the world, knowing things that only we shared. I miss the sense of anticipation I used to wake with each morning.
I used to wake in wonder, sometimes just lie there for a while to make sure it wasn’t just another of those life-like dreams that you wake up from feeling so disappointed. I’d feel the warmth of your Dad in bed next to me and I would realise that this was for real. We had embarked on the journey of making a family. I felt so light and free when you were with me. The days seemed to pass so quickly and each seemed brighter than the last.
It’s silly I know, but the sun felt different when you were here. The birds sang a slightly different refrain as I walked each day and the flowers were a different hue. Can that be real, or am I sweetening the memories, for fear that they will leave me? It must have been real, because I can still remember the way the earth smelled when we planted trees – your Dad and me. The earth smells different now. Can that be?
Some days are hard. God knows, I try to get through days, weeks and months. I have to say, I do alright. Probably nine days out of ten, I do pretty well. I might even go a day without thinking about you. Then I realise what I have done and I am so scared that I will lose your memory, that I concentrate hard on recalling every last minute of the time we had together. What a difficult cycle of events and thoughts.
Lately, with the prospect that maybe you were a fluke, maybe you were our only chance at being parents and maybe we simply won’t have children, I find I cling harder to your memory. I am scared – maybe your memory is all I will ever have. So I revisit those memories often, in order to keep them vivid and real. To ensure that there can be no doubt of that time we had together.
The presence of another child would not detract from your memory. You carved a place in our lives and that place will always be yours, and only yours. But since you left, my heart and my body have not been at proper rest. Both are metaphorically pacing – they cannot be still. And all for want of feeling that way again. My belief remains firm that the only way to put my heart and my self at ease is to carry another child. So you can imagine my frustration for each month that concludes with me still childless.
Can you imagine that, or were you only blessed with the ability to share the wonder and happiness that we shared? Perhaps you were so wrapped in our love that negative thoughts could not penetrate your psyche. I guess that would be good, really. For both of us – I would never wish to hurt you or expose you to discomfort. So yes, it is best that you are not able to sense or share my frustration, my angst and my moments of true despair.
Have you seen the path that we are travelling since you left? Can you track our heartache, our anger, our disappointment? Are you watching silently, and maybe tilting your head a little as you try to understand why we are treading water, why our lives appear to be stuck? I guess you would find it hard to understand. After all, the only thing you really knew a lot about was our love. You had a lot to learn, yet I am attributing to you a level of sagacity usually reserved for the elderly or the wise. To me, you represent greater wisdom and learning than anything we could find in all the books in the world.
I guess you know where we are going. I wish you could tell me. I struggle so hard with this. I try to be mature and I try to accept that I have no control over this. That the growth of our family will be governed by fate, by destiny and by powers about which I know little or nothing. If only I could fix it. Make it all better. Make it go away. Bring you back. Bring you a brother or a sister. A sibling to love without reservation, as I did to you.
Each day I fight the instinct to stop the car, maybe get out and run, or yell at the sky with my fists clenched, or roll in fresh cut grass and try to become a part of the earth. Let the earth swallow me up and make me new. Make me worthwhile. Make me a daisy, or a clover or a butterfly. Make me whole, if only for a while. I fight the need, burbling up inside me, to demand an answer. To find a culprit to blame. Sometimes, the questions gag in my throat and I have to work hard to clear them away. I feel them boiling up from my heart or my gut – that empty place – and they could easily gush forth without warning. I push them down, knowing that to voice those questions, to demand those answers, will only reinforce my knowledge that there are no answers and bring me back…again…in that giddy circle of despair.
Sometimes, I just don’t know what to do. I thought maybe I should tell you how I feel. Nobody else really understands. Probably because we are all different. But I think you understand and I hope you can see that place inside, that internal precipice, from where I am shouting my needs and desires to you. Up there, with the wind in my face, I am telling you as loudly as I can that I loved you, I miss you, I want you back with me now, I want your brothers and sisters. I want so much. I would settle for just having that little cold piece of my heart warmed again with hope. That would do me.
I have seen you in my dreams. Is that you, or are you showing me your unborn brothers and sisters? I always knew you would have Dad’s dark hair and curls, but where did you get that rosebud smile? Maybe from my Mum’s side of the family. And I can hear you laugh. To this day, I can hear you laughing. I like to think you are laughing at me. Saying to yourself, maybe to Pop because I know he is there with you, silly Mum. Eating her heart out. If only she knew…
If only I know, my darling.
If only I knew. |
