Yesterday I attended the Compassionate Friends annual gathering, in Perth.
I was surrounded by fifty or so fellow bereaved parents…. some who had only recently suffered loss, others, like me, who were emerging from the shadows …. and others, clearly, more in the light….
The distance we’d travelled in our relative grief ‘journeys’ (though as time passes I’m becoming ever more conscious of the less than accurate nature of this term – I’m certainly not travelling in ‘Place’, but more so in ‘Time’ perhaps; it feels more like an evolutionary process than a movement process, as the term journey implies, and there is definitely no destination…..but if it were movement related, I’d have to say it’s on the ‘z’ axis, and vertically more than horizontal….) was a factor, for sure in determining the tone of discussions and interaction, as were the specific tragic circumstances of loss, but the predominant mood was one that subsumed any slights of distinction: it was one of togetherness….
It’s not the first time I’ve been surrounded by the company of bereaved parents, and not therefore the first time that I have enjoyed that unique feeling of togetherness. That was over two years ago when I went to a meeting of the Brightest Star bereaved families support group.
I’ll never forget, from the moment I walked through the door, the incredible and almost unbelievable feeling of comfort, of safety, of peace…..it’s a strange thing to highlight perhaps, as being one of the most memorable moments of my life, but it does perhaps illustrate comparatively a most debilitating circumstance resultant from grief of this nature: isolation.
I became the absolute centre of my own grief when Christopher died, and that in and of itself was (and remains) isolating – but the more crippling aspect is the separation that the grief provoked, between me, the one who has lost a child, and everyone who hasn’t. There is absolutely no way to bridge this comprehension gap, which has put me at distinct odds from others, to the point of universal absence – and constant miscommunication promotes even greater incentive to further absent oneself from the world.
Which is a conundrum for sure, because the last thing I’ve needed is to be isolated…
I knew it was a critical issue to deal with, this enforced isolation – and that it was imperative to ‘keep in touch’…it would have been so so easy to have slipped under …….
Yesterday reminded me of why it was, and remains so critical to maintain ‘contact’ – because empathy is a primal and fundamental human tenet. We’re not ‘loners’ on the whole, the plight of the castaway is one to which we can all relate, as being an un-natural condition, a troubling and inherently terrifying prospect: of abandonment……
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As I was preparing to write this post today, two magpies flew in front of me – one for ‘sorrow’, two for ‘joy’ – and later, whilst walking, a flock of birds flew past me overhead, in fluctuating but constant formation….. journeying clearly, with purpose and direction …..
Seems the birds were making my point for me, about the value of togetherness – those times when the individual is made stronger by the acknowledgment of another, that they are not alone …..and that their abnormality is nothing more than a result of geopgraohic distance, relative numbers and (missed) opportunity.
Abnormality dissolved yesterday, and indeed, I suspect any visitor might be surprised at just how normal it was ….. of course there were tears, but there was plenty of laughter too…. if anything was abnormal there was perhaps an overabundance of talking – but I think that’s just because there’s a driving need to talk; talking is all we have after all…..one could predict that silence would not reign; I doubt though one could predict the tangibility of warmth that existed, that I’ve discovered exists at all such gatherings – I could cite this warmth as being generated by the openness of shared experienced, but it seems to me that it comes from somewhere else, from some deeper core, born from an understanding so implicit as to deny any language – very little needed to be said yesterday to be honest; words typically were confirming only what was already known….
I’ve sought always, for the good that might come from Christopher’s death – it’s quite something to have a good so evidentially revealed, the priceless worth that can come from being together ….. quite something indeed.
Song for the day: ‘Eleanor rigby’ by The Beatles.
Love to all,
Mx