Remembering Grace Again

Remembering Grace Again

Grace's 'birthday' comes around so quickly. Although it's now seven years ago, the unfolding narrative of that week still plays through my mind when the anniversary comes around.

Each year is different and this year I feel further forward, more healed and whole than before. Rather than being on a roller coaster of emotion as it plays out, it feels more like watching an old cine film - a bit more distanced, with the volume turned down. Still there, still sad to watch but less painful, less debilitating.

Professional support in moving forward (EMDR - a recognised and highly successful approach to dealing with trauma) has played a huge part in that and I would recommend it for anyone struggling with difficult, traumatic memories. The journey and ups and downs of this year are too much and too personal to write about in detail here, but I am always happy to talk further with anyone who wants to know more. Facing and dealing with trauma is painful and exhausting, but so worth it in the long run for our emotional wholeness.

I am grateful to God for the strength he's given me to get through the tougher bits and for amazing people to support, pray and guide me through it. I'm still on a journey, but I'm further forward than before!

Those who read my yearly posts will know that I like to write to commemorate Grace and I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read, comment and remember her. So I finish with a poem I wrote earlier this year. It helps me to imagine her in heaven, where we'll one day meet again.

Thanks for reading this and walking with me in ways small and huge - you know who you are.

                                           Unwritten

This is a poem I don’t want to write.

For two weeks, I’ve mulled the idea

and dreamed the idea

and thought the idea

And avoided writing it.

Today I have tried to hide in work,

Buried beneath a novel and a play, which must be taught,

But my mind is elsewhere,

This poem must be written.

You must be written.

I have in my head a clever word:

“palimpsest” –

I want to use it to write my poem

To find a clever way of expressing all that I’m feeling,

All that you might have been,

But all I can feel is the stab of pain

As I conjure an image of you and imagine you

doing the things that you haven’t done.

Because you’re not here.

This is a poem that has to be written

But won’t quite come out on the page;

I abandon the pen and attempt it on screen

To trick my writer’s block into giving me something to enter

Onto this blank page

which seems a fitting metaphor

For the you that wasn’t written

but must be written

For my mind to let you go.

The purple balloon I bought last week

 and sent up to the clouds

On the day you might have been born

Is the shape of my thinking, my longing,

my yearning, for the you that I never met.

The you that might have asked for a princess cake

Or a sea turtle or football or My Little Pony,

A party with dresses and painted nails and beautiful, plaited hair.

Or not.

Because I don’t know you, I can only dream you.

Too many possibilities crowd in. 

How can I do you justice in made up words?

How can I paint a picture of a you

So perfect and precious and created to be a masterpiece

by the Only One who truly knows

Who you are, where you are, what you love,

How you dance,

the colour of your hair and eyes as they sparkle

In the light from His throne?

You are to me only an echo of a life that might have been,

An echo of a sound that bounces back from heaven,

Impossible to decode

And put back together into something I can

touch and hold.

So here I am

Not writing and not thinking

and not creating a tangible you

For my mind to hold and release and move on from.

For every possible you there is another

And each brings with it the pang of pain

for all the possibilities there once were

for a daughter a mother never got to hold and know.

Instead I think of the tiny you I held so briefly,

Eyes closed in forever sleep

And carry you in my heart,

Knowing that there is a beautiful, flawless, perfect you

that I can’t evoke

In a good place, with a good Father

and that one day

I’ll find out that one of these far-fetched thoughts is true –

Or that it isn’t .

But it won’t matter then

because you’ll be in my arms again

And we’ll walk hand in hand,

Carrying a purple balloon, waving in the breeze,

Beginning our story again,

Penned by the Author of Creation,

Filled with beauty and truth and laughter and love,

A story too good to write on earth

but inscribed in all eternity

to read for the rest of time.