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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.

Comments

  1. Georgie, the words you have written are truly beautiful. No words for me to properly describe them. xxxxxxxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. So moving Georgie, sending you love from all of us xxx

    ReplyDelete
  3. As ever, I find your skill in expressing what I thought to be inexpressible amazing and inspiring. My words feel trite and patronising! What a blessing your gift is for your own healing but also those you love and love you and perhaps don't even know you! To see how you have been open to God growing you through your loss as he holds you and grieves with you, I can only imagine has felt like the longest of roads at times. Know that you and your daughter continue to inspire. I believe God is using you and Grace to help others on their road to healing too. Xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. My comment seems to have disappeared, so trying again. Did you get your EMDR on the NHS or privately? I am trying to support a neighbour with PTSD - all she is getting is regular sessions with a psychologist, but the psych doesn't seem to have heard of EMDR or CBT, despite them being the NHS recommended treatments.

      Delete

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