When I was a child I was very curious, I would open draws search in cupboards. I knew where my mom kept her stash of Chocolates and sweets. It was not celebrated though, if something got lost they would say to ask Ally she’ll know where it is. My curiosity got me into trouble many times. I remember staying with a friend of my parents and I would look into everything. I broke something once because I was trying to see how it worked. To this day I have never told anyone. My mother used to say “curiosity kills the cat.” I wonder if she was trying to tell me something, but that never deterred me! I haven’t grown out of this curiosity, I still find myself digging into things, wanting to know why things happen and how things work. I recently read a study that curiosity is a great asset for a child to have. I wish my family had read that study back then…
“I come into the peace of wild things. who do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief.“ -― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
When you feel like you’ve lost your way and glib answers just don’t cut it.
When you’ve almost entirely forgotten who you are, when darkness thickens, and light is barely visible, and all you want to do is lie down and let your emotions run through you and out of you to sink into the long grass of despair…
When all around you are voices, empty harrowing voices making way too much noise, distracting you from your inner silence and the beauty that you have come to know so well!
Look up my darling, stare through the windows to the sky, see how the leaves glisten and honey bees gather unperturbed…
Look up and you won’t notice how frail your earthly form has become, how much a dim world has hurt you…
Just absorb the silence, let butterflies remind you to breathe in the gentle fragrance of earth again as their pale yellow impressions dance in the cool of the day…
Listen closely to the buzzing of bees bringing you back from the abyss and welcoming you into the peace of this magical world,
The cacophony of voices will fade into oblivion and vibrations of kindness will return you once again to the wonder of wild things…
I’m starting a series of recollections of when I was a child…
When I was a child we moved around a lot and every time we moved my father would say “don’t tell anyone”. This was a terrible dilemma for me because I had spent the best part of a year developing a friendship with just one friend. Now I had to vanish into thin air like I never existed. The trauma was unbearable because of what waited for me on the other side, a friendless future and being shy didn’t help.
To this day I only recall the names of 2 childhood friends from school. I also have an aversion to secrets!
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Saint Paul
my son changed worlds nearly five years ago…..
I have my soft place to fall, it’s among the broken-hearted. With them around me, I don’t need to pick myself up. I can wallow in my tears for as long as I want I can wail out every bit of brutality that my bones can bear. They don’t judge me there or tell me it’s been too long and I need to get over it. They bring me warm coverings dressed in acceptance and love. They serve me tea and sympathy. They provide me with delectable offerings of kindness. They let me flounder for as long as I want in the deepness and mire of it all. They remind me that I am breakable and that I may never be fixed.
I stay there for a while among *shining-light parents, some who have completely forgotten how to live some who don’t know how to be in this world some who don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning many who say that their lives are over. They gorge themselves on despair, yet at the same time, they sup at lavish tables of grace. In this place, I get swallowed up by my own self-pity, my dark night of the soul. We hold this trauma in our bodies for years sometimes we soothe our wounds with harmful things our form becomes weak with the burden of our loss.
Yet here in this sanctuary of tears they never ask hard questions, they let me just be they never ask me how he died they ask me who he was they exist with me in the celebration of his life. They say his name out loud in these hallowed hallways of grief.
Then as time goes by, in their care, I am awakened with soft kisses. They have held me in safe-keeping bound up my open wounds until I have wept out all my tears. They don’t expect me to never return to this place, the door is always open, and they anticipate that the hard rain of sorrow may fall again. Here they have helped soften my grief, they have given me the resources to find my way in the dark.
They are the ones who give me the strength to get up and face the world again the now strange world where people still live their lives, whereas my life just ground to a sudden halt when my son died.
You see I didn’t just lose my son. I lost everything this beautiful life had planned for him. I lost my hopes and my dreams, and now I am absolutely terrified to dream again. It’s like the hammer coming down on me and I have become particles of matter floating about, waiting for the end of my days when I can see him again.
I know that bravery is my cause, given to me by a force greater than myself, words are my sanctuary raining down miracles and I clutch onto signs every day. Kind voices are my staying power. I desire truth as my constant I can no longer pretend that I’m okay all the time and that the world is safe for me.
It is because of those who have come before me those who have stared down this terrible darkness that I am able to carefully tiptoe out of the horror of it into the bright exposing light of my life. I need to be fearless in my faithful expression of grief, where I have faced the very depths of suffering. I don’t need to be pitied, I just need to be understood, maybe even honored for my bravery. It doesn’t serve me to pretend that this isn’t hard. Actually, pretense is the last thing I want to be acquainted with.
I must accompany my tears until the very end of this present age and place them in God’s eternal jars for safe-keeping. I want to always be found in realms where the holiness of love and peace are my only resting place…
a promised land where death and darkness are no more!
(Please don’t feel sorry for me. This is a fearless journey I have undertaken in the presence of angels and my guides; it is pre-written in the Akash. I cannot avoid it, for it is my testing ground, my divine pilgrimage into something more wonderful than I can imagine)
*Shining light parents: The group “Helping Parents Heal” coined this phrase for bereaved parents.
I reworked this piece from four years ago, and it still feels true…
remember the time when we knew each song, naive impressions that nothing could go wrong?
music playing on the turntables, daydreaming of becoming famous…
dancing to the tempo of night fever spurned lovers lonesome dreamers…
celebrity posters on my walls, I joined in with the live applause…
bedazzled by the silver screen I longed to be a dancing queen…
I lived inside the words and the beat, soulful numbers made me feel complete, they strummed away my deepest hurts soothing my loneliness with each poetic verse.
these are the confessions of a teen spirit… finding comfort in soul lyrics.
captivated by revolution songs, it sounds like a whisper where I still belong.
AllysoAlly 