Coming up for air…..

Today it is cloudy and gloomy in Seattle. Hopefully the sun will come out at some point this week – I miss it.

Blogging is supposed to be therapeutic with loss. I don’t know sometimes. I have so many thoughts racing around my head… and getting them out can help. But it doesn’t change the reality.

I’ve been busy lately, possibly too busy. Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed and have to stop. I cancelled several things so I could just hug the lounge room floor yesterday. I watched a lot of “Call the Midwife” – which of course triggers a lot of blubbering. To be honest I don’t mind though.

One quote caught both W and I unaware…

“…so loss is made endurable by love and it is love that will echo through eternity.”

W says, that even though we lost Duncan, we get to love him…and in this way…the loss is something we can endure. We imagine he would have been a large, possibly highly cantankerous baby.

A moment a few days ago, I watched two mothers focus in on their children and you could just feel the love warm up the room. I felt sort of honoured to be watching the connection they had with their babies. I did very keenly wish I could have mine with me. But that is not the way things are.

Love and grief,  so tightly bound together. I have felt love from near and far in this year. I think I am struggling right now, because I still have this urge to “d0” something for Duncan..something to remember him. One day I would like to maybe spread his ashes under the tree W and were married under. In my mind, it is a hot summers day and I sit with W and dangle my legs over the boards and put my son to rest in a place that we can always come back to.

One of my teachers has a way of putting things, that always settles me down. Sometimes I get angry at the way people talk to me about what we’ve been through. She has helped me acknowledge sometimes what people are saying, isn’t what they are trying to say. “You are coping really well” …acknowledges that we are coping…not that we are going for gold star grief recovery.

I think loss is with you forever, no matter how great or small. As I am slowly having more good days then bad, I look around at the world and how it has shifted forward while I have been hunkered down within myself. I am trying to listen to people again, to share their stories. I feel kind of outraged that I still have so much pain. I get angry when I have to put it to one side so I can do things I am expected to do. I worry I won’t be able achieve the short term things I have set out to do this year.

It’s not all anger though. I love Dunc, I miss him, but he is with me. I put a lovely cross stitch of his in a frame (finally) the other day, I was sort of losing it as I did this, and out of nowhere a hummingbird appeared at the window for a few seconds, then vanished away. A reminder to look at the day filled with sunshine and warmth…

Seattle is growing on me though. I have visitors this week and I get to show them around, which is always fun. I have my full body massage final as well. I haven’t had as much hands on as I should have. But I am hoping that the course will just keep clicking through out the year and I will get there in my own way.