I Went Away

“It’s been too long” said George fighting tears after a family FaceTime. And it has.

In the sentiment of Bring My Flowers Whilst I’m Livin, I travel home, with George, to visit those I love with all my heart.

There’s a new baby, children that are now young women.
There’s my own dear Mother (Luke and George’s Grandmother) and my sister whom I need to be whole, delicious nieces and dear friends who’s history I share… and a very special dog.

And I do no work.

Of course, I still meet with grieving Mothers and answer the sad, sad emails and calls.
I speak to many about naloxone and overdose reversal and train anyone who stands still long enough.. and I don’t need long.

But apart from that… I do no work.
I do not write.
I do not journal.
Not a word.
But above all … I do not weep.

Instead, I bask in the warmth of my loved ones, laugh and talk, snuggle that baby and hug that dog.

I went away.
Both physically and mentally, I left.

It appears that even I, who fiercely advocates that there is no true ‘return’ from the death of your child, feel the pressure to ‘move on’.
It is not spoken. I don’t really feel that my friends expect it.
It is an inward pressure, from where, I know not.

“Maybe, the grief journal is keeping you in your distress”… words, maybe spoken or unspoken, echo in my psyche.
I mean, what else is there to say?

Home again, I do not write or journal… for months.

But it does not help.
It does not free me.
I am nauseous, my belly aches. I find no peace.
Instead, I suffer the terror, the restlessness of ‘what have I forgotten to do?’

…you’ve forgotten to journal, Sheila.

This, here, is where it all began… writing as a release, as a way of ordering and understanding my thoughts and emotions, long before there was any notion of making them public.

”You don’t have to publish everything you journal” says my brilliant therapist. Luke disagrees.

Without the writing, I lose my way.
Steeped in my ‘doing’, I disconnect with my ‘being’.

Without the writing, my distress does not go away, but my peace with it, does.
Granting my distress words does not accelerate it, encourage it, prolong it or make it be so, instead it calms and fortifies emotional muscle.

Distractions do not heal it.
Just because I am not weeping, doesn’t mean I am not bereft.
Just because I am laughing, doesn’t mean I am not slain.
Avoidance, is as exhausting as the distress itself, yet grants no relief.

And as I, at last, face my distress, I find my words and write, cigarette and tequila in hand. I finally find my tears too, and the bracing that wreaks havoc in my body, yields, and a notion of being at peace with my distress seems tangible.

2101 days in, and I still have a lot to learn about blending true happiness and deep sorrow whilst staying true to, and being present for, both.

With all that I know…
with all that I have learnt…
I still have to journal to truly ‘hear’ my heart, in order to access it, to know it, to settle it.

And I muse… this emotional avoidance? this difficulty cohabiting the sadness and the joy?
Is that what Luke was doing with the drugs?

As I gulp my last drop of tequila and light another cigarette, I note…
it sure does work on the surface.
But the belly and the heart don’t buy it.