When it happens, when the one you love, the one you’ve protected , loved and fought for, the sister one who is only seventeen months younger than yourself dies, leaves you, you think you can write? No it isn’t possible. I thought maybe I could escape that abyss, that black hole staring up at you, empty when you get that phone call. But the abyss just gets wider and the keyboard freezes. it’s like writing through treacle made in hell; the keys sticking, clogged, slow.
I thought maybe I could bring out the pathos in my broken heart show how words can help me share, convey the depths of feelings, but it doesn’t . It’s just dark, lonely and full of panic. Why panic? Because I feel helpless, helpless because I cannot bring her back. Someone, I forget who, said, ‘Well she’s been suffering for a long time, so maybe it was a good release.What? What?’ I cried , ‘I would claw her from the grave if I could.’ Every day, is precious, every day she suffered and fought for life was precious. It was no release – never – never. Please don’t tell me that, please – don’t.
So, it’s not something that can be written coldly, is not possible to plot, formulate or even edit. I feel the tears brimming, stinging and falling and I do not who I am addressing or reaching out to. Can a writer in grief write it out? Touch their readers? No, not intellectually, only through blind eyes, fingers moving, heart hurting, panic. Words like scalpels tearing open the grief.
So should I share this with you or will you condemn me? Shall I run away and delete the words, or will I just sit and cry and press publish?
Is writing sharing? Or is it a clever deceit.
My dog has been so good, looking up, staring at me soulfully with those dark eyes and all I can do is bury my face in her fur and cry. So this is not a poem on grief, or a sonnet or a cleverly wrought article, it’s a cry, raw and without hope – Helen oh Helen I see you through my tears. I love you.