Keeping memories alive

In a new house there are few memories. A fresh chapter in our family history has begun, and any memories this house holds are not ours. Someone else's stories murmur within these walls, celebrations, sorrows, quarrels,  moments of love, all there, but not ours.
Ours are elsewhere, in the woods, running and whispering through the trees in a scarlet coat; in an orchard on Dartmoor, bouncing on the trampoline and making daisy chains under the apple trees; skipping by the river Dart, under the shade of the big old horse chestnuts. We have so many memories, but because we have moved, they have stepped back a layer into our family history. They are no longer current, no longer fresh, it seems as though they are no longer alive.

What do you do when someone you love dies? What do you do? Do you try to forget they ever existed to blunt the sharp edge of raw unfettered grief? Do you plunge into an abyss of nostalgia and weeping for the past, and barely acknowledge the present; or do you struggle on with your life, punctuated by the agonising balm of triggered memories?
The agonising balm...ferreting in an old coat pocket of Lily's and turning out ten pussy willows, a Fry's orange chocolate wrapper, a rainbow string, a crumpled bit of tissue. 'Her fingers last touched these things! Where did she get that chocolate from? Weren't those the pussy willows she collected on our last mother's day walk along the tidal road, when she picked the pampas grass and wanted to make it into angel wings?'

Yes really, angel wings.. like she knew.

It's not only tangible Lily objects which act as triggers. Some little girls of about seven have fine straight hair the colour of a mouse's back, in semi profile their heads have a familiar shape, sometimes they have a similar cardigan to one of Lily's, or even an identical skirt, they might move with her easy, unobstrusive grace. Just for a second, if I screw my eyes up I could just pretend...

Sometimes we all look through her wooden box. She didn't have lots of stuff but it's all in there and we handle each scribbled note and china horse as if it were a precious jewel. It brings up emotion, unexpected anger from some, quiet withdrawal from another. We don't do this much. Since we've moved it's like she's taken a step away, or we've moved further on and left her behind. Her photo is still in the kitchen, with a candle and some flowers next to it, but she seems less present. Maybe she wants to go back to the woods, maybe she's still there, running up and down in her little red coat with no one there to play with.

Maybe that's rubbish.

We've been busy. I'm busy unpacking and simultaneously packing to move on again. There's the Advent Fair coming up at school and I'm making dolls and curry for it. I'm trying to write. Hugh is building our new home. Maybe it's us that hasn't connected with her, maybe she's knocking at the window and our heads are too busy to hear her.

Is that the way it is with someone who dies? No matter how you try, life on earth just moves on and away and we forget, not fully but in a soft focus, fuzzy kind of way?

Sometimes a flash of clarity, the exact tone of her voice, the set of her jaw when she was sulking...what would it be like without photos, without memorabilia?

My lovely friend Ruby has written about her experience of losing someone close where no keepsakes or belongings were kept and nothing was discussed, she talks about this at http://www.loving-transformation.com/ In our family we are lucky to have photos, a couple of video clips, school books, hair clips. But really, am I being too attached to material props? Are we all? They are comforting, but are they a distraction from the Lily that is real now? Do they put a barrier between us and a very real connection with her in spirit form? Doesn't our preoccupation with material things prevent us from connecting to the spirit that is in everything, even ourselves? 

Old coat pockets and sweet wrappers will eventually rot and fade away, Lily's love will always be there.

If we believe that nothing ever really dies, then why is our grief at losing the physical form so excruciating?

Do you have any experience of this? How do you remember your loved ones who have moved on?

Time passes

Time passes. Time rushes on  its winged feet, not bothering to check if I want to  hop off and wait for a while. Day after day gallops by, dragging me on, a reluctant passenger, caught in the whirlwind of school runs, washing, cleaning, answering a hundred needy calls.
The seasons change, the rosebay willowherb turns to cotton wool in the hedgerows, the squirrels leap past our windows in a nut induced frenzy. It's autumn yet again and the days of summer have faded and gone.

It was close to midsummer's day when Lily left us, two years ago. A blue June sky and a sunset emblazoned with glorious gold to welcome her onto her new path.  But the sun has kept on setting, over and over again and no one thought to ask if I minded. How could the sun know that I wanted to be suspended in an eternal June, where the foxgloves bloom forever on my daughters fingers and I wondered if she had enough suncream on her shoulders?

With the autumn mists and spider webs spun across my path comes another departure:  from the last summer memories of Lily. This is the third summer I have had to leave without her, to walk into winter with only three children by my side. And each time autumn comes we travel further and further away from the physical reality of her. Those last walks by the river, the last dentist appointment a few days before her accident, the last school pick ups when she brought home origami doves that she had made for whitsun....Each year these memories seem to drop a little further into the mists, each year it is harder to move away from her. Each year, autumn creeps on insidiously, with its rosy fruits and golden leaves. And I mourn the loss of the wild roses and bright days of midsummer, so inexorably entwined with our last days with Lily.

And the seasons will keep changing, and moving, the years will keep rolling past and we will move on too. Much as I sometimes long to be held in a timeless June with my four children dancing around my feet, the reality is that Freddie, Tansy and Leo are growing and changing, and so are we. Our lives on earth are not over and we still have our paths to follow.
Lily's path led her away from her earthly existence into a realm which is very close by. Our worlds are not as separate we fear, but our focus on 'doing' and 'thinking' effectively blocks any connection between the two. If we can take a break from the frenetic, busy and head centred patterns of our material lives and listen with a quiet heart, with an open heart, what whispers will we hear?

Lily's birthday

Ten years ago today, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, my daughter Lily was born. The foot and mouth crisis in the UK was slowly drawing to close.  It was a calamitous year.

Lily was born so swiftly that I hardly realised I had given birth..'Look down, look down' the midwife said, and there she was, a tiny waxy little girl. After giving birth to a boy, Freddie, two and a half years earlier, I had been (secretly) hoping for a daughter...my Lily

I could tell you so many things about Lily.

How, as a newborn she cried every evening but stopped if I took her outside to see the moon.

How she walked on her first birthday...although she didn't really want to be any where but my arms until she was three.

How she called orchids, 'awkwards' and buttercups 'hiccups' until she was nearly in school.

How she kept a little wooden fox by her bed because 'she saw foxes in the night' and was scared.

I could tell you that she was solemn with strangers, but kind, loving and happy at home and with friends. And she talked about poo as much as any other child.

I could tell you about how she used to refuse her spinach at dinner but happily browse on pennywort and hawthorn leaves in spring.

And how, when flagging at the end of a long walk, I used give her and her big brother Freddie one date each and the burst of energy sent them charging up the last hill yelling 'date power!'

I could tell you how she sometimes woke early and took Tansy and Leo into her bed to read and play.

I could tell you the wildflowers she knew...fumitory, black medic, scarlet pimpernel, guelder rose....The Flower Faries were her favourite 'reading in bed' books.

I could tell you so many things

What I can't tell you is what she'll be doing for her birthday today, although I know she'll be close by, in the whispering trees, in the iridescent damselfly which visits us every day, in the little wren who hides in the willow.

Lily's 6th birthday, 2007

I can tell you what we are doing. We are lighting a candle and remembering and loving her and wishing with all our hearts that she could be here eating cake with us again.

Lily Rose

13.09.01-11.06.09