When you walk through a storm........hold your head up high...

 My dear, dear Matthew,
A door opened once again this last week, unbidden and unexpected, back to the depths of grief I felt almost 6 years ago. A suddeness, a shaking, a dropping into the dark chasm of pain.
It swept me off my feet and squeezed the breath out of my body.
Maybe it was worse because I wasn't well for a few days and spent sleepless nights propped up with several pillows unable to breathe properly until the vicious 'flu like symptoms abated.

 Several days earlier we had welcomed into our home for a few days, your widow and her new husband, also called Matthew, and spent a few days getting to know him a little better. You would like him. He is a gentle soul. And it could not have been easy for him to come and stay, where there are photos of you all over the house. 

He met once again your brother and his wife and 1 year old son, when we had a family get together  last Sunday. 

But, and I say it honestly, after a while it became more apparent to me, as they left to tour around other places for a few days, that I was beginning to feel more emotional and painful. (Maybe the onset of the flu like virus did not exactly help.)

 When the house became quiet again, it felt strange. 

Not something I could control, which is always a scary place for me. Why? I asked myself ? Why now? 

Ok I wasn't well, but it was deeper than that. 

A door had been opened once again, into those awful days of early grief, when tiredness and pain were constant companions. This new relationship which has presented itself, only serves to highlight the fact that it is not you by her side anymore. Even when I know that, and accept it, wholeheartedly without question, liking him very much.      

It is a gaping hole, that can never be filled, or cemented in, even the depths of which can never be plumbed, nor healed, it goes down into the abyss, endless, vast and alone. 

You are gone. 

Gone from me, 

My child that I bore,

That I so loved and will do forever,

From your first breath 

Till your last 

When I was not able to hold you in my arms and wish you goodbye, 

And others gathered your broken body 

From that nightmare scene,

Whilst we were still unaware........

Then a Silence of you..............

No Longer a presence of you............

   

           

But our love for you will never die, and you will never be forgotten.

Forever your mumxxxx

A different life.........

My lovely son, contemplating as you sit by the candle light in your garden, the year that we lost you......
We are this week contemplating a visit from your widow.
Only she is bringing with her a new husband, also called Matthew. And her surname has changed.
I know that you met him, years ago, at the Christian festival Soul Survivor, and it is good that he knew you briefly.
She now lives and works in America, at the same Christian College as her husband in Dallas.

It is what we prayed for her, after the devastating loss, that she would one day meet someone again   with whom she could share her life.
And God has a way of being surprising at times!

BUT
We are facing a whole new different relationship, and with the sense of pleasure that we have to see her remarry and begin a new life, comes the immediate knowledge that it was because you died that the whole of our lives were altered and shattered on that awful night.

We are always in the process of rebuilding, and trying to make sense of where we are now.
But it is the "where we are now" that has to be faced each day that goes by.

This is another of those "first" experiences, in the same category as birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas.  

SO we greet a new couple this weekend for the first time, whom we have not seen since last year. Now almost married 12 months, and will negotiate the fact that it would have been your own Wedding Anniversary on Sunday. It seems so incomprehensible to grasp.
A bit like about to negotiate a minefield.........you never know how you are going to cope, or what will happen......except we have to go through it.

I miss you.

I found a letter someone had  written to us just after you died,
And I quote from it now......

" I struggle to make  sense of the death of Matthew and why you should have to go through such grief, But at the same time, I give thanks to God for the tremendous person Matthew was - his faith, his personality, his desire to serve God wholeheartedly."

We go on, without you, this weekend into territory as yet uncharted, holding Jesus' hand.  
May the Lord watch over you for us.

Mum  xxx




    

Seven autumns,seven winters............. 2006-2012

Here I am again, thinking of you..........

Since you left, we have had seven autumns and seven winters,

Six springs and six summers. 

The autumn you left is remembered as a blur of pain, 

Punctuated by beautiful sunlit skies, and glorious sunsets, 

After the hottest summer we experienced in years. 

It seemed so incongruous, to live with all that beauty 

And all that vibrancy, 

When you could not see it. 

And we could never see you again. 

I took refuge in the solace of our garden,

It was one of the only places that I felt really safe. 

And in the passing of the years and seasons until now, 

I have spent hours out there................

I have changed the garden, just as I have changed, 

Only I wanted it to be a place awash with colour 

Reflecting the way that I always think of you 

Smiling, laughing, caring. 

So if you could see it today, 

I know you would love it. 

I painted this from a photograph I took 4 weeks after you died. It was a day that made me feel, just for a little while, that I could go on living.  

                      I had gone into the local park to find somewhere to be on my own and sit awhile. 

The sunlight began to filter through the trees and just for a short time, I felt that I would, maybe, be able one day to enjoy the beauty around me, without the crushing weight of loss.  I did not immediately set to work as I was so devastatingly tired.

I began in the depth of that winter of 2006/7 and finished it by March 2007, when it won  a place in the Local Sutton Artist's exhibition. You would have been so proud.  

                         

It is framed and on the wall in our lounge, a reminder that now after all this time I can enjoy beautiful days without the agony I felt then, because those days only served to remind me that you could not share them. 

You loved the park, and you also took photos there.              

Matt's photo taken in summer 2006, Sutton  Park. 

The autumn colours  appear on the leaves of the cherry tree planted in memory of Matt, in the grounds of the school opposite our house. The school he attended till he was 11 years old.

So, Matt, as the evenings now begin to shorten with the onset of winter, and dusk descends at 5.00pm, as your dad and I were tidying up the garden for it's winter sleep today, I thought of you. Seven winters and seven autumns, we miss you.
Love mumxx