Simply Matthew. April 23rd 2012.

Family walk. Cornwall. 2004 

Typical of Matt's sense of humour! 

Matt's photo of the sunrise in Mullion. Cornwall. 2004 

Matt and Chris, our Pastoral Minister at the Baptist Church.   
 Matt's 29th birthday in 2005. (Chris and Matt were both killed in an accident in September 2006.)

Lake Tahoe. 1998

Morocco 2000

Summer 2006

Vannes. France

First day at school. 1981 April. 

At a friends' birthday party

His first attendance at a wedding!

My dad, me and Matt. Cornwall. 2004  

Thinking of you on the day we would've celebrated your birthday. 23rd April 2012.

Here I am again, Matthew, it will be your 36th birthday on Monday 23rd April 2012, and as ever, the anniversary approaching, it is like watching for something you know is so painful that the nearer you get to it's arrival, the harder it is to deal with it. Each year I say to myself " I am stronger this time".And in some senses that is true, as our lives learn to live around the gaping, yawning void, where you stood and breathed. When it is an anniversary, of your birthday, or your, and I say this not flippantly, your death day, we are compelled to stand at the edge of the chasm and look into it.          

Matt wading in the River Rothay, Grasmere. July 2006. 

As I look again into the void, which has been there for 6 long, long, years, what do I see? Looking back at you I see the life I once knew, a completeness. Now I live a totally different life, one which holds on to your memory, whilst endeavoring to live here and now without you. One of my favourite pictures is the one of you wading in the river during our family holiday in that last gloriously hot summer. In a few short weeks that summer ended in tragedy.  I look out now on the world you used to be able to see. I look at the photos you used to take, and posted on Flickr, and I see the world through your eyes then. I see the picture as you saw it. 

To me that now has a significance all of it's own. I see the world as you saw it, in the little videos you made, waterfalls in Yosemite, your feet covered in the overflow from where Bridal Veil Falls hit the rocks at the bottom. 

I hear your voice in the cottage in the Lake District, where you had used my camera to video the farmer baling hay.To this day, when I see a farmer in the hay meadows, with the baling machine, I cry. And afterwards at the end you said "Time for a brew I think".    

Matt in Cowplain Hampshire, learning to play cricket

Then as though your life suddenly stretches out behind us, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, I work my way backwards, through the 30 years you were here on earth.  And now there are no more photos of you, no more memories that have been made. They stopped.

So once again it is your birthday, and we are going out for a special lunch, your dad and I.We always mark your day. And your favourite cherry trees are in blossom. Albeit a bit battered this year!      

 

Bridge over the Rothay in 2007. One year on from 10th September 2006. I scattered sunflower petals in the water.

"The dictionary defines closure as

'. . . to be imperious to . . . to choke off . . .

to constrict . . . to bolt . . . to bar . . . to end.'

For survivors, the word closure often connotes that the bereaved are underachievers

who flunked a grief course.

Though the intention is meant to be sympathetic,there is evoked a note of chastisement

for failing to end the mourning process.

In the eloquent words of Dr. Jimmy Holland at New York's Sloan-Kettering Hospital:

'We create a sense of failure as if the bereaved is not doing it fast enough.'

For grief work takes more time and effort than most people ever anticipate.

And even after weeks, months, and years later,

grief may ebb, but never ends . . .

The Song of Songs has an insightful perspective on the death of a beloved.

Instead of a word like closure ('to end'),

are the thoughts of never forgetting, always remembering.

The final day of Passover . . . is a Service of Yizkor ('Remembrance')

for those whose memories will never die.

In the synagogue is a 'wall of remembrance'

of past members who are recalled

with lights lit by their names.

There is no closure.

The beauty of their lives never ends.

The life of the dead is now placed

in the memory of the living.

For 'love is strong as death' (8:6).

~Rabbi Dr. Earl Grollman, in "Closure and the Song of Songs,"

Bereavement Magazine , March/April 2003

Easter Sunday April 8th 2012

Cherry tree planted by the school opposite, in memory of Matthew. Now in bloom .

How is it today on a day when we celebrate the Resurrection and my heart should rejoice in the wonder of it, that today I feel bereft? 

Part of that reason is on Easter Sunday you would send a text to my phone saying, 

"Christ is Risen!" and I would reply

"He is Risen indeed!"

I miss you to a depth so profound, and a horizon so far away, that holding my grandson yesterday, and loving his wonderful smile and his baby chatter, I so wished that you could see him. You were my firstborn son. 

It is such a paradox, that I can actually say genuinely, that I know I will see you again, but I wish, oh, how I long and yearn for it to be now.  

My tears fall. 

The sounds of the morning reaching my ears from the garden outside.

A garden reawakening from winter sleep.

A garden full of birdsong and new growth.

A garden I love.

A garden where your tree is in blossom, 

Beautiful  white star flowers. 

This month of your approaching birthday.

And all it's beauty and new life 

A reminder of the cruelty of a life cut down.

April, as the saying goes 

And which for me, now has a deeper understanding,

Is the cruellest month.    

  But in that other garden

There was a voice that simply said 

"Mary"

And through her tears 

She turned and saw You 

Standing there in the early dawn light

And she knew

What I know now,

You are alive!

So, once again, I ask You to take care of my son, until we all see him once more, in that place where death has no dominion, and our sorrow will be ended.       

Until that day, Matt, until that day, I go on walking this journey, meeting new things along the way, other people whose lives will cross my path, I take hold of this day here and now,
And I will Rejoice in it!
Death is not the end
Death is defeated.
Jesus lives!
So I can hear you say to me, Matt,
Christ is Risen!
And I reply
He is Risen indeed!!      

March 18th Mothering Sunday 2012

                                              Remembering you on Mothering Sunday

Matthew and me Isle of Wight September 1977

 Here I am again, Matt. It's Mothering Sunday tomorrow, and once more we will remember you especially. Your brother and his wife will be celebrating their first Mothering Sunday, and with joy for their baby son who is now 5 months old. I do not place their photos here, to protect their privacy, and I love them very much, and will be thinking of them tomorrow too, as they live away.

I still have two sons. 

Only you are with your Heavenly Father.In my prayers I ask Him to take care of you each and every day. The Father you loved and followed.          

Our grandson's feet.  

Matthew 2006

Yesterday, the familiar gut wrenching, splintering of my heart, welled up inside and spilled over into tears, that I cannot see you or talk to you, for the rest of my earthly life, however long that will  be. It's Mothering Sunday. The cards have been in the shops for ages, the pubs and restaurants advertise their "Celebrate Mother's Day" meals, (at exhorbitant prices!) And I am faced with your loss as your mum, the child to whom I gave birth in April 1976, who was part of our lives for 30 years.      

Matthew in his garden. 2006  

So, I still have two sons, that I love very deeply.
So today, I will take "time out" in the garden, where the yellow of the forsythia is a splash of brightness, the daffodils are out, and the buds are fattening on the trees and shrubs. I'll plant the first of the sunflower seeds, the poppies and nasturtiums. And breathe again, hearing an echo of your voice where your presence used to be.
Love you, miss you,
Your mumxx    
  

Another milestone birthday. 8th February 2012.

Well Matt, last week we had the usual spate of February birthdays. Mine and dad's falling within 4 days of each other, and various friends on either side! Always a scramble going out and buying the presents for 6 different people!  But it's fun. Only this year was very different. Your dad reached his 60th birthday on 8th February. It was another of those family times when you are so keenly missed. A blank space, which your presence used to occupy. It will always be so. You are frozen in time at  the age of 30. One of your old friends reached 30 this week, on the same day as your dad. And I know as your brother approaches his 30th in a couple of years, he feels it keenly. 

Matt. 

  

 However we had a visit from him and his wife and our lovely grandson for the weekend of my birthday, and we had a lovely time. Not without it's underlying tacitly understood sadness, which runs beneath like an underground stream.
We walk above it on the surface, going on in our everyday lives, not always aware of the stream below. Until something triggers a memory of you, which has the ability to reduce us to tears, or to feel the familiar stab of pain. Only natural for someone who was so loved. Then the stream bubbles to the surface and sometimes overflows for awhile, until the pain recedes.

We wish you could've been there with us all.
It was nonetheless a good week.
Your dad declared it one of the best birthday's he had celebrated. Our friends certainly went to town! Some of them making a dinner the evening of the 9th, followed by a wonderfully crazy game of "Racing Grannies"!  This was a Scalextric track with a difference! Instead of cars, we raced the grannies round and round! All this followed a glass of champagne to toast the birthday boy. Lots of merriment!!
I had a picture of you in my mind's eye, reduced to tears with laughing. Oh how we miss your laughter.

  So your photo is sitting surrounded by cards, and the mantlepiece and hearth overflowing with them!
He had lots of thoughtful gifts and we ourselves spent the day in London, as a treat travelling First Class on the train.
His work colleagues gave him a presentation and a specially made cake.
So, as I write this thinking of you, we are still surrounded by all the cards and flowers, and next week we are going to visit one of your old friends, now a 7 hour plane trip away. I have not seen them since your Thanksgiving in September 2006. Your dad met him and his wife in Beirut, in 2009. But I could not go, as I was sorting out the sale of your grandad's home.
They have a little girl now. It will be poignant stepping off the plane to greet them. When your dad met him at Beirut airport, he was wearing the England shirt you had bought for him. Not bad for an American! But it was a special show of the affection and regard he has for you.
Well, time to go.
Thinking of you, love you, forever.
Mumxx  
 

Christmas is coming again, the sixth without you.............

 Well, Matthew,
Here we are again, it's Christmas time. This year it is very different. There will only be your dad and I on Christmas Day, for the first time I can ever remember since we have been married. And on Christmas Eve it is 41 years since we got engaged.We will spend Christmas Eve with your brother and his wife and our lovely grandson, now 11weeks old. His mum said to him that when he is old enough they will tell him about his Uncle Matthew, (who would have been 35 this year.)      

Our Christmas tree this year. December 2011

I have decorated the tree and hung lights outside, as I love Christmas time - and as we've said many times before, so did you. Only I feel a sense of sadness in it all. There have been major changes in our family once again which you were not able to see or to be there. Two more of your cousins were married, and weddings make the lack of your presence more noticeable. Your nephew was born. And your young wife remarried, and is making her home in America. We are really pleased for her. She is moving into a large family.    

Smudge the rabbit and Rudolf the reindeer. December 2011 

So, Matthew, I've included a photo of Smudge the rabbit and Rudolf the reindeer. Why?

They are both things which were very special.

Smudge the rabbit was bought for my mum by my dad years ago. She died 21 years ago this year,aged just 70. After she died Smudge lived at the bottom of the stairs in dad's home, sitting in a wicker basket and wrapped up in a scarf. When dad could no longer live on his own, Smudge went with him to his Residential home and sat on his bed.

Inanimate things can be "real" when they are cherished for the memories they hold or simply because of the person to whom they belong. 

I now have Smudge here. He sits on the bed, still wrapped in his scarf, a reminder of my mum and dad. 

Rudolf was given to you Matt, one Christmas, by your wife, and we all laughed as he looks like a reindeer with attitude and a face that is full of mischief! 

After you left us Rudolf took on a different significance, going everywhere with your young widow. . But it became time to close the door finally and begin a new chapter, so Rudolf is now here with us. 

A tangible reminder of a cheeky grin, a sometimes irritated "don't suffer fools gladly" stare and a heart that cared for others. 

He went to work with your dad the other day, as there was a competition for the most creatively dressed desk in the office. 

And he was a big hit, even though no prize was won!      

So on our sixth Christmas without you since September 2006, I love you, I miss you and hold you in my heart. 

Mumxx   

Return to the Lizard, Cornwall. October 2011.

Footprints in the sand

I came down to the Lizard a few days ago, to spend some time on my own in the place I love so well. The place we all used to stay as a family, along with your grandad, year in year out, and where we had such happy times. I saw my new grandson last week, your nephew, and it was a wonderful experience. I am going to love being a granny! I have spent the days in quiet reflection each morning, and the afternoons walking the cliff paths, and along the empty beach at Polurrian. I can hear echoes of your voice mingled with that of grandad and the others and it makes me smile. We will never lose you, Matt, you are forever with us.  And on days like today, walking along the beach, for once, I remember you without the sense of loss.                  

Polurrian Cove.