Old photos.

May 2005 California

Dear Matt,
When I want to see you, I go to look at the old photos.
I have to say "old" now, as they have a start date, on the day  you were born, and an end date, after you were suddenly taken from us.
There are now no more photos, as there are now no more memories to add.
But the ones we have are so, so, very important, and precious.
It is a chronicle of your life here on earth.
A life lived with your family, and for a few short years as a young married man.
Your middle name was chosen on the day you were born.
It is your grandad's middle name.
I am glad that you and he were so close.
I miss you, both.
The one taken before his time, and the other at the end of a long life.
You have both left your legacy with us, in so many different ways.
 
 And we will come home to you both, in the fullness of our own time.
But, until then, I sometimes sit and sift through the photos, seeing once again your cheeky grin, or smiley face, and you looking right back at me.

Matthew Milford Sellers
with
Leslie Milford Sellers,
his grandad. 2004  

I can hear your voice and when I am in church, often "see" you where you used to be, near the front, standing to worship.
People still tell me about the evening two days before you died, when you went around the little assembled Friday prayer group and prayed for each one. It became even more special to each one of them, in the light of what happened 48 hours later, which shocked the church to the core and then reverberated outwards like some vast tidal wave, to our families, friends and wider community.
  
 So, in this soggy, rain-soaked summer, there have not been many days to spend in outdoor activities, and as the rain has poured relentlessly down, you would have been longing for the sun!
Oh how I miss you, Matt.
I want to feel your hug and hear you say "I love you mum"

After 6 years, you do learn to live with the emptiness, but it is always there. How can it be otherwise?

Cadgwith. The Lizard. Cornwall.
May 1997

So, my lovely, lovely firstborn son, smiling out at me now, we will always love you, always remember, and when people ask me, as they do(!)   "How are you?"

It depends how I feel about answering.........

I know that after 6 years, some of them think I should have "moved on" whatever that means!

It isn't possible to leave you behind, Matt. 

We carry you with us, a permanent physical scarring. 

You were bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. A part of me.

So when a newly bereaved friend asked me recently, " When does the pain go away?" I thought long and hard before answering. 

I was silent. And hugged her tight.   

    

Spain. May 2006. 

  

Back home from The Lizard. June 2012

Hi Matt,

 Here I am back home once more. We enjoyed our week in Mullion with your brother and his family, going to various places and the old familiar ones.  And we talked about you, and how you are so missed......forever...... a hole, a gaping hole, in our family which you used to occupy.
And somehow, that underground grief which flows ever on welled up at the beginning of the holiday, when we heard the awful news of the sudden death of someone else we knew very well.

Mullion Cove. Cornwall. June 2012

Our friend had expressed her wish that we should not be told until we got home, and was upset that we had heard the way we did  but somehow someone else "thought we should know". So I received the news at the beginning of our first family holiday with our grandson, by a text, which although not stating what had happened, made my blood run cold, and eventually after several frantic phone calls we were given the truth.

I would say that it is not really the best way to learn devastating news.      

For me it meant it had a double effect. The shock making me feel helpless and sick, and then the thought of all that the newly bereaved family, in the loss of their husband and dad at a relatively early age, were going to have to face. It affected my son, and so his wife. Seeing the immediate effects.

It reverberated round my emotions for days, not being able to sleep very well, and constantly having flashbacks to the night we had our own phone call in the early hours of the morning. It made  the last 6 years melt away until it was as if I was living through it all over again.

Porthleven harbour

St Ives beach. 

We have visited the family today, having returned home yesterday, and the sheer rawness of the grief and shock is self evident. Nothing ever, ever, prepares you for the sudden death of a loved one, so alive one minute, and then.......................a call...................  

So, Matthew, we had our week, and as we knew there was nothing we could do at that point, I found great solace in the daily routine which began with our grandson having his breakfast, sitting in his high chair and beaming when he saw us first thing in the morning. He is a very smiley baby, now 8 months old, and he brings us much joy. I wish you could see him.

The path to Lizard Point

You would recognise the now familiar path which winds it's way down to the Most Southerly Point in the British Isles. This time of the year there is the yellow of the wild field mustard, mingling with the other flowers by the wayside.  And we went to sit on your rock, and I picked some sea pinks, or thrift as it is known and dropped in the small flower heads one by one, as we remembered you.
We already chose a house in which to stay next year! All of us once more. By that time your nephew will be almost two years old and walking.
So we left your rock once more and walked back along the cliffs to the sound of the waves and the sight of the shifting, ever changing sea.
In my heart Matt.............love you. Mumxx      

Mesembryanthemums growing wild on the cliffs at Lizard Point.

Cornwall once more............

Dear Matt, On Saturday we are going to Cornwall once again, Having beaten a path to it's door for the last 20 years. Always going to the same timeless place. Mullion Cove, on the Lizard Peninsula. Our new grandson and his mum and dad are coming too. He was there with us last year, hidden to the world being carried within his mother. 

It is a place we all love so much. And it is the place where you rest, close to the sea, hidden in a rock. A secret place known only to us. Your grandad also loved it, and called it "Timeless".       

Mullion Cove 

 But you and grandad are no longer with us making our annual trek South. We miss you both, and will do what we always do thinking of you both. We will have a Cornish Cream Tea, so beloved of grandad, and will visit your rock, which we call "Matt's Rock". This we do separately, your dad and I on our own, and your brother and his wife on their own. Space to reflect and remember you.    

 The picture of the boat being launched was taken in 2004, which was the last holiday at Mullion that you shared with us. A glorious week! As you went with your wife to California in 2005, to meet your old friend, who was married by that time. So this picture has a significance of it's own. Another "last time you were with us" one.

Here is my dad, your grandad, on his last visit with us, your dad and I, in 2005, not being able to make it in the years to come due to his health, enjoying the last of the afternoon sun at Lizard Point, not far from where you are now hidden in a rock by the edge of the sea, where the lighthouse nearby throws it's beam into the darkness each night.
      And this morning, sorting through one or two things, I came across a letter I had written to you in 1993, which you had kept. You were staying at home whilst we were on holiday with grandad and your brother.
I quote from it now,
" Dear Matt,
We've had the most glorious week for weather. Day after day of unbroken sunshine and blue skies. You would love this corner of England. The scenery is superb. Mile after mile of unspoilt coastline with spectacular sea views and lovely coves and beaches..................
      Grandad says it's the best weather he's had since we went on holiday as a family to Torquay when I was 16 years old! ..............
Mullion is a typical Cornish village and has a good old-fashioned pub which does really first class lunches. We've sampled one there already!
We've been up the Lizard lighthouse and visited the Cornish Seal Sanctuary, which has wonderful views across the Helford River..................
Please water my plants before we get back........."

So as grandad said "It's timeless" and we are glad it is your resting place.  

Lots of love, forever, mumxx

Greeting the dawn.............13th May 2012

 Sometimes Matthew, I waken very early in the morning, especially when the daylight hours are growing longer. The dawn chorus of the birds is reaching it's crescendo, reminding me of the day you were born that glorious late April 1976. I laid in my hospital bed as the day unfolded and there was a blackbird singing just outside the window. The beginning of a long, hot summer. I felt incredibly happy. Newborn son asleep.      

 But it's your dad I want to talk about today. He recently had an 11 week course to become a fully bona fide cricketing umpire.He went off yesterday to his first match, being his début and being supervised he, and I, (who would have been stressed let's face it!) decided he was better to go alone. Once he has found his feet I will be accompanying him.
As he donned his gear, I felt the old familiar tears well up. You would have been so proud of him. And no doubt would have gone to one or two of his matches. I thought about his own dad, whom you and your brother called  Grandad John, and his mum Granny Sellers, both cricketing afficianados. Indeed they took your dad to his first match when he was still a babe in arms, pushing his pram to the local ground! How pleased they would've been too.

Matt in the garden. 2002 

 So, once again, my memories were stirred and images of you so clear in my mind that I so wanted to be able to talk to you and share all the news. Inevitably, I woke early thinking of you and it was such a beautiful daybreak. I wandered up the garden at 4.15am, and took the photos. I always feel that God knew exactly what He was doing when he created that very first special garden. I find the reality of ours so comforting, and therapeutic. What a creation we have in all it's joyfulness!
I forever miss you, to a depth so profound I cannot see the end, and the enormity of the loss so vaste and wide, that it surrounds me. But we have the promise that creation will be redeemed, and oh what a day that will be! And what a hope we have in our own redemption! So in the midst of deep deep pain and loss, there can be joy.          
So
"You are the Lord
The Saviour of all
God of creation we praise you,
We sing the songs that awaken the dawn,
God of creation we praise you!"

Definately out!!

 Love you Matt, always.
So "Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away," may Jesus hold you close.

Dawn in the garden. 

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!!