The veggie garden is going berserk. Must be about fifty cherry tomatoes already. Rocco waits until it's cool enough to water them all each evening. He makes me watch. He makes me do a lot of things.
I read somewhere that grief is born the moment your loved one dies. The first three months, exactly like a newborn baby, your grief needs constant care and attention and tending. It's been a bit over three months since my brother Cameron died. Getting out of bed, showering, going out in public .. are all really hard things. Sometimes I can't do them. I don't think grief is the price we pay for love - I think grief IS love. And the harder, most wholeheartedly we loved, the harder, most wholeheartedly we grieve.
I just always wanted to help him, be with him, teach him things. He was this blonde supernova running around our family room. He was so happy. He was so happy.
I'm bereft. Torn. Broken. Pulled apart. Recovery meetings and therapy appointments are saving my arse right now. And Dave, doing just the right thing at just the right time. Most of all, Max and Rocco. My obligations and love for them making me get up and do things and plan the day, plan the dinner. And just stay alive.
I'm back to sleeping with his bone ashes on my bedside table again. I swear they're getting heavier, like he's somewhere saying Eed, dude, let them go. Probably. My theory is that I'm so thick with grief and pain that if he is around me, I can't see him properly.
I love him. I love him. I love him. I love him. Every time I saw him after I moved out of home I made a beeline. I think I'll always feel bad for leaving him - sometimes I was so caught up in my own shit I wouldn't talk to him for months. I hate myself for that, and apologised to him so many times afterwards. I was at the beginning of a very fruitless and destructive drinking career, which took precedence over everything.
Mum and I went through some boxes of his stuff. Found his first lock of hair, his favourite Richard Scarry Book (Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.) His preschool pictures, his kindergarten writing. He couldn't spell for shit. He wrote about his dad with such an obvious love - it surprised me. I knew he was the apple of his dads eye. His dad would click his fingers and Cam would reach up to hold his hand. They were so alike. Huge intellects, smart, arrogant, big thinkers. Depressed.
Both gone, both from their own hand. But for eight solid years? For eight years they loved each other like any other father and son.
The older I get, the less I understand life. I don't know if love is worth the pain. I don't know anything, except when that corn is ready to be plucked the whole plant will be gone, leaving a bare space where it once stood. So we plant some other seeds, see if they take. We won't know what stays or what fades away.
I read somewhere that grief is born the moment your loved one dies. The first three months, exactly like a newborn baby, your grief needs constant care and attention and tending. It's been a bit over three months since my brother Cameron died. Getting out of bed, showering, going out in public .. are all really hard things. Sometimes I can't do them. I don't think grief is the price we pay for love - I think grief IS love. And the harder, most wholeheartedly we loved, the harder, most wholeheartedly we grieve.
I'm bereft. Torn. Broken. Pulled apart. Recovery meetings and therapy appointments are saving my arse right now. And Dave, doing just the right thing at just the right time. Most of all, Max and Rocco. My obligations and love for them making me get up and do things and plan the day, plan the dinner. And just stay alive.
I'm back to sleeping with his bone ashes on my bedside table again. I swear they're getting heavier, like he's somewhere saying Eed, dude, let them go. Probably. My theory is that I'm so thick with grief and pain that if he is around me, I can't see him properly.
I love him. I love him. I love him. I love him. Every time I saw him after I moved out of home I made a beeline. I think I'll always feel bad for leaving him - sometimes I was so caught up in my own shit I wouldn't talk to him for months. I hate myself for that, and apologised to him so many times afterwards. I was at the beginning of a very fruitless and destructive drinking career, which took precedence over everything.
Mum and I went through some boxes of his stuff. Found his first lock of hair, his favourite Richard Scarry Book (Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.) His preschool pictures, his kindergarten writing. He couldn't spell for shit. He wrote about his dad with such an obvious love - it surprised me. I knew he was the apple of his dads eye. His dad would click his fingers and Cam would reach up to hold his hand. They were so alike. Huge intellects, smart, arrogant, big thinkers. Depressed.
Both gone, both from their own hand. But for eight solid years? For eight years they loved each other like any other father and son.
The older I get, the less I understand life. I don't know if love is worth the pain. I don't know anything, except when that corn is ready to be plucked the whole plant will be gone, leaving a bare space where it once stood. So we plant some other seeds, see if they take. We won't know what stays or what fades away.
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Write to be understood, speak to be heard. - Lawrence Powell