Tag: Love; family

Baubles To Advent: How Very Close

I took my cache of goods to the food bank today, a little early before the end of my #BaublesToAdvent2018 campaign, but the food is bought and better there than waiting in my kitchen.

 

As I drove there, after the daily school run, in my battered war-horse of a family car I felt just how close this could be. When I arrived there, in my charity shop-bought coat and battered pumps, I could just as easily be asking for help as bringing an offering. My partner and I cut our cloth carefully to ensure a roof over our head, food in our pantry and that the children have all they need, but for my job we might be closer to needing this service than I would wish to think about.

I remember an old hand at work, discussing an awful tragedy which had come to our notice, saying: “There but for the grace of God go I.” Faith or not it is mere chance for a lot of us that we have not become too ill to work, injured or some other circumstances which might keep us from our incomes.

With the exception of the super rich, we all walk such a fine tightrope over these things. We must make sure we do what we can to provide for all, while we can, for tomorrow it could be us.

#ThrowbackThursday Bringing Change: Hopes & Wishes

First published 9th March 2017 on Quiet Radicals

Last month was welcome in sweeping away and closing doors behind it. Taking with it the immediate instant sting of grief, of loss.

It had started with a tiny heartbeat. For us this was Hope, a miracle after an earlier loss. We saw Hope on a screen, wept and held hopeful hands togerther, marvelling at that tiny heart beating in less than a centimetre of potential.
Just three weeks later as my slightly rounded belly was pressed down, we saw Hope again, not much bigger but with that strong, minute pulsing absent. Hope was gone, lost. All there was now was grief and medical options to physically let her go.

That heartbeat had drummed out a promise of a future world, a world that we now know will not become. Thoughts had been turned to preparations. Preparations which are no longer needed. The loss of that tiny heartbeat had been incorporated into our own heartbeats, only to be a soft echo and nothing more.

Two weeks after that, well, what we are left with is the wondering – what is Hope?

What is hope? Defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as “desire accompanied by expectation or belief in fulfillment”. The dictionary definition, as with so many words, falls far short of the lived experience of hope.

Hope is, in the absence of concrete guarantees, the need to get back up. Hope is not a wish, not a vision of what is better, it is the part that screams “DO NOT GIVE IN”. It is not a petalline and blush concept – it is found in the viscera, perhaps even is of the blood rather than the heart. It is the part of all of us that – in the face of abject mortality, in the line of failure after failure, after losses so great we fear we might never breathe again – tears apart at fear, at defeat, at fatigue. It understands that there can be better than this and shrieks “GET BACK UP.”

Hope is in every act of carrying on, every moment of continuing with each other, with our children who have made it into the world. Hope bursts through, blistering and ripping through grief, into love. It does it again and again and will not stop. Hope is the thing that unifies us all. It inspires courage and lets us start over again and again, and again.

Hope is not lost. Hope lives on always, in all of us.

* If you have been or are being affected by pregnancy loss please make sure you are supported. If you are struggling there are a great many organisations offering help and support. The Miscarriage Association and babyloss are good places to start. And, for all it’s worth, our hearts are with you too.

My partner James has also written about this experience- unusually from the perspective of the dad. I warn you, it is heartbreaking but worth reading here.

Love, in three embraces

This morning my boy drew himself into bed, exhausted after his share of caring for the twins in the night and with hot coffee on the bedside table for me to awake and to take over care. He held me close in his hot arms and spoke softly in his low, deep tones to me about love, our love, in the terms of kindness that are habitual for us. The safety, the intimacy and the feeling of the pieces being put together. This is it, for always, all at once familiar and new, exciting and reliable, home and adventure. For all the scars we carry are held as jewels which led us to this very moment, every moment.

On a morning last week my first-born, my golden haired girl, crawled into that same bed, afraid and frantic from a nightmare, having quietly scaled the stairs up to our room in the dark. I brought her close to me and whispered words of comfort to her, intertwined with threats to the spectres of the dark, from the burning ferocity of maternal love. As she melted into safety, into my concerned but tired embrace, we fell asleep in the dark, my heart held in my arms and swept over by the honeyed sensation of knowing she is safe.

Twenty-four years ago, sitting with my arms around my grandmother as she wept, having fallen in the hospital toilet in what turned out to be her last months, promoted from 12-year-old to the first familiar face of comfort in a moment of fearful realisation. She told me not of her pain but of her shame. The love and protection she always had given me became a well to draw upon to quench this sudden, terrifying need for reassurance. I held her close and spoke words of love which I hoped were enough.