Friday, June 23, 2006

Getting feeling back

Last night Alma and I stopped on the NJ side of the river and sat staring at the skyline for a while. It was hot and sticky and Manhattan rose out of the steam like the buildings in Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil.

The magnitude of Manhattan hits you more on the NJ side of the harbor as you are looking at it directly side on, not from the bottom point like you are in Brooklyn. The whole place is revealed in wide-screen splendor and it is impressive!

I would normally be yapping about what an amazing sight it is but last night they looked just like buildings, impermanent lumps of rock adorned with fairy lights.

I am feeling numb at the moment and I have a raging internal debate going on over wether this is a good thing or not. Don't they say that it is better to feel something, even if it is anger or grief, than to feel nothing at all? At the same time, the numbness is what keeps me getting up in the morning and gets me through the work day without telling people to "fuck off".

People say the strangest things when your Mum dies, mostly expressions of sympathy, but one guy, who admittedly has a gift for putting his foot in his mouth, said to me: "Well sometimes these things can be a good experience!".

'A Good experience" has been ricocheting around in my head ever since and I have been suppressing the desire to scream at this guy "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?". An experience maybe... a good one? No.....

Maybe I am not so numb after all. On the other end of the spectrum I feel so fragile. My ability to ignore bullshit has gone out the window and I feel raw.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Working it out

Since my Mum died I'm still trying to express myself in words and they are not coming out right - I go through mood swings that lurch drastically from a benign sadness to tears in the street. I am walking along feeling okay then someone says something or a song is playing on my headphones, it reminds me of something and a lump wells up in my throat. Most of the time I could not tell you what that something is.

Life is sad at the moment but I know it will be happy again, it's just a case of moving on. I remember when my Dad passed away I was 9 years old and the very day he passed I went out and played football with my friends - it meant nothing to me, death is not real when you are 9. It was probably a month later and I was walking down the street in St Andrews with my Mum and for no apparent reason I burst into tears - suddenly I knew that I was never going to see him again.

I had this feeling last week as I sat in my living room with the phone in my hand wondering who the hell to call! My once a week (admittedly depressing) phonecall to my Mum in Scotland had become a kind of anchor that kept me rooted and now the anchor has been raised and I was drifting.

This feeling has kind of set in with a lot of things - rootlessness (is that a word?) - when both your parents are dead you are suddenly a complete adult. Theoretically you no longer have to answer to anyone but yourself. The umbilical chord is finally, well and truly, cut.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Back To life

"Blinking lights on the airplane wings
Up above the trees
Blinking down a morse code signal
Especially for me

Ain't no rainbow in the sky
In the middle of the night
But the signal's coming through
One day i will be alright again"

"Blinking Lights (For Me)" by The Eels


I'm having a hard time writing right now. You see, my Mum passed away on May 31st and my daughter is due on July 9th. I came back from the funeral in Scotland to go to a baby shower in New York a day later. An emotional numbness has set in and my head just keeps saying "Stop the bus I want to get off!".

The Eels song above has been playing almost constantly in my head and on my headphones. Music has incredible healing powers and sometimes you just need to lose yourself in it for a while to see that nothing is as sad as it seems. Just don't come at me with "Remember there is always someone worse off than yourself!" or you'll get my standard Basil Fawlty response: "Yeah? Well I'd like to meet him I could use a good laugh!".

A lot of thoughts and images have been running through my head in the last 3 weeks, most of which I am sure have some kind of lesson involved that I haven't quite worked out yet. I have written a lot of stuff down but it is a fractured narrative and mostly too personal or too fragile to print yet.

All I can say is that it was a great comfort to have my family around me and without their strength I know I would not have been able to deal with the situation. Harry, Michael, Anne, John and Isabel, Thank You... I love you all.