On your birthday

Today my mother would have completed her 65^th rotation around the sun, though maybe she’s still revolving somewhere in the atmosphere. I haven’t yet been one to publicly note these big days, the birthdays and anniversaries and the like. That is not to say there is anything wrong with that expression of grief or demarcation of time passing. It just hasn’t been me. But today my mother would have completed her 65^th rotation around the sun and she has been beautifully on my mind, coursing through the arteries of my chest, infused in my inhales, exhales. 

Just after she died, I made public some of my most intimate writings of the time surrounding her death. I wondered then what it would be like if we were to instead be open, if we were to not shy from our complexity, if we were to be fierce and tender with the reality of our reality. Today I woke with similar wonderings. 

Recently in my PhD research I’ve been sitting deeply with questions of what it is to engage in the work of mourning alongside another, where the work of mourning is both immediate and ongoing, constant and ever-changing. What would it look like if researchers of child dying and death were to draw near, cultivate space, and intentionally accompany those with whom we interact as they walk through this most human work? How would our understandings change if we were to not shy away, only viewing the work of mourning from a distance, but were instead to embrace as our duty our participation in that work, honouring its diversities and allowing the one being accompanied to direct the way through what is true for them? What would it mean if we were to lean toward such intimacies with one another? What would we learn? How could we be changed?

In this asking, I have had to be intentionally honest with myself about the ways I too am engaged in my own work of mourning. This has so far looked like open acknowledgements within papers and presentations of my identity as a bereaved child and honest descriptions of my grieving process in abstract, controlled terms. But today I woke wondering what it would be to be open in the intimate, to voice the shape and complexity of my work of mourning as I am walking through it, on this, her birthday. For if I am to ask those who have lost their children to entrust me to participate in their work of mourning, should I not also be willing to do the same? And is it not all too often that we only share the wrapped up, polished, perfectly orchestrated presentations of our interior? Could there not be something different possible, if we were to stand openly in our messy now, full of unexpected sunlight, tight hugs around tears, simultaneous wishing and steady understanding?

I started dropping these words into a note on my phone while riding the bus last week when, as happens not infrequently, I suddenly felt the sweet and gritty desire to ask my mom a question. This morning, sitting in the ruins of a church that have been allowed to return to the earth as they grow into a garden in the middle of London, the rest came spilling out of me and shaped themselves into a poem, of sorts. So welcome, come in, this is my work of mourning today, the day my mother would have completed her 65^th rotation around the sun. 

On your birthday

On your birthday, 

I want to grow flowers. 

I want 

to talk to you about dazzling

and ordinary things. 

Like boys, and cups of good

coffee and if you think 

you’d do anything 

differently. 

On your birthday,

I want you 

to know that when my brain flows 

strong I feel 

like you.

On your birthday,

I want 

to feel

like you. 

I want 

to know if this 

is what you had 

in mind for me. 

On your birthday, 

I want to know

if you would tell 

me to choose differently.

On your birthday,

I want to know 

if you found a star nebula 

intricate enough 

to hold you in the ether.

On your birthday,

I want you to know

I lost half

of nearly all 

of your pairs of earrings.

The first few, 

the suns

and the orange roses 

and the ones you got with Bert in Arizona,

I thought for sure

I’d failed you. 

Now, each time I realise 

what has gone 

I breathe 

and marvel 

at pieces of you 

slipping 

from my grip 

to be scattered about the earth 

and

I think you’d secretly 

be proud to see yourself

in my letting go

even as you told me off 

for not paying better attention.