50 years on

In just a few days time, on the 10th January 2021 it will have been exactly 50 years since my mother, Grace, took her life.

Well over 18000 days.

A lifetime.

My mood drops, seemingly, every year as the date approaches, subconsciously at first and then playing out more obviously in my head over the last few years.

I have been given and taken the opportunity to work through the complexity of the effect of her death (and its manner) on my head and heart.

I stare at various dates putting together stories about her life, gluing jagged details I now know and reaching out to something,

I suspect to her.

I really don’t know what IT is but IT IS there.

My grief, her or my trauma, a hidden memory of a 15 month old baby boy buried deep in the very front of my brain.

I can feel it.

It can swirl like old clothing in a rattling broken washing machine or sit heavy in its dirty water pushing me down. During recent therapy it would pulse and make connections between fears and shattered shards of my heart. It has taken me on journeys based in reality and fantasy, making me choose to do some pretty stupid things or unlocking surges of creative energies.

It will make me snap and snarl like a cornered stray. It can pass over and through each and every part of me, like a cloak or coat or the arm of something or someone I cannot come close to describe wrapped around my shoulder.

Could it be her?

And every year the date passes by on the far side. I do not connect less or more but I reach further to try to find some memory.

An impossible memory.

One that wont go away.

Even after 50 years.