My Dearest Seana

Once the winter nights draw in and the days become wetter, colder, damper and shorter it hits home that Christmas is around the corner once again!! The last happy pictures I have of you are at Christmas. I have had the expected “hardest” time coming to terms with the loss of you. You will always be in my heart - therefore you will always be here" But I realize that for me the act of "remembering" you - means to fully accept that you are gone!! But I have wanted to imagine the sound of your key in my door, to imagine your phone calls, e-mails, visits, times at the movies, listening and sharing music, I have wanted to be a part of your living, so why would I want only to remember? But my darling this coming new year I want to do it differently. So I am slowly trying to “remember”. I find it hard to look at photos and listen to music because when I do, my feelings of loss break my heart all over again. Overwhelming loss like; the fact that I won’t have the chance to be with you and your future children - (we had plans about that!!) Loss, like the many times I let go of you so that you could have a “family life” with your father loss, like watching you move your loyalty to him and his partner, especially as he had only negative things to share with you about me. Loss like supporting you to have the life you needed, wanted, that excluded me from treasured moments I craved to share with you.

I am now choosing not to dwell on loss. I choose to feel gratitude and joy for what I have in my life right now. I choose to recall that it was my love for you that made it easy for me to put you first. I knew you would understand this when you were older. Even though you won’t be older – and we won’t have that adult bonding time, my love remains with me. I would never change the decisions I made. Therefore I can choose to acknowledge my love led choices without regret.

I am sorry though for the times I hurt you, for the times I was not strong enough or made you feel guilty about me, but I forgive myself, I know I did my best, I know All three of us, you, your sister and I, as mother and daughters did our best.

I honor you by feeling and sharing the gratitude I have for having had you in my life and for the love of you, the memories of you. I honor you by being the best I can be every day, and by being happy, fulfilled, and embracing life.

So I guess that means I have finally fully accepted you are gone.

Life is so full of irony - to feel you and have gratitude for you, your love, your personality, you as a child and as a young woman - I must embrace your memory, by embracing memories the pain of them, the joy of them- I have accepted you are gone.

Thank you for having been you, thank you for being my daughter, thank you for all the memories you have given to me. I look forward to the time we will meet again.

Your sister and I are moving on now Seana, moving on with living. I hold your love to my heart, and feel it every day. I am so proud of you, I am so proud of the way you lived your life. Good bye my lovely and hello to all the treasured memories. love you always Mum xxxx

My Two Girls Mean Everything

L is doing very well. I am so very proud of her. As mother and daughter we continue to grow. We share the memories we had with Seana, and are building new ones without Seana's presence, but in our shared knowledge that she will always be a part of us.

Good Vibrations

My man calls days like today Seana days. Amazing how little tiny things make Seana days special. They may begin with tears, but when I focus on how I want to connect with my baby, they always become wonder days. Today I made my garden sparkle with Seana dust.

NOT A GOOD DAY!

Why is it not OK to go out into my street, lie down in the middle of the pavement and wail until I am comforted by my community, until I feel I can go about my business again, until the next time the moment of loss is as overwhelming as it was yesterday?

Was it ever something that a grieving mother was permitted/expected to do? Why is it that I turn to a blog that has no immediate empathy towards me, other than what it represents to me in a world where "we pull ourselves together"? Have we learned to distract ourselves to the point of isolation where it counts?

Barack Obama's favorite TV program is The Wire. (Not on TV here yet!!! but I was watching a program about it) apparently it converses with the viewer with regard to the reality of mostly a black experience in Baltimore, Maryland USA. It is about how individuals commit themselves to whatever institution they are in via trade, drug, law, what ever, and how blinkered they become in order to live day to day, within it. It's primarily about urban life, artistic ambitions, and uncommonly deep exploration of sociological themes including how corrupt life has become.

To me, from what I have seen, It seems to suggests that one way or another we distract ourselves from reality, we numb ourselves from the pain of the existence within a mass dilution we share, that being "we as individuals are in CONTROL" but then we all seem to understand that: as families, communities, nations and as human being's, we are far from being in control of anything. Here lies our dilemma!!!!!

Critics have frequently described The Wire as one of the greatest television series of all time. Is it because we identify with this "dilemma", that "The Wire" talks to us. That through it we hear our daily conversations with our inner self? Is it because the program is mainly about black American urban life, that we don't have it over here yet?

Certainly it made me think. It made me question why it is not ok to howl with everyone in my community who has lost a child today, this moment or tomorrow.

Maybe the internet is my way of doing it.

One Year On

We always have choices in life, even in the most dire of circumstances we can choose to find choices. Do we live with distress, do we put our head in the sand and hope beyond hope, that something, anything will come along and change our circumstance, or do we make an asserted effort to do something, anything, to forge a positive path forward for ourselves.

Moving on, can feel like leaving behind our Seana: she physically cannot share the changes with us, and I see no evidence of her benefiting from anything I do. Sometimes I don't even feel her anymore, my own baby! my own daughter, a young woman of 26, who shared her life with many, and added to the lives of the many children she worked with and of friends, family! But I know that in the eternity of life the circle is always moving and we all of us move together. My grief will move to gratitude and joy. This blog is but one tool to help me do that. Thankyou M for showing me by your example how to do it, and all your hands on help:-).

Seana, the best way to honor you is to move on with our lives, is to be as happy and as loving, and as contributory as we can. So here is some news. Your sister has become 30 and has created a home that she loves. She is travelling with children from her school to Uganda next year in her capacity as music teacher. N and I got married, L and I sang together in their ceremony, she looked a picture, it was a fab wedding.

I am continuing with my art projects, working on my film "Sunflowers", and applying to do an art MA at Goldsmiths to complete my research and finish my huge canvases depicting Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism. M has finished the first part of his OU art history course and handed in his essay. E is 60 in a few weeks.

Your father and M will speak for themselves, they still do not want me in their life. L is taking care of your beloved nephews, and soon I hope to spend time with k and his mum, they have moved to Folkeston.

I will say this of F he is a good father. I was proud of his having raised £4000 recently for the Lupus trust with his iron man contribution - and also for the poem he wrote and read at your funneral(I will publish it here). It is, and always has been his behaviour towards me that I have not been able to cope with. Maybe you can see for yourself now, that it is never possible to change another's heart, we can only develop and change our own, and in the process touch others. In that I will continue.

Seana

There are so many days that I type my daughters name in Google, hoping there will be news of her, that someone in the universe sees fit to keep her alive by posting new pictures new thoughts, new anything. Sometimes I am lucky and some one has run in a marathon in her honour, or posted something about her when she was alive, but inevitably, news will no longer come.


So ......I am creating this blog ...so I will have somewhere to visit, somewhere to come for news of my lovely daughter, because I created it myself. Admittedly it will be old news, old news that I have created in new thoughts, new words, new drawings, new conversation, or new news after the fact. It is aimed at comforting me, in that, I will have somewhere, other than my head, to go.