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.