Transition

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compassion, imagery, lies, loss, metaphor, passing, reality, Saturday, telephone, the other side, transition, truth, unassuming

Transition

Soft as soft and unassuming seemed the day you stole away. And I wondered: are transitions merely ghosts, spectres, unreal reality? The hoover softly purring on the carpet like a cat with much to do, pondering sleepily if those things can be left for another day. It was just another Saturday. The day after Friday, and the one before Sunday – or so it seemed at the time. So Saturday morning chores filled the moments and as I vacuumed vacantly, the sun shining through lace-adorned windows, my thoughts popped in and out like uninvited guests mimicking the movement of my arm as if stroking an imaginary pet.

And yet, when the telephone rang, I knew before I answered it what I would hear. I wasn’t surprised, not in the least. I had been preparing for this call for longer than I can remember. I cast my mind back and pictured us on a sandy beach with you just out of reach and felt the pang of loss. That holiday was our first and last: the grandmother, the mother, and the child – three generations together, linked by our own expression of what it meant to be family. The path we had trodden to get to the other side now blocked by the greedy, irascible sea, at first calm, luring us closer, now raging higher, threatened to prevent us from going any further. There was no alternative but to climb the steep incline or be drowned, and so mercifully we were spared. But even as we climbed,
the threat of loss hovered on that occasion, just as it did when the telephone rang.

“I think you should come straight away”, the voice was calm and caring.
“Is she …?” The words fell away. Why was I asking? I already knew the answer.
“No”, the voice said. But I knew this was an acceptable twist of the truth. We both knew – better to travel in hope. Silently, I thanked the voice realising that compassion is not a liar.

So, softly you left on a Saturday.

~ Marie Williams – April 2018

Alice, Milton and Oscar: Making Sense of it All

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Alice, attic, child, childhood, dark complexities, discovery, literature, loss, mad hatter, making sense, Milton, Oscar Wilde, paradise, reality, social anxiety, Wonderland

Source: Google Images photo: Ruya Foundation

“When children are trying to make sense of things that are beyond their understanding, they will usually try and work it out within the context that they do know and understand. … I watch as art is used as a reconnection point, the bridge, between the destruction of self, and the beginning of some sense of future, of hope. It seems that in this reclamation of the soul art is reborn”. – Justine Hardy, author and trauma psychologist, on art, conflict and healing.

Alice, Milton & Oscar: Making Sense of it All

Later much later, but before she had discovered that Oscar wasn’t really wild, and Milton’s paradise wasn’t lost, at least not lost the way she perceived it, rather that it wasn’t in the place that she had put it, and it was there after all, on the book shelf, partly covered by Alice’s adventures in wonderland, a place that she would not want to visit even if the mad hatter personally escorted her there. Besides, she hated tea parties!

Her own reality was such that it seemed more fitting to smile outwardly, while life as she knew it passed her by in a fog of pretence. Much of her childhood embraced activities which should have been enjoyable but were somehow grubbily tinged by the other stuff which did not make sense, at least to her, but she was in no position to prevent, avoid or escape from. So while brushing her teeth each morning, she would squirm as something else brushed up against her which on inspection did not foam and certainly did not leave her feeling clean and sparkling.

A sense of inadequacy pervaded the world in which she existed, and she questioned what was real and what was not. But childish views and thoughts are no match for the dark complexities which swirl in never-ending circles. There was not enough time to make sense of it all, and yet there was more than enough time, so she decided that instead of going around and around in circles, she would place it all in the attic that Oscar talked about. And if somehow, paradise lost, languishing on the book shelf could be found, then, perhaps the mad hatter would be just the person to help her find it.

~ Marie Williams – 2017

It Happened

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ashes, confrontation, denial, dreams, fears, growth, imagination, key, memories, nightmare, reality, reclaiming all that was lost

Source: Google Images

It Happened

I never told you did I? I didn’t even tell myself. It took a while you know to come to terms with all that happened and even now, thinking about it and actually daring to share it seems like a betrayal somehow – but I know that I have to speak and the time to do it is now. How could I allow myself to doubt that it happened? How could I think that making the link between then and now was totally unconnected when the very fibre of my being shouted, screamed, the pain was real, and not a figment of my imagination, but a nightmare stealing surreptitiously into my dreams, locking every door, tossing the master key into a river, rolling relentlessly into a sea of despair.

I’m not ashamed you know. I do not blame myself. I don’t expect you to understand. You didn’t understand then, so why would you understand, years later, when the passing of time has minimised it, diminished it, so that the ogre that it was, looming large, fearfully fierce, is reduced to nothing more than ashes in a dusty corner of your memory. Ashes which you refuse to sweep away. To acknowledge them would suggest you played a part so they lay largely undisturbed, the specks becoming spectators at their own show.

So here I stand, and I know it’s inconvenient for you. Why couldn’t I have chosen a better time? Well I’m afraid that with the passing of time, I grew. I choose this time and it belongs to me. I claim and reclaim all that was lost. I’m telling you now that it happened.

That master key tossed so carelessly on to the ocean bed glints gleefully in the sunlight, sparkling on the shore, assures me that my memory serves me well.

~Marie Williams – 2017