A night in my old bedroom...
I woke up last night in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, crying. I’d had a bad dream and was aching for an unknown baby from whom I had been long separated. In the confusion of all the darkness and semi-consciousness and guest room pillows I couldn’t distinguish the emotion of my dream from reality. I sobbed for a while, as Nick patted me sleepily and murmured comfort. I couldn’t understand why I was feeling so sad.
The night just gone had been the wonderfully festive occasion of my dad’s 60th birthday, and was filled with speeches, stories, songs and wobbly-voiced toasts in celebration of the brilliant person that he is. I haven’t laughed so much or smiled so constantly in a very long time. Nick and I had trudged up the stairs to my old room at the end of the night, exhausted and happy. Throughout the night’s speeches there had been many, many references to my paternal grandparents, Bertha and Les, who both died very suddenly, six weeks apart, when my dad was in his late 20s. In fact, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the party was for them! They received so many mentions, “here-here”s, nods and raised glasses that it was almost as if they were there with us. I never met them, as I was born after they died, but that night after I had woken up, crying for my unnamed baby, my thoughts turned to Bert and Les and my tears were for them. I was crying because of all the struggles they’d had, all the good times they’d had, and all the memories of them that everyone else possessed, which I didn’t have. I got up after a little while and padded off into the darkness to get a tissue from the bathroom adjoining my old bedroom. Even in the dark I could still remember the steps to the door and how to turn the knob so it doesn’t squeak. As I did this I remembered that, sitting in a small bag on the floor near the door, were my maternal grandparents, Ted and Ethel, whom I remember vaguely. To be precise, their ashes were in the bag on the floor, as mum had recently retrieved them from the cemetery for scattering at Rosebud. This didn’t seem strange to me at all and, to my mild surprise, I was rather comforted by the presence of all four of my grandparents there with me in the darkness.
I dried my tears and thought of the absurdity of it all; weeping in the night, surrounded by the memories, dreams, ashes and physicality of loved ones; living, dead and as yet unborn. I shivered back over to the bed where a loved one with skin on had kept a spot warm for me. He shuffled over and hugged me tightly and even let me warm up my cold feet on his legs, without complaining. I smiled into the darkness and had a fleeting sense of my family’s ongoing, communal spirit outside of time and breath; grandparents, parents, siblings born and miscarried, unborn children and one single lover. Everyone. All of us, all together. Regardless of who was alive. For one moment, we were all just there.
The night just gone had been the wonderfully festive occasion of my dad’s 60th birthday, and was filled with speeches, stories, songs and wobbly-voiced toasts in celebration of the brilliant person that he is. I haven’t laughed so much or smiled so constantly in a very long time. Nick and I had trudged up the stairs to my old room at the end of the night, exhausted and happy. Throughout the night’s speeches there had been many, many references to my paternal grandparents, Bertha and Les, who both died very suddenly, six weeks apart, when my dad was in his late 20s. In fact, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the party was for them! They received so many mentions, “here-here”s, nods and raised glasses that it was almost as if they were there with us. I never met them, as I was born after they died, but that night after I had woken up, crying for my unnamed baby, my thoughts turned to Bert and Les and my tears were for them. I was crying because of all the struggles they’d had, all the good times they’d had, and all the memories of them that everyone else possessed, which I didn’t have. I got up after a little while and padded off into the darkness to get a tissue from the bathroom adjoining my old bedroom. Even in the dark I could still remember the steps to the door and how to turn the knob so it doesn’t squeak. As I did this I remembered that, sitting in a small bag on the floor near the door, were my maternal grandparents, Ted and Ethel, whom I remember vaguely. To be precise, their ashes were in the bag on the floor, as mum had recently retrieved them from the cemetery for scattering at Rosebud. This didn’t seem strange to me at all and, to my mild surprise, I was rather comforted by the presence of all four of my grandparents there with me in the darkness.
I dried my tears and thought of the absurdity of it all; weeping in the night, surrounded by the memories, dreams, ashes and physicality of loved ones; living, dead and as yet unborn. I shivered back over to the bed where a loved one with skin on had kept a spot warm for me. He shuffled over and hugged me tightly and even let me warm up my cold feet on his legs, without complaining. I smiled into the darkness and had a fleeting sense of my family’s ongoing, communal spirit outside of time and breath; grandparents, parents, siblings born and miscarried, unborn children and one single lover. Everyone. All of us, all together. Regardless of who was alive. For one moment, we were all just there.
posted by becrowe at 11:33 pm
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