As I close my eyes away from the people, I am offered and relieved to return to the movie in my head. My third eye spies a pattern like exquisitely delicate lace work formed into a mandala in my central view. It is made of blood. Not congealed dying blood, not spattered and messy and ugly blood of a former life. But the vivacious blood of the living.
The mandala evolves slowly into new forms, some lines are thinner and others thicker. Rich, full, living blood. I want it to have meaning. What do you, my minds eye, tell me with this blood work?
For this is true blood work, alive and living outside of it’s usual form, I am at home with it. It defies the laws of physics. Just as your death defied the laws of physics, as every death does. We think we know life. The living are here. The dead are there. The dead are not ours, the dead are of the other. Our children are ours, they are not of the other, therefore they can not be dead.
But they are.
Blood holding itself in place as a living entity. No veins or arteries. No congealment or clotting, or thrombosis. Not stuck together like a thrombosis. Sound so much like trombone. ‘I have a trombone-is in my leg.’ It doesn’t sneak up on you like cancer. Looking at your perfectly normal body in the mirror and then someone tells you there is something growing there that is surely going to kill you. Not maybe, it is going to kill you unless you do something about it. You barely noticed it. And it will definitely kill you. Eventually. That’s sneaky cancer.
The trombone-is? Well, you know it’s there. You cannot miss that sound. Just like my Gabs. The trombone in my life. Calling me out on every little bit. Observes every inconsistency. Keeping me honest. ‘But Mum?’ Parents have to make sense of their actions for them, even if they can’t make sense of it for themselves.
And somehow parents, including me, accept all these challenges, as if you want them to live by your standards, then you have to front up as well. In my experience, this was very exacting. Could that be because I am particularly dishonest? Probably. I reckon I am a born liar. But in my defence, it was most likely the only way I could survive.
Your children are force fed your beliefs, habits and actions from so early in life. They see every marginal discrepancy between what you say and what happens. They are the ultimate accountability partner and any schism that exists between stated values and actions are called out. Every day. Often. Unrelentingly.
We quickly learn as our children grow, there is no easy path to avoid facing ourselves. They will graciously spotlight it for us. It is excruciating. I certainly know that my daughter was very ‘eyes on the ball’ of my disconnects.
We hope to the bejesus that the worst things are not going to happen. Everything we do is ultimately to avoid the worst of the worst happening. Well, that is to those of us who know how easy it is to slip off the narrow ledge of life.
Dear life, please tell me that reality isn’t as bad as what my deepest fear says? I want it a candy coated world that is fun and comfortable; smooth and pastel. Katy Perry style. I assume if I haven’t found it then it is because I haven’t faced down enough of my scary yet.
Tamed the dragon, jumped out of a plane, plumbed the depths of the ocean, raced motor bikes at high speed, gone horse jumping. All the things that might help me to finally able to properly relax in the reality of all of our imminent demise. Living. While. Terrified. ‘Jump now, and enjoy the view on the way down’ she laughed.
When the offspring die by suicide, that honesty, that accountability, she spent forty-two years detailing for me? It goes to the moon. Meaning, I mean, is as big as the moon.
I learned a new word today – ignominy. Well I think I already knew it somewhere, but I was wanting to say ignominiously. According to one dictionary it means deep personal humiliation and disgrace. Well, there you go, that does it. I have lived an ignominious life then. Lots of humiliation, disgraceful and dishonourable conduct or actions. Um?
Something is just so not right in these thoughts.
Brutal honesty. I ask myself; Is it mostly brutal or mostly honest?
The blood lace in my mind’s eye is a fine calligraphy that moves and evolves. It is always fresh and new. One minute droplet of blood perfectly circular and fleshily bulbous. Fine mandalas turn into faces and then I see the million faces of the dead gone before us.
How do you think about the dead gone before?
Not the mother or grandmother, but the ones who died hundreds of years ago. How do you think about them? I don’t think you really can. The faces don’t seem human or real. They are history. Too easily dismissed as gone forever and oh well too bad, but it was a long time ago. And somehow that is ok. It doesn’t traumatise us.
Is this what they mean by time heals? Time erases the humanity of the living person? Unless you happen to be someone who has made great works of science or art or committed a murderous treachery, you too will be erased, and it happens oh soooo quickly.
As I read your treasured books Gaby, I come upon your book marks. I stop, when did you last read this page? What happened in the moment you put it down? Was there someone at the door? Was it boring you? I don’t want to read the story beyond your marker.
If you hadn’t read it, I am not sure if I can. Your eyeballs were the last ones to read this print and touch this paper. I don’t want to know more than you did, I don’t want to have more experience than you had, I don’t want to go further than you, in any story. But I already have.
I think of the last time your hands, laid this book to rest on the table or back on the bookshelf, fine hands, nails strong like bone china, fingers delicate and light with a scar on the left index. Used amongst friends to tell left from right. The memory of the child desperately wanting and getting (from me) a pocket knife that was way too sharp and dangerous for a small child to wield.
Gabs would always remove the dog’s collar, unless they were going out immediately, on the walk or in the car, it was removed with those hands. The hands that appear to hold the world with a feather light touch. The long fingers and nails looped the collar loosely over the snout and then undo the buckle at the side, with perfect nails then dug deep into the furry coats. They all adored her touch.
She knew what each dog likes best. Jackson, a dog stitched together by about six different breeds, loves the chest rub, Bruty, a short-haired, border collie, loves the head rubbed easy over the top of his skull, particularly since he got into, and won, a fight with a red belly black snake, saving his pack. Little, a Jack Russel, jumped up to be held close as soon as her bum hit any seat, but he was all stilettos on your lap.
Now I am to go on with the story? Start over with a remnant of our former life. My paid jobs were always to achieve what had been pre-defined. By others. The goals, the targets, the programs. They are set. Pick it up and keep going. My life, was mostly done by circumstance or constraint. And now I make a life completely anew, without the blood rails of my daughter to keep me going.
Some colour blind people don’t see red at all. Does that mean they don’t know the essence of red? What do they see at the blood bank? Surely those plastic bags are full of the greatest visual intensity a person could ever envisage? And what with it coming from your own body? What do you see if you don’t see red?
A litre or so of your own blood is more than just a liquid, viscous red. It is rich with life supports. The platelets, the cells, the plasma, more than red paint. It has form. Multi-dimensional, both symbolic and tactile. Some people see red with their eyes open, When I close my eyes I see red, a complicated crochet type pieces like a growing lobster made of moving blood particles, forming and then breaking into a new pattern.
She wore her red cardigan to the Madonna concert, she turns to look aside, and then back straight at me. The eyebrows lift and dropped rather quickly in anticipation of the photo that I’m trying to take. It’s stuck on video but I don’t realize this, I persist, and she persists with drawing out her smile for the photo, that is being videoed.
Starting anew means not wiping your honest recollections on someone else as if you are smearing dirt on them, it means having humility. Room for mistakes and time for improvement, means realizing you don’t always have all the information you need about a situation before you have to make a decision. We rarely have enough.
Did she have all the information about what she was doing, I don’t think so. Not at all. We always need to try to see the whole person. I am working on it, so I return to my internal calligraphy and watch the blood lines move hoping for a greater reveal.