Spring blows in and with it some good news.
My youngest son has started school and my oldest son has a lovely new girlfriend and he is happy.
Before long they head overseas together for offshore adventures and thanks to the efficiency of the internet they send me photos by email and soon I join up with that new social media invention, Facebook so that I may follow their journies.
He looks happy in all the photos that I see and his handsomeness has returned, the lines of strain and sorrow have faded from his face and once again his eyes sparkle.
My little boys are happy to be reunited at school and catch the bus together willingly.
My middle son who is now nearly 15, ( he had turned 13 a couple days after Hori's death, the day after his burial to be exact) well, my dear boy wants to play the bass like his Uncle. He will be good too, he has a good voice, his uncle picked this up when he was about 5 years old.
In fact, I remember one of his birhtdays and Hori came around for his birthday and gave him a Batman cape set. "I thought I would save all your towels and table cloths, Sis and give him a real Batman outfit."
Such forethought.
So my boys are happy. Their happiness gives me hope and some how I think that it might be OK to move on -start to be happy, to look forward to my empty days.
Perhaps now I should fill them?
I see in my sons' faces that you can enjoy life and maybe even forget the former things but for me I
can only hope that one day I will forget that I no longer have my brother, that for the rest of my life I must live it without him there.
I wonder if that will be all right and I feel a different guilt now- a strange guilt for being a little bit happy. It's like my happiness is a sign that I am forgetting my brother's sad death and sudden exit from our lives.
But I remember him in a different way now. I imagine that he can see us all each day and that he takes great pleasure in seeing his nephews achieving fabulous things as they grow older.
My 7 year old has a drum kit and he is very good. I often feel sad that his Uncle is not here to jam with him and he would have so enjoyed playing with him and teaching him new songs and beats.
He would laugh at Isaac's mistakes, he would fit his guitar playing to save his little nephew's dignity.
He was like that Hori, all about protecting others and sheilding them from the slings and arrows.
I think some days that maybe he took to many hits for his loved ones and neglected his own back?
At times, all my sons play music together and it does sound beautiful and there is a sensitivity in all their hearts and playing that is quite moving.
So nearly two years later and I look at the stages of grief again and I still sometimes flounder in a pool of grief, anger, denial and anything negative. But some days I fell brave enough to give acceptance and moving forward a go.
I am not very good at it but I know with time I should succeed - however success is measured in these things. I still can't see how I can say some sort of final goodbye, leave him dead and buried and forget about him and accept that he is no longer here and I must live my life without him.
I have stopped playing songs that Georgie used to play and now I play music that I think he would like to play or songs that I like to sing that remind me of him. So much of him dictates so much of my life each day. I walk our dogs more than ever and I write about my awful grief, I wonder if that will ever stop.
This must all be releasing something from me but I don't quite know what yet.
But I do feel better and I can almost sleep through the night.
That dark spirit called grief that parked it's self in my room every night, waking me up and making me cry, has gone. I connect with more friends through facebook and internet sites, I talk to them about my terrible loss until a burning swamp of desparing words starts to swallow me up again. It's like I need to crash into an iceberg to extinguish these burning wounds on my soul that blister and plague me from time to time. Listening to Christian preachers on Youtube soothes my soul. I can really relate to the shepherd boy in Psalm 23 when he sings, "He leads me beside still waters and makes me to lie down in green pastures." I sure can see those green pastures and feel the crisp, clean streams of water bubbling over my troubled head.
But I believe that I can now say those words, the very gold words that I had inscribed on Hori's gravestone, "All is well with my soul......"
I planted this rose shortly after Hori died.
It is called Compassion.
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