I’m in the office. This is my what’s next? The place that was once Seb’s little work hub. He spent hours in here. It is very different. I have made myself a place. It’s a bit like I was standing in some very large footprints; I couldn’t fill them so I’ve stepped aside and marked my own.
I have things to do. My brain started clicking in last week. Looking to the start of next year, a new term, the next thing; an investment in tomorrow for LP and I. Proof that it is possible to move in a direction that isn’t straight back to bed.
Seb’s memory is cherished but I can’t keep smashing myself in the guts with it. Things have been put away- I have drawn an actual curtain across the belongings that I just can’t engage with right now. It hangs beautifully in sumptuous velvet; it is sunset pink; there is method here. The things that I needed to do, now replaced by those that I have to. I have to be ready for what’s next. I want it. His books will wait for us. They are thoughtfully stored. None of this progress came lightly.
I suppose you could say that I am getting comfortable with taking up space. Whereas before, when he died I felt as if I should live as if I had died too. A single track of dedicated motherhood until I’d served my purpose, then I could just keep fading. Perhaps if I was quiet nobody would notice. I feel so differently now.
What happened has shaken every part of what I had established as myself. I am keeping all the best bits, the crest of the wave that will carry me on. Over and over again. I need this. LP does too. Everyone who cares- their investment in my well-being coming to fruition; every kind word blooming now at a time where I can really absorb it.
Do you ever feel just like everything resonates. Everything you hear or see, you feel it, like you’re living everyone’s lives and nothing stands a chance of evading you. There is a part of me in it all. I may as well have infinite heads, though more docile than Medusa’s snakes; they are not sleeping. They are so aware but they are so still- taking it all in. This isn’t a complaint. More like a discovery- it’s all still functioning.
It has taken time. I have allowed myself to have it. To let the process work itself out. To trust that the strength that remained in my core could hold. I marvel at the power of the mind.
Seb had absolute faith in me. There it is. The centre of it all. I am keeping that. I will pass it on.
Did you ever watch Quantum Leap? A scientist becomes a perpetual time traveller when his experiment goes further than planned. Each time he moves through time he becomes someone else. He then has to sort their lives out with the help of his pal Ziggy- all in less than 60 minutes of telly time. He was quite good at it.
I wonder if I’m a bit like Dr. Sam Beckett- leaping through time and trying out different lives, trying to get things right, whilst at the same time being Ziggy; cheering myself on. Perhaps Ziggy was like a conscience. Someone somewhere will have unpacked this theory much further than I. Dr. Beckett always wanted to get home but never did; home was all the new stuff- the leaping. Existing in another way. He put Ziggy first in the end, so if they are parts of one being then he saved himself at the core.
Grief is a bit like that, a life of eternal firefighting. Leaping into different states and saving the day, checking in with yourself to make sure you’re doing the right thing. Mourning the things that have passed, dusting yourself off and finding your latest reflection. Seeking out clues and trying to get on with it. Every day is different, and each morning you wonder how you managed the one before. The titles tell us that Sam was trapped in time; perhaps his thoughts just needed reframing and that’s not an easy concept. To think that tomorrow will be okay. What a notion, here we go.