Grief Notes by Josephine Patrick
It is very quiet here. I’m watching TV and when I press pause to make a drink, the only sound I hear is coming from outside. It’s a strange creaking- I can’t quite work it out. The silence made me want to write this. Perhaps for company. When LP sleeps it is only my sound […]
Continue ReadingIt is pouring outside. The wind is lashing the rain against the windows. Louder downstairs than up. I don’t know why. It has gone one in the morning. I am tapping away at this on my phone. It might help; I don’t know. After a day which began in an impish fashion, with larks on […]
Continue ReadingI’ve been working on the office. The little box room where Seb would spend each day. The confusion of wires and myriad books has changed. Things have been stored, I have put him away; collectables wrapped and preserved for a time when LP will resist the urge to pull them apart. They are all hers. […]
Continue ReadingThere is a pain that I have to be present for, to witness. It isn’t mine but I feel it like a slow pulse; quietly marking time. I can’t claim to really know the feelings, deep and raw; they are found in the blood. The loss of a father, the brother and the son. My […]
Continue ReadingI think I might have spent about two hours today, sitting half awkwardly on a chair in my kitchen, singing to myself a bit and just staring into space. I felt that had I sat on the sofa it would be a bit like giving into the nothingness that I felt like I needed to […]
Continue ReadingFunny. It’s good to be funny. Things are better with a joke. I thought I’d lost it; then it came back. Now I’m taking it all, humour in all things. A happy little basket in my hand and a bottom drawer for laughs. It is a matter of survival. The return to it began in […]
Continue ReadingEvery so often, just to make me laugh, Seb would hum a random but recognisable tune and tell me that it was Popcorn. It never was. He knew that I would just laugh so hard. Then he would descend into far fetched stories about the pop star Jonny Vosper- who never existed; Seb had made him […]
Continue ReadingAt night, I am the drunk woman at the party. Gesticulating with her wine glass, and pointing at things with poking disapproval. And another thing… Oh no, she’s dancing now. Just don’t look. This is one of my fears. When Seb was here there was always a safe place to put that woman. Now she […]
Continue ReadingIf I allow myself to think about Seb, before anything else, I can hear him first. He’s not saying a thing. It’s his breathing. The sighs that said so much. His thinking noise. The weight of his pause before he’d ask a question. I hear him and then I let myself see him. Then I […]
Continue ReadingGrief has made it tough for me to properly listen. To listen to myself and to listen to anyone else. If you are speaking to me I can hear you, but I can’t absorb what has been said; it isn’t lasting. I think I may have lost some feeling. I desperately want to be part […]
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