There’s an idea I hold onto: that I need to sift through all the muddy memories of my past in order to start living my life. An idea that I’m so bogged down by the legacy of grief that shrouds my family that I can’t begin to know myself. But here, a novel thought! What if I just write ‘…and they all lived happily every after…’ as an end note to all that grief?

Because…

My father’s parents died before I was born. He hardly speaks of them, but I remember going with him to their graves when I was young and looking away when I saw my hot-head father cry. He says he doesn’t mow the lawn, because that’s what his father was doing the day he died.

And they all lived happily ever after.

My mother’s sister died after a battle with long term illness when she was just past 40, buried by her parents and siblings. I was four and it seems like no one ever really talked about her death. She was barely mentioned again and I couldn’t say for certain what killed her.

And they all lived happily every after.

My mother’s father died three years later of a midweek asthma attack at just past 60 years old, in the middle of the street at dusk. We buried him next to my aunty. I don’t remember the funeral but I remember the wake.

My grandfather’s businesses were not in order, and his children’s lives bore much of the brunt of his business choices. His business partner went for the throat, settled for cutting open the belly. The fallout left my grandmother with no money and a mountain of grief.

And they all lived happily every after.

My father cheated on my mother, repeatedly I think. Something pushed it past breaking point, and they separated in the months after my grandfather died. My mother lost the two men in her life in the same year, and was left with the children and the family business her siblings didn’t care to tend.

And they all lived happily ever after.

We each live separate lives now. Having survived years under the same roof of unprocessed grief, I saw my older siblings leave and detach in their own ways from our family’s history. They went out into the world, and began making new stories, which they tell with conviction as long as they never get stuck looking too long at the past. I left too. I went further away, yet feel the most caught up in the past. I’m watching my parents live out their grief in their own ways, by never looking at it directly, and I ache with the need to put the pieces of our past back together to make this game of happy families we play feel real.

As my mother often says, an anniversary is still an anniversary after a divorce, a birthday is still a birthday after death. The events that roll on through our lives reshape our memories of the past, but they don’t change the fact that this time has passed.

Is there a way to move past a sadness never touched, never aired, or will we forever be processing our grief and loss?

My family’s stories are not mine to tell or to finish off. They’re not mine to redraft. If holding onto our collective grief doesn’t make me stronger, it might kill me. So I persist. I start living the life that I want to live, and I let the stories begin to unfold around me.

And we all lived happily ever onwards.

 

 

The first time I was photographed with the boots I knew they were way too big. I stood next to them and they were as tall as me. The photo showed the Valley in the background and those giant boots diminished me. Had I ever been that small? As a young boy I longed to grow up, to be tall enough, so that I could wear those boots. I hungered for the time when I could stride across the Valley in those boots. To be able to be tall enough to wear the boots, rather than stand inside them, or be overwhelmed by them.

They were black and shiny, made of fine grain leather. The boot-maker had crafted them for my great uncle on request. They fitted him perfectly. He wore them walking through the Valley as he went about his work. But he had left them when he went off to France…and he never came back for them. He died over there, before I was born, but I seemed to always know the journey of the boots and their wearer. The boots were worn in, but well cared for. The leather shiny and supple, the soles worn but not shabby, evidence of having been reshod, all scuff marks polished away. They usually stayed in the cupboard under the stairs, in a box that seemed to have been made especially for them. Awaiting the return of the owner to once again place them on the floorboards, sit on the box beside the hearth and don them to walk into another ordinary day, walking.

A dog barked in the Valley below distracting me from my reverie of the photo. That dog was one of the progeny of my great uncle’s dog. A farm dog and a true companion to me.   A border collie, breathtakingly black with one white star on the forehead. Fiercely loyal and constant, perennially gentle. We had walked through the Valley together on many days. Checking this, fixing that, tending to that animal in need, ensuring this fence was repaired and then returning to the cottage at the end of the day.

My great uncle’s dog was gentle too. Whenever the boots came out and were placed beside the hearth, it was if she could sense my great uncle nearby. Her ears would prick up and she would almost stand to attention, waiting. Perhaps it was the smell of the leather, that still contained some essence of my great uncle, perhaps it was the sound of them being placed on the wooden floor, as if in readiness to be donned then off for the walk, striding through the Valley, the pair of them side by side, on their daily journey of repairs and tending.

The old dog would bark in anticipation and my grandmother would shush her. Firmly imploring the dog to settle. Her eyes glistening with the memory of her brother. She knew about loss. She knew about waiting. She knew about remembering. She knew the dog missed the man and that the wait had been too long for that loyal companion. I remember sometimes wondering why my grandmother seemed so sad each time the boots were taken out and then later in the day put away. It only seemed to happen once or twice a year. I didn’t understand then. But in time to come understanding would seep into my consciousness and I would be aware of the loss and the need to remember.

I recognized that memory and loss go together. That loss of a person is found in memory. That in memory the loss can be acute. The recollection can bring tears to the eye, tears of sadness and tears of loss for what could have been. But that bittersweet moment of recollection, while creating certainty that it can never be a newly formed event, still allows for the mind to play out the scene. And so it was for my grandmother whose memory would be tweaked by sound or smell, by bark of dog or scent of leather. The remembering of her brother with the placing of the boots by the hearth was enough to honour him, to remember the man.

As a child I would smell the leather, that heady musty smell, but it held no memory of my great uncle for me. In time to come I would understand that they were his boots. He had worn them in. Worn them while striding across the Valley. And that photo would trigger memories of my grandmother, as I gazed at myself standing there next to the boots once again. And then the smell of those boots would conjure up, not a man gone off to war and not returned, but my grandmother’s kitchen, a place of roast dinners and scones, of marmalade and jam tarts, of lemon curd and the best roast potatoes you have ever had.

Until finally I was old enough to pull all those threads of the story together, to collect the memories of smells and sounds and objects and faces. Then I could understand the import of that photo. It was like William standing in his boots next to his namesake.

 

 

 

In another life I would still be in love. I would still be happy with the man that was part of my life for over eleven years.

In another life I would happily be remembering that on this day thirteen years ago, after months of getting close as friends, I realised there was so much more between us. I can still so vividly remember being swept up in the joy and glory of sheer talent and emotion at a Radiohead gig and having this overwhelming yearning for him to move closer in behind me and wrap me in his arms.

In another life, we would be able to reminisce together about how we had shared the floor in a hostel that night so that we could be closer than the bed set up would allow for us to be, but that nothing happened, we just talked and drifted off to sleep, knowing there was something growing deep inside us. We would be laughing about the day shopping for Xmas presents, eating yummy food and stealing ever longer glances at each other, and the smiles we shared, as we grew more certain in this joint realisation of respect and affection.

We would remember how we caught the train back south and both went home separately. I went out with friends and realised how much I missed you so called and asked you to meet me at home. We watched a movie side by side as heat built. You slept in my bed and we curled up together knowing there was something big happening but not quite sure enough to act just yet. We slept.

In another life we would be away somewhere romantic to celebrate our love on this anniversary weekend. We would remember the hotel room that went to waste at our work Xmas party that year because you didn’t sleep there, you slept with me. And this time we knew, we were sure that we were falling for each other and we were so deliriously happy.

Over the years our love grew stronger and we built a great life together. We were so happy for a long time and I truly believed you were the one and our future was together. But something shifted at some stage, imperceptible at first, but from there we ended up slowly falling apart. You sunk into uncertainty, anxiety and depression and we somehow got to a state of complete stagnation.

I tried to talk, listen, understand but was increasingly excluded and stonewalled in my concerns. You ultimately checked out, but still I tried to fix and fight for what we had.

In another life you would have fought for us too.

When I finally called out what was happening more directly, we imploded spectacularly and I really did not see that coming. I pushed for resolution because I was so certain of the strength and depth of our love that in my mind there was no way we wouldn’t make it through. But you ran and hid and retreated further.

You forced my hand. I didn’t want to lose what we had, but you wouldn’t engage. You left me with nowhere to go if I was to retain a shred of self-respect.

I had to let you go. I lost you but I still loved you.

In another life, there wouldn’t have been nearly two years of grief – over a year of sleepless nights, tears, self-doubt and utter bewilderment. No – you would have been there, curled up next to me.

In another life I wouldn’t have endured days and weeks of forcing myself to survive and engage in the world even though my heart was shattered and I could barely breathe. I lost all of my optimism and I literally could not comprehend how we had come to this.

In another life, I wouldn’t be here frozen on the precipice.

Regardless of real personal progress and achievements through the torment of the last couple of years, the spectre of you still remains. Holding me, haunting me.

You weren’t the perfect man and I am not the perfect woman, but what we had was so good and its loss devastated me. I am so close to moving on but this weekend and this month of significant dates has pulled me under water again somehow.

How can I be so raw still? It makes no sense. I still don’t understand where the love went and I question if this broken heart will ever really heal?

In this life, I want to be free of you. I don’t want to hurt anymore. I want to be me without this underlying sadness. I don’t want to cry for your loss ever again.

In this life I want to move forward. I want to be open and not hold myself back from anything because of fear of hurt. I want to live life to the full. I want to love and be loved. I want to laugh, and create, and inspire, and be happy.

I choose to let go of the other life. This is the last push and then it’s done.

That life is no more.

This life is for living and I will be good at that again.

_____________________________

Zoe Green

Our heroine Chickpeas Tunisian is half woman half beastess who lives in a 2 bedroom Brunswick smell cave with a cat. She’s a private detective, unformed genius, inveterate root rat and treats her body like a bikie clubhouse. She can find anything and anyone for that is her superpower and is partners with a 50ish year old lone gunman type called Derek who she knows nothing much about. She does not drive.

Morning

Torn between finishing the text to her ex asking for a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement and  getting stuck in with her vibrator Chickpeas stopped to ponder her future errand. Lying down on the floor where she passed out earlier sometime was helping her a bit. She’d read somewhere you’re more creative lying down and more likely to engage in complex problem solving or even come to think of it napping, delicious quiet sweet…..”Honk!” “Fuck”! Chickpeas bolted upright “What is happening ? …oh yeah the delivery”  she thought leaping towards drawers and throwing what she  assumed was clothing on. ‘Coming!” She yelled at the closed door as she chucked shoes and sunglasses at the right ends of her body. She got downstairs fast. “What took you so long?” Derek remarked in a I do not really care  about the answer kind of way. ‘Doing my nails” Chickpeas swung into the cab of the van “where’s the package?” She asked. Chickpeas liked to allude to her life being more mysterious than it actually was to add an air of enigma to her pick up situations. The package was an unknown brown paper wrapped  box that needed to get to Uncle Knuckles that morning. Now Uncle Knuckles had a lot of strings to his bow and Chickpeas and Derek were new to the operation and the area, they’d been recommended by a mate of a mate so it was probably his dry cleaning but Knuckles needed it and they were getting 300 bucks to get it to him.

Derek moved his 1983 discovery camper through the Brunswick back streets like a turtle on valium “In the back Peas, obviously” ” well lets get there quick , i’ve got shit to do”. “You want to drive?” “Don’t be a penis Derock, you know I can’t” and on it went until they found themselves staring down the barrel of their destination. ‘That it then?” Chickpeas asked. “Yep” replied Derek “In you go”. Chickpeas put her head through the curtains that cut off the cabin from the van proper and held her breath. Derek was paid to hunt feral cats by the Catholic church for environmental reasons and he kept all his ‘things’ in the van. Chickpeas saw what she was looking for and grabbed it while at the same time ignoring everything  else in sight and trying not to breathe.

Ok then? Derek asked “ok then D” she replied stepping away from the van and the festering mass of  Eww in the back.

The sky had started to turn a light grey and a misty rain feathered down  muting the glare of the city and making it softer and even relaxing to be outside of the day time doing a semi sinister transaction for a split of 300 bucks. She popped into the Cornish for a pint and a vegan pizza being 20 minutes early for the meet and pondered her next move.

This was the first real job they’d done for Uncle knuckles  and if she fucked it he’d fix her for sure. The twenty minutes ticked by and no one showed, she had another pint and waited. 40 minutes and still nothing. One more pint and then the phone call “k Derek get over here before I get too pissed, we’ve got a situation..no I don’t know what to do you Massive PENIS..ok, k I’m calming down, fuck you very much, see you in a sec goodbye”.

An hour later Derek and Chickpeas were back at the smellcave down 300 and up an extremely unwanted box.

To be continued…..