Today is our eldest daughter’s 21st birthday. Our much loved, longed for, prayed for, beautiful, eldest child.
For weeks now I’ve been thinking about and planning for, the family get togethers we will be having to celebrate this milestone – when her University exams are finally out of the way.
I fished out Rachel’s baby book this morning, to get some photos of her as a baby, to make up a “Happy Birthday collage” – as one does.
I opened the first page, expecting just to see photos of Rachel, but amidst the first photos of Rachel as a baby, I was also bombarded with photos of two smiling little girls with captions like “sisters”.
Rachel was three and a half years old when Leah was born. She loved her new sister from day one and never showed any signs of jealousy or resentment.
Seeing these photos this morning, caught me completely off guard, and triggered such a huge wave of grief, that my breakfast threatened to make a reappearance.
Every family event is bitter sweet.
The caption reads “I love having my sister home for the weekend.”
I wondered what I had been thinking of, when I had made plans to work today, but Wednesday is my busy clinic day and I almost never take it off. I also don’t like having too much time to think. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to regain my composure.
Thankfully, I rarely – if ever – look as if I’ve been crying, so once I reached the Health Centre car park, I blew my nose and was very glad, as I have been on many other occassions, of that “busy clinic morning”.
I’ve talked before about the song “Somewhere Only We Know” here and here.
I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete
Oh simple thing where have you gone?
I’m getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you’re gonna let me in
I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin
I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I’ve been dreaming of?
Oh simple thing where have you gone?
I’m getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you’re gonna let me in
I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin
And if you have a minute why don’t we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don’t we go
Somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know?
“Grief triggers” are in many ways a case of “somewhere only we know“.
What triggers my grief won’t necessarily trigger your grief and vice versa.
I hadn’t anticipated this wave of grief. So, not only do we not know what will trigger somebody else’s grief, we often don’t even know what will trigger our own grief.
Such a steep learning curve.
My Journey: 