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Denial

Learn how to hold the child within

When mother died, I hid under her bed.
I needed a fortress, a safe space.
All that was available was the living room, corner,  sickbed of a dead woman.
My two year, younger sister joined me.
Two huddled lumps of, I’m not quite sure what is going on.
They coaxed her out.
They came back for me but I wouldn’t leave the safety of the shelter.
Too much grief outside.
No comfort for me in the arms if a sobbing adult.
“Just  leave him alone he’ll come out in his own time,” I remember my Daddy saying.
 
Alone I became scared of the possibility of ghosts.
I was underneath the bed of a dead person.
Would there be ghosts?
I was six!
Somehow I lived in a reality where I understood there were ghosts.
There are no ghosts but those that we create.
 
I later learned that they had offered my daddy a lift from the hospital when she died.
He refused.
He needed to walk.
October air and time to think.
A man in his early 40s should not be faced with telling his six children their mother is dead.
How did he do it?
How did he face his own loss and grief and still hold the fear and pain of his children?
Denial helps I guess!
 
I was upstairs when he came through the door.
I remember running to the top of the stairs, he was late, we were waiting.
I think he said, “she’s gone.” My oldest sister screamed, quick, she knew.
I think she was expecting this.
“Don’t believe him,” I said, “he’s lying!”
Denial helps I guess.
“Would I lie about something like this?”
His gentle plea.
No he wouldn’t.
I did know that and so, somehow, I ended up lost, alone and afraid.
Under the bed.
 
When Daddy died I did what I should have been doing when I was six.
I built a fort.
I sometimes fear I’ll drown inside, in tears, alone and afraid.
Yet everyday I have to get up and go on.
I am a grown up.
I smile, I laugh.
I am a clown with painted face, trying to recreate my grief encased life in a new image.
I will make you laugh for me.
Laugh for me!
Because sometimes the weight of this loss threatens to crush me out of existence, fort or no fort.
Like a pythonesque foot on my crenellated existence.
This is why denial helps, I guess.
Box it up.
Cement it in.
Walls and towers and contained.
If my daddy could contain his pain to care for all of us, surely I can learn to hold the child within?
Just leave him alone he’ll come out in his own time.
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