So it is 12 months to the day since we got the terrible news that Sam had died.
Some days it still doesn’t feel like it is real. I know it is – but complete and permanent absence is so hard to grasp. Maybe we aren’t supposed to grasp it – death was never intended to be part of this world.
I see pictures of him and I want to see him again, talk to him, hug him, go surfing with him. And while I do hold to the Christian hope of being reunited in the age to come I feel so deeply sad that I have to course the rest of this life without him around.
If Paul is right ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain‘, (and I believe he is), then Sam has won the lottery. He is better off than we are here – which isn’t hard because grief really sux. Today we gather to remember him – to allow the reality of his absence to penetrate our hearts once again in a more significant way.
It’s good to come together, but the reality is that each of us have to grapple with our own unique experience of loss. Just to think of our inner circle of Cos, Ellie, Danelle and I, we have a young woman planning a life with a young man – future dreams decimated… Cosi is strong and courageous but her heart is also broken. No one can feel what she feels.
Danelle has lost her boy – the kid who she really ‘got’. And no one can know the turmoil she suffers. I watch – and sometimes it gives me chills. She has chosen to walk this path and face it head on, which means some days it smashes her hard, but there hasn’t been a day she has stayed in bed and tried to avoid it all. It’s like being in a horror movie for her.
Ellie’s one sibling has gone – the person she was closer to than anyone else.She loved him, protected him and they were a beautiful combination. I can see the damage it has done, a heart in tatters, but I can’t feel it like she can.
And my own experience is well described in this poem my friend Jen shared today. It’s like a background track that i- always playing – you never escape it. Some days it is all you hear, other days it is only there in the quiet moments. But no one can experience my grief either. It’s ever present, gnawing…
(So the images are a selection of what Sam was like – the family clown and always up for a laugh.)
I missed you quietly today. So quietly that no one noticed.
I missed you as I climbed out of bed and as I brushed my teeth; when I waited at the lights on the drive into work and as I heard the rain outside my window.
I missed you as I ordered lunch and as I kicked off my shoes when I got home; as I switched off the lights and climbed into bed for the night.
I missed you without tears or noise or fanfare.
But oh how I felt it.
I felt it in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening and at night. I felt it as I woke, as I waited, as I worked. I felt it at home, on the road, in the light, in the dark, in the rain.
I felt it in every one of those moments, each one sitting heavier and heavier as the weight of me missing you kept growing and growing.
Yes, I missed you so quietly today.
But I felt it so loudly.
*****
Becky Hemsley 2024