The exquisite vulnerability in asking to be held

​Today it is six years since she flew away. I wrote a big deep raw post only about a week ago (as I usually do about now), and thought that would be it for a few months. But this morning was the dawn, that dawn, the first one, and for the first time in years there was a strong belly against my back on this morning, warm and alive and vital, full of potential realised, dreams still unfurling. Here. Breathing. Real. I have done the thing I rarely do and asked for holding, and received it in the way that I need.

Blessed be.

So much has changed in me in the six years since she left. I am bigger, stronger, more vulnerable, more broken open. My capacity to hold has grown, and with it my ability to see and let myself be seen... to a point.

I have let people look through oft-foggy windows into the darkling room of my grief, and then pulled the curtains shut; that's it, you can go away now, I'll do the hardest bits fiercely private. I have on many many occasions gone into process in workshops and on dancefloors, have shared in circles and in cafes and on buses and in restaurants and on beaches, but the one thing I do rarely is to allow myself to break and have someone hold me in that, let alone ask for that holding. Witnessed, yes. In relationship, no.

I think it's because I feel like grief is such a huge part of being human, and we are all learning how to be with it on our scary wonderful journey from birth to death.

For me grief is the flip side of the coin of love, and the size of our grief is the size of our our love is for that which has been lost.

All of us have lost and will lose. Death in all its forms permeates the spaces between, it is our invisible dance partner, sneaking close with a rose between its teeth, whispering the inevitable, that everything we love will die, and that this is the perfect truth of a life. I feel like this is why we are here, to learn how to die, over and over, in all the tiny ways, and in the big ones. To learn how to let go, first in surrender, then in acquiescence. To get to that place where we can walk to the starry door and open it with a steady hand, moving open-eyed through it, into the mystery.

For most of us, grief is a looping story of possible futures lost, the ones now forever unwritten, all the places we will never walk or dance or love; the ones we dreamed would always be there and now are not. It hurts to let these dreams go. And my experience is that our culture has very little language for grief, and so most people have a huge backlog and a dearth of ritual and skill and resources to be with it, so it gets locked away, wallpapered over, shunted aside for later, maybe, possibly, never.

And then when a child dies there is nowhere to hide. It is too big, too raw, too terrible; it picks the locks and steals through the cracks and stirs the sediment of unwept tears in a human heart.

Grief demands to be felt. It knock knock knocks and then waits for that moment, the one we don't see coming, when a random song pierces the veil, or a familiar laugh calls up long-buried memories or the scent of jasmine wafts through the rivets and hinges of the lockboxes we've hidden in Bluebeard's cellar and now here is Grief, thundering up from the basement, wild-eyed and heavy-booted, bringing a cloak of rain to cleanse, rain to soak, torrents to flood through the parched and perfect gardens we cultivate in our own hearts in a vain attempt to hold back the wild vines and the shadows that hide in their roots. The rain comes pelting whether we like it or not and when it does, things get messy.

We don't tend to like things messy. It scares us, to realise that control is an illusion. So we hang on, fingernails and braced thighs when the only thing Grief asks is that we let go into the river and then into the ocean, let ourselves be buffeted and blown and washed onto some far shore and when the rain clears there is sunshine, a new landscape, untrammelled territory to explore and make our own. It's scary as fuck and nobody teaches us to do it, until Life does, often brutally.

So I don't ask anyone to hold me, because to be truthful (and this may be pure projection but for me it feels real), unless someone has been broken open in this way, and has let the river take them, over and over, it's just too big for them to hold a grieving mother. This one, at least. And if it's someone who knew Blaise, their own grief is being felt, and I can't lean completely into that either, not when I am being rolled by my own. It's too much.

This morning as dawn stole into the room with pale fingers and the melodies of spring birds carolling of new life, there was a warm belly against my back, warm arms around me, a warm heart beating ka-thump ka-thump and they all belonged to someone who has in his own life let go into that river and been taught, over and over, how to die. I melted stutter-stop into being held, feeling the parts of me that wanted to make jokes, skip away, or surge deliciously into sex, that other turbulent wonderful river; death, life, death, life, all pushing and striving through two bodies in communion.

I stayed tender. I wept on another. I talked about her. I wept some more. I leaned in, and in, and in; seen, known, held, loved, seen, known, held, loved. It is a priceless gift, one I am very good at giving and often pretty shit at receiving. We teach what we need to learn. So today I learned a bit deeper, trusted a bit more, dared to ask, and dared deeper to receive. I am so grateful for those arms, that heart.

Today is the sixth year of dawns without her. The first one, over and over. More than two thousand of them, but who's counting? I am. That's time for you, taking me down the river, further and further from her, but in a way, closer and closer.
Blaise, my one precious cub, I miss you. I miss your chaos and glee. I miss your whole-body laugh. I miss your stillness, your dance, your flaming wild curls, the everyday miracles of motherhood with you. I miss all the things.

But fuck I am grateful for all the things losing you has taught me. I am grateful for who I have become since you left. Every death is a birth and in this way you are my mother. You birthed me when you flew away. And if you are my mother then Grief is my father, taking my hand and leading me into the world, pushing my edges, teaching me to express every facet of my humanity as my spirit dances through this body, challenging me as fathers do, so I may grow. Growing up is hard. Scary.
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And so, so wonderful.