Sitting beside the grave of a 2 day old infant whose family I don't know, I was confronted with a difficult mixture of feelings. I could immediately imagine the importance of this bench for the child's mother, or father, who have somewhere to come, and know where their baby girl is. As I stayed there awhile, the beauty of the graveyard became apparent - the stillness of the summer's evening, the colours of the trees highlighted and accented by the sunshine. The brightly coloured windmill, standing beside the tiny grave of a little girl I never met.
"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.
I miss you like hell."
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
There is perhaps nothing capable of taking away the pain of such a loss, but having somewhere to come, and be, must allow it to be there in a way that families of missing persons cannot experience. The headstone speaks to the certainty of a life cut tragically short. This child was born on 29 June and died on 1 July. If it is not already, peace may one day be possible. Sitting in front of her grave, I understood more deeply the predicament of those left behind when someone disappears. For all the intellectual research and reflection I have done on the experience of ambiguous loss, nothing could speak to me more directly than the agonising ache I felt in my heart and in my gut as I sat there. Families living in limbo have nowhere to go, and everywhere to look.
"Sometimes, when one person is missing,
the whole world seems depopulated."
Alphonse Lamartine (1790-1869)
Comments
Post a Comment