Iona Winter

I wanted to write something last Friday but couldn’t, and then I asked myself who would I have been writing it for anyway? If I am honest, this past year has been about learning to read others, witness their pain and anger (sometimes unspoken), and/or notice their avoidance ~ it has been exhausting.

Making Reuben’s death visible felt important from the outset, because of the silence around suicide, and the ways it snakes around our ankles and we (generally speaking) continue to avoid talking about it.

Each of us has a unique narrative around Reuben, because he connected with people in a multitude of ways. I’m unsure about the notion of collective grief, perhaps it’s more like remembrance of the special relationships we individually had with him. None discounts the other.

There are reminders every day that my tama ataahua is no longer alive, of what I no longer have, who I no longer am, and what can never be. This wound is irreparable, I won’t ‘get over’ it, and every parent who has had a child suicide knows this. It is not something to be survived, more like endured, and it’s with me constantly.

I didn’t need to publicly mark the day he died, because I’d rather celebrate his birthday. Neither did I need to publicly relive the day and night where he was gone from me and I was unable to get to him, because of this pandemic. And the week before, when I was meant to be with him in Tāmaki, how my flight was cancelled, because of this pandemic. Here we are a year later, and I am again prevented from being with those I love, because of this pandemic. Yes, I’ve written some vehement anti-viral poems. Yet nothing soothes the absence of him.

What I actually wanted to do last week was stand at the harbour mouth and scream (the scream in me that has yet to come out). But I thought instead of how others might experience my horror, rage, and mamae, and that someone would probably call the cops and then I’d have to try and find words to explain myself, when there are none.

Deep inside, I refuse to be silenced. I know intimately the unvoiced howl within me; the violent arches that ripple up from my puku and leach out of my mouth, wrenched sideways and silent. The grief lies feather-fine just below the surface of my smile, or positive social media messages, when most of the time I have to fight to stay present instead of running for the hills. There you have it.

Reuben Samuel Winter (20.05.1994 – 17.09.2020) was brilliant soul, a talented ringapuoro, and an incredibly loving and empathic human being, and he is (yes a purposeful tense change here) my only child, a sensitive and sometimes bloody cheeky wee fulla, and the love of my life.

There is no one-size-fits-all way to do grief. I bear it alone, because he is still my child, I love him unconditionally, and these days I must learn to live with what it means to be broken-hearted.

Storm                                                            (Voicing Suicide Anthology, 2020)

Storm clouds caress

the sky, I ponder

the decision you made

to leave this life.

The expansive territory

you traverse alone,

leaves me impotent.

And the release

I imagine you felt

has created

compression in me.

Grief no longer shouldered.

lies tossed at my feet.

I have no choice,

but to heft its weight,

up onto my back.