Iona Winter

Absence is something we all walk with, as a part of life, and in numerous ways. Yet I’ve come to realise, that it absolutely does not ‘make the heart grow fonder’.

I love Reuben as unconditionally as I did before he died. Nothing will alter that. But this experience has both changed and reconnected me. 

For the most part, I’ve continued to be a loving individual and not hardened my heart – this is an intrinsic part of who I am now / and was before. And I say this in contrast to the pretending we are expected to do within society, when they’ve had enough of our grieving process. My friends will agree that I’m dreadful at pretending, and thankfully, I can choose not to navigate that particular minefield. 

I’ve been reading Denise Riley’s ‘Time Lived, Without Its Flow’. While it’s a difficult read, as a suicide bereaved parent, she has an astonishing way of speaking about absence, and how time shifts into something intangible and non-linear — and that this is what we must live within. There’s no way of going back to the life from before. It’s implausible to think we will get over this unimaginable grief, which has created something akin to an internal death.

Mothers have lived with this grief since time began; children who never returned from fighting other people’s wars, those who inexplicably died, and the sudden deaths. It’s a specific bereavement one cannot understand if they have not birthed a child who lived, and then suicided. And I say this in a non-defensive way, with much aroha for those who’ve not experienced motherhood, because I imagine that comes with its own distinct grief too. As Denise Riley puts it, ‘I’d like them to try to imagine what it is like.’

We humans are excellent (well, some of us are) at looking for similarities, so we can empathise, and yet it’s unfeasible and perhaps arrogant to think we can ever know another’s experience. In fact, why do we aspire to be so intrusive? How about we stop saying ‘I know how you feel’ when that’s an impossible thing to attest to? We cannot know another’s journey, not fully. We may see around the edges if we are lucky. We are alone with our internal worlds. The Johari Window model comes to mind. 

Early on, I realised the only people who came close were the mothers in my life whose children have also taken their lives. Plus, I think it’d be unfair to expect anyone to understand this lonely, estranged, and incomparable event. Perhaps that’s true for all kinds of grief and absence. 

My grief around Reuben’s death will always be raw, because of the non-linear nature of time. This timelessness I’ve stepped into, reflects the often-painful new place I inhabit within myself. 

… you will have learned 

To wean your eyes

From that gap in the air

And be able to enter the heart

In your soul where your loved one

Has awaited your return

All the time. 

(from For Grief, by John O’Donohue)