Walk

I have always needed to walk. I'm not trying to get anywhere. I am already there. I wander around a new place to understand how it fits together. I wander around an old place to tease it apart. I lose myself for hours. Sometimes I really get lost.

I love to explore. Whether it is the dark suburban streets of the Inner North, where drawn curtains, glowing at the edges, hint at a life behind. Or at dusk on one of Canberra's mountains, where I am as still as the magpies and kangaroos. Pausing as one in the dusty peach glow.

I don't feel afraid at night. This is my place.

Walking calms me. I think it is the rhythm. It takes me out of my head and into my body. In to place.

I walk fast. Stroking cool leaves as I pass. I collect tiny flowers. I smell damp soil, heady blossoms and cooking dinners. I smell the seasons changing.

I hear droning televisions. Muffled discontent. Humming street signs.

Possums turn to stone as I pass.

The dim street lights collect halos of bats and moths. Under one lonely spotlight my pale hands look like they are not my own.

When winter winds succumb to spring, I am intoxicated. When mild autumn evenings turn bitter and wild, I am exhilarated.

I wonder about the invisibility of the wind, moodily tossing hair about my face. Filling my ears. I love it all. If there is a full moon then I am done. I am undone. The blacks of my eyes are swollen with her secrets. I will not sleep.

Walking inspires me. I find myself somehow home writing about fallen magpies, falling leaves and hidden lives. It is past midnight and I am wide awake.

If I could write a letter

Dear Leah

This is not an easy letter to write. I am more than twice your age but am I so different to you? I don’t know any 16 year olds. But I knew you once.

I have discovered many things in my life, about family, love and death. About myself. The journey is so rich. But I don’t have all the answers.

I know you are under a dense shadow. The blackness is pervasive. It blocks everything else out. Your mum and sister are faded, peripheral to you. Your grief is self-centred. I know your desperation, your emptiness. Your anger. I know.

I know how much you can love. How you put a dozen photos of your dad on your wall.  A reflection of your documentary zeal. A loving memorial. Only to take them all down a week later. The first of many…putting away. Putting away the past, putting away your dad. Hiding your tears. I know it was easier to pretend he never existed then accept he was gone. The shock of your beautiful family of four, becoming three. Without your permission.

Your beautiful dad. I knew him too. He loved you, all of you.

I so want to help you. If I was there I would hug you. But I know you might not let me. I’d scream and cry with you, we could throw things, throw cartwheels, dance like crazy, and laugh at ourselves. I know how creative you are. How many poems and stories you write. How you ask, why? I would write with you. We could try to find answers together.  

I know you never got to say goodbye. Whisper it to him now. Say goodbye a hundred times. Tell him everything you are feeling and how much you miss him. Never stop talking to him.

I am so grateful you met your boyfriend, how he holds you, while you cry and cry. He is young, but he knows to do this instinctively. He never pushes you, but I know there is so much you want to tell him, and your mum and your sister, but your throat is constricted. You can’t breathe. I know you dream of silent screams. What can I say to release you?

I am so proud of you, how you front up to school each day, where he used to teach. How you look towards the science department, how you can’t bring yourself to go there. How you look towards the teachers car park, where you would meet and drive home together. You were so happy in his company.

They have built a memorial garden for him. You pass it each day. People seem a little wary of you, they don’t know what to say. You are barely aware. You are empty. You have put walls all around you.

I worry about you, you see, how you are burying it all inside. Deep in your belly. Creating a hard place there. All your fears will grow from such a place.

If I was there I would lead you to your mum, and make you hold her hand. You feel so alone, but she is there. Your mum and your sister know. They feel it too. I need you to open your eyes and see them. How can I convince you that you are not alone?

I want to say to you, that however you’re feeling, it’s ok, you fight through this any way you can. There is no template. No right way. All I can promise you is that it will get better.

One day you will remember your dad with a smile, instead of angry tears. You will think how very lucky you were to know someone like him. How knowing him has helped you to live a beautiful life. You have adventures ahead of you. You will be so loved, and you will deserve to be loved. I promise.

I know you loved your dad with every cell in your body. It was the most natural thing in the world. You had something very special. No-one can ever take that away.

Your dad is part of you, just like he is part of your beautiful mum and sister. You have his sensitivity, you have a little of his skepticism. You are drawn to science and nature and documenting the world, just like him. You are with him every day just by being you. He would be so proud of you.

You are beautiful and you are loved and you are not doing anything wrong. Keep feeling every moment with vivid clarity. Let it wash all over you. This is life. This is why we are here.

I love you. And I am thinking of you always.

LC

I Dreamed A Dream

Many months ago, when I was still living in California, I had a dream that was thick with sadness. I woke from it very early in the morning, conscious only of the blackness shifting to a pre-dawn grey.

It was a sad dream. And lying there, unmoving, I felt the dull and empty kind of sadness you feel in the face of death. And this dream was about my death.

I was in a hospital bed, and a man I had loved was at my bedside. We had broken up recently. Yes, we were broken. Our relationship was like a clay pot riddled with air pockets, shattering in the kiln. Shocking but not surprising.

I knew I was dying and I had requested some pills to bring about the end quickly. I felt pain for a moment, but it quickly passed.

And then I changed my mind.

I didn’t want them to work, I didn’t want to leave yet. We rushed to the nurse to reverse the effects of the pills, but no nurses were to be found. Some time passed and I was still alive. I believed the pills weren’t working, that I would live.

The details of the dream have faded, even as the emotions resurface. But I remember that I died suddenly, soon after this. I watched myself fall to the floor. But I thought I would live, I whispered to myself. I felt betrayed. Once death comes there is no going back. In my dream I experienced the absolute and desolate finality of this.

I remember watching my friends and family gather beneath me as I floated over their heads. I felt frustrated, stuck in a form where I couldn’t be part of their lives anymore. My friends became a writhing mass of movement, a musical number, with my mum swaying in the centre. I remember feeling briefly amused, they were dancing up a storm.

Around this time, I also had dreams of being hugged by a male friend, it was a different friend each time and I remember each one clearly. People I had shared a special connection with, in the distant and recent past. And each time it was the strongest, warmest, safest hug you can imagine. Like a hug a father would give.