A Mother's Note on Grief - Monologue

 

A Mother’s Note on Grief 

A piece on grief and parenthood, intended for theatrical performance as a monologue. Written for Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month and suicide prevention.

by Delphie 

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Sybil, Isla and Alby. My three little ones.

Sybil, my eldest, grew to be quite troublesome in her late teens. She was a beautiful little baby with thick black hair as soon as she was born. I remember looking into that tiny thing’s eyes and thinking, you are all I ever need. 

But it’s typical, I think. The teenage rebellion - you know - finding themselves and all that. Things we all did, in our own ways. To be quite honest with you, I didn’t mind at all. I felt as long as she was safe and with friends, I’d just let her be. Live her young life. Before she even knew it, she’d be an adult. Before you know it, life loses much of its fun, its freedom. That part of us, the wildness, it gets snuffed quite quick and that time in your life is often all over in a blink of an eye. So I let her music play loud, let her grades rise and fall, as success in life often does, and I’d not say a word when finding my red-eyed daughter rummaging through the snack cupboard. That had been me, once, and my parent’s strictness had only left me smoking in far worse places than my own back garden. 

Isla was my second, came only a year after Sybil, and quite her opposite. Equally as beautiful and I suppose you’re thinking all mums are bound to say that about their kids but I’ll admit, Isla was rather bald when she was born, and looked like a (beautiful) little, old man. 

I didn’t quite feel the same as I did after I’d had my first baby. That didn’t mean I didn’t love Isla as much as I did Sybil, I just, well, I don’t know. I was tired. And you can’t quite explain that tiredness to someone who hasn’t felt it. It’s just this abyss you fall into, of never fully resting, never fully waking. It was all a little overwhelming. 

But Isla became what I think most would consider the ‘perfect’ child. Determined. Incredibly intelligent and it pains me to say but I’m unsure where that part came from. She was a tad bossy, that part made sense, but she’d often beat me in a debate. She was ambitious and not for a moment did I ever doubt her nor the woman I watched her become. Despite her and her sister being so entirely different, they were truly inseparable, and I knew then, that I’d done something right. 

My last was Alby. He came a long while after my girls. Eleven years after. Quite the little accident as I’m sure you’re putting together, but as soon as I saw him that very first time I knew I never would’ve been complete without him. He was very poorly when he was born. The doctors couldn’t kickstart his lungs. Oh, I just remember wailing my baby’s blue! I have a blue baby! Sort of not knowing at all what was going on, the midwives don’t tell you of course, they’re just running and slapping and those ninety seconds feel like eternity. But they got him breathing. That’s all that mattered.

Now, having a boy was quite different to having my girls, and I use ‘quite’ with a great deal of under-exaggeration. He never cried any more than they did - oh no - they were all complete monsters when it came to crying but, I don’t know, he was just less interested in things, less curious. The girls cared a little more about exploring the world they were born into I guess, and he just, accepted being in it. Alby just sort of sat there and drooled. Nothing wrong with that. I suppose it’s what we all want to do from time to time. He had three mothers in a way, and became very close to Sybil and Isla as they took care of him. But he couldn’t compete with their bond. No. That was truly something else. 

When Alby was five, my partner died. 

Me and him used to take the blue train to this beautiful little park we’d found hidden behind a forest of pine trees, just beyond the tracks. There was one bench, in the middle of this meadow of grass, tall and never mowed, and the bench faced the ocean. No one ever sat there. No one knew the place existed. We’d go every Friday, me and him, a place we liked to believe existed just for us. It was there that we’d planned to have Sybil, then Isla. Then, not Alby, but sometime just before Alby, he’d knelt beside that bench, a ring between his fingers, and I’d thought, in that moment, that we’d be each other’s forever. Forever, I suppose, is a long time, with too many days to plan ahead. Forever, I suppose, is a long time when for every one of those days you’re left thinking of the steam, the hoot, the chugging, the crunch. 

The day my partner died, he’d used the blue train to take his life. 

I really never saw it coming. 

For that reason, I blamed myself. He was mine as I was his. I was supposed to be there for him. I was supposed to see him, to take care of him, to notice. I hadn’t. I didn’t. 

Sybil reacted how I’d expected. Her being out all night slowly turned into being out all day too. Sometimes, I’d only see her for dinner, and even then, she often preferred to have it elsewhere, often probably preferring to not have it at all. I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t eat and I wouldn’t have wanted to have dinner with me either. With someone who hadn’t been there for someone when he’d needed her most. I would’ve hated that woman, especially if she’d been my mother. 

Isla was by far the bravest of us all. So caring. Always trying to make sure we were all there for dinner, even if none of us ate it. She told me the best way to deal with things would be to keep our routine the same. She was right. She told me the best way to soothe our aching stomaches would be to eat, even a bite. She was right. One day though, she’d said to me she wanted to stay home and look after the family, help ‘keep it together’. Bless her, she was only sixteen and I certainly wasn’t going to see her leave to uni for another two years at least, but I went and sat right down next to her and said, that is the silliest thing you have ever said. And of course, Isla didn’t do ‘silly’. Don’t you ever give up on your future, I had told her, it is my job to keep the family together. 

It was then I knew I was failing. 

Those words should never have to be spoken from mother to child. 

I knew I was failing but I was buried. I was buried and falling down a hole so deep, unable to pull myself out. And you see, becoming aware of it, knowing you’re falling without knowing a way to catch yourself, is so much worse. 

Alby didn’t really understand why daddy was gone and why in some ways, mummy was too. 

He knew daddy had gone somewhere, for a long time. Forever. But like I said, forever is a timeframe that I think no one can quite fully grasp, not ever, and I never knew what to tell him. Hopeless. I was utterly hopeless and of course, Isla was my little star, telling Alby that daddy lived in the clouds now. That when it was grey out, as it often is in Ireland, we could go out and wave, and he’d be there, waving back, but little eyes couldn’t see very far, and daddy was standing just a little too far away to see. 

It won’t be long before Alby can’t remember at all, Isla had said. 

She’d meant it kindly, in a way that saved Alby from the emptiness we all felt, although, what she’d really meant was that it wouldn’t be long before Alby couldn’t remember him at all, and that had birthed a different type of loneliness within me. A loneliness that sunk in my chest and reminded me that my son would never know his father. 

The way his dad could play the piano so well, so beautifully, you'd think it was a recording. The way his dad's laugh, so deep in his chest, would always send him into a coughing fit afterwards, and for that more laughter from us all would follow. He would never tease him for his father's secret love for birds, especially the squat little sparrows, always flitting around like they were late for something, or the starlings, and how they came together at dusk in their shadowy clouds. Alby wouldn't see how he'd go through fazes of being unashamed then embarrassed, saying birdwatching made him feel like an old man, and like time was catching up with him, even though it never did. His dad was brave. Braver than I, when it came to people at least. Always the one to share a smile, send a compliment, ask for the bill. Alby would learn these things, through us, but he'd never know them, and that was a pill that made me sick to swallow. 

On sunny days, when the clouds weren’t out, Alby would ask Isla where daddy was. She’d tell him, there are always clouds somewhere in the world, Alb. Just because they aren’t above us right now doesn’t mean they’re gone. 

And soon, just like she’d said, Alby's memories begun to fade and he knew his dad only as the passing clouds above. 

Isla would tell me that Sybil didn’t really blame me, that eventually, she would come round and that absence was just her way of dealing with things. Isla had a way with words, young and yet so wise, that would always bring a little light into the dark. 

Six months after his death, Isla suggested we go to the park. 

At first I’d laughed, then laughed a little less, then realised she was serious. I wanted to refuse, to again call her silly. But she wasn’t. She never was. She was always right. So I said okay.

I remember the evening as if it were yesterday. We were all sat down at dinner, Isla had asked Sybil to be there, and I had asked her then if she would come to the park too. She’d looked up at me, shocked almost, that I’d spoken to her, and I felt the heaviness of guilt wriggle its way into my chest again. In all this time I'd wallowed, thinking she was rejecting us, me, I'd been neglecting her. Was that wrong? Yes. Yes, I was her mother. But lost in it all, Isla told me that it had been my first time greeting death too. But lost in it all, Isla told me that it had been my first time greeting death too. And he’d come so quietly, hadn’t he? Slipped in between us, sat himself down beside the half-finished glasses of wine and my children. I hadn't known not to invite him into our home.

I’d then noticed that Sybil had gotten her nose pierced, a little silver ring. It was cute, edgy in a Sybil way, but mostly cute. I didn’t mind, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have said anything. We’d stared at each other, for a while I think, my thoughts had sort of blanked looking into the green of her eyes. Her face had blurred and for a moment I was lost within her dad. I blinked quickly and my Sybil was back. Then, I had smiled. 

She’d looked away, as if she’d known who I’d seen, as if everyday she saw the same within herself and in the mirror. And after that she’d nodded and I had to remember what I’d asked. That was it. A nod was all she gave me, but it had meant enough.

Going to the park was possibly the hardest day of my life, even harder perhaps, than his funeral. I wasn’t sure. The funeral hadn't felt like we were burying him, rather, burying our family. Everything we had. Everything we could have been. But the trip to the park was something else entirely. 

I'd arrived and all at once, the earth had splintered, the sky bleeding into the ground and that ground swallowing me whole. Everything I hadn’t processed, everything that had been buried for all those months, came crawling to the surface of my skin, up my throat and out my mouth. It came tumbling down, crumbling my knees and knocking me from my feet. 

On the train, I had held it together, held my breath, just about at least, for them, for my children. I had focused on the view, not the train. Not the fact that I was sitting on the very same train. 

But the bench. I saw a glimpse of it, out the train window at first, a flicker of wood within a field of green, all in my peripheral. It was when we were off, from the station down the secret little foresty path, and I saw the bench closer that - that it collapsed - the wall - the wall I had put up in and around me collapsed and my heart was strangled and squeezed, picked and poked by a million needles and I was choking and it was all my fault. 

It really felt like all my fault. 

Then, I’d felt a warmth on my shoulder. My Isla. I turned, slowly, to smile, to show that I would be okay.

But it was Sybil. 

Then I had felt something else. Something that still felt wriggly and raw, but that blossomed in my chest instead of festering, and I recognised it as a feeling I hadn’t felt in all those months. A feeling you don’t feel when you’re buried or falling, but rather, close to the surface, close to picking yourself back up. Hope. I felt it, and hugged it. I felt that hope and clung to it so tightly as it whispered to me, so softly, that our family could be whole again. 

Turning to the ocean, I saw Isla and Alby in the distance, her pointing at random things and telling him what they were. 

“I doubt he understands anything she tells him.” Sybil laughed. 

Her voice, her laugh. And she was right, he probably didn’t.

“No, I don’t think he understands it.” 

She turned to me, she knew what I meant.

“But she’ll always tell him anyway.” 

I gripped her hand so tightly, smiling.

“We all will.” 

I heard the waves crashing against the cliff below, and with them carried the whispers of hope once more. I looked up and saw a cloud high in the sky, one that had the shape of small bird. A sparrow, or a starling, even. At first I smiled. And then I waved.