Over my head...

Asha asked me while we were on holiday with David and Ann after a trip to watch seals, whether we had ever lived on the coast in Norfolk – she remembered a cottage we had borrowed – the one Ali and I used each Easter, at Binham. So having no other plan, we drove there. We went to see it and then Binham Priory which she also remembered (Kirin calls it a castle!). On entering the big echoey church, Asha ran right down the length of the nave and immediately started to play pretend school. It was to be a singing lesson. The song she started to teach standing in front of the altar – facing me, Kirin and the rest of her imaginary class, was

over my head, I hear music in the air
over my head, I hear music in the air
over my head, I hear music in the air
there must be a God somewhere

Not an obvious choice by a four year old! Ali used to sing it to Asha as one of her bed time songs. It was sung when Asha and Kirin, hand in hand with Doug, led the coffin with Ali’s body in it from our house to the hearse. It is the song we use frequently at Christmas time. We will use it when we bury Ali’s ashes this Saturday (see above). Ali loved it, I love it. It doesn’t claim too much. Just that “there must be a God somewhere” – based on some notion that we can hear singing...just a hint of angels up above… Not making very sophisticated claims – but hopeful, nonetheless.

Bad, very bad moments, have been redeemed for me, by breaking into song (in my head if not literally). Many of the last and most beautiful memories of Ali with us, have songs to go with them. The air is full of singing, particularly when we walk back into a place like Binham Priory. Songs we have sung can jump me out of a rut - push me to be open to other people, to their loving gestures, even if something in me feels threatened or unsettled by letting people in. Somehow the experience of singing from this repertoire of familiar songs acts as a gentle persistent reminder to me that the story will go on. The music in the air is a prod from Ali to get on with it, to live with new perspective - “ let not my doubts or my darkness speak to me” in the words of a Taize chant. Grumpiness and anger are the feelings I get quite regularly, at some point every day probably. And when those feelings hook into me, they can end up with me being short, churlish with the children, and out of reach of others who look on. Sulking is a cul de sac. Grieving is not sulking, but it has similarities. Being gentle on myself (frequently offered advice) doesn’t, I think, mean that I can’t also have a fairly tough dialogue running with myself, an argument back to my negativity. What does it mean, to live a new story out of all this crisis and crushing disappointment? I told a few people that life feels like trying to make up a sequel to a drama, where the main actor has now left the stage. I have to imagine how the story is to go on ...even if people are shuffling in their seats. That’s a really unhelpful perspective, which, all in good time, eventually, will be replaced by a different way of feeling and thinking.

Loving the children – enjoying their company, looking at holiday photos, listening to Asha’s rendition of “there must be a God somewhere” in Binham, five months after her Mummy sat there singing those same songs... That is what I need to cling to, especially in the moments trying to fend off despair. An hour after this episode Asha did an enormous tantrum in a very public place and I felt horribly alone - a textbook example of a “not-coping-parent “. I was bailed-out by Ann and David who let me escape upstairs when I got to their home. It’s debilitating.

That is all I can say – my experience with Asha and Kirin is stressful, knackering, enormously draining… and then once again, beautiful and fun – the experience of so many, many, many parents of very young children!

So… some holiday snaps -Holland, Kent, Scotland