The Anniversary
Without Prejudice
She comes, steps into my dreams, my little harbinger of death. She is just as beautiful, taller, darker, older and she nudges my memory that is never gone not for one second.
How are you, she asks and I say fine.
Yvette and I have turned ourselves inside out today and tonight. The garden is done, the house and unit gleam with polish and perfection. We have moved and dusted and washed and scrubbed and emptied bag after bag of "stuff".
We have unearthed the Christmas tree and found the lights. And we hang some in Acers rooms, as he loves the twinkle. The table is cleared and set for tomorrow. The boys rooms are clean and tidy after lots of groans and protests mainly from Jai.
Even worse is dragging them into their showers, their rooms smelling of sweat and testosterone.
We honour her and my brother Jamie dying on the same day some 40 years apart, 30th November, when both James Stuart and Lauren Jade stepped away from us and went "somewhere else".
That's the only way to deal with it is to think she is simply just "somewhere else". Maybe she is in charge of "Baby Island, as she loved babies. Or perhaps she waits for me in her "Dream House" with it's paddocks and stables and nursery and pool.
Just sitting waiting behind the lines of the drawing, hiding and her face will break out and light up the sun, making tomorrow a lovely day. That is what she would want for us all.
To be living happy and free and able to be who we are, or sometimes just be.
She wanted peace for us and love and all the noble things the heart is proud of. The person you helped today may be helping you tomorrow.
And because she was trusting and died anyway, we remain wary of the big wide mucked up, topsy turvy world or dangerous people.
Stay away from the crazies and lead the boys on to healthy lives and help them become men.
And if she were here she be grabbing the delightful fat baby, Cruz, as he cruises through his first steps, and hugging him and kissing those chubby cheeks.
She be here in spirit not in form, showing uip when we need help the most. The rough hours when sickness invades the house.
This year we will set a place at the table for her in the best Royal Albert and silver and have a moments silence to reflect on a life well lived, on two lives well lived.
I can't remember Lauren to even have a dissenting word with anyone, she loved people and wanted to be on their laps. On one hip I carried her on one hip till she was 5, nver too heavy, nor too naughty, just found it easier to carry her, one hip permanently lower than the other, and I am delighted to for it to be so.
Because once I carried her on it, I felt her growmg turning and tumbling in my womb, ready to be born. And once she was, she shot her head up from the bassinet and wanted to watch the world. She was curious.
She loved animals and insects and revered life like no other child of mine. She felt life and other peoples pain and wanted to help. Be part of the solution and not the problem.
She highlighted the plight of baby seals, writing to Bob Hawke and receiving a reply. She hated violence and dissent and loved peace and harmony and made it her mission to have it for others.
She kept skinks in the laundry tun, naming them Stanley And Samantha. And fed them and talked to them and loved them and was upset when they shed their tail and ran away.
She loved her kitten Mush and gave him a christening and dressed him in grow suits and took him visiting stiff limbed and unprotesting in a tiny stroller.
The kitten never trying to escape, resigned to being a fake baby, and she had baby newborn, which is a revolting looking baby doll, anatomically correct that she loved.
And I look at her photos and know she was a happy girl, brainy, good writer, couldn't spell, same as Jamie. We's been to Bali months before she died and she loved it so.
I don't think I could go back there even though I loved it too. I was worrying about her Dad then, wondering what would happen when I decided to end it.
Couldn't care less about him, now, worried enough about him then and made no big fuss, not missing him once he was gone. He knew everything, anyway.
So now that he doesn't see a grandchild or child I am glad.I don't want his hatred and cynicism in my childrens lives.
He always liked to spoil it for others anyway, telling me six weeks after she died I was no to talk of her again, poor Man, he had no idea, how sick of his petty tyrranies ( we as a family of women ) would become.
I kissed him on the cheek when his Dad died and felt nothing except revulsion. I could not understand how I had stayed married to him, except for the childrens sake. I would have probably have stayed with him, until Lauren was 18, becoming a statistic to wife beating.
Sick addiction and sick man.
Enough said, I prefer to talk about her, as the Anniversary approaches. The day not too bad, just the build up, the week before.
We spontaneously cry, on hearing a song, ganging together at our own family private grief. The counsellors said that we would come to our own way of dealing with it.
Grief getting worse and time does not heal. it's just that grief becomes more personal.
We love to say Lauren loved this. Lauren did that, Lauren laughed at this, Lauren would want this. We honour her memory every day, in the way we handle others, the way we manage our lives.
And of course we are not perfect, so sometmes we just feel crap, and take to our beds for the day, the Sea Of Counterpain". Even our grandmas had days when they just pulled up the covers and went back to bed.
Her face glows out at me from the picture frame, at the end of her exuberant para sail at Legian Beach and she glows, just glows.
I can't help but smile at the photo and until then I will smile at her happiness and how we as a Family should be proud, We have honoured her memory by being good people.
I am proud of my girls, grown women, now, who went through the worst and came out the other side, strong, loving, sexy and that is what I wanted for all of them.
That they revered life in all it's shams and glories, thet they never gave up, they kept on keeping on, and believed in better and had hope.
Their children their most precious possesions and wanting the best for them, also.
So as the Anniversary approaches we don't shy away from it, we go through it, because she said we were all going to be fine,
"Better Than Fine"
Love Mum xoxoxoxoxoxo (x) and one for luck.
She comes, steps into my dreams, my little harbinger of death. She is just as beautiful, taller, darker, older and she nudges my memory that is never gone not for one second.
How are you, she asks and I say fine.
Yvette and I have turned ourselves inside out today and tonight. The garden is done, the house and unit gleam with polish and perfection. We have moved and dusted and washed and scrubbed and emptied bag after bag of "stuff".
We have unearthed the Christmas tree and found the lights. And we hang some in Acers rooms, as he loves the twinkle. The table is cleared and set for tomorrow. The boys rooms are clean and tidy after lots of groans and protests mainly from Jai.
Even worse is dragging them into their showers, their rooms smelling of sweat and testosterone.
We honour her and my brother Jamie dying on the same day some 40 years apart, 30th November, when both James Stuart and Lauren Jade stepped away from us and went "somewhere else".
That's the only way to deal with it is to think she is simply just "somewhere else". Maybe she is in charge of "Baby Island, as she loved babies. Or perhaps she waits for me in her "Dream House" with it's paddocks and stables and nursery and pool.
Just sitting waiting behind the lines of the drawing, hiding and her face will break out and light up the sun, making tomorrow a lovely day. That is what she would want for us all.
To be living happy and free and able to be who we are, or sometimes just be.
She wanted peace for us and love and all the noble things the heart is proud of. The person you helped today may be helping you tomorrow.
And because she was trusting and died anyway, we remain wary of the big wide mucked up, topsy turvy world or dangerous people.
Stay away from the crazies and lead the boys on to healthy lives and help them become men.
And if she were here she be grabbing the delightful fat baby, Cruz, as he cruises through his first steps, and hugging him and kissing those chubby cheeks.
She be here in spirit not in form, showing uip when we need help the most. The rough hours when sickness invades the house.
This year we will set a place at the table for her in the best Royal Albert and silver and have a moments silence to reflect on a life well lived, on two lives well lived.
I can't remember Lauren to even have a dissenting word with anyone, she loved people and wanted to be on their laps. On one hip I carried her on one hip till she was 5, nver too heavy, nor too naughty, just found it easier to carry her, one hip permanently lower than the other, and I am delighted to for it to be so.
Because once I carried her on it, I felt her growmg turning and tumbling in my womb, ready to be born. And once she was, she shot her head up from the bassinet and wanted to watch the world. She was curious.
She loved animals and insects and revered life like no other child of mine. She felt life and other peoples pain and wanted to help. Be part of the solution and not the problem.
She highlighted the plight of baby seals, writing to Bob Hawke and receiving a reply. She hated violence and dissent and loved peace and harmony and made it her mission to have it for others.
She kept skinks in the laundry tun, naming them Stanley And Samantha. And fed them and talked to them and loved them and was upset when they shed their tail and ran away.
She loved her kitten Mush and gave him a christening and dressed him in grow suits and took him visiting stiff limbed and unprotesting in a tiny stroller.
The kitten never trying to escape, resigned to being a fake baby, and she had baby newborn, which is a revolting looking baby doll, anatomically correct that she loved.
And I look at her photos and know she was a happy girl, brainy, good writer, couldn't spell, same as Jamie. We's been to Bali months before she died and she loved it so.
I don't think I could go back there even though I loved it too. I was worrying about her Dad then, wondering what would happen when I decided to end it.
Couldn't care less about him, now, worried enough about him then and made no big fuss, not missing him once he was gone. He knew everything, anyway.
So now that he doesn't see a grandchild or child I am glad.I don't want his hatred and cynicism in my childrens lives.
He always liked to spoil it for others anyway, telling me six weeks after she died I was no to talk of her again, poor Man, he had no idea, how sick of his petty tyrranies ( we as a family of women ) would become.
I kissed him on the cheek when his Dad died and felt nothing except revulsion. I could not understand how I had stayed married to him, except for the childrens sake. I would have probably have stayed with him, until Lauren was 18, becoming a statistic to wife beating.
Sick addiction and sick man.
Enough said, I prefer to talk about her, as the Anniversary approaches. The day not too bad, just the build up, the week before.
We spontaneously cry, on hearing a song, ganging together at our own family private grief. The counsellors said that we would come to our own way of dealing with it.
Grief getting worse and time does not heal. it's just that grief becomes more personal.
We love to say Lauren loved this. Lauren did that, Lauren laughed at this, Lauren would want this. We honour her memory every day, in the way we handle others, the way we manage our lives.
And of course we are not perfect, so sometmes we just feel crap, and take to our beds for the day, the Sea Of Counterpain". Even our grandmas had days when they just pulled up the covers and went back to bed.
Her face glows out at me from the picture frame, at the end of her exuberant para sail at Legian Beach and she glows, just glows.
I can't help but smile at the photo and until then I will smile at her happiness and how we as a Family should be proud, We have honoured her memory by being good people.
I am proud of my girls, grown women, now, who went through the worst and came out the other side, strong, loving, sexy and that is what I wanted for all of them.
That they revered life in all it's shams and glories, thet they never gave up, they kept on keeping on, and believed in better and had hope.
Their children their most precious possesions and wanting the best for them, also.
So as the Anniversary approaches we don't shy away from it, we go through it, because she said we were all going to be fine,
"Better Than Fine"
Love Mum xoxoxoxoxoxo (x) and one for luck.
