i’m a bundle of laughs these days

I turned up to a meeting last Friday and got chatting with one of the guys. We exchanged a few bits of chat and then he said that he’d had a look at this blog before he came out to the meeting. He commented on the fact that I don’t seem to be holding much back.

I’ve wondered about it for a few days. Self-absorption? Perhaps. Stuck in a creative rut? Possibly. But the only real point I can make with any certainty is that these pages are here act like some kind of skimming pool filter; whatever’s up on the surface will make its way out. That’s not to say that there isn’t other stuff deeper down, but these little bobbins are the ones that just seem to keep on coming back out.

Pain is loneliness.

I’ve been wondering why this seems so true of late – why is it that with a wife of 11 years, 3 kids, numerous friends within a five minute walk of here and plenty of scattered soul-mates across several countries  I still feel a profound sense of loneliness these days?

There’s a feeling I have that has become familiar of late. It’s more geographical than emotional, as if it’s some kind of second-hand deja-vu I’ve mysteriously inherited. To the side and behind me is fog, the kind that is saturated with rain that defies the laws and hangs in the air, refusing to fall. I think there may be people nearby – or there may have been. Perhaps I’ve been walking with them, but since I cannot hear, see or touch them they don’t feature too heavily in the scene.

I know that I have travelled some distance and gained some altitude to get to this place; my body feels a little tired, yet excited by the fact that it is working well enough to get me this far. But as I stand here – wherever here happens to be – something becomes clear; all that has gone on before is just the beginning. Ahead of me lies nothing more than a mile-high mass of fogged-out emptiness across which I must travel. Alone.

This is the sense I have so often, that recent times have taken me on some kind of mini-epic journey, forcing me to climb higher than ever before – so high I don’t even have to look down to know how precarious this position has become; the sense of risk is all around. Six months on since the first funeral of the three and there have been clear signs that this initial phase is drawing to a close. Days of suffocating tears have long gone, as have the moments of feeling utterly allergic to the toxic shock of Normal Life. I have been able to work, to write, to laugh and reacquaint myself with the new normal.

But this feeling – this sense of the months having only just been an introduction – this is something new and at times overwhelming. The sheer length of time ahead feels like too much

Last night a friend talked to me about the ‘ancientness of sorrow’. He said that loss connects us with something bigger, something timeless, something that to some extent we have to shoulder on our own. I’m wondering how many characters – Biblical and otherwise – fit the mold: David, Job, Jesus, Jonah, Paul, Lear. The list could be long.

I have to stop now, before I find myself putting on old Cure albums at an unreasonable volume.

Filed under: grieving