Reflections at twilight...

On grief, loss and tragedy

“Anyone who’s ever had a dream, and anyone who’s ever played a part, anyone who’s ever been lonely and anyone who’s ever split apart”
Sweet Jane, Lou Reed

There’s a path I walk regularly near my home, which brings me along the banks of the river Shannon. Whatever the weather, it’s always a sensory feast. With the changing seasons I can walk along the bank and watch the working ships in the distance making their way across the estuary. The river’s endless chatter against the rocks and birdsong accompanies me, in contrast to the silent forests standing further inland.

Last week, instead of going up the stony hill, around the bend onto the pathway which would bring me to the next ‘point’ on the embankment, I took the path straight ahead. Because it was mucky I found myself standing still and taking in the view. Around me, the last of the evening’s walkers passed by; parents murmuring to babies dosing in buggies, joggers’ breath hitching in the damp air, while I listened to the river’s restless voice below. My back pressed against the break in the hedges. This is the break that signals the point where a family friend went almost 25 years ago, and never came out. It was there she laid herself down to rest.

I was pregnant with my daughter when she was buried. For a time, the place where she was found had a bench and windchimes hanging there but it is now fully overgrown. As I stood there, the Shannon’s currents churned behind me, and I recalled the events of the time, people in the town had searched for her, myself included. I remember calling to see my best friend, her sister, and being told that T had gone missing.

The irony of it was that the place where she lay had been searched but she was missed. She was found eventually, and the waves of trauma rippled through our little town. Sometimes when I walk up that way now, surrounded by the living rhythm of splashing waves and rustling reeds, I think about how she walked up here too, but for her these would be her last steps on this earth, before she lay herself down to rest amid the trees’ silent vigil.

My dear mother, who passed two years later, was at the latter stages of a 6-year battle with brain cancer, and I recall a day where we both stood in the bedroom upstairs, with a skylight facing onto the estuary, and she remarked how she ‘knew’, that T was ‘over there’. ‘Over there’ being the exact point where she was found.

I had in the few short years previous, experienced the trauma of losing a loved one in Cork to suicide also. Kevin, whom I had been in a relationship with as a young woman, had decided one morning in his hometown too, that the only solution to his problems was a permanent one. And he went to a forest near his home, to end it all.

These were dark times indeed. Days that have shaped me into the person I am today, for better or for worse. I like to think that I took something from these experiences which allows me to be compassionate towards others and to be grateful that I myself, lived to see that life goes on, everything is transient and that sometimes there is no logical reason for the events that take place in life.

Walking away this time around, the river’s voice still humming at my back, I felt inspired to write this poem when I got home. This is in memory of T and Kevin, and is for anyone who has ever been ‘split apart’ by the suicide of another. May you find peace.

Denise

REFLECTIONS AT TWILIGHT

When you got to this point T,
Did the earth rest soft and easy beneath your feet?
The final leg of your weary journey,
Only a few short steps left
As you made it, into the forest.

Who did you think about, dear T?
As you drew your last earthly breath
and lulled yourself to sleep
One last time.
My mother’s finger pointed, her
head nodded towards you,
from our window:
"I know she’s over there”, she whispered.
And you were.

Beneath my ribs,
unborn feet kicked
Reminding me of my reason for
Staying here, away from those trees, those
rivers.

Into the woods you went too,
Kevin; different trees, same silence.
Your body found by an innocent child.

The news came our way,
One unassuming Saturday morning,
I dropped the phone
Poor Mam picked it up
Trying to make sense of the message,
the horror still hangs

like a shroud over my memory.

Those left searching for you T:
Out of time, their voices pierced the
air where you lay
On the soft mess of twigs and late summer’s
brittle leaves against your porcelain skin.

Fully overgrown now,
strangers pass your spot -
unseeing the you that was there,
Before you went
Into the forest.

The trees remain, still, looming as
light breaks through their black silhouettes.
Facing homeward,
I glance back,
one last time
shoulder turned
toward the steadfast sun,
setting surely on another day.