And life, with all its devastation, trundles on

Punch-to-the-gut-photo which popped up on my facebook feed this week …. Julia & Megan playing oboe & flute, 21 June 2014

28 June 2021

I have just read a HuffPost article about how differently the “Back to Normal” phrase can be received by people, depending on what you’ve been living, what you’ve experienced.  The link is at the end of this piece. It has a purely US focus and is timely because of upcoming 4^th July celebrations and festivities.  The phrase raises such mixed responses because for hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, there is no “back to normal”.

There cannot be. Because “normal” has gone. For good. And it didn’t take a global pandemic for anyone who has experienced a devastating loss (be it death, illness, or other) to realise that.

There is something quite vomit-inducing about the “back to normal” (let’s just call it BtN) talk.

As though the past hasn’t just happened

As though people who have died don’t matter or can be forgotten

As though the effects of grief, loss, and upended lives are contained, time-bound

As though the past doesn’t affect the present and/or the future

As though we are still the person we were before the loss

As though…. Life just goes on

So yes – life just does go on. It trundles along.  Hiccups here and there, smoother bits here, crevasses and ravines and steep slopes and landslides over there…. In a way that is all life ever is.

I have so many wonderful experiences within the space of a week. Just this past week,

I have started not one but two brilliant learning programmes – one on Systemic Constellations and one on Human Systems Dynamics. Learning goes on. Professional life goes on. New connections go on. And for that I am so grateful. Where would I be without my work?

I have received our (our – not my – this was a joint effort for sure) eldest child’s wonderful university results and he will be off to start a Masters in Maastricht (has a lovely ring to it, I think)

Our middle child is just back – at long last, after 6 months away at uni – and it’s good to have her noise and clutter and clatter around the house

I’ve been out on a first long-ish bike ride on my new, posh, ultra-beautiful road bike

I’ve been celebrated and thanked for my work at La Maison de Tara this past year, and into the future

And alongside all of that, I have had multiple kind, generous, thoughtful, loving, consoling, heart-felt messages from people who know that this is the week, two years ago, that Julia, our youngest, died. And know that however my life looks from the outside, whatever joys I may genuinely experience week to week, I don’t forget that, or her, for an instant.

The rough with the smooth

The love with the loss

The glittering gold with the heavy tar

Life trundles on. And that’s okay

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/people-who-lost-someone-to-covid-talk-about-what-returning-to-normal-feels-like-britt_l_60c3d69de4b0583aec44a375?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=us-must-reads