A line ... a journey

So, it’s done. I‘ve taken the ashes of which I wrote in my last blog and I’ve sprinkled them into the waters off Scotland’s west coast, in one of the most tranquil places I know. I described last week how light those ashes were, and that was so evident when I sprinkled them because, instead of them pouring down from their container, they rather billowed out because the air mingled with them and they didn’t have sufficient gravity to drop downwards. No: instead they were susceptible to every breath of wind so that as I shook my container they seemed to take off, as if flying, and they were blown into the water. Where they had all landed, they formed a trail of white ash; a line that appeared to be a gash across the dark water. I felt it represented the wound across my own soul that’s as violent as a gash. I thought that it represented visually the journeying that I have done in order to reach this point when I could let go of the memories and let them go… out to sea; out of sight; out with the mercy of God carrying my previously-heavy burden that had been made lighter last week when I had burned my box.

Some people might call this ‘closure’. I could not disagree more.

This was not closure for me. I’ve had ‘closure’ for decades. The whole ghastly story has lain behind a door that I have closed every time anything reminded me of the events I wanted never to have occurred. My mind has been so closed that (I realised last week) I had not even grieved my loss. I don’t think I have felt anything. The door was so firmly closed, there was no space for feelings. All I did was close down the least little reminder.

In creating my little ceremonies, first of burning the box and subsequently scattering the ashes, I opened that door. I can only have revived memories of the little life that (by the way) were associated with exquisite pain emotionally. I didn’t face what was happening. I had pushed it into a drawer to hide the evidence. It terrified me. So it was only now, more than forty years later, that I experienced the first feelings of grief. It surprised me. Even up to the morning of going to the coast I had filled my mind with excitement about where I was going until I was positively shocked when we were about to depart and, alone in my room, I picked up the little container and discovered tears rolling down my cheeks. What was going on, I wondered to myself?

I was opening myself to grief. There is a time to mourn, and that time had caught up with me. I had denied it, delayed it, postponed it, tried to avoid it – but it finally caught up with me.

Shaking the ashes into the Atlantic did not bring closure. It heralded a beginning. That line of ash drew a picture trailing out to sea. It traced the line of my journey. I have a long way still to go. But one thing that’s important is that, when I had finished the sprinkling of those ashes, my hands were open. Fantasies about closure had finally come to an end.

Oh, and there’s one more event to tell. As I sat on the rock watching the tide pull the ashes away from the shore, a tiny white feather fluttered down to my open hands. Extraordinary. It was exactly parallel with the white feather that I’d seen when I had burned the box a few days previously. I cannot help but wonder all the more whether they signify the presence of angels.