chocolate shared on the sofa
maroon flowers emerald
leaves velvet texture
one lying down the other tiny
curled at his side a memory
or a photograph or a figment
of the imagination
I don’t know
Category: Grief
Working on a piece of prose about my late brother while watching Iron Man 2, and the only thing that brings a slight tear to my eye all evening is Iron Man’s dad telling him posthumously that his son was his greatest creation. Well, fuck. I’ll cry at a fictional character’s grief before I cry at my own.
On Tuesday I had my first counselling appointment. My pouch has been playing up for like five days. Last night I had another bad dream. Next Friday is my uncle’s funeral. It hasn’t been the best of weeks. This prose thing that follows happened last weekend.
I wanted to make something out of this, a poem or something. But it is what it is. It doesn’t need dressing up.
Saw this tweet today and it got me thinking:
“Grief is the price you pay for love.”
— INFP Thoughts (@INFP_Thoughts) 25 April 2017
Yeah, I guess grief is the price you pay for love but though I’m sure I loved my brother as much as a baby possibly could, I don’t remember it and it’s as if he was never here at all. So I’ve paid the price in terms of grief, sort of, in a way, but I don’t feel like I got the pay off of love.
(Context: my big brother died when I was one year old. He was sixteen. I’m 29 and I’m still trying to figure this stuff out. I need someone to tell me how to grieve.)
I found someone who could probably empathise with the loss of my brother, who would know what it’s like to not remember a family member and not be able to grieve… and they are a fictional character! It’s Rodney from Only Fools and Horses, which my partner has been watching recently. I can definitely relate to this conversation, from S2E5: The Yellow Peril. Rodney and Del are sat by their mother’s grave. I bolded the important bit. If anyone else can relate, let me know. That would be sort of nice.
