...you can never ever leave, without leaving a piece of youth..."
Like everyone, my life has been lived to the soundtrack of (mostly) my choice. There are so many songs that throw me back in time, that comfort me, that amuse me, that provide background noise for a busy life, and many, many songs that I forget as the years pass. Depending on my day, music could accompany me for anywhere from 10 minutes to 5/6 hours.
There are so many different quotes about the connection between life and music; and one of my favourites is "music is the language we use when words don't work". There's a lot of the time I feel like that, that a song, a series of notes, a bunch of word set to music, can far more eloquently express how I'm feeling than my spoken words ever can. This last week, music has been a constant companion to me, from the beautiful works of Gorecki's Sorrowful Symphonies, to songs that I turn to when daily life turns from good to bad.
This last week has been one of the worst in a long time, and it's all I can do to try and make sense of each individual bit of bad news, never mind trying to comprehend them altogether.
As my big brother reminded me this week, the problem with loving too deeply is the deep loss that that love inevitably brings. Ying and yang, life and death, love and loss. But stilll, who wants to live in a world without love? Who wants to live in a world where you can't rejoice in the happiest moments with those who you love, and where you can't seek comfort in the worst moments with those you love? If anything, the outpouring of love and comfort from friends and family this week has reminded me just how lucky I am to have the friends and family I do. My life is all the better for them.
What wrecks my head about times like this last week is that my family, my friends and I, have been here before. I almost have a routine for coping now....but still, the unexpected loss of someone I love suddenly hits like a sledgehammer. My insomnia hits even harder, bed time is anywhere from 1am to dawn, despite lying in blackness for several hours. I have to find something to throw myself into, be it work, drawing, playing music, walking, writing, something, anything, to try and distract the brain. My tolerance of others disappears, and inevitably, somewhere random, whilst stuck in traffic, while in a shop, in a cafe, I get that horrible claustrophobic realisation that while my world will never be the same, everyday life will always carry on oblivious.
Bereavement wise, there is very little that
rips you open as much as the sudden death of someone you love, especially
at our age. With some of my friends, there's been the long warning,
cancer, cystic fibrosis....those are hard and hellish to watch, but at
least you have time to prepare your goodbyes....but the suddenness of an
accident, of a natural death (at 33?!!)....those are the hardest ones.
Throughout random parts of today, I just kept thinking "this time last
week, Dai had 12 hours left of her life." "this time last week, Dai had 4
hours left."
Some people take comfort in God, in life's
plans....throughout my life, I was always taught that God was a loving
entity, that we're all on a path through life guided by God. I can't
reconcile those thoughts with the shit the people I love have had to
deal with. I just can't. From teenage suicides to tragedies, from child
abuse to adult addiction, from miscarriages to sudden deaths like
Dai's.....I can't believe that there's someone, some thing, some entity
deciding that these are all ok things to throw at people I love.
It
was something my Gran struggled with, her trust & faith in a God
who took away her husband, son, and baby grandson within a few years,
the latter within 6 months of one another. She somehow kept her faith til her final years, and it's slightly ironic that it took her losing her faith for us to realise just how seriously ill she was. My own faith was something that I
struggled with until I just decided "fuck it, my life is neither
comforted, consoled nor enriched by believing that everything is
pre-ordained and is happening because an entity thinks it should". Some people, including those I love dearly, find comfort in that. That in itself brings me comfort.
That
struggle of faith and belief of mine was over half my life ago, and the closest thing to a belief I can deal
with is that, no matter how shit things are, love wins out, every time. Love for family, love from
family. Love for friends, love from friends. Love in the simple everyday
actions in your world, be it letting someone into a queue of traffic
ahead of you to having someone randomly pay for some of your shopping
because you're short of money. The little things that keep us going from day to day.
It's rare that I totally concur with
lyrics of a song from start to finish, and rarer still that I think a
pop song gets it totally right, but I think these guys pretty much sum
up to me why we get through what we go through during our time of existence...
.
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