danny is playing songs for you

dancing in the moonlight king harvest Danny says reminds him of you and never my love by the association. i have been listening to if i die young by the band perry and tears in heaven by eric clapton
i am trying to remember this song you used to sing with your guitar about crying but i can't find it.

the colour purple

before you went sister i told you you must read this book. you said you did want to and i had it ready to bring to you. it was about hardships of childhood; indomitable women and being parted from your sister for many years and wondering if your sister is dead.
it is about noticing the colour purple in fields. and how god just wants you to notice this.
i found this book resonated with me loudly, the love of the sisters particularly. and i had shivers at its end.

it had a happy ending.
but alice walker is a novelist and a medium and somehow the ending was both real and also heavenly.
it reminds me of the pictures my grandpa most recently painted of little boats in the sky peopled with figures.
sailing through the  top of the painting in boats like in a woody allen film.
he left behind the vivid views of France cottages and country side; the many moons and the poplar trunks- or that's how i see them, tall and thin and of my childhood; and he went back to his imaginary worlds with sailing boats in the sky.
Rubi; are you in one of these sailing boats?
it has been most moving to see family members who have grown up and older come together for rachel. seeing my grandpa sprinkling holy water over your coffin sweet sister was so strange and sad. big Ursula came into the church to say goodbye she was so old and slightly bent over rach but she came all that way to be there with you once last time.
we followed you out of the church and there were beautiful flowers for you saying- rubi, sister, rachel, a heart from dylan, a music note from jess a wreath from us and norris- 'she was in her cradle' and loads more. they came from far rubi and we listened to your angelic voice singing out over the church. you were such a humble angel rachy; so much an angel.

nothing compares to you

this hurt is new. it is barren and desolate and lonely.
it is like when the ring goes on in lord of the rings.
my mind is filled with child hood memories places we went and places we passed on the way to ballet for example but it is lonely and empty and i cannot see our young forms there. i just see the things without you and us in them.

the crashing silence of this thing death howls in my ears.
my children stayed off school today we stayed long at the wake.
my home is cluttered again as i do not wish to do any housework
i barely want to do anything.
i keep revisiting the days leading to her going from us.
the weekend it snowed.
i heard she was very tired and weak
i did not see her though i had children around to look after. it was to be monday that i saw her but monday she was rushed into hospital and tuesday she died.
i raced to the hospital first on monday to be with her.
she did not recognise me i think although i cannot be sure. she was 'confused' they said.
we left her at 8 pm or so in intensive care with a plan that sounded like there would be a tomorrow. at 1 am or so my phone shrilly rang and then i raced blindly to my car. i drove through the dark night streets and parked. the images from her childhood favourite film the outsiders running through my head when the police close in on mat dillon as he runs away.
i ran into the quiet hospital running to the lift. to my sister. if i could get to her i could keep her alive.
this same large space i ran through five years ago as i left in the witching hour with my baby daughter.

she was gone by the hours beteen 4 and 5 am
she just slipped away and left us here bereft and heart broken.
we all had come all her brothers and sisters her brother in laws and her parents to will her to stay; to love her, keep her here with us.

we buried our sister

yesterday.
the church was packed out
the flowers were most beautiful
the loss was profound
goodbye sweet sister
for now
i know when i calm from this shocking new reality without you
i will find you and hear you again
somehow.

quite lost without you

you know sis i really had no idea you were gonna leave us. I mean, you are so there, so very there that to even imagine not having you there is simply not possible. and yet you have gone and you are not there.  i don't know what to say except that it is like a beautiful aspect on the horizon has been removed. i love you and hope you are reading this although with any luck you are having a fantabulous time and are not yet getting down to reading xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

i am quite drunk

on red wine. i can only type slow and the computer also is going slow.

i haven't written

because each day is to sludgy and i am not myself.
the hard fact that my sister is not here with us how i want her to be makes me very depressed.

thursday

it is 2 weeks and 2 days since the saddest day of my life so far.
it has passed in a blurry blink.
I am home right now alone with my baby who is asleep and I am using the time to quietly tidy the piles of mess which have gathered.
all the time my sister is in my mind. it is the back drop to my consciousness.
I have the kitchen door open and the air is cold and I can hear the dropping rain.
I can see the view through my sisters window, though I am not there,in her silent home.
I can see the trees that she loved to watch, when she would rest weak and fragile upon her sofa, they are dark and dripping with rain cast starkly against the white sky..
I know the trees must miss her appreciation. how they changed over the course of her illness she knew, and she loved to watch them day and night ebb and flow into different shapes, colours and movements.
I never would have known the silence that is death. the absence which sits within your heart.
if there is really a good god, why did he make death so inexplicable?
How did aunty get to heaven from the hospital my daughter asked me.
and will I die mummy, I don't want to die.
someone said the word non-existence to me in some sentence and my inner self balked, my inner self reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard.
in each of the people I have met today I have wondered if my sister might be seeing me through their eyes.
it is like a strange fantasy like in a film like the matrix, that my sister will see me. I will see her and we will know.
and then I feel so alone and I feel the hard table next to me and hear the police sirens and the laundry whirring and I don't know anything.
how long does it take to get to heaven mummy my little one asks?
I don't know.
I can't say.
I am sorry this waits like a guiloteen to move you to childish fear. fear of the dark. fear of nothing. fear of non existence.
but i imagine a garden a beautiful garden.

it's just that

one minute my sister was here and the next she wasn't. now i am scanning all her photographs and crying painful tears as i will never, as far as i can know right now, see her again. i have been having nightmares about graveyards. i want a sign but yet i don't want a sign. i just want my sister.

in memoriam, tennyson

With weary steps I loiter on,
Tho' always under alter'd skies
The purple from the distance dies,
My prospect and horizon gone.

i keep on thinking this will come to an end and i will be able to share this horror with my sister and then all will be better. i can talk over everything and we can make it all better over a glass of wine or a cup of tea or while i do her feet. but her silence is too loud.

none the wiser

it has been a long weekend and i feel incredibly intolerant and irritable around my family. they all have to go back to school tomorrow and it is past ten and they are not in bed. in fact i am raging. i can't bear that this goes on even while my world landscape has changed so definitely.

rage is something i had not expected. i cannot bear that everyone trundles on while i feel a loss so unfairly and sickeningly.

i never could have imagined this. that things really do go on. it makes me feel so ill.
how can i bear this?

no amount of alcohol

will make this better.

i am just starting to appreciate not having anyone around me. the baby is asleep and no one else is here. that calm usually precedes a storm. they will be back and probably sooner rather than later and then my head will once again become awash with confusion and the moans and whines of normal daily life which right now is virtually intolerable.

i hate to say to myself that i have poured a glass of red wine and am drinking it though it is only 3 15 pm.
right now i cannot just be.
i will not drink loads just a little to soothe my mind and calm the painful calm knowledge that i can do nothing about.

feeling awful

physically and mentally. i have what feels like heart burn and i feel very sick. my head and body is heavy. it is Saturday, my least favourite day when times are tough because of the presence of children and the incongruity between their needs and my ability to provide. today is like that but i have not even the energy or spirit to be there for them. they all seem to be coping fine and husband is home today and is planning to take them out.

my throat aches and a drowsy numbness pains my senses.
my throat is sort of throbbing but not with an infection i know that it is sadness.
i do not know how i will get through the next days i feel physically restricted by a sludge, my body is heavy there is a brick in my brain and a weight on my chest.
if only i had a manic connection to the after world which could make me see the days less heavily.


since writing the above i have had a bath and bathed the baby and just now the kids have left to go bowling with husband- including little  cousin D and my man's daughter who lives in Scotland but is down for a visit.
i get so infuriated when one particular child of mine always needs to find any number of things just as is time to leave. and then i feel a mixture of emotions including guilt for feeling so angry.
 little baby nearly one -in few days- is feeding himself banana.

the car has also gone bowling so i am not sure i will be getting out for a bit. my pushchair is at my parents and i am not  in a fit state to go on a bus today with Saturday people crammed into a small space concerned about their shopping bags and feet and pushchairs and space and crying children and people that don't get up for oldies. i would probably cry. or faint.

my heart is so heavy with sadness which won't relent.
i cannot find words to express what i want to really say about my sister.
i cannot bear to write here the date or of the day she will symbolically and literally be committed to the earth and to heaven. i am not sure i can ever be normal again and find the will to do the things each day to do things that must be done. but i will try and i shall go on. if anything for my sister who i desperately wish i could spend a little more time with.

i went to ramsgate

i got a coach yesterday from lewisham and for what felt like an eternity i sat crammed amongst many people hurtling towards Thanet.

a girl got sick, a pretty little thing, with her nan and her nan' s friend and talked the whole way of bingo wings and aerobic classes. i sat and stared out of the window my wriggling boy squished on my lap. i thought of my sister on this coach  last time she went to ramsgate. she loved it. she also got sick on the coach just before she knew that she was ill. i tried to see through her eyes the little seaside streets and the twinkling lights of other peoples lives far away from grey south east London.i searched panickedly for rochester castele as we crossed the medway, as my sister was enchanted by Rochester  and it's Dickensian history.
when she last came here she and her youngest sister swam in the sea. she was so gallant.so brave.so fiercely beautiful.

i was not sure if perhaps i had made a mistake going to ramsgate. i had gone to meet the children. my sister and i had already planned to go and i wanted to get there for her. in fact i got there and felt lonely and devastated and missed my family. i was not sure i was able to be happy for the children. but their 'christmas morning voices' a phrase coined by Rachel made me happy. and i listened with borrowed enthusiasm to their retelling of chasing waves and climbing and fun. their cheeks were rosy .

eventually the two youngest, mine and my sisters, went to bed and a lovely friend of my friend (they have been looking after the kids) read them the three little pigs in her beautiful lulling deep voice. they actually fell asleep!

i stayed up drowning my deep sorrows with red wine next to an open log fire. Rachel loves fires. my son stoked it and remembered Rachel teaching him her love of fire. we listened to its timeless crackling. we used to have fires in my garden in new cross and she would always be the main fire keeper with my son her right hand man. once, he remembered, she rescued something from the fire that belonged to him and she burnt her hand.

after  sleep we woke and went down to the sea again. i bought them cockles in vinegar then i stood transfixed by the grey sea and spoke to Rachel in the wind and the moving tide. my shoulders fell and after some time i promised the sandy wet children hot fish and chips and managed to drag my leaden body across the sand to the restaurant.

at some point i felt out of control as the children began to bicker and whine. i felt so strongly that i could not make thing's better. i had not the strength to answer the moans and whines and remained silent.

and then i kissed them all goodbye and went to the coach where i sat silently traumatised and read a book of poems that my sister had recently read.
i saw a girl who looked just like my sister at some point in her life. she did not see me watching her.
when i got back to lewisham it seemed alien and strange. my world has altered. it is not the same world of february 6th 2012. it has changed and i am still in it.

i want to sleep

for a long time. i may go back to bed. i have just walked to the shops round the corner from me and had to walk out again. i feel as though the cheerful mood i have exhibited for however long i have lived here has been fake all along and this is the real me. i have no smile anywhere.
i am feeling quite hateful today and normal noises of slurping tea and breathing are annoying me. as was the shop keeper speaking loudly over me in a foreign language as i left the shop without buying anything. i suppose it was nothing to do with me. or perhaps he was saying 'miserable bitch' in Pakistani who knows? the next shop keeper who i didn't recognise was better simply because i didn't recognise him. i need anonymity right now to rest my exhaustion in. but he didn't say a word. not anything. i didn't know if he was shy, indifferent or just terrible rude but not a word did he say. i suppose it was refreshing for me not to be friendly. sometimes i must exert to much effort on this. Emily Dickinson poem sprung into my mind while walking along the street to the shop on the main road- one of my sis's favourite poets.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us-don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be a somebody!
How public, like frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!


    emily dickinson




yesterday i had a couple of arguments with people who are very close to me. imagine if i was never to see them again either? oh shit. i think it's best not to argue really. i was particularly chastised for not speaking up at the moment i felt irritated. and the argument then became a lesson for me. i actually take that on board and i think i will try to be more confrontational. although confrontational may be too strong a word for what i will be. maybe confrontation  is a more loving and honest action than being politely offended. perhaps that is less real. i would rather know a little more of what lies beneath the shell we wear. or perhaps it is just me who wears a shell.

what's awful is that dreadful thing 'you don't know what you got till it's gone' never did i think this applicable to a person in the way its become for me losing my sister. i never realised i would apply this to my strong, present, vital sister. i must have been living in fairy land. i mean i woke up this morning with the horrible plain fact that i and all of us thought we could make our sister better with love and that we could make her stay with our love for her. i for one thought i could protect her in some way. but death came and stole her away.
i suppose i feel just so sorry and bad that i couldn't promise that i would keep her safe from the jaws of death. and yet i pray with all my heart that death was not like that. not jaws; not stolen but something else.
emily dickinson keeps springing to mind

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality. (emily)

i don't know. i really don't.
i just remember sitting near my sister on her sofa and loving her so much and of her being a separate person whom i now know i had no ability to protect from the fate which has proven to be so cruel to us. but i can only hope that perhaps there is a happy ending somewhere.

your beautiful singing

rubi, i am sitting in my parents kitchen listening to you sing www.myspace.com/rubiforever and i can't really believe  that you are gone. you are so vibrant and warm and here. i have had a number of glasses of red wine and i am protected by this as i listen to your gorgeous vocals. they are so calming and peaceful. they are never shrill.

medicine

i have had enough wine to calm the box of tears within my chest. my eyes are dry but they feel as though they have not stopped crying. rachel and i often spoke of this box of tears in our chest which often we would feel even though we had not cried. i feel covered in salty tears. 

today

i have managed to fall out with two of my sisters we have shreiked and shouted in agony and sadness and i have felt soiled.

fluctuations

have fluctuated today between states of anguish and distress to calm and rational.
family coming together to get things ready for that which we must do.
very cold when i think that this is really happening and that my sis is really gone. right now, for example, i can write that without crying without really feeling. i have entered the state where this is not really happening. that she will be back to finish off unfinished things. have poured my first glass of wine for the evening.
tomorrow i will join my children in ramsgate. i really do not want to go but i will and i will try to dedicate the time to my beloved sister. i will send my love into the stars, i will feel her breath across the ocean's windy breeze. i will love the skies for her and i will try and relish in the children's happiness. i will do my best though i really will be tearing apart inside.
i may get a coach i do not think i can possibly drive but i will see tomorrow.

baby asleep

poor little thing. he has been crawling around beneath my feet while i try to get things tidy. now, more than ever i cannot bear it when there are things everywhere. clothes particularly. i loaded the dishwaher- it has been playing up but i hope it works today as i am out of washing up liquid.
i hoovered the stairs with baby crawling up ahead of me in anticipation of a bath

kids gone to ramsgate

they have just left. they all had to climb out of the sitting room window as i left my keys with my car at the garage and man locked door after he left for work. muddy footprints are strewn up and down the stairs. clothes litter the floor. the kitchen is covered in plates and cups and remnants of breakfast- son one made some pancake mixture. and they have left with my friend to go to ramsgate. i was supposed to be going but i cannot get myself together yet. i may follow down though i am not sure if i can face the drive. i have a mild stitch in my tummy and i feel very old.i don't want to get dressed. in fact i am still wearing yesterday's clothes. i am worried and hope the kids will have a nice time. we were all supposed to go. me, rachel and the kids. i feel she would prefer i went. i don't have the strength and my patience is at an all time low. i feel particularly for my son one as he is older than the other two.

it is the morning and just a minute ago i heard birds singing. now i can hear an aeroplane overhead it gets louder then , after a while gradually softer till it becomes a blanket of noise fading into the sky outside.

in fact the noise is still there it won't go and leave me in peace with the morning. god that went on for so long even the cats were peering out of the window, i can still
 hear it now, i never knew planes were so intrusive and their noise goes on and on it almost sounds like it just won't ever go away.

i did just look outside, my curiosity of this suddenly alien noise getting the better of me, and i could just see the childlike toy looking plane with flashing lights flying, yes flying- it sounds strange to my ears today- and the noise is still going- i saw it flying through what look like foggy skies. damn it it sounds like it is going round in circles above me.

peace, i think it has finally gone though i can still hear it in the very distance.
Jesus Christ there must be another one. a whir ringing a constant whirring in the sky.

i will have to get used to it. i can hear it still, this incessant sound of planes. i have just looked out and there above the houses and the trees- stark black against the blue and gray still dark morning sky, was another plane. white with lights pointing forward into the sky.. and another. i have never known so many planes. flying on nothingness emitting this mushrooming sound.  i have looked out again and there was another. that's what, four planes in a matter of minutes. i almost feel like its rachel playing a trick on me in some celestial realm, she has picked up planes like toys and is running them through the sky.

but now it is getting boring. there is another one. i never knew so many planes could go at once i did not really realise there was a flight path over where we live. i suppose i see planes and think they are like birds randomly visiting my sky.

there was another one again. facing into the gray skies, lights twinkling.in fact the blue has left the sky and now it is gray and rain has begun to fall. its falling cold and softly outside my back door on to all of my familiar things; the sledge and plants and chair and things beside the door. i still hear planes. they are coming form two different directions above me and all seem to flying to the same point in the sky it feels like they all disappear into a Bermuda triangle and then another one comes to take its place.
there is an other one. oh bejesus, it is as though my mind is playing tricks on me. so many people up there in the sky right now cocooned in metal and sitting on upholstered chairs, high up in the sky going somewhere.

now i hear, beneath the fading blanket of plane noise, a police siren. and the sound of him on the stairs getting ready to go to work.and at last now there is nearly silence. no, the siren still goes.

i have never noticed so many planes. still the sky is reverberating with this noisy traffic.

i have been sitting here writing for 20 minutes soon it will be 7 am.

i need to be strong

of all times
right now, i need to be strong. for my children, for my sister's child.
somehow i need to carry on though my heart breaks silently within my chest.
for a long time my dear brave sister had to live in the moment; day by day she had to live and believe in life so that despair would not take hold. now i have to do the same. so easy it is for the claws of despair to grip and pull down yourself into utter hopelessness.
somehow i have to be strong.

but how can i go about the daily business when i want to cry to the world of my loss?
how can i enjoy something new that i cannot run by my sister to see her smile and hear her views.
i cannot even bear to look at the wind in the grass
this grief is so deep and i dare not look it in the eyes.

how can i say hello casually to anyone and act spontaneously?
when i know my sister lies still her breath stopp't

how can i be strong?

i am losing the plot

i hate this, it is so difficult having children and losing a close close person to the jaws of death.
it's difficult to separate my son's moodiness from his age when in fact he is mourning his aunty, and the littlest ones just have no idea.

i don't know how i am going to do this just on the functional front. how do i contain my huge loss and still be a mother who is any use?
i don't know if i can. i miss her so much. i am in major shock and unable to process the past week. despite her being ill for so long she had been so better. things were massively looking up. this has hit me like a sledge hammer hard in the head.
i feel totally inept. i am scared of not coping. i am scared of the days without my sister; without her being here. i am not ready for this for a loss so gaping and so massive and huge. i am not ready and i cannot accept it.
i will not accept it.

where is god right now? how could he steal away my sister. why do i have
 to pray for peace. i just want my sister back.

this is just dreadful
i will go to bed and i don't even feel as though i can sleep. give me strength, god.

depressed

full of sighs
head aching
only just realising the vital thereness of my sister as i see her on film but can no longer touch her.

it is hard being a mother right now because i have others to care for but everything is not normal.
it can make me fee quite angry to deal with other's ways and snapping it makes  me feel quite wild when i need to be understanding.
i feel quite exhausted and drained and lack lustre

but one of my sis's just made me fee better. she said it is hard to get time off as a mum. and to do what i need to cope.
not sure what that is but it is nice to hear those words.

those of us

it is not just me but others who are dragging their bodies around. there is no normal and has been no normal since last Tuesday. i have horrid visions in my head and am afraid.
today i had to go to car breakers to get things for my car. of all the places you could want to go, a car breaker in deptford is not one of them. the loud noises made me feel like i was jumping out of my skin and the way everyone was talking hurt my ears. these people right now seem brash and cold. the pictures on the wall remind me of the word in which i live.

right now i am back at my parents. some of us are here. someone is playing the piano. someone is paying the bass which sounds to loud and hurts my throat which is thick and achy with sorrow.

the sort of lethargy i see is like a gray porridge.
i feel too weak and pathetic to be constructive to really get down to doing something productive and necessary.

if i could just stop and hold my breath for some time i would like it.

but i can't.

so blank

all wrong today. heavy body achy and slow. not sure will be able to get things done. ever. at the moment. it is second day of half term and i am already dreading next Monday. back at school when i need to function normally. be up on time children fed and dressed.
my body feels wrong.

today i feel blank in my brain; it is heavy and tired and cannot comprehend how our sister could just go so suddenly. and what ifs are churning round my forehead and this makes my heart literally ache and my head so heavy.

it feels so unfair that you are not here to help us make sense of this but then that is good i hope you are sleeping so peacefully and have no idea of the tragedy we feel in our hearts. i hope if you can see that you know it is going to be okay and the tragedy will change into glory and our hearts may stop aching and we will be peaceful and ok and see something okay in all of this. i hope you see things with a divine sense of perspective and it is just here on earth that we feel things so humanly. perhaps if a day here is so much longer than a day in some difficult to believe in heaven, then some redeemable thing will make this all better.

i am going to try and tidy my home so it does not get on top of me.
morning seems the worst.
i feel overwhelmed by sludge.
but my children need me right now. so
chin up.
one thing at a time.

will you never walk this earth again

rubi?
that is utterly repulsive to me i cannot accept this.
i know i may be blind but i cannot accept i will not walk again with my darling you. please speak to me tell me it isn't true. it is sick, ill, wrong. i will not believe it dearest sister. i want to walk into shops with you and choose things you like. i am yet to come round again and cook for you. perhaps a bottle of red or rose what do you prefer, or white?
please rubi. how can you have gone away?
it's too soon
i cannot bear it.

horrible morning

woke up first after man went to work. slept with all the kids on a big camp in the sitting room. made some sourdough bread last night. theraputic. woke up this morning feeling sick thinking of death and coldness and horriblness and it must have filled my very cells cos the reat of the morning was like walking through a mad altered reality. my whole house was the same but slippery and hard to grasp. think i dreaded the kids waking up which they did one by one. so i had to wake up and get themfed and stuff. i made them pancakes and then begged them to get dressed. they seem to have no idea of the hell inside my head.but then i had to get myself ready which was the worse cos i felt like i was walking on ice and through black air.
felt so alien and grotesque and angry and irritable. how could the kids be so damn normal it feels like my world has collapsed and caved in.
carry on regardless.they still drag their feet and seem to act like nothinghappened. i know they care but they carry on.

got to where i was dropping off big son. burst into welome tears as i told the mother a kind lady, of my sister's death.
i have not been able to say that word.

death
dead
died
it feels like a thick sheet blank opaque and intransigent.
respondingless
final
unanswering

recovered then to carry on and sort out my car cos i smashed the rear light on a tree yesterday.
saw your baby boy's dad and he was so sad and cried tears for you.
with my family now and having my first glass of wine

i am afraid of tensions running high and emotions spilling out.
everyonoure is getting tense and emotional
cos days have passed and we don't have you but we have ourselves and we are all growing confused.

At grandpas

We are all here and singing your songs and stuff

feel fucking sick

in my stomach and hate that i am writing my personal sister stuff on this piece of shit blogg crap.
i have been with family today in fact visiting my grand pa and uncles and 2 aunts who made family very welcome, and its a poxy cliche and no one dare say it cos its such a fucking cliche but why the fuck wasn't my sister there. now i feel like a glutton. i feel like i have pigged out and my sister is not there. its bull shit i'd rather not grieve it is so selfish. i'd rather just be cold and knowledgeable and uncaring rather that all fucking sensitive and pathetic and full of sad thoughts. it won't damn well bring back her. i am already tired of those thoughts. they have been thought by too many. why can't this be unique and special.

i have no friend now. she was. i feel, one of the closest people in the world to me. she knew stuff. i could talk to her about anything and visa versa. now i feel like an appendage. now i feel like a bit which is missing another bit. i feel like a biscuit that has been bitten in half and then abandoned. i feel like a twin who has lost her twin. i feel like a lonely lonely sister who never got to say the stuff she wanted to say and never even said goodbye or pledged her love and promised stuff to.

songs seem jangly and empty without her and rooms seem empty. even the houses on my road look grey and hollow and barer than they were before.

my children are excited about going to ramsgate and i don't even want to go really. not without my sis. but i just don't know. this is just shite.

nothing prepares you

nothing prepares you for the absence that is death.
i feel as though i have taken for granted your presence
and while the thought of you still being which i know you do be,
it does not take away from the fact i can no longer be with you in the flesh.

yours though is a strong and true and unending spirit.

........

it is cold today but there is no snow out of my window or rain. baby is in his high chair in the kitchen i am sitiing at table feet on freezing cold floor, heating not working to optimum.

a candle is burning on the table next to me; a big generous flame.

amelie is still asleep in my bed. she is a very pretty sleeper.
elliot has choclate spread on his toast and is rather enjoying it it is keeping hime fairly quiet.

joel is with dylan at dylan's dads.
i am going to have a bath and get dressed and thenget us ready to go to grandpa's where all of us have been invited to go and be together in memory of you
sorry i am still writing this blog it is really helping me rach its like a diary i must keep.
i love you and i want the world to know about you.

a poem

rubi rose you said you didn't want to hear this cos you at the time felt it was maybe some kind of requiem but i don't think it is its just my poem to you who i dearly love my little bramble bush rambling rose

Rachel

of quiet splendour

of kind consideration

of furious love 

of sweet melody

of unique humour

to bring a laugh to us

side splitting

though our heart may ache.

she races towards the sunrise

a unicorn 

of rainbows 

and toast with egg  so beautifully

delicious.

 

and years ago with spotty pants she showed a lovely arse

in doorways of our child hood

always offering a fun and impolite and  full of laughter way.

i love my sister.

soggy bread

and chewy toothpaste

forever sad we made a soggy pea soup

of our cherry chewy misty dreams

 

book boat 

of shiny books 

of shiny possibilities 

we drank in roald dahl

every single word

 of twits

beyond the pale

of pheasants sad

of Danny

champion of the world

 rachel makes them seem alive  and happening.

 i love you rachel

you're a spirit 

of frank and uncompromised beauty

i love you rachel

the sky needs you to understand its place

to seek a cool unending moon and a 

yellow sun to take its place.

blood blood 

live love

sorrow 

sorrow 

hope 

hope

beloved sister dear

i love your breath 

i love you

i love you. 

 

this is bullshit

rachy you have always been there to talk too and now you are not i feel like a little girl lost.
you are the best person to have a conversation with it is so meaty and consequential and satisfying. you could go days feeling irritated by some small thing and then talk to you and your irritation makes sense. you were never one to make any one feel uncomfortable about anything ever.

just got home

i bought some cillit bang crap cos i am losing the faith with vinegar etc although i still have some sprays on the go and actually having just used some bang stuff its not that good, it just wipes the shit around- vinegar feel s like it moves it permanently  but right now i kind of need to feel like i am shifting stuff and maybe toxic cleaners which fuck my hands up feels like the way to go.

poured a large glass of red and fed my yeast mixture gonna make two loaves tomorrow if i can.

baby girl 4 yrs Amelie feeling unwell been sick earlier; she's cuddled up in my bed with baby nugget in his new Jim jams- Amelie is wearing his other new Jim jams cos she loved them so much 12- 18 months but they fit her OK.
i will go to bed soon and awake to another day where you still not come home rubi. fucking gutted.

another day

draws to a close and still you are not here. i suppose this is what we have to get used to. your sis jess told me that when you began your sleep, from where we stood, that a chorus of angels and hundreds of people, angels like you, waved and cheered as you alighted upon the shore. while we remain here in this slow moving time you have gone to a cool place and you know that it is just a whisper till we will  see you again.

rachy i have no idea how we are gonna carry on without you in our world.
but in many ways the fact you were so positive and hopeful and left us so suddenly means that it is only us who feel pain in our hearts as we wish you were here to grace our days.

i can't tell you how much we all love you and how bereft we feel without you.my darling sister
i hope that you are safe and warm. i remember you in your hospital bed so we they couldn't beieve you were really ill, getting expressos and yummy things to eat. the daily mirror. i loved to do your feet, give you refexology, i really thought i could help you.

remember the france st aignions river where we played and you sang candy girl and we imagined we were
candy girls like we were in an american movie- 'come along girls,candy girl'

i want to shout out to the world

for it to stop.
for seas to hold on with their waves and for the skies to open.
rachel the world should stop for you to let you pass
i see you behind the microphone and i cannot possibly join you on the stage.
you know, when the audience watches and listens and wishes for the night to never end
because of you and how you sing.
i couldn't possibly jump up there and cuddle you
your show must go on.
and i feel so privileged to have spent time with you.
we had so much fun together, such strange times they run through my mind and i want to hold your hand
and be with you again
i don't think i can ever let you go rubi
why did you have to leave us
we are so lonely without you

hi rubi

baby, i am half way there i have cleared a load of things from my kitchen so it's getting clearer and clearer.
i am naughty i have drunk 2 glasses of wine and will have another but i so know you understand. will find someone to drive me to parents later where i know you will be waiting on the sofa your fluffy hair skinny jeans, soft jumper and uggs all cosy on the sofa with a glass of red perhaps. i will get a lift. unless of course you have gone away, may be i think you have gone unannounced somewhere far like Australia and while i sit in cold sunny empty new cross you are dancing in the waves on a sunny beach; befriending local children who adore your face your humour and love and understand your language, you will be watching in awe the different skies and beating your beautiful rhythm for another audience. they love you rachel. and they will look after you till we all come to bathe in the pretty waves with you. by then of course you will have prepared a place for us and told them all about us. those who love you beyond the biggest love .

this is my companion

i am writing here as it is better than talking to myself.
i had a phone call from a cousin that i really needed.
i was feeling particularly alone.
i have bathed the baby he is now sleeping and i will now seek to make my kitchen immaculate.
it will be a challenge as it is like a whale has come and got sick in it. but i will, to keep my mind slow and focused.
i am finishing a glass of wine left over from last night too. not such a good idea.  i have not eaten today but don't want to. the weather is sunny. i will just carry on until it is time to go out and get my children.

alone with my baby

i woke up treacly man gone to work, kids not here. house a disarray like my mind i can't sem to find any thing and keep on forgetting what i am doing as rubi is running through my mind.
i have to look after my baby and i will slowly tidy and focus on that. my sister was uber tidy and literally had a place for everything. i will focus on the minute. i am alone.
i have made some special bread sardough or something where i have been growing yeast since not last tue but the one before. it is a strange way of having something from the past and holding it in the present so i made the bread and i thought of my sister and i will take it to my family later. this bread works like magic there is no kneading. i must go as my baby is crying for me.

rubi howmy gonna cope?

sister i am not sure how i am gonna really manage to get through this sudden leaving of you. i am not sure how to do it. alcohol? more than ever the gaping coldness of the evening i think may scare me. but sister, i told your son i will always be there for him and i think that's how i am gonna cope. somehow rubi cos he needs us. he needs me. i will love him just how you want me to love him and i will encourage and guide him just how i know you want. i will, we will keep on feeding him and helping him to grow just like you said you were doing. nurturing him. i will find your spirit everyday -the color purple- and i will devote my life to carrying on your sweet love.

dear sweet sister

it seems almost wrong to write of my sister on here but i must write and of my sister i must write.

www.myspace.com/rubiforever

listen to her songs. love her like i love her. her going feels wrong for me right now she should still be here but she's not.

she is one in a million and i shared a room with her fro some  early age till about fourteen years old.
off she has  gone and left me bereft.

good bye sweet sister

An angel took my sister in the night.

all the things

my sister who i shared a room with when we were small- we had a 'half' each was rushed into hospital this morning and is now in intensive care. when i hold my baby i think its her i want to save her and hold her and make her better
nothing more to say

life's chemistry

some days the chemistry of life is bloody irritating. today has been one of those days.
i have just been to the shop to buy a bottle of red wine even though it is Sunday night after 9pm and i have the school run and possibly some work tomorrow.

even though today we did a kind deed of visiting an elderly relative and cooking her a birthday lunch and then against my inner desires it was kids to the park for sledging, i feel quite irritable and  i think it is purely life chemistry.

it's kind of like a bad hair day.

a few people i really care about seem to be losing their way, whatever that means, at the moment and it is just weird how life just keeps throwing things up in peoples paths to trip them up.

winter wonderland

or so my insomniac son says but he's right it is beautiful out there. me and two kids pulled each other round on sledges earlier.

anyway

as I was saying. today was okay. was overwhelmingly tired but got up early cos kids always wake early at weekend and off we all went me and the kids- significant other working- and we first went to the bank so my big son could change a load of penny's into value so we counted out a load of pennies and put them in bags- a timeless human activity. paid into his account. then we went to walk/jump on an icy pond up at Backheath.

 Next we went to my ma's for tea and toast etc then we went to the Royal Standard Blackheath to the library, the charity shop and then to pound stretcher at Greenwich peninsular where we delighted ourselves in buying about 20 pounds worth of tat.

then to tesco lewisham to get a load of aunt bessie frozen grub for a roast tomorrow- including a glorious jam roll which  i will serve with custard.
then we went back to my mums and stayed there till it snowed a load then i drove home.

it is my old lady friend's birthday on Monday so weather permitting we are gonna go cook her lunch and give her presents tomorrow and sing her happy birthday with balloons and stuff. she'll be 84 and i am gonna do her feet too.
goodnight.

another what to write situation

well
i am currently smoking a cigarette and enjoying a glass of wine.
baby still awake and crawling about. girl alseep and significant other watching sport -yawn- son on pc.
running out of time to type cos baby moaning -is with his dad right now.
have been reading Alian De Botton ( de bottom) 's book called Status Anxiety, very good read.

its snowing

lovely white snow plapping down onto our dreary streets

every things rosy

probably cos I put away a load of rose wine.
but also because I / We have got through another week.
there is something about everything being still okay, having got through another week, unscathed; still alive,
that draws small positives which grow and yield as long as they accrue.


I love spring.
I know winter is planned for the next few days but I can feel spring as can we all, in the bright sunshine and the emerging shoots from the ground.
I am desperate to get into my garden and plant and replant and grow things.
Got to wait till the cold is through.


just walked to the local shop to buy some beers for my significant other- he's been up since 4 am- and the street seemed more positive. i don't know why. things are shit. oh yes, the rose wine.


anyway i love life cos my sister feels better, i massaged an old lady's feet, and both of my little kids are fast asleep.


goodnight.

am i my only blog reader?

considering the world or galaxy of blogs on offer, then yes I'd imagine so. however. if anyone out there in the ether likes my inane and miserable musings on life, love and everything then nudge me!!! xxx

the befriending of an old lady

I have always liked old people. I love the song by Neil Young Old Man take a look at my life and being a song writer I tried to emulate it with a song in ode to old women but somehow it just wasn't the same. In fact it was crap. When I was about fourteen and fairly melancholy I wrote a poem about old people which in fact was very fatalistic and patronising, but hey my heart was in the right place!
it started 'walking along with their face to the ground smoking their last cigarette'
      then (i can't remember) da da da da da da da da da da da..their lives they so dearly regret'

anyway it wasn't the most promising poem but it came after I was sitting on a bus watching two old folk, a couple I believe, doing just that- they were probably about thirty, ha ha.

any ways, I had an old great aunty who is dead now, god rest her soul,  who I used to hang out with.
I would go and eat with her and watch TV, and go shopping- before she got too old.
she would tell me loads of stories. and I would listen.
when I was about fourteen, I remember her telling me how long it had been since her husband died and how she missed him. I think she may have shed a very uncommon tear.
I remember massaging her shoulders and feeling at once embarrassed and also happy as she found the massage so nice. what could I do? Touch is powerful.

I, being brought up to believe so, would, when we talked of death, affirm the the true existence of heaven- with a belief as resolute as that of my dads- a devout believer in the scientific and metaphysical ability beyond space and time for heaven to exist- beyond our little comprehension, and she would almost bitterly call me a romantic-rose-tinted-spectacle person etc etc.
but I so wanted to make a heaven for her that she could look forward to.
it was odd at the end how her waking hours were spent talking and almost calling for the young version of her sister and imagining the hills where they walked and played. it was very ghostly and Heathcliffe and Cathyesque.

any way I did digress.
thing is, I have decided this year almost without realising it, to resolve to visit at least once a week, an elderly -non blood- relative- to help with shopping, cleaning, sorting things out, talking etc. befriending.


on the third or fourth visit, today, she mentioned she was soon to visit the chiropodist. I promised her a reflexology treatment after this. for obvious reasons. however, I sort of could sense she'd love a foot rub there and then. so I did. and as reflexology is very good at doing, it created an opportunity for her to relax, be comforted and to talk a little about stuff inside.

very good I thought.

things i plan to do

• learn to play the harmonica
• do one painting a week
• write something of substance
• keep brewing business/ vocational ideas                                                                                                                       how to achieve this
• use internet to find harmonica tuition
• start painting 
• find topic that interests me
• keep brewing

big skies in new cross

tonight or this eve, now, the sun is setting gold and red  and driving through new cross along the new cross road, the skies are huge and open. really nice. plus it is Friday. things not so bad.

i lost faith in myself

it has felt sometimes like everything has been unravelled and my confidence hit at some point
an all time low so i don't even value the smallest moment in which i breathe.
all i can say is god give me strength to change this.
i want to value my existence.

tsunami

cancer is like this.
It comes with no warning and without celebration, without pomp and without occasion.
It sweeps the very life from under you
and pulls the carpet from beneath where you trod.

When I discovered a loved one was afflicted in this way
it felt as though me and those I love
were inside a food processor.

An alien and uncaring finger pressed it on
and pulsed us to a pulp.
then stopped.
Then pressed it on again
until we no longer knew ourselves or the ground on which we stood.

That cold and wintry day many months ago,
my world altered when hers was threatened.

Some days you are pleased that things are level and okay
you forget
and carry on with it all
and then the tsunami comes and rips things assunder.
No warning,
No reason
No justice.

Once it has struck once you never feel the same.
And any tickle, any ache, brings with it the hated uncertainty of unwelcome mortality.

Can things get any worse? you wonder
And sometimes it feels they can
But I have to try to believe.
Things can get better.

i thought i liked Thursdays

in fact they are a day like all others and actually never mind the school run, Saturday will bring with it its achingly long tribulations too of having to find stuff for kids to do all day and the rest.
i know i sound like a well depressed misery guts. well, perhaps i am just that.

the food was okay though significant other stormed out before the end due to a communication issue with him and son one, nearly fourteen; and the hunger and enthusiasm with which i shopped for cake making stuff was all but gone when the cake finally emerged from the oven.

so my happy thoughts turned into a now mostly uneaten cake that will haunt me for a couple of days and a wasted pint of milks worth of lumpy birds custard in a pan waiting to be thrown out cos it doesn't really keep.

I have only just managed to get daughter age 4 down to sleep as she kept reappearing after copious story reading and having loaded dishwasher and put a wash on i now have about 5 days of put off laundry to put away all creased and unlaundryish having been piled up for days.

not much of the domestic goddess eh, no wonder everyone's been hunting for clothes for days.

not anything else to write about.

i like thursdays

it is nearly the end of a week and somehow that cycle pleases me- nearly Friday so nearly a break from the school run (yawn) and so today i am cooking a yummy meal: baked spuds, chilli con carne, rice and cauliflour cheese followed by jam sponge cake with custard. and i got a nice bottle of red which i will not feel guilty about indulging in.

just looking forward to kids bed time and some peace and quiet!

bored of blog- on writing

if i am then i can't imagine what anyone reading it must feel.

i mean i started it as a process to help me write stuff down but it feels really icky and sometimes i regret writing stuff that is so close to the often boring bone and wish there was better stuff i could think of to write instead of my insecurities and banalities.

but then i also figure that you gotta start somewhere and if you edit too much and worry to much about how what you say is gonna come across then you lose the flow.
i mean is it better to write a whole load of crap than nothing at all?

i would write on paper but i have so many books of endless writing, moaning probably and i suppose this is a cross between self therapy and an attempt to find my writing voice.

i just hope i find it soon!