Our relationship grew more complicated when my little sister was born. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time—I just figured every mother liked her second child more than she did the first. I didn’t feel bad, exactly. But my warped sense of what was normal stayed that way for a long time. Decades.
I have a memory as a young woman trying to read a best-selling book called My Mother, Myself. I don’t think I got past the first three pages. It was probably the first book I brought into my life that I couldn’t finish. Hell, I couldn’t even get a good start on it. You and I weren’t even talking at that point.
The next time I heard from you was when we received a Christmas card. The first one after several years. You had a new last name.
Complicated.
What is the truth here?
The truth is, our early relationship was not always good. In fact, in hindsight I can see it was pretty dysfunctional. Broken. Given the right touch, it could have been good sit-com material. The Dick Van Dyke Show with a Kardashian twist.
Maybe a clean break for several years was exactly what we needed. When I called you that day from my store, and we finally met after all that time, we’d both changed—mostly me. I was finally more woman than little girl, and could, for the first time, understand the pain you must have felt so often in your own life. Having said that in a big-girl panties kind of way, it doesn’t totally negate the little girl pain that still lingers. Just sayin’.
Our last years were mostly good, except a part of me feels like you continued to chose—which you did—but somehow even though it still hurt, I knew you loved me this time. We talked about your choice, and the reasons you were leaving me to move with my sister out of state. You felt that in the end, you really had no other option. I believed you. I still believe you. I need to believe you.
Complicated.
As uncomfortable as it was for you, you finally expressed your love for me and I will never forget those talks we had. You touched a part of me that only a mother can touch. Or God. Mothers and God. What a powerful combo.
Complicated.
And then you died, leaving me for the last time. We had so many years yet to make up, there were so many more things I wanted to talk to you about, and then you were gone. You left too soon. But I know in a way, we caught up on all of those lost years the very first time—the very first second—we both wanted to be with each other. In one blink of an eye so much was erased.
I will forever treasure the small amount of time we had in the days prior to your death. We shared some intimate moments unlike any we had ever shared in all of the years that came before. My feelings when you died were a mixture of loss and anger—stirred in with more feelings of abandonment. God has been chastising me about this, and I’m slowly getting over it.
Before you died, we spoke every afternoon. For the first year afterward, I reached for the phone almost every day before dissolving into a sense of utter loss. That’s pretty much when I felt the worst and got pissed off the most. There wasn’t really a target, but there was some ammunition. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Probably a good thing I had time to mull things over before getting all locked and loaded with more junk from that storage room.
Now, I talk to you every morning and often during the day. I found a song that belongs to you even though you never heard it while you walked this earth. When I need a good cry, I play it over and over. I plug the ear buds in and close my eyes. And when it still isn’t enough, I turn it up louder and hope I can find you in the words and listen for your assurance. Your genetics. Your strength.
And almost every day, I hear your encouragement and your love in ways I never heard before. God does work in mysterious ways. I just wish I understood more of them. Ahead of time would be good.
I love you, Mom.
See you soon,
Peggy Ann
Peg Brantley
A Colorado native, Peg Brantley is a member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and Sisters In Crime. She and her husband make their home southeast of Denver, and have shared it with the occasional pair of mallard ducks and their babies, snapping turtles, peacocks, assorted other birds, foxes, a deer named Cedric and a bichon named McKenzie. Red Tide is Peg’s first novel—find the trailer online.
Find Peg online at pegbrantley.com
Sibel Hodge
To my darling child,
Today is the first anniversary of the day you slipped away from me and I needed something to mark and remember that day. Isn’t it strange to think that I never even saw you. Never held you. Never told you I loved you. Never publicly acknowledged your death.
‘So why were you away from work last week?’ my colleagues asked me just after I’d lost you. I opened my mouth to speak, but what could I say? For one thing, I wasn’t ready to talk about the devastation of losing you that was the most agonizing pain in my life. How could I sit there at work and possibly even explain what had happened without breaking down? How could I talk about how just days before I was carrying your life inside me? I’d been ecstatic, riding a wave of bliss and dreaming of my baby. Dreaming of how, in a mere seven months’ time, you would be born and I’d be able to hold you in my arms, sniffing in your pure baby scent and tickling your tiny feet. That your eyelids were already forming and you could already suck your thumb. That your central nervous system was functioning and your skeleton was changing from cartilage to bone.
How could I explain to them that my life had just unravelled? That your death had erupted such a massive void in my life, even though I’d never met you. Never gazed upon your face. And how could I talk openly about what is still one of the biggest taboos of motherhood. Every other aspect is openly discussed, and yet this...this is still considered shameful, somehow. That it should be kept a secret. After all, isn’t it why we wait until after those first few months before we announce to the world that we are, in fact, pregnant? Why is it that we should feel like this? I think now that as women we think it means we’ve “failed” to do one of the most important jobs in the world that we can do. That it’s our fault it happened. Something we could have done differently. We feel “broken” somehow if we suffer a miscarriage. We feel that as there is often no funeral, memorial ceremony, or sympathy cards that it’s like it almost didn’t happen. Maybe society feels that women’s issues aren’t important enough to speak about openly – that a miscarriage is just a minor blip in a woman’s life. If statistics show that 1 in 5 pregnancies end in miscarriage, then how many women are suffering in silence? Millions? Trillions? Where are their voices? How can we be in the midst of such a health-obsessed time and yet miscarriage is still kept quiet?
And so, as they looked questioningly at me at work, as the letters piled up on my desk, the phones rang, and the emails arrived on my laptop, I told them, ‘I had the flu.’
I’d suffered the death of my child. I was in a kind of living hell. A time when even breathing took up all my effort. And I’d just contributed to the secret taboo of miscarriage.
Your dad and I mourned your short existence in silence, behind closed doors with the curtains firmly shut. We had to withdraw from the world and suffer our grief through a masked face that hid the enormity of our despair. Some close friends and family knew what we were going through. Your grandma couldn’t even talk about you. She still won’t acknowledge your existence. Others didn’t know what to say. Others tried to help, but what could they do? A shepherd’s pie or a casserole wouldn’t bring you back. This was a journey we had to go through on our own. Life had to go on. As far as I’m aware, the HR department in my office still didn’t even acknowledge miscarriage as a bereavement!
And so I feel so guilty about falling into the trap of accepting that I wasn’t supposed to talk about you. Why should society tell us things like, “Don’t worry, you never even knew it...It wasn’t even a proper person yet...Obviously, there was something wrong with it so it’s for the best...Well, you were still in the early stages. Better to have lost it now than when i
t was born”. Try telling that to someone who’s lost their mum or dad or sister or bother and see what the reaction would be! How can the centre of all my future hopes and dreams be summarized as an ‘it’. It may be that it was just “easier” for people not to talk about it, but downplaying or belittling the pain is only a short-term solution of putting a plaster over an infected wound. Pretty soon the wound becomes toxic.
Why should the miracle of life and the devastation of miscarriage be deemed a subject that shouldn’t be mentioned in polite conversation? The complexity and depth of all our stories need to be told and acknowledged. We need to let people know everything isn’t OK. We can’t just ignore it and the pain will go away. We can’t just move on as if nothing notable happened that day. A cup of sweet tea and a walk in the fresh air won’t fix it. If no one knows the reality of what it feels like, how can society understand how important this is?
And so today, as I acknowledge and honour your life, I know that the one thing worse than losing someone who meant everything to me is having to sweep it under the carpet and pretend that I’d lost nothing.
I’m finished with my lonely grief. I was pregnant. You did exist. I’m singing the words out loud, my baby, and I’m sharing you with the world. It’s OK for me to remember.
You may be gone, but you’re never forgotten.
Your loving Mum XX
Sibel Hodge
Sibel Hodge
This is an extract from Sibel Hodge’s book Healing Meditations for Surviving Grief and Loss. Sibel is the author of an eclectic mix of books for adults and children. Her work has been shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Prize 2008, Highly Commended by the Yeovil Literary Prize 2009, Runner up in the Chapter One Promotions Novel Comp 2009, and nominated Best Novel with Romantic Elements in 2010 by The Romance Reviews. Her novella Trafficked has been listed as one of the Top 40 Books About Human Rights by Accredited Online Colleges. You can find out more about her and her books at her website: http://www.sibelhodge.com/
Find Sibel online at sibelhodge.com
Barbara Silkstone
To my first love,
A memory-photo flashes before me of the first time I saw you. You were a seventeen-year-old guy with Clark Kent glasses; your warm smile sent snuggly things dancing in my body. From the moment you touched my hand we were locked in delicious, unforgettable, shout-it-from-the-rooftops first love. With complete faith that our future would be spent together, we held our passion in check until the time we would marry.
Not a day passed when you didn’t tell me how proud you were of me. You even adored the things I abhorred about myself. My skinny stick-like legs with knees that looked at each other were beautiful. The space in my front teeth was adorable. You made me feel loved for the first and only time in my life. Catholic-me loved Jewish-you. Naively happy, I failed to understand our precarious position.
Do you remember our Sundays spent in long drives in your Mercury convertible? You were so proud of that big old car. We traveled 9W along the Hudson River till we had memorized every bend in the road. We watched summer turn to autumn; it moved so quickly as if an artist had splattered reds and golds in a wild creative frenzy.
One time you found a pheasant feather and tickled my nose with it. I grabbed it and slipped it into the pocket of my car coat. Once at home I pressed it between the pages of my beloved copy of A Certain Smile where it remains. It’s been thirty-plus years and I can still conjure the scent of your Canoe aftershave as we laughed and kissed in the November rain.
Snow came just after Thanksgiving. We carried a picnic lunch of turkey sandwiches and hiked the woods following the prints of little animals. We were two innocent teens in a winter fairyland. Do I linger too often on these memories? I think not. If there is a time when you are showered in unconditional love, when your soul dances in the clouds, then you keep that time in a small corner of your heart for the lean, mean days that will surely come.
Spring arrived dragging Easter with it. Your laughter wilted. It was a drizzly Sunday when you came to me wearing your moss green sweater but without your smile. Do you remember your words? I’ll never forget them.
I can’t see you anymore. I’m breaking my mother’s heart... because you’re not Jewish.
Confused by rejection I didn’t see coming, I sobbed. I’ll convert. I’ll be the best Jewish wife and mother. How complicated could it be? I buried my tears in your chest.
I can’t do this to my mother.
I can still feel your cold chapped lips on mine. I knew then it was our last kiss.
I’ll never forget you. Your words were meant to ease my pain.
Now I pick on the memory-scab and it bleeds. Why didn’t you fight for me?
The world went on... oblivious to my broken heart. For me the wrong people slipped in and out of my life like cats through a picket fence. Cheaters, they took pieces of my trust with them. But I clung to the belief that you would never have deceived me. You might not have fought for me, but you would have always been truthful.
After my second divorce, my second betrayal, I saw a counselor. I asked why I gave my love to men who cheated, and why my shattered soul would seek out the memory of you after each painful encounter.
The counselor explained the natural order of things. First experiences are seared into our psyches with a vividness that doesn’t fade like other memories. We are a blank canvas at that point in our lives. We may not remember our third kiss or the kiss we received on our fortieth birthday, but we most certainly remember our first kiss. That clarity of memory is called the primacy effect. You were stamped in my heart as my gold standard, forever.
At times when the lights were low I would see you. Just before I dozed or as I perched on the edge of waking in the morning you were there... but not. I could stand it no longer. I hired a private investigator to find you. My instructions to Sam were simple. He was to find you. If you were married, he was not to make contact with you. I did not want to complicate your life or hurt anyone.
Weeks later, I was in a business meeting when the call came. Cupping the phone to muffle the background noise I listened to Sam’s excited voice. “I found him! He lives very near you. Let me know what happens. Oh by the way, he is married.”
A punch in the stomach would have worked as well and hurt less. I heard a voice say, I can’t do this, and realized it was mine.
“Call him,” Sam said. “It’s really important to him. When I told him I was working for you, he almost came through the phone lines.”
My heart did handstands while my body shook. “I need time to think. I have to fix my makeup.”
“Makeup?” Sam sounded bewildered. “It’s only a phone call. He asked for you to please call him right now. Here’s his number.”
The phone slipped slowly from my hand like something held in a dream. If I followed through, I was about to hear your voice from the far side of a quarter of a century. I was the same, but what about you? Once I dialed, I’d have all the answers. My fingers slipped on the keypad. It rang once.
And then your voice, alien and yet familiar: I can’t believe it’s you. I’ve spent my whole life looking for you.
I was frozen with crystals of emotion. All the things I had waited years to tell you fell from my mind like dead butterflies.
You whispered: I’m amazed. You did something I’d dreamed of doing so many times but lacked the courage. I’ve never stopped loving you. I loved you from the first minute I laid eyes on you. You’re my soul mate.
Could it be this easy? Why were you sharing so much so soon? I panicked but responded in kind: No matter what was happening in my life, you were there in my heart. I’ve always loved you. Every city I traveled I would crack open the phone book and search for your name hoping to find you.
You sighed: I looked for your face in every crowd, wherever I was. I’d think I saw you and then be wrong. I’ve only had two loves in my life, you and my wife.
The words, my wife, are painful to hear, and so I stepped over
them as my world spun under me. Were we coming together? Or was this a dream?
I let you steer the course as we poured facts, dates, and times into each other as if a portal had opened and a stopwatch was clicking off our last minutes on earth. I felt myself come unbound as the ropes that held me together for over two decades fell away. I imagined I felt your tender, sympathetic touch on my face as I told you of the life I led since our last embrace.
Your voice turned sad: For seven years I made countless trips to your parents’ home begging to know where you were. Your mother would slam the door in my face.
I wiped a tear as I whispered in the phone: She never told me you were looking for me.
There was a long silence before you spoke again: I finally gave up. I met Amy, fell in love and we married. She’s Jewish.
At that moment I had a terrible urge to run back to my jaded world. It hurt to know that Amy was able to give you what I couldn’t. But I was being selfish. I knew she must love you dearly. It would be impossible not to. My senses began to warm. I remembered the comfort of your wooly sweater and your big strong arms. I remembered your laugh. It was a great laugh.
I’m so glad we did this: I sensed our phone time was ending.
Your voice carried a smile: You did this.
Why were you so hard to find? I asked.
You laughed: I was right here.
We’d grown up in the same northern city. Separately, we had traveled the world only to settle a few miles apart in Florida. Serendipity?
Again you whispered: A couple of years ago I made one of those stupid blunders men do. My wife and I were talking with friends about first loves. I said I had never gotten over you. That was a mistake, and it upset my wife a lot.
Lost Love Letters Page 2