I’ve been reading back over the last few posts. I feel I need to find a sharper focus, I need to know what I’m doing. There’s a wooziness, fog, I’m skirting round the edge of something…
My grandson is now the age my youngest son was when my mum died.
I’m working with the words of nursery rhymes…
I’m searching for something…
I’m collecting sticks and stones like I did as a child, playing in the woods on my own. I’ve return to the basics of observation… but that in itself isn’t enough. It needs to not just show a thing as it is, it needs to stand for something else…
The meaning of loss?
Am I still searching for my mum 28 years after she died so suddenly and tragically at the age of 69?
Am I finding her in me as I approach that age? (I’m nearly 63)
I think I’ve been foggy on purpose. Because looking at this with clear sight is so difficult. It’s still sharp. I see friends- actually quite a few friends, dealing with the difficulties of having mothers in their 80s and 90s and I (sort of) envy them. I find I have questions for my mum I didn’t get to ask. (So if you have them, ask them.) I think what I’m doing in my work is a form of asking… what the fuck is this all about?
It is about loss and memory and grief, a rootlessness I think, in general. But I think it’s mostly about connection, and love.
