I’m a wimp – I admit it .Things that scare /upset /frighten/unnerve me …I move to one side of my head .I know they are there , but I wait for a time when I am strong enough ,and then I face them .Sometimes my head is overloaded with stuff and I want to hide , but I don’t , I pick things out ,one by one and take them in and do something with them .
Nothing can be worse than what I’ve through , so today ( after a lovely walk and a pub lunch ) I sat and properly read Vanessa Nicholson’s article ‘For Rosa ,my lost daughter’.
The introduction to the article goes like this ”In this extract from her searing family memoir,Vanessa writes about her daughter Rosa, who died in 2008, aged just 19.”
A bit too close to home I think , but I read on . I won’t bore you with the whole article , if you are interested you can read it online , but suffice it to say , absolutely loads resonates with me , and I realise a) I am not going mad or b) I am going as mad as her .
This is her opening chapter ..it gives you a little insight as to what happens in our heads ….
‘ Nine months after Rosa’s death, my husband Andrew and I are on holiday with friends. It’s a sunny day and we are on a bus somewhere in Palermo. I am sitting opposite the door, daydreaming, when the bus stops. With a noisy “whoosh” the door opens and a bright ball of light illuminates the entrance. And there she is — she has come back! She is climbing up the step, luminous and smiling, dressed in a summery frock and ballet pumps, with the sunlight catching the highlights in her hair. Of course she has found us. How could we have thought of going away without her?
I sit up in my seat, a surge of joy expanding my chest. I’m about to speak ,to get up, to embrace our beautiful daughter.Then suddenly the door closes and the light has dimmed again.With shocked embarrassment I realise it was simply a trick of my sad deranged mind.
I lean back,defeated. I have become insane,I think. With the loss of her ,I have lost part of myself’.”