A rare insight into parental grief from a fiction writer.
“No one ever thinks of what a violation of the natural order one's
child's death means until they have a child themselves. For a parent, there is no greater
experience of disorder than their child's death. Suddenly the hours break down,
night suppresses day, blood crystallises into wounding needles. Theirs is a
scream that gets drowned in a void, a grief whose venom is like no other. Their
world shatters, like a mirror on which their image had been reflecting. […]
I ventured into the notion of my daughters' death as if into a nightmare
which ultimately was but an exorcism. “If I imagine it, it won't happen,
because fiction never ever mixes up with life”, I would tell myself by way of
relief. But the nightmare lasted a few years, the years I needed so as to
assimilate the fact that, if death happened, it would be an unavoidable
reality. I cannot say that I prayed, although I was very close to doing so. The
gesture with which I rejected such a recourse was, I think, what brought me
back to serenity. No one is the keeper of their future, or at least, no one can
say they are until they overtake it and are able to hide that future within
their own life, like a part of their own selves. That is why I thought that, if
at some point in time I suffered the misfortune of losing one of my daughters,
my problem would not be to lose her, but rather worse, to accept my life
without her. However, I didn't feel that way about Clara, my wife. Clara's
death, just like my own would have to be for her, was a natural event, within
the natural order of things, like leaves falling from deciduous trees every
autumn. Loneliness, loss, grief…, these would then be the consequences of
compliance with one of the laws of life. But a child's death leaves the parent
suspended between two voids, a before and an after, and loneliness, grief and
loss become an unnatural horror where all hope and all incentive are consumed
in themselves, without any support at all, without any consolation.”
Jose Maria Guelbenzu, El
amor verdadero [True Love],
p.549-50. My own translation.
"...without any consolation" sums it up perfectly.
ReplyDeleteThank you for translating and sharing this.
Thanks for reading, too. I find the word "void" very apt because of the double meaning it has. It is not only the void our child's death creates in our lives, but it is also the void others create around us and our grief. Both voids collide within the grieving parent, and both are quite devastating, each in their own way.
DeleteThank you so much for being there.
I feel as if I "know" Clea a little, through your blog and Clea's mother's blog. Your eternal love for her and her innocent sweetness (and fun-loving silliness) shine through, so much that I, too, feel sad for the loss of Clea and wish that I had known her.
ReplyDeleteIn coping with the tragic death of my son and the void that surrounds me, I find myself in a constant state of turmoil and restlessness. The purpose and meaning of my life as I have known them for 24 years have disappeared and I am seeking a new balance and the occasional moment of peace.
I am learning that one of the few ways to do this is by connecting with other people, mostly parents who are experiencing a similar grief.
So your blog is very meaningful and helpful to me and I'm sure to others as well.