Spotlights and Shadows

The world of the bereaved parent is one of stark contrasts. One moment, you are trying to grasp a fleeting image of your child, a wisp that sits in the shadows that you so want to hold close once again, and the next something happens that shines the brightest spotlight on your pain.

There’s a cliche out there amongst the muggles where people say something like “I didn’t want to say anything about Evie because I didn’t want to remind you of her death”. Like I could ever forget? To be reminded of something, you need to have forgotten it; Evie’s death lives with me 24 hours a day, every day. Sometimes it is front and centre, and a lot of the time, the dull ache of the pain is just there, an everyday part of my life, never fading, just ‘there’. Every now and again, an event happens, an insignificant little event, that turns the world’s most powerful spotlight on the pain. It knocks me sideways when it happens and the impact can last days. My classic reaction these days is to close down, retreat into myself and wait to heal.

As I get older, and the time since Evie’s death - not ‘loss’, to me the word loss implies it can return - increases, a lot more of my memories of her are becoming shadows of their former selves. The clarity is fading and I struggle to bring them into the light to remember them. It’s a function of age and time. Likewise, as I go about the task of living, I see glimpses of her.. Young girls that have similar hair, or maybe walk the way that she did. They are ghosts of my beautiful girl, shadowy images that are gone in an instant. The hardest part of these images is that they are totally unpredictable and there is no warning. And in that instant, once again a shadow turns into a spotlight, a hole opens in my heart and the pain sears through me one more time.

So this is my life now, one of extreme contrasts. It is a life of spotlights and shadows.