Memories fizzle & pop

 Stars shine bright in early morning light.  As ever, my mind wanders to you Damien as I ponder your fate.  There is no way to know how you left us.

Rattling through my mind, memories, pop and fizzle like an old black & white cine film.  Your life, fast forwards jerkily, faded snippets of happy times, birthdays, Christmas, and laughter.  The film fizzles, melts to the whirring of an empty reel, a life unfinished, nothing but silence now. Terrifying visions haunt quiet moments. 

I know somewhere under these stars you wait for us, alone. You know I am always looking for you and one day will find you.  Have to. But time is running out, my son.

Touch paper

Ambiguous grief

The sensitivity of the situation has not diminished, but easier to talk about.  What used to be a trigger or touch paper moment, igniting swells of grief and emotion in the moment, are somewhat controlled. Not always.

I have learned to live in it and around it. It’s an open wound and is not healing, but the edges are less sharp. Sometimes. Tears of loss, inconsolable, quietly run amok in my heart and are only mine to know. #ambiguousloss #greif #missing #damiennettles #justicefordamien 

Time to move on….

 Life, for us, stopped the moment our son vanished without trace.  We haven’t “moved on” and I can’t think how we can unless we forget he existed.  It might appear we have because we didn’t disappear.  We are still here.  Life continues its path.  But now we live two lives.  One foot in the present and one foot firmly in the past.   We are not ready to give up on his life and cast him aside. A memory of inconsequence. He deserves to be found because we don’t think he was allowed to make a choice for himself.  Was it an accident? However, no body was ever found. Or, did someone choose his fate for him? We may never know.  

We hope time will tell. Until it does, we are still living in that moment when we knew he had vanished out of character.  That awful dawning realization, that fateful knowledge, we are in this for the long haul.  

 

I am sure it’s meant well when it’s suggested we have to ‘move on.’ It is incomprehensible to those who haven’t been in this situation to imagine how stuck we are in this ongoing grief.  It has a name Ambiguous Loss.  There are thousands like me living this loss, desperately hoping one day to get answers.

 

No matter how long it’s been - it is still an open wound. We have learned to live around the emptiness of it.  But we cannot walk away and ‘move on.’