This is what I wrote seven years ago:
In the Bible it does’t say that Abraham died, it says that he was gathered to his people. Zoe Michelle Wilson was gathered to her people at 3.27am this morning.
Continue reading2,556 days without you
Angel Zoe
Thirteen
Today you would be thirteen. That means that some day around now, I haven’t calculated which exactly, you will have been gone from us for longer than you were alive.
It’s a thought almost too hard to bear. We have moved further and further from the reality of you and our lives together, left with only memories and photographs. So oftentimes I don’t bear it, I distract myself so as not to think of it, I skirt around the edges, so I can still keep going, still keep living, as I’m sure you would have wanted.
On your last birthday in this world, your sixth, I wrote “My baby girl turned 6 today. What a delight she is to have around.”
What would thirteen year old you have been like? At thirteen I was a mess of hormones and anxiety, on the verge of coming to form my own world view.
I will never know what thirteen year old you would have been like, but I can imagine.
I imagine you would be more fiercely yourself. More fiercely thoughtful, more fiercely loving, more fiercely optimistic, more fiercely wanting the world to be right and fair. You were all these things at six and a half, I image you would have been only more so at thirteen.
I imagine you would have been at the climate change change protest some of your peers were at because you always wanted to put things right.
But I fear that you would have been disheartened by and cynical about the state of the world you were inheriting. That’s what I also fear for your peers.
I’m glad you don’t have to come to terms with mosque shootings and genocide and increasing inequality and the instagram bullying that kids your age seem to accept as normal.
Listening to my friends I’m pretty sure you would be in the grip of your own pubescent hormones, with all the accompanying tumult and sass, but frustrating as I’m sure that is, I’m jealous they have it.
Heartbroken is not a big enough word to describe how we are missing you discover yourself as a young woman, as someone with her own sense of identity and purpose. That you will never experience all of the firsts of young adulthood that are so frightening and wonderful and exhilarating.
Heartbroken is not a big enough word to encompass all the love we still hold for you in our broken broken hearts. Miss you my baby girl, six and half forever.
Click here to see what we did for Zoe’s thirteenth birthday.
1461 days without you
At the friendship bench dedicated to Zoe at her school
In other years I have these posts written in my head long before the anniversary of the day you left us, but this year there just don’t seem to be any words, so this may be a little disjointed.
I’m borrowing some words from another bereaved parent, songwriter, author and musician Nick Cave, from the depths of his grief after losing his son: “I think I’m losing my voice… just file it under lost things. My voice, my iPhone, my judgment, my memory… isn’t it the invisible things that have so much mass?” Continue reading
A tap on the shoulder from the universe
In the couple of years following Zoe’s death, I wouldn’t have recognised inspiration or an idea if it hit me over the head, let alone tapped me on the shoulder. I did manage to resurrect my half forgotten blog and tortuously express some thoughts in writing, but it didn’t particularly feel like inspiration, or a message from the universe. It felt more like a desperate and visceral compulsion to make sense of what had happened and communicate my pain.
But right now, the the universe does seem to be telling me something. I think it’s to write more, which I haven’t been doing much of recently – one new post in three months.
Last week The Daily Post included an excerpt from one of my posts in their one of theirs, Creating (the physical and mental) space to write, which clearly I haven’t done recently. The response from a reader reminded me of one reason I write, or at least one of the reasons I publish what I write. Continue reading
A map of Paris
Paris had always been the romantic city I dreamed of returning to. I had spent just four days there one December when I was 22, travelling on a backpackers budget. Bundled up inadequately against the bone chilling cold, we trudged the streets of the City of Light, admiring the Christmas lights, standing on the banks of the Seine watching the Eiffel Tour light up, drinking cheap red wine, eating from prix fixe tourist menus and seeing as many art museums as we could fit in. The day we left, we woke to snow.
So I was delighted when Zoe started to read and was captivated by the book Thea Stilton and the Mystery in Paris. It follows the adventures of five um… amateur detective mice as they solve the mystery of some stolen haute couture designs while tracking the thief around all of the Paris landmarks. As you do. Continue reading
The boats aren’t swimming today
One of the gifts of having a child is seeing the world through their eyes. Continue reading
The things we keep, the things we sent, the things I let go
So far I have kept almost everything belonging to Zoe. I may not always. But when I go to her room with the intention of clearing out just a few things, I get lost in memories and end up putting everything away again. Continue reading
The Princess Manifesto and other Zoe-isms
I don’t usually write posts based on writing prompts – I just write when I feel the inspiration (bad blogger). But today I saw a prompt that was one word – handwritten.
Co-incidentally, after a discussion with friends about wedding dresses, I had been thinking about something Zoe wrote in a card to me. It was around the time of the royal wedding and all the little girls at her school were obsessed with weddings, so I showed Zoe the photos of my wedding to her Dad. Disappointingly for Zoe I had neither a train on my dress, nor a veil on my head. However the photo that fascinated her was the one at the top of this post, because it was all about her, a 32 week post conception Zoe in mummy’s tummy, in a wedding dress, inspiring her to draw me a picture and write me a card with these words in it. Continue reading
Compassion is hereditary #1000speak
You know that saying – “Insanity is hereditary, you get if from your kids”?
Well, I think I inherited compassion from my daughter.
Until recently it was widely believed (in Western cultures anyway) that babies were born innately selfish, that it was our moral duty as parents to turn them from self obsessed little savages into beings fit for human society, through training them with reward and punishment. It seemed to make sense – after all, newborns are famously demanding in getting their own needs met no matter how exhausted their parents. Continue reading
The return of Charlie Cat (or on belonging)
Can one shaggy fickle moggy show you where you belong?
We didn’t adopt Charlie Cat, he adopted us, soon after we moved to our new house in 2008, the year before Zoe’s cancer diagnosis. We’d moved from a townhouse in the inner city to a single level house with a safe little garden Zoe could play in. No more lugging washing up two flights of stairs along with a strong willed toddler, or driving to where she could walk on the grass. It was a house that matched my dream of how family life should be, in a neighbourhood of other families, close to the zoo, playgrounds and the beach. There was even a walking school bus to the local primary school and a feijoa tree in the garden.
The week we moved here, I walked with then 2 year old Zoe to the supermarket around the corner. She stopped at virtually every house along the way. “Look, a house, a fence. Look another house, another fence.” With the right house, I felt sure we would become that perfect family, give Zoe a quintessential Kiwi childhood and that our marriage problems would become a distant memory. The addition of a household pet seemed like the icing on the cake. It felt like a sign that he had chosen us. Continue reading
Retro Girl & the Chemo Kid 