Dear Ceylan...a letter

Dear Ceylan
It's hard to believe that it's been five years since you left us.
Five years since I last saw your smile. 
Five years since you were part of this world.
Five years since your heart stopped beating so suddenly.
Still, there are moments when, in a busy street, I look up and am sure that I  have glimpsed you hurrying around a corner just ahead of me or slipping into a shop before I can catch up with you.
I know now, that it's just a trick of memory, a vision made almost real by the desire for it to be true.
But for just an instant, I allow myself to believe it's you.
"It's been five years," people say, " Time heals all wounds. At least the grieving is over now."
But that's not true.
Grief is not that convenient.
It's not time-limited,
it has no beginning or end.
It becomes a constant companion..
And true, it's no longer all-consuming the way it was those first few days, weeks, months.
It no longer engulfs me like a black fog, turning everything it touches into shadows of inconsequence.
Instead, now, grief has become the emotion that fills the empty space where you should be.
Five years on Ceylan, we have not stopped grieving the loss of you, but we have learnt to live with grief.

We went to Germany to see Torsten and the kids a few months ago.
They're doing ok.
Selma is so beautiful.  
Tall for her 9 years, he hair a mass of tight, unruly curls. 
She still hates having it brushed but Torsten doesn't give up.  
He knows you would never have let her go to school with messy hair.
Her favourite colour isn't purple anymore, she thinks it's blue, and she loves playing " it," and climbing as high as she can .
We climbed to the top of the goal post in their school playground, Selma and Mia and me.
She's an amazing climber. 
She was already scrambled to the top before Mia and I had taken our first step.
We sat watching the sun set over the fields and woods that surround their village.
I watched Selma absorbing the peace.
She tries so hard to be brave, to fold away her cloak of sadness and hide it in her pocket.
But there are still times when the lack of you is too unbearable, when all she can do is curl up and cry.
" When that happens she tells me that she is just sad because the world was more beautiful when her mum was in it," Torsten sats, " And all I can say, is that I know it was. But I think things are slowly getting better.  The other day we were buying her some shoes.  She has quite big feet and the woman in the shop smiled and said- it won't be long until you can wear your mum's shoes- and for the first time, Selma didn't say anything.  Didn't say my mum is dead or start crying. She just nodded. When I asked her why afterwards, she  shrugged and said it's just not  worth explaining it to everyone dad. That's an improvement, isn't it? A sign that she is beginning to cope better?"
And it probably is Ceylan, she's probably learning to cope without you.
But it made me feel guilty.
Made me wonder how many times  we, all of us, unknowingly, say careless things.
How many times in the course of a normal day, children who have lost a parent, are reminded of their pain.
I see it in Selma's clear, blue eyes as she watches the sun set,  searching the horizon for something she will never find.
I see it in the calm independence of Luis who has grown up not knowing that some of the things he does himself are things his mum would have done for him.
He was so young when you died Ceylan, still so unformed.
He looks like you.
His 7 year old eyes are so dark and deep you feel as though you are falling into them.
His gentle, thoughtful smile is heart-breakingly beautiful.
And he's a perfectionist, just like you.
Dividing sweets precisely between two boxes and very exactly cutting the crust from his bread.
His hair falls dark over his face, just like yours.
You would be so proud of him.
He's self-contained and definite.
There's a "just-so-ness," to his world, that holds his life together.
He seems to possess an inner strength way beyond his years.
He loves cooking.
We made chocolate chip cookies with him and Selma.
Luis knew where everything was and measured out exactly the right quantities.
He's as delicately determined as you were.
And he's amazing at ice-skating.
Were you?
I think you must have been
Because I stood at the edge of the ice rink and every time he flashed past, I could imagine it was you.
Sometimes the three of them, Torsten and Selma and Luis, glided across the rink together, holding hands, laughing, watching Mia and Joss and Ninesh as they wobbled uncertainly near the edge ( I was too cowardly to try! ).
Selma and Luis tried to help them.
Selma held Mia's hand.
Luis hovered near Joss.
But in the end the joy of gliding smoothly across the clear, white ice was too tempting.
They were just two kids having fun on the ice with their dad.

The house is lovely Ceylan.
Torsten has done such a good job making it into a home.
It's much bigger than your house in England.
I think you'd like it.  
Big and airy and full of light with just the right amount of furniture.
There is a tree in the garden that is your tree.
The kids bring things to show to you there: feathers and special stones they have found.
You can see the garden from every room but it looks best from the living room.
In the living room, 
Joss was lying there on the sofa when I walked in...
" Mum," he whispered, " Selma just said Mama."
I looked at Selma.
She was sitting on the floor, behind a chair, trying to fold a picture she has made in a special way.
It wasn't folding right.
Silently I sat down next to her.
She kept trying to fold and re-fold the paper but it wouldn't work.
Suddenly she looked up at me, tears streaming down her face.
" You can't help me," she said.
And the words stabbed me because I know she's right.
5 years on and her grief is still so huge and so raw, there is no pocket big enough to hide it in, no one who can help her enough.
Torsten tries so hard Ceylan.
He tries so hard to do the impossible, to be a mum and a dad to them.
And he does everything he can to make your dreams for them come true.
He's so proud of them.
So worried about them.
And he reads to them all the time- remember how you told me he wasn't so good at that?
He wears your wedding ring on his little finger so that it touches his.
And he carries your memory with him everywhere he goes.
It's not always easy for him.
There are times when the children cling to him, clambering over him when he is sitting down, hanging round his neck, as though they need every ounce of his soul to make them feel complete.
And he is endlessly calm and kind and patient.
His love for them shines so bright and is so strong, it's almost tangible.
They are surrounded by love, Selma and Luis.
His parents and your parents still come and look after them every few weeks.
They still spend every Summer in Turkey with your mum and dad..
The children would like it if Torsten stayed there longer but he says he can't, not yet.
He's still not ready for that.
I think that, In Turkey, everything he sees or touches or hears is a memory of you so that there, your absence doesn't lessen, it grows.

And so, you see, Ceylan, life has somehow muddled on without you.
Mia and Joss are growing up, standing on the gritty beach of teenagehood, occassionaly dipping their toes into the adult life beyond.. 
Ninesh and I are getting older, with all the grey hairs and wrinkles that come with age.
At least you were spared that.
After you died Ninesh bought a convertible and took up paragliding.
He never said it, but I think it was because of you.
I think he realised that life is too short and unpredictable and fragile to put off doing the things you have always wanted to do. 
And me.
I gave up work to spend time with the people I really care about.
I keep thinking of you, how you had given up work for that first year in England.
How you spent it with Selma and Luis.
How that year is their most precious memory.
If the loss of you has taught me anything, it is to have no regrets and to have the courage to do only what I believe is right.
And so that is how I live my life.
It makes me happy.
From even the saddest places, hope can grow.
I talk to you often.
Do you hear me?
If you do, I hope it's not too annoying.
You always were a good listener.

So you see Ceylan, you are only out of reach, never out of mind.
Today the skies are blue and cloudless, not raging with rain and thunder like the days after you died.
I hope it's because you have found peace.

As I write this, our garden is bathed in sunshine.
I imagine looking up and seeing the outline of you, your gentle, half-shy smile mingling with the sunlight, your words a whisper on the breeze.
And I think, perhaps,I know what you are telling us.
That five years on, it's time to stop crying.
We will try Ceylan.
Life has this way of forcing us to live it and even if our tears have dried, we, all of us who knew you, live it a little more sadly for the lack of you.
I'll never stop missing you.
Love always
Becky x

Your family

Doing the Right Thing

"It doesn't matter what you do in life," I tell our 17 year old daughter, Mia,  in a "let-me-give-you-some-motherly-advice," sort of way, " as long as you always know you are doing  "the right thing."
Mia looks at me and I can feel a debate brewing.
" What do you mean?" she asks.
I pause, trying to clarify my thoughts, Mia has a way of unravelling my certainties.
" I mean that however inconvenient or scary something is, if it's the right thing to do, you should do it anyway," I say, proud of my explanation.
" But how do you know if something is the right thing to do?"  she asks.
And so I tell a story.
" When I was 14," I say, " one of my best friends died while I was on holiday.  We didn't have mobile phones then, so I didn't find out until we got back...."
And suddenly I am there again in that moment, climbing out of the car tanned and happy, my grandmother, ashen-faced, whispering the news to my mum. My mum telling me. Me screaming....but that is not what the story is about.
" I had missed the funeral," I continue, " it was while we were on holiday. I didn't have a chance to say goodbye or to see her parents.
 And the worst thing of all was that the last conversation my friend and I had had before I went away, the last conversation we ever had, was an argument.
 I can't remember what it was about.
My friend was on very strong medication for her asthma, I knew it made her moody but I couldn't help rising to the bait.
 I should have phoned her back, I  should have said that I was sorry, that i didn't want to argue with her.
I should have done the right thing.
 But I was a teenager, convinced of my rightness and everyone else's wrongness, so I didn't.
 I left for holiday without speaking to her again. 
For days after we got back, after I found out she was dead, I would peer into people's faces, trying to make them fit into the hole in the world where my friend should be. 
I kept thinking I saw her walking just in front of me or heard her bubbling laughter in the room next door. 
And worst of all, for days and days, I kept trying not to think about the thing I knew I had to do. 
Kept pretending that I was too busy, had too much homework, had to buy my friends' birthday presents.
 Anything to avoid it. 
 Anything to avoid going to see  her parents. 
When she was alive we had spent hours in each other's houses. 
 Now that she was gone, the thought of going back to her house, of seeing her mum who always bought us Wagonwheels and made us lemon squash to drink, was petrifying. 
She was an only child, the centre of their universe and she was gone. 
I didn't know how to face the immensity of their grief.
 But I knew I had to. 
I knew it was the right thing to do 
" And did you/" asks Mia, " did you go and see them."
" I did," I say, ' I sat on the sofa and we smiled at each other and I talked about school and they nodded and in the emptiness behind their eyes, I saw the scattered fragments of a world that would never seem beautiful again. 
And when I walked out of that door that day, I vowed, that, whatever else I did in my life, I would always, always do the right thing.
 However inconvenient or frightening. or unpleasant."
" But how do you know going to see them was the right thing to do?" asks Mia insistently
, " Perhaps it  just made them feel even sadder." 
" Of course it didn't," I say "it showed them how much I cared,  how much my friend meant to me."
"You make it sound so black and white,"  says Mia," right or wrong with nothing inbetween. I don't believe anything is that simple. There is no black and white, only grey.
I know you did what you thought was right. But what about them? What about her parents? What's right for one person might seem wrong to someone else. Muslim suicide bombers who kill themselves and hundreds of other people believe absolutely that what they are doing is right.  Do you think it is? "
And I am non-plussed by the powerful logic of her words, by the possibility that she is right. 
I feel the value system that I have built for myself for so many years,  crumbling around me..
And much as I would like to argue with her, my seventeen year old daughter, I find myself lost for words.

" You love it," says my husband, when I tell him of yet another friend in crisis who I am trying to help. "You love all the drama, you love the fact that they all come to you." And the implication is that It makes me feel good about myself.
And somewhere, deep down inside, I know there is a lot of truth in what he says. 
Aspiring to do the right thing, the noble thing,  means that you can wrap yourself in a blanket of altruism, your conscience safe, your sins atoned, free from finger-pointing.
But as Mia says, it's not that simple, not so black and white.
If someone we love or care about is hurt or sad or ill, we will, all of us, do anything we can to make them feel better. 
That's what caring for or loving someone means.
 It's not about making ourselves feel better, it's about stopping them feeling so bad.
And we are not being " good," or 'bad," or " right," or '"wrong," when we do it, we are simply  being human.
And perhaps our reasons for doing what we believe to be right are more selfish than we care to admit but at least they can sometimes give meaning to what seems meaningless, create hope where there was despair, create a sense of purpose where there was only  helplessness .
While I am writing this, I have received a text from a friend.
One of her son's best friends, Oliver King, died from  sudden arythmic death syndrome(SADS) when he was 12 years old.
After he died his parents set up the Oliver King Foundation to raise awareness of SADS' And our friends became trustees.
I've never talked to them about why they did it, I can only guess. 
But  I think it might be because they wanted to show how much they cared, because they  because it gives Oliver's life meaning, because it helped with the helplessness, because it was completely the right thing to do.

Oiver King

The tweet says:

The OK Foundation @TheOKFoundation · 

"It is not length of life, but depth of life": Happy 16th Birthday Oliver. Missed, loved, in our thoughts every day.

Mia's right, there is no absolute right or wrong, but that should never stop us from doing what we believe is right. 
How else can I say the sorry I never got to say?
How else can we give our sometimes shallow lives, any depth?

RIP Georgina
RIP Oliver