Winter jacket

With the temperature dropping to below zero degrees and frost forming on rooftops in the morning, I got out a winter jacket, one that my brother bought me a couple of years ago. This was the jacket I wore first to brave the winter in Canada (until it was not warm enough for -30C temperatures...).

When I put it on, I heard a little tearing sound.

I opened it up and looked inside. I had forgotten about that episode, but the stitches reminded me of it.

At the seams were these threads that mum weaved and sewed. She noticed that the place between the arm and body of the jacket was torn one day when I was visiting her. She took it and before I left, she sat there and mended the tear... that brought a tear to my eyes. The jacket felt warmer and warmed by her touch.

Seeing that just now made me realise again how empty my life has been since she left. I do miss the phone calls, the chats on Skype, the visits (not so much to the hospital...), and the excitement of going to see her every few months. It's all stopped now. Nothing. Gone. History.

All that is left, beside the memories and her belongings sitting in a storage space I dread to enter (but must soon empty...), are little signs and moments like this that remind me of the dear motherly love that I lost and can never find again.

Why am I crying again...?

I should be much stronger.

I should be! I must be!

The other day, a college friend of mum's posted wooden clogs mum gave him once as a momento of Holland ,where we lived. Under that picture were the words "How we miss you so though you have departed..." Another college friend of hers, a caring auntie, commented and shared her own sadness and said she also had a pair of wooden clogs just like those.

Moments like this make me wish I could sleep and blink away that lingering pain.
How my heart wrenches and aches again now 

"Oh what I'd give for a hundred years..."

"Oh, what I'd give for a hundred years,

But the physical interferes,

Everyday more, my Creator.

Oh, what good is the strongest heart,

In a body that's falling apart...?"

The actress half lay on the floor, weakened and defeated. Illness has robbed her of her strength, her courage, her fame and glory. Death is lurking and stalking her, life is fading away. How Evita must have felt toward the end of her life? How powerfully it was captured in song and on stage by the performance of Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical, one of my all time favorites...

The musical was a delight, and something I'd looked forward to some time. In my late teens, I listened to it repeatedly (without realising the true meaning of "dressed up to the nines" or "at sixes and sevens"). One song in particular, "another suitcase, another hall" I felt poignantly described my life.... Always moving, never stable, my family spread across the world, my destiny so unclear and unknown... And for those many years when (first dad and later to a greater extent) mum was ill, my suitcase was always close by and half packed ready to go at an instant's notice. 

Seeing Evita succumb to (as I realised only this weekend) cancer brought back a lot of emotions and memories... For the couple of months, I have been so consumed with work i feel like I've not even had time to "feel". Being someone who is normally in tune with and driven by emotions, I began to feel uncaring and detached from life and the rest of the world. I feel so drained and so very unhappy, even though I was busy and making more money than usual. Soon after the show, in my friends apartment, I stared out the window at the night cityscape, and described how I feel... 

And I sobbed. The first time in a long, long time, even though often at night, when all's so quiet when the world is asleep, the feelings of emptiness and longing flood my heart and bring me close to bursting out in tears. As I told my friend, more and more mum and dad appear before me together, whereas before it was either one or the other. 

Is it so that after some time the dead just get lumped together? Is it true that after some time you just blur death and all those memories of illness and hospital visits together? I've tried hard not to think of and let my thoughts drift there... But seeing evita on the floor and lamenting her body succumbing to illness, I could not do anything else...

Those long nights, and difficult days at the hospital seem like an eternity away now. But I can still see it, smell it, feel it. It was overwhelming, traumatic and horribly painful to endure. And that was just for me, a bystander. How it must have been for dad, for mum! For my friends. For my uncle... For all these millions of cancer patients, and other sufferers of chronical and terminal illnesses, and their families. 

What kept me sane? What kept me alive? The belief of love that will heal me. The belief  that one day I will find someone who will truly heal me and pick me up and fill that void inside. A void that is still void. 

And now, two and a half years on since mum's passing, almost seven years since dad's passing, I am still standing, seemingly going strong. But at times I wonder what holds it all together. Because in moments of solitude, at night and in moment of silence, I can hear the darkness and painful memories echo, I can feel the void vibrate. 

There are moments after my lectures when I stand in the empty classroom and wonder whether my parents are there sitting in the back, smiling at me on the sofa in the back...

There are moments at work when I am so stressed and my eyes so tired that I think of my parents and just doing that would give me a burst of perseverance... Are they proud of me? Would they be proud of me and what I have become and done since they left this world? I sure hope so...