A long time between posts

Dear Friends,

It's been a long time between blog posts hasn't it? Two weeks in fact.

Actually, I put up a photo a a few days ago but took it down a few
hours later because it caused too much heartache.

I guess the lack of blogs reflects the fact that not much has changed.
While Ben's absence is constantly with us and there are still things
to say, it seems that most of what we might say has already been
said in the blogs below.

Someone asked me recently if I had days where I didn't think about Ben
or feel the pain. I said, "No... hours perhaps, but not days." And I
think for Lindy it's minutes maybe but not hours.

Someone else who has lost three babies talked of a 'new normal'. It's
not that you go back to normal, she said, but that you adjust what you
expect normal to be. That seems to make sense for me at present:
normal at the moment (and "for as long as it takes"), is like living
with a weight on my shoulders and an unseen but constant shadowy
companion that dampens my spirits and makes me more prone to
frustration and grumping at Lindy and the boys.

So now I go back to my study and think of Hans-Georg Gadamer's
descriptions of the 'finiteness' of human existence. And I'm reminded
of St Paul's words at the end of his chapter on love in his first
letter to the Corinthians: Now we see things only indistinctly like a
blurred image in a mirror. Now what I know is incomplete. But one day
I will know fully, even as I have been fully known by God. Right now
three things remain sure: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of
these is love.

Thank you for listening!

Chris

From Lindy

Ben is always in our thoughts and our dreams and we often find
ourselves saying 'I remember that Ben…'

At the same time we are thinking and dreaming and talking about our
four healthy (thank God) boys. We hope and pray that they don't feel
second class because they didn't die. :-( That would be awful wouldn't
it?

Sometimes it seems so long ago that I knew Ben. Sometimes I look at
his stuff and I wonder if he was ever 3D. At the same time missing
him intensely is something we all live with in our different ways.

I have a friend who has been through something similar and she
writes me letters and always signs them off with 'Keep looking after
each other'. So far so good. It would be too easy to let a chasm form
as we try and process our pain in different ways.

'Shameless marketing' blog removed...

This blog has been removed for fear that it might have been misunderstood... always a danger if you don't know Chris's quirky sense of humor.

Meanwhile we wrestle daily with the paradoxical conjunction of Ben's constant presence in our thoughts and his such final absence from our lives.

Our sincere thanks to so many people for walking this road with us.

3 months... From Tim

Three months, three weeks, three days, three hours; much difference?

Three months after purchasing an item of technology, its price is
severely devalued. The same can't be said about grief. There isn't an
equation for grief; it's not as mathematical as some would like it to
be. Grief isn't necessarily inversely proportional to time past.

For me, Ben's death is similar to what I imagine an amputation might
be like. An amputation involves losing a part of yourself. After this,
one has to re-adjust to life without what has been lost. This is the
stage where things are at now. Even though people are independent
beings, strong friends form part of who you are and for this reason
losing someone is like losing a part of who you are. Once this has
happened, you have to make adjustments in order to be able to cope
without what has been lost.

I've heard that when people undergo an amputation they will sometimes
forget that they have lost a limb and will perform actions as if it
was there, such as taking a corner wider than necessary to avoid
hitting the non-existent limb on the wall. In the same way, I find
myself forgetting that Ben is no longer around and when I see
something that would have interested him I go to pull out my phone to
message him and then I get that helpless feeling when I remember that
there's no way to communicate this with him anymore…

Time

Time heals they say.
But time is also a river that sweeps us inexorably on,
Away from the past, from Ben.

We tumble through the rapids, bruised and battered,

Gasping at times for breath.
Longing for peaceful water left behind.
Can't we pause for a moment, or better, go back?
To savor the past and not to forget.