And so it was that I was belting out Here You Come Again with the biggest cracking smile on my face (I know it's supposed to be a sad song, but dang, Dolly Parton sings it so darn sunnily - is that a word? - that it makes you feel good, even though it's a heartbreak song).
Then a song by Keane came on and I was immediately thrust back to the first time I heard it after Ellanor died. It had been a song I really loved anyway, but after everyone had gone back to work (Steve included) and I had started my new life as a childless mother, I found myself absolutely bawling singing along to it one day only a few weeks after we said goodbye. It's another of "those songs" I have written about before. Ones that are love songs but can easily be converted or fit in to losing someone, if you look past just a few lines here and there.
I can remember working in my new home office, for once blessedly distracted with concentration on something other than Ella, when this song came on:
Somewhere Only We Know
I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete
Oh simple thing where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin
I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?
Oh simple thing where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin
And if you have a minute why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go
Somewhere only we know?
I look at the words now and don't see in them what I feel when I hear and sing the song. Nowadays, it instantly places me right back there in that room. Desperately singing and searching for her. There is something very organic and earthy about it to me. I think it is in this that I see the connection with her, for I was forced to accept quickly that she too is of and for the Earth even though she is from me. I can't even pinpoint exactly what it is in the lyrics that connect them to her (for me), but I seem to recall it occurred around the time when I was really working very hard at learning the balance of letting her go but also letting her in. It is an incredibly tough task to learn to mother in this way - without your baby here to show you what it needs from you - but you do indeed still mother that child, regardless of whether you are actively and physically doing so. I wasn't aware of that then. But it was what was sparking in me.
Not only that, but she had suddenly gone from my entire awareness. After all, this dear soul had been around me since late 2002. I had had the immense pleasure of getting to know Ella right through 2003, both before and after she was conceived, and then she didn't really "leave" me until she was two weeks old. So just two short weeks had passed for me to get used to not being able to communicate with her using my telepathy, before she slipped away from me completely. I called and I called to her, so often. But I never heard back (not for months). While it was very good proof to me that none of what I had experienced with her had been made up in my head, for why could I not continue to "make it up" now?, it was incredibly hard to accept that this is how it had to be for me to stay here and do my healing stuff. She had to back off in order for me to continue to learn lessons from her death. This was the period you may remember reading about on her website pages, where I mention instead hearing "from" her via others (some of them rather confused by it). She did maintain that contact but had to go and whisper in others' ears. I see now that it couldn't have been any other way but by gosh, how painful it was that I did not have firsthand contact with her myself anymore.
After she passed, of course I was utterly blinded by grief and she was nowhere. I now could not see nor hear her. I was incredibly distressed by this. And this song came in at one of those points of gaining more understanding of why our separation had had to occur. Indeed, I had just been learning about why she had even come to me at all.
Eeeeeeh. Too heavy for this time of the morning! Must go get that coffee.... must add this to the book. (Speaking of book - I shall give an update soon, promise, as I know some of you have been asking)
