Tag: death

I can’t think of a title for this post so I’m going with – shit, how can it be eleven years since Matt died?

Sara CrowleyLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking about Matt a lot recently and I feel so lucky that I have a whole bunch of his words to read. His writing was as precise, smart and funny as he was in person, so it’s a conjuring trick of sorts – I can magic him back for a while. I have the worst memory, so to read through our joint LiveJournal (I had forgotten we ever did that – what a curious thing that we did) is to visit a place in time where for a couple of years Matt and I entertained each other online. His posts were a mixture of words and pictures, someone cancelled his Photobucket account so the drawings are lost forever, but the words remain. His replies to me were witty and wise. His advice still feels relevant today and it’s a bittersweet pleasure to revisit a world where he was very much alive.


i see everyone as holding a sealed envelope with a date on it…….the good thing is to see the inevitable conclusion as a call to be as much alive as possible, which i think is the best possible use of death phobia. It would be, and is, so easy to give up and see it as the ultimate in wet blanket and never bother doing anything else again…. but surely then every minute and every second should be made to count and have the fullest meaning wrung out of it………. Not everyone can handle an awareness of death, and actually gravitating towards it as a disposition, as perhaps i do, is wholly off the menu for most people..too scary…too debilitating….too deathy. All the work is being done one way or another..Some think of death, some of beer, still others of pupae and fauna..and what stories we’ll have to tell on the other side…
I was greatly struck by this conversation with my dentist:
DENTIST: “You might well die of cancer……..and you know why that will be?”
ME: “No.”
DENTIST: “Because you didn’t die of something else.”

Matt Kinnison 7/12/2005

The older I become the more I feel like there’s this clatter of dead people in my heart/mind and sometimes it’s fine and sometimes it’s distracting and sometimes it makes me feel lonely. Perhaps not lonely, maybe nostalgic for lost relationships. I imagine there’s a word for that feeling, but I don’t know what it is. True connections in life are rare and I’m so pissed that I don’t get to speak with Matt any more but remain truly grateful for the words we had, the words I still have.

I send love to all who knew Matt and all who navigate lives with loss.

(Picture of Matt by Matt – on the front on an envelope containing a letter that he delivered to me “by hand”.)

There’s nothing more boring than other people’s dreams…

Sara CrowleyLeave a comment

I dreamt about my dad. I was in a large block of offices full of people and saw him at the top of some stairs. He was wearing a suit, shirt and tie. He looked more 70’s dad than anything (maybe my subconscious translating the priests’ assertion that dad would have a “new and glorified body” and assuming pre heart attacks would be a prime point in time.)

I said “I really miss you.”
And he said “I really miss you too.”
And we hugged.
He said, “You’ll be coming to the thing tonight though? I’ll see you again there.”
And I said, “Yes.”

Then, in my dream, I thought, I mustn’t forget this. Remember.
I went up to dad and I said “I really miss you.”
And he said “I really miss you too.”
And we hugged.
He said, “You’ll be coming to the thing tonight though? I’ll see you again there.”
And I said, “Yes.”

But I didn’t know what the thing was. I didn’t know how to get there. I retraced the conversation over and over, looking for clues.

I went up to dad and I said “I really miss you.”
And he said “I really miss you too.”
And we hugged.
He said, “You’ll be coming to the thing tonight though? I’ll see you again there.”
And I said, “Yes.”

I went up to dad and I said “I really miss you.”
And he said “I really miss you too.”
And we hugged.
He said, “You’ll be coming to the thing tonight though? I’ll see you again there.”
And I said, “Yes.”

I went up to dad and I said “I really miss you.”
And he said “I really miss you too.”
And we hugged.
He said, “You’ll be coming to the thing tonight though? I’ll see you again there.”
And I said, “Yes.”

And this looped on for who knows how long. And when I woke up I thought I mustn’t forget this.
I went up to dad and I said “I really miss you.”
And he said “I really miss you too.”
And we hugged.
He said, “You’ll be coming to the thing tonight though? I’ll see you again there.”
And I said, “Yes.”

I really miss my dad.

The grief underpins everything. Sometimes it feels dormant, but just when I think it is safer now, less spiky, it washes over me like an unnoticed wave that I have my back to, plunges me right back into salt and panic.

Last week I spent time with two gorgeous women who reminded me of who I am. This is what friendships should be like; time spent with people who don’t judge, who don’t monologue at me, who don’t insist everything has to be funfunfun, who understand that life is complex, who don’t leave me exhausted and drained, who don’t put me down, but instead lift me. I am so grateful to know these smart, thoughtful, ace people. Thank you KG and KM!

(Photo taken from Worthing pier yesterday. A beautiful day with Si. Calm waves, blue sky, love.)

 

It’s difficult…

Sara Crowley6 Comments

My first online blogging was done via LiveJournal way back whenever. I had a small group of readers whose LJ’s I also read. We commented on each other’s posts and it all felt cosy and fun. I was a little wary about being discovered so I used a pseudonym and fake names for all the folk I wrote about, but otherwise it was truth all the way. Then I set up “A Salted”, a blog in which I discussed working in a big bookshop and writing and reading. It was less gossipy than LJ, but still it was definitely a personal blog. Then came this one. I have way more publications to my name and I wanted to feature them and promote my writing. I also review books. Sometimes I interview other writers, beginning the Smash Lits interviews because I get so incredibly bored by all the writer blog tours. I prefer to read blogs that make me feel I am reading about a person. I hate twitter accounts that are repeated links to someone’s writing and RT’s of praise and fake reviews. (Five *****’s to Sara Crowley’s extraordinary story!) Facebook pages full of dry self promotion. Blogs that drone on. Who cares?

I have become so cautious about what I say, I don’t tell the truth about my life to anyone really. I am fake and polite and careful at all times. What would happen if I told the truth? Oh my goodness, people might know how I feel and what’s going on, and then what? How…exposing.

We live at a time when I can watch “Reality” TV shows in which young people will have sex, get drunk, show their entire bodies, but never reveal themselves. It’s a curious honesty. Big Brother contestants sleep together unabashed, yet refuse to discuss whether or not they might date as if suggesting they might want a relationship opens them up to a potential embarrassment far greater than showing their genitalia to the cameras. It feels as if having sex with someone is fine, but wanting the hand-holding, chatty bit of a partnership is too much.

Random thoughts:

It’s six months since dad died and it very much feels like my life has divided into before he died and after. After has been miserable as hell. I look at pictures or think of things and go, ah, yeah, that was before dad died. That was before I lost the weird innocence I didn’t know I had.

My new job is great. It’s the one bright spot in an otherwise terrible year.

There are so many things I don’t talk about. I keep secrets and lock away so much sadness that I may explode.

People say you find out who your friends are in times of crisis. What if you find out you don’t have any?

At my dad’s funeral the church was full. He was such a friendly, popular guy many people wanted to pay their respects. I don’t know who would come to mine; not so many, that’s for sure. I went to a neighbour’s funeral last week. Her husband died 25 years ago and they didn’t have children. After all her struggles, her endurance, her keeping on with a smile and joke, life ended. That’s what it does. She was 96 and she had told me all her friends were dead, even the younger ones.

We get through our lives however we do, and it ends. That’s a certainty. I will die. You will die. Everyone we love will die. And in the meantime I’m alive, I’m sad, I’m pissed off, I’m increasingly afraid my life will end before I have written my fucking novel, I’m fat, flawed, exasperated, but I do my best to put some good out into the world, to be a decent person, to keep on keeping on even though the ground has turned out not to be solid and it all feels so bloody hard.

My most used saying of 2016 so far is, “It’s difficult…”