The Interval
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The signal for our satellite dish had been obstructed by this year’s outstanding growth on the lime tree in my neighbour’s garden. He had cut out some branches, to no avail, and a decision had to be made, cut down the tree or move the dish to the chimney and it was my decision, said my friendly neighbour. I chose to save the beautiful tree and have the satellite dish moved.
On Friday last, my neighbour’s brother, James, an all-round technology expert, arrived to move the dish. Ladders were produced, tools laid out on the garden table, and the operation began. The two brothers worked together until children had to be ferried to various locations and there was a pause of about an hour and a half in the proceedings, during which time James and I sat down for a cup of coffee and a chat. At this stage it was also raining quite heavily and there was nothing else to do other than to remain indoors and do what Irish people do very well, tell stories.
We talked about building houses, losing money, growing up on a farm, mothers-in-law, being true to yourself, Feng Shui, ghosts, geopathic stress, water divining, astrology, nature spirits, cats, music, the passing of loved ones and finding solutions to problems by leaving them aside for a while to give the chemistry time to work, in the interval. Intervals can be as short as the space between musical notes, or as long as it takes to grieve a loss, in each case necessary to make the music or to help us sing our song.
Without knowing anything about my past, James told me the following story. Just before his father died, he had asked James to take him to where he had been born. He didn’t wish to go to the house as other people were now living there, but he went to a particular spot in the fields to look towards a hill which contained a graveyard. He said to James ‘Outside the consecrated ground of the graveyard is where all the stillborn children are buried’. James had listened respectfully to his father, and no questions were asked. He had accepted that his father had wanted to make a return visit to where he had been born, and this observation was by-the-way.
Not long after, his father died, and at a family gathering, one of James’s aunts remarked about them being a family of eight, and James was thinking, there are only seven in my father’s family as he named all his aunts and uncles. He questioned his aunt, and she told him that there had been a stillborn baby girl in the family. And he then knew the reason why his father had wanted to return to this particular spot, to acknowledge his sister, and perhaps even to let her know he would be passing over soon.
In the telling of this story, I was so deeply moved, remembering my own two stillborn little girls, and my stillborn brother whom I had never known about until I had had my own experiences. The lid had been sealed on that particular box in the hearts of both my mother and my father, but thankfully, in more enlightened times, I didn’t have to lock up my grief. However, having been dropped into these memories all out of the blue, I have been plunged into an emotional tour of my own and my parents’ disappointments and sadness, and I realise, in my own way, in order to get on with life, I respond to many situations in ways that are not congruent with what I am feeling deep inside.
James had enabled the signal to reach the satellite dish, and unconsciously unblocked my channels for essential messages to get through. Now I can stop running away and begin living my own truth.
