With gratitude to Philip Roth...

When Philip Roth wrote the following, I dog-eared the page and did what I always do when I find a moving or resonating passage; I wrote it down in my own handwriting to truly 'feel' the words on the page and, hopefully, have them somehow or other seep into my brain-cells and my sub-conscious and allow me to become a better writer.  But it was more than that. It serves as a perfect prologue to this post as, last Friday, I did almost the exact same thing as Roth's "Everyman" narrator; I sat by the bones of my ancestors and "listen[ed] to them when they spoke."

"They were just bones, bones in a box, but their bones were his bones, and he stood as close to the bones as he could, as though proximity might link him up with them and mitigate the isolation born of losing his future and reconnect him with all that had gone.  For the next hour and a half, those bones were the things that mattered most. They were all that mattered despite the impingement of the neglected cemetery's environment of decay. Once he was with those bones he could not leave them, couldn't not talk to them when they spoke.  Between him and those bones there was a great deal going on, far more than now transpired between him and those still clad in their flesh. The flesh melts away but the bones endure. The bones were the only solace to one who put no stock in the afterlife and knew without a doubt that God was a fiction and this was the only life he'd have."

My brother died the year before I was born, when he was five.  This means I was conceived in grief.   I think there must be something to that as I have had, not only an affinity with cemeteries all my conscious life, but also a deeper need to explore the unknown and unknowable.  That is not to say I am a believer in pseudo-science or the paranormal.  I am a firm skeptic and have come to the conclusion that, apart from perhaps a physical energy-exchange, there is no 'passing' (that awful American euphemism) on to some other consciousness or place.  At least no more consciousness than could be found in the sky or a 265, 000 year-old piece of granite.  I suppose the philosophy that most interests me is existentialism (and the anxiety with which it is related).

How does this relate to being Tofu-hearted mother? In many ways.  Firstly, I seem to have an inherent understanding that life is short and what you make of it. This means that I don't, when I can help it, over-emphasise the trivial.  To me, it's the big things that matter - family, love, friendship, compassion, courage, forgiveness, loyalty and generosity.  Pettiness and greed make me physically ill and I will retreat from unnecessary anger, self-centredness and spite.  This doesn't, however, mean I will shy from a fair fight or from one based on justice and fairness when I need to. Secondly, I will always apologise when I have been in the wrong. And, thirdly, but probably most importantly as it intersects with my role as a mother, is the need to feel (like Atticus explains to Scout) that I have stood in another's shoes and walked around in them.

When I sat at my brother's graveside last Friday, all I could think about was my children and how close both they and I are to the little boy who we never met. The ripples in the pond that spread from such a death as that of a five year-old, cannot be underestimated. And I was overwhelmed by the events of last week and how my son, at thirteen, is still so close to being that little boy he was at five and the fears and tiny disappointments any child feels as part of growing up. I wanted to protect him in the way I couldn't protect my brother. It sounds crazy, I know, but that's kind of how I have felt all my life. What a thing to carry!  What an effect it has had!

Having seen the effects of a death on an entire extended family (and on me), I couldn't help but reflect on how special the childhoods of humans are.  That innocence is far more than the cliche it has become - in fact, it is everything when you really look at it.  I am constantly torn between wanting to protect my children and wanting to set them free to learn their own lessons.  I do not believe I am an over-protective mother; nor am I one who wishes to prevent them from feeling pain.  My own pain has made me who I am and I would not wish to change anything that has given me pain. But it's always a fine line between that and knowing when to stand back and allow them to take their own stand against the world.

Last week, my son was verbally and physically attacked (not too badly) and he stood his ground and the perpetrators were punished.  Whilst my own anxiety over the exchange was a catalyst to a weekend of deep melancholy (as happens and I know will pass), he did learn a few things about himself that are indispensable: when to stand your ground and when to let something go; when to know that your own actions or words have helped cause your current predicament; and when to seek help and when to see it through alone.  All these things were spinning through my mind in that cemetery, and over my weekend, but the questions in my mind can never be fully answered as they are essentially unanswerable. They change with each day and each situation. All any of us can do is fill that shadow between action and reaction with the best of ourselves. Whether he did that or not is unknown.  But I am pretty sure he tried.

I suppose part of me, in having children, has seen the opportunity to have my brother with me in some sense.  To have the time over and this time make it last.  I have always felt I owed it to him to be the best parent I could be - mistakes and all. I was never there when he lived, but my children have the 'miracle' that is life and I want them to always know how lucky they are to even be here, let alone living the life they have.

Roth's Everyman also speaks of the "tenderness [being] out of control. As was the longing for everyone to be living.  And to have it all all over again." I understand this only too well. And as I sat at that grave-side and ran my hand over the weeping headstone that bears my name, along with my brothers, I felt exactly this longing.  And for the first time I recognised the completeness of such a 'longing' and both the universality of it and the inherent privateness of it. To have it all over again is exactly the gift I have been offered.  And to not realise that, nor to rejoice in the opportunity, would mean to be undeserving of such a tender gift.