I wonder If it is a form of grief Or of mental illness To still see signs from you To experience parts of you Communicating to me; And I wonder Why I see them more now Than when you were alive. I love and miss you always baby Grief cascades in a flood. And I struggle with the choices you made While you were too ill, too traumatised, too hurt, too inexperienced and vulnerable To make choices. And weren’t protected from doing so. Loss doesn’t dissolve in time, nor in water; Loss enlivens in water and we are lost as we baptise in it. In tears, in rivers of grief, in the bodies around us. In those who have lost all their children. All their hope, all their future. While we lost one, then a different we lost two. Sometimes I meet someone who knew you And I feel their perspective Of you And of their own loss, within who they are themselves And I try to ease that for them. But perhaps that is a betrayal also Because how else do you live if not in the memory of those who didn’t die- yet. And I remember the voices who said “Why didn’t the trains keep running Why did they have to scrape parts of you up off the track?” It was so inconvenient for them to pause in their day, as you expired in yours. Why don’t they recognise the losses that happen everyday And I wonder if those people ever did recognise their own humanity Ever felt pain If the evil of their words is just momentary. Or lasts forever to one day be judged by a feather. I still feel violently sick at your loss, like I’ve been tossed about on a rollercoaster so long I don’t know up from down; Like this version of reality doesn’t really exist. How could I create that? In life or in fantasy The evils in this world are human. But you knew that first. I miss you always baby And I wish we could have outlasted The evil that didn’t care And continues not to care And to hide itself within some kind of false justification. The doctors who have the power to help the suicidal And yet lack the compassion, understanding or capacity to do so The legal teams who cover the crimes of the guilty and go home to eat and drink and sleep like this form of morality is perfectly acceptable The ‘newsmongers’ who report on sensationalism rather than news The politicians who create the rules and yet don’t live by them. I wouldn’t want that to be the world we exist in either. Perhaps that’s why we struggle to survive it.

"They would not listen, they're not listening still I doubt they ever will" Four years now.

I think of you so much, especially at this time of year. I dream of you and wake disturbed and confused, feeling a horror in my body I can never clearly put into words. It is horrific what happened to you. It is horrific what you lived with. It is horrific how you died. Your experiences were horrific....our experiences seeing you, seeing what happened, were horrific too. I'm always in a state of trying not to constantly see what I have seen happen to you. We all are. I sat in an a mental health review today and it was piteously poor. And I'm reminded... Mental health services in this country are outrageously poor. Better never be in need of help, because those whose job it is to provide that care, that safety net, may as well not even be there, because they're not... properly... there. They are at best ineffective, at worst they are damaging and cause further harm. The service of caring for those with mental health difficulties, trauma, bereavement and grief is so poor as to be more damaging than of any help to anyone. We love and miss you always.