Compassion Magazine Winter 2022

Winter 2022 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 17 In the months following his death I started to notice thoughts and words related to this new sense of awareness. Firstly saying them inwardly, then whispering quietly and then, with great trepidation, saying them out loud to selected people. Finally I put the words down in verse, which has greatly helped me to process what happened. Also helping me to understand how I feel, how I feel about him, my beautiful family and the world around me. Even now it feels somehow unacceptable to think this way or to say these words. However, the unavoidable fact is this great sadness I am facing and borne out of this, perhaps, the offer of a new way of living, and a new way to live. This is what I wrote: The Gift The knitted socks Handkerchiefs given one year and received the next The cardigan that didn’t quite fit I worried about the gifts that I didn’t want and couldn’t return How trivial this all seems now With my son’s death, I have come to the painful understanding that he has given me a gift. More than any other I have received, I didn’t expect it and didn’t want it. But I have it now and cannot return it. It is beholden upon me, for my sake as well as his, to use it as well as I can. This gift, is an awareness of mindfulness, the gift of living in the present and, as best as I can, appreciating life (and death) for what it really is. Through this gift, his gift, my overriding intention over the last four years has been to hold my son in my intention, attention, and attitudes. His life, his death, and his memory. Rory Hammond. Born 21st April 1998. by Neil Hammond