“What Does a Life Worth Living Look Like For You?”

I asked her if she still feels like she’s not allowed to grieve

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“What does a life worth living look like for you?”

The question blinked at me from the piece of paper, my answer beneath it vacant.

In the last few months, I have said some version of this maxim out loud more times than I can count (which, considering I’m a dysgraphic dancer, is not high) and I continue to ruminate back to identities found and then fallen.

There is Follin, always and onward, for one word association example - not to discount the purpose of being a mother as a meaning to it all.

“You must have seen her,” Follin replied almost instantly when I asked her, not long ago, about her grief for her sister Gemma.

These are the words she wants on herself somewhere, sometime, one day.

Not everyone will get why we call each other by these terms when we aren’t “biologically related” but… they don’t have to. “Hey Sun,” I text my son, Gem’s brother Leo- my baby who also has his own perfect mother, and has somehow made room for one mussy more. “Hey Mum,” he says back.

(What do you do when you have two mommas, and one would create the fan club for the original Mom, above all moms? Well… we made me the friendly British buddy in a side-car, just grateful to be nearby for the ride.)

“I honestly can’t believe you still want me as your Mum,” I said to him one time, meaning all 11 words more than if they were 1,000. “I’ll never stop pinching myself.”

But… life has made me pinch myself for other reasons too lately. Like wondering if I can keep going with a body that’s dismantling like this (results of which I swear I’ll share once we know more, but it’s felt like months and months of maudlin meddlesome micro-infos and very little to confidently stand on. I am not one for sharing things until it’s 110% certain… and medicine is literally almost never that, so that means I rarely feel comfortable sharing anything that isn’t foggy with obfuscation. But at some point, I’ll rip off the useless Band-Aid).

I’ve also wondered if I can keep going without (selfishly) a way to continue the stories that suffocate my cerebrum daily (someone out there: give me a space to rehearse and a couple months of time… and you’ll instantly have a show). The creation isn’t the hard part- that’s a certainty, a pathology, a disease.

The support for the arts? Even just for one lil’ Mum who creates without sets, or effects, or someone else’s stories (i.e. scripts or rights)? Unless you have a person willing to pay the most minimal for stages here and there … We feel a ‘one woman’ tortured side show with no loving circus.

Space is all that’s needed, almost always… But that translates to most of life, loss, and It’s many meanings too.

Anyways, back to my babies.

“As soon as I’m old enough,” Follin said, as we worked on designing a bracelet for both her sisters lost for different reasons and in different ways, “I would like that part of the Tiny Dancer song tattooed on me, just like you and Leo did to show Gem right before she died.”

Follin doesn’t show her grief very often (if ever), nor many emotions on the outside… but the second I asked her if she still feels like she’s not allowed to grieve as much as others almost 2 years later, she had a plan instantly at the ready.

She had been silently ruminating on what she wanted, without telling a soul, which in other terms is just called:

Grieving.

PART ONE. Continued tomorrow.