Being Present

I was thinking back the other day to the time my sister, Maureen, got married - her first marriage to Colin, that is. I don't remember much at all of the wedding, but I can vividly recall how I felt on the evening of the day. By that time the married couple had gone off on their honeymoon and I was with Mum and Dad in the room behind the shop on Guide Lane. I'm certain that up to that moment I hadn't thought at all in real terms about what it would be like without my sister at home because the feeling of something close to complete devastation, a kind of emptiness, took me entirely by surprise. I don't know how long it lasted, but I know how it felt that evening.

How old was I? I think I'm right in assuming I was twelve. Maureen married when she was nineteen - which seems very young now, but was quite normal at the time. So I suppose I was still pretty much a child. I say this because the memory brought home a realisation to me regarding the way young kids experience others, specifically those close to them. I reckon that Mums and Dads and Grans and Grandads, and anyone who's always around, always there, are experienced as much as presences as they are as individuals.

They sort of fill all the empty spaces in a way that I think most of us experience as deeply comforting. And part of the painful process of growing up is getting cut off from those presences and coping with the loss.

Thinking that made me consider for a moment what it must be like for those denied that kind of security - or, worse, those who must deal with presences that embody some kind of threat. But it's almost too painful to go there.