The cemetery

When I was ten, I lived in a small town in Scotland at the top of the tallest hill. We shared this hill with a golf course, and a cemetery, both of which I would play in. I was not supposed to play in the golf course, not that that stopped me, catching crickets and stealing golf balls was always fun. Other days though, I wanted to get away from the other kids who also played on the golf course, I felt different to them. The cemetery was where I would go to be alone, it scared most of the other kids, or bored them. I would walk among the graves telling the dead of my problems, the abuse and neglect I was receiving at home, the bullying I suffered in school, my wish to live with my Nan and Grandad instead of my mother. 

 The dead were comforting to me, they would not judge me, or laugh at me, they would not tell me I was lying or imagining the abuse. Their silence allowed me to vent because at home I was not allowed to show my feelings. I marveled at the solemn grandeur of the older graves, surrounded as they were by the tallest trees I had ever seen. It all made me feel tiny and insignificant, granting my wish to be invisible and safe.   

 We moved away from that place, and the abuse and neglect got worse. I grew up and moved out, and suffered an abusive relationship, I was a broken adult when I returned to the cemetery, I did not know it then but I had developed borderline personality disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder due to what I had been through.   

 It had been my intention to return to that cemetery on a permanent basis, being tired of hurting, tired of the nightmares, tired of the anxiety depression and the hopeless void that had taken over inside of me. I had quit university, lost my job, lost my home and lost the will to live. I had written suicide note after suicide note, apologizing to my Nan and Grandad for being a failure, telling my mother I hated her and that I hoped she finally understood what she had done to me. I wrote notes telling anyone who would read them what my ex had done to me, lamenting the fact that I had not told the police.  

Finally, I wrote a new note. To my daughter, to tell her I loved her. That she was the reason I did not do the things I had planned. I took her with me to that cemetery for a walk, and it was a sunny day in the spring. She was three months old and gurgling in the pram as I trod the once familiar paths that I had thought I had forgotten but my feet seemed to remember.  I read the note out to her, and she babbled happily without a care. The sun warmed us as we walked, and created a green twilight in places that soothed my soul somewhat. The birds sang and the flowers smelled lovely and we reached the top of the cemetery where the trees thinned. It always amazed me that as the trees thinned the graves grew more clustered. Neat and tidy rows as far as the eye could see. Packed in tightly as space ran out. We walked back down the hill, meandering through the older graves and trees, chatting about all the fun things I wanted to do with her as she grew. The love I could give to her, the places we would visit, and most of all, I promised her I would protect her to the best of my ability from those that would hurt her. I asked her to trust me as she grew, and to be patient with me because I was making this mum thing up as I went along. It was walking in that cemetery that I realized the best example I had on being a mum was actually my Nan. That going forward I would try and do for my daughter what my Nan had done for me.   

There were many years ahead of me now, now that I had decided to keep living, and I had a job to do. No longer was I filled with hatred and numbness, a spark had flickered into life and I was nurturing that spark and watching her grow every day. I took the note I had written for her, and I ripped it up, vowing to never darken her days with it, I scattered it to fly with the birds and dissolve into nothingness, and we went about our walk, with her none the wiser.  

She still does not know about that walk, that visit to the cemetery, the last time she visited it she was just a baby. I am hoping to take her and her brother with my husband to visit that town this summer, to share a place that is so important to me. I have told the children that I once lived there, and that my Nan and Grandad would take me to the beach and the swimming pool and so on. I have told them that when I lived there it was the happiest time of my life, which is the truth. That was exactly my reason for wanting to die there, and exactly the reason it was the place I had a very real moment of healing. I have required many more healing moments since then, but it was the first step on a journey and they say that is the most important. My life began again in that place, so it is only right that now I have my diagnosis, that I visit again. It is my place of pilgrimage.  

All that remains of that day I revisited that cemetery is this story. Make of it what you will, but somewhere, in a town called Greenock, many years ago, a little girl talked to the dead, and found more comfort than she did from her own mother. And that little girl grew up, determined not to be the same mother she had had.