Page 132 of How We Began

8th April

It’s here, the beginning of the last term of the academic year. I’m not sure how it has come around so quick. Oh, okay I am, but I am trying very hard not to think about my track record of stropping, sulking, stalking, and drinking.

After lectures, I told Ben and Meredith that I have things I need to do. I actually wanted to go and study…just once, without Meredith obsessing over my brother, or the fabulous home we are going to have and the parties we are going to throw. Or what wedding dress she may or may not wear in two years when they get married, happily fucking forever after, not that I’m bitter.

I’m all for obsessing and appreciate I do a fair amount myself. Oh, okay. I do a lot. But today I just needed some space, even from my own circling thoughts.

It would also be nice to study for once without Ben somehow talking me into taking my clothes off. See? I am growing as a person.

I’m all for naked study, but it is probably best not to do it in the library.

I wanted to look at the sources for the group project. Since I came up with the idea, it’s grown inside my imagination and become something that I feel very strongly about.

What is loss?

How do you let go?

What does it mean to admit your sorrow and regret?

How do you live with the memory of what was but is no longer?

These were the thoughts on my mind as I climbed the bloody stairs all the way to the history books.

Luckily I found the most extraordinary source. My god, this is what being university student is like. I found it impossible to read without being moved to tears.

This is real life, real loss and real sorrow. It makes my heart ache with the enormity of it all.

The source is a soldier’s thoughts on the Menin Gate in Ypres. The Menin Gate Memorial Hall of Memory records 56,000 ‘missing’ of the British Empire who fell from October 1914 to August 1917.

Fifty-six thousand soldiers lost their lives in one town, in less than three years? How can you possibly compute that sort of loss? The record I have found is heartbreakingly touching. The author has to consider why the memorial is there. Surely no one will ever forget what happened in that town.

He writes that he wonders who will march through the gate now that their numbers are dwindling. He believes that the names are well graven on the arch for there will come a time when nobody remembers the names of those who gave their lives.

Can you let loss go? No. You immortalise it in any way you can, so that you will never forget. Even when you are no longer there to remember, the testament to your loss will stand forever more.

The other source I found is entirely different and this is why I knew I was onto a winner. It considers the comparison of the drastic loss of a nation with that of the private loss of parents who have lost their children through war. Kathe Kollowitz’ statue in Roggevelde Military Cemetery, Vlasdlo, depicts a mother and father kneeling in grief at the loss of their son during the war. The husband kneels, arms folded over his chest, remorse set in stone on his face. The wife is kneeling forward, and forever in mourning for the son that she blessed to go to war but who never came back.

Is it possible to move on from that? How do you give your blessing and let your child leave you in a futile pursuit, to have them never to return to you again? Should you let go? Can you ever let go of your guilt afterwards? Can you learn the art of letting go?

All in all, it was a thoroughly depressing trip to the library, but one full of amazing information. By the time I made it back to the dorm, I was choked to the max, with a tight chest unable to lift the weight of loss that gripped me. It’s not personal to me, but I can feel it like the cut of a knife.

When I walked inside, I gave my notes to Ben who was in the lounge talking to Jayne and Beth. I then went to my own bedroom where I sat in the dark for what seemed like an age.

Ben came in to find me in the end. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I am.”

I am now.

“I love the stuff you’ve found. It’s very thought provoking.” He leant against me so we were touching all along our side.

“Thank you.”

“What’s wrong, Lilah?”

I tried to come up with the words, to put them into a sentence that wouldn’t hang around my heavy heart like a weighted chain. “I can’t imagine how you deal with that sort of loss. I don’t understand how to let go of something you love that much without it killing you on the inside.”

He sat there for a while and we watched the lengthening shadows spread across the room.