It is natural to idolise those we love or about whom we are infatuated, to elevate them to a status verging on the inhuman. Similarly for those who die time can dull the clarity of their outline and they shapeshift into an idealised version of themselves. We view someone through a crystalline prism ignoring all but their most clear-cut, obvious and desirable qualities.
Maybe inevitably this has happened to how I perceive Ruby although I wasn't insightful about it because I had no current reality of her existence to compare her absence to. Until now. I watched film clips of Ruby for the first time since she died 22 months ago.
Looking at photos and watching home movies and film clips had been impossible for me, too upsetting and painful. There are, of course, familiar pictures in frames all around the house but I am so used to them my eyes barely graze them. They can wash past me fifty times a day with hardly a nudge of recognition. But those less familiar images of Ruby, thousands of them stored on the computer and in my phone, taken every week of every one of her 140 months alive are only one unpressed button away.
Claire and I have very different experiences of this. She regularly listens to Rubys audio diary, hundreds of entries each minutes long recorded on her iPod over the years. It's pretty banal stuff- "got up, breakfast, school, homework, dinner, played at Poppy's house, bed"- but it's Rubys daily banal stuff. Claire receives great warmth and a closenes to Ruby from this. I, on the other hand, find it torturous. On the rare occasions my iPod randomly skips onto Rubys voice I lose my breath and I buckle.
I know that to navigate through the process of grief I have to put the hours and the effort in. There is no shortcut. Pushing myself to look at photos of Ruby would be disquieting, I knew that, but I didn't expect it to be as painless as it has been. So far it has been progressive and not too displeasurable. Watching Ruby dance and sing and eat and talk and be bored and stare at the TV again was a spectral experience at first. Also warm and beautiful. And upsetting.
But the most unexpected emotion, and the most welcome, was irritation. One five minute film clip was of Ruby lying on her bed and filming herself singing the popular song of the week from beginning to end. After five full minutes of total self-indulgence getting utterly lost in the music she panned the camera to one side where two if her friends were perched on the end of her bed staring at her with looks of horror and bemusement. This was very "Ruby". She had a level of precocity in many qualities (intellect, relationships, creativity, logic, interests, literacy) but in other ways could occasionally be infantile, irritating and naively overconfident as children can be. And it was totally wonderful to see again. It was joyous to be reminded of these touching but easily forgotten aspects of her character. That song, that damn song, was sung again and again and again to the point where, as soon as the first note passed her lips I would throw her a minor glare, say "Ruby?" and the song stopped. This may read as a little authoritarian but I am sure parents can easily understand that the things repeated by a child so many times they become painful to hear can occasionally irritate you to the point of requesting immediate cessation.
When I watched another clip I noticed that tiny scar on her forehead from when she contracted chicken pox. I hadn't thought about that scar for nearly two years.
I picked up her trumpet recently for one of the first times and got a few notes out of it. It was the cue to recall memories of encouraging her, night after night, to practice, practice, practice. She wasn't the jazz genius I was beginning to remember but a normal human child barely scraping her way through a grade 1 exam and who never wanted to practice.
In all the photos her hair was perfectly placed. But, as proved by the film clips, she would run her fingers through her hair a thousand times a day to maintain the perfect side parting for those photos. I had forgotten that gesture, her long elegant fingers, the balletic arc of her arms. At times she looked almost gangly like a spidery tangle of limbs and hair but at other time she swooped with the grace of a gliding bird. The film clips clarified this to me. I was beginning to forget.
On Shrove Tuesday this year I made pancakes for us. Pancakes were Ruby's favourite food and they have always been my favourite (I sometimes consider myself a sophisticated "foodie" but my final meal of choice will always be homemade pancakes with lemon juice and sugar). Ruby and I made them every weekend as a breakfast treat and I made them for her last breakfast the morning she left for the fateful trip to Scotland in May 2013. I had not made pancakes since then. But I pushed myself into making my, and Rubys, favourite food. Of course it was upsetting but they were very tasty. After all they are pancakes.
I must remember to remember and I must provide cues for provocation. Then I can simultaneously smile and cry remembering my irritation and joy together. My reflections and grief can feel more holistic, more human and more personal to Ruby. It is easy and comforting to remember the faceted crystalline Ruby shiny and glinting and perfect but, in the longer term, it feels warmer and more genuine to bear in mind other traits. Her chicken pox scar, the way she threw her head back in a guttural laugh, her body odour, holding her iPod too close to her face, scraping her shoes on the pavement as she walked, asking me to make her excuses when she wanted to stay in and read instead of socialise, leaning so close to her dinner plate her hair would drape across her food. The irritations and the love, this was the reality. I revere it all.
