Thought Picnic: Losing anger to gain more understanding

My little troubles to their deep grief

Just two days ago, I was about to write one of my stroppy blogs having been irked by an event as I returned home from work.

The first piece of news I read as I returned home, shocked me beyond words. At that point I realised that whatever level of pique I had could not in any way compare to the deep tragic grief people most affected by that news could be feeling.

A young mother of two toddlers, the mother who could easily be my daughter had in unexplained circumstances been pronounced dead.

No blame

This woman had only 14 years before lost her mother to unfortunate and tragic circumstances in an inadvertent suicide leaving a 4 daughters, the youngest, the half-sister of the other three, became an orphan, she had lost her father to suicide just a couple of years before. The pain was palpable for even the distant to feel.

Peaches Geldof had died. Yet, in the stories that followed her demise was something so profound about a short and one time wild life, haunted by tragedy and grounded by new reality.

In an interview in 2012, she said of her mother Paula Yates, “I don’t blame her, I’m not angry with her, I understand her… I honestly understand what she was going through.”

Between anger and understanding

The emboldened part of that quote was more prominent to me and says a lot about some of the fractured relationships we have with our parents.

With time, I have understood my parents better, yet, some memory crosses my mind at certain times that still brings forth some seething anger.

Then again, Peaches never had the opportunity to talk things over with her mother, to go over the issues that would have pained or haunted her about her mother’s death, she worked through the issues without the option for engagement and got to a point where she could understand well and yet neither blame nor be angry with her mother.

Unresolved to resolution

It behoves us to realise that there are some things we would never get to chat to our parents about, about the past, the present, their decisions, their influences and even their mindsets as they move into the sunsets of their lives.

We however must begin to live our lives out of the shadow, the hauntings, the hurts and the unresolved anguish of being either the fortunate or the unfortunate offspring of our forebears.

What has happened has happened, whether we have been accepted or rejected as we strive at times to live up to the expectations of others limiting the scope of what is the pursuit of our own individual happiness and the lives we have built around ourselves quite separate from those who brought us into this world.

Finding purpose

There is a blessing in finding a way to move on, moving on from blame, extricating ourselves from the clutches of anger and getting to a point where we know nothing in perfect, but perfection comes from ability to adapt, to appreciate, to understand, to accept and to embrace the fullness of our humanity in our relationships with those close and afar.

It is time to escape the imprisonment of anger and walk into the freedom of understanding. With that little lesson from Peaches, I pray that she find peace wherever she is and that those that survive her might find strength and the fortitude to bear their very tragic loss.

Rest in peace, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof.