It took me a long time to decide where home was and what 'home' meant to me. The longer I've been away from 'home', the clearer the concept had become. However, in the last year, that concept has changed. When I pictured 'home', I saw my childhood house in South Africa. Last year my parents moved and so now I have a new visual for that. When I pictured 'home', I saw my parents and our dog, Bello. Three days ago Bello left that picture.
There is nothing that can prepare you for the loss of a loved one - furry or otherwise. I come from a small family and so our dogs (we've had 2) were always a strong part of our unit. As a 6 year old I wrote one of my first stories about my brother, Boomer. Boomer was a sheepdog who left us during my final year at school. We got Boomer when I started school and he passed away the year I finished - he traveled that road with me to the end. Bello joined us in 1999 from the SPCA, a sprightly, beautiful spaniel cross something with a mop of golden ginger fur and the playful, loving temperament to match. I left South Africa about 6 months later and Bello provided a much needed buffer for my parents - someone to adore unconditionally while I flew off to explore the world. After 12 years of exploring, i might have reached my destination...
So, now the picture looks like this: me in Sydney with my son and husband. My parents in their new house in South Africa... and it doesn't look right. I can think of it as a period of transition while the fractured pieces of that 'picture' rejoin in a new form. The person who boarded that plane in 1999 would think of it like that - optimistically. Right now it's blurry, distorted by tears and grief and a feeling of intense loss. I have a fierce urge to 'fix' it - to paste it all together again but I don't know where or how to start. I've never been very crafty. So, answers and solutions on a postcard please. Address it to me at my home. Wherever that is.
About Me
- Margaux Nissen Gray
- New York, New York, United States
- Born in Johannesburg in the late 1970s, I grew up as the only child of a German father and South African mother. At 2 we moved to a small town in the Eastern Cape called East London where I later attended Clarendon Girls' School and developed a passion for Theatre and the English language. After school, I attended Rhodes University in Grahamstown and graduated in 1999 with a BA Honours in Drama. At 22 I moved to London, did a series of rather disastrous jobs and met my Scottish prince who whisked me off to Sydney, Australia. While London held (still holds) the key to my heart, Sydney became our home. Five years in Sydney were filled with glamourous nights out, satisfying jobs, fantastic friends and constant sunshine. In 2007 we were lured accross the pond to Dublin where our precious son, MacKenzie, was born in 2008. After 3 years in Dublin, we made the monumental decision to return Down Under in pursuit of joy, love and laughter. Of course it doesn't end there...
The Nissen Gray Family
3 comments:
I have always wondered where home was. Having lived across NZ moving every 3-4 years, new house, new school, new people. The only consistent were my family, and now my mother has passed, my sister has her own family and my brothers are in other worlds. I left home at 16, left NZ at 20 and kept moving for the next 26 years. I say I am a Kiwi, but I have lived in Australia more than half my life, I am divorced and I have no children. My home is where my hat is, as the song goes, it is a place where you are true to yourself and can be the best person you can be. It is not so much a place but a mindset and the oasis you create around that mindset. It is a place where you know yourself and have a degree of peace. When a parent or a beloved pet or a friend passes it is a time to reassess what is important, it is a reminder to live your best life because life is finite.
Argh really struggled to say what something appropriate in response to this recent entry ... so hard not sounding 'empty' over facebook but you have described what I am sure most of us living away from home feel, especially those of us from EL .... your fractured picture will mend RG... I am busy re-piecing mine together and it has been one helluva journey to get here - so sorry about Bello, we lost our furry family member a few years ago and I had to listen to my father weep for her over the phone while I sat in the UK ....I will never forget it xxxxxxx
rindMy angel how sad to read your latest episode. I well remember the young lady who went off to London to make her name on the stage. We had just found our beloved Bello at the SPCA(what a wonderful place)You promised to return to us after 2 years if you didnt make it!! Well everything turned out differently when our Bumble arrived on the scene and our Muschi moved even further across the sea to Sydney...We knew that you would never return to us in East London.We had our darling Bello to love for 13 years. Now he has also left us and we are alone...Our new home will always be there for you as long as we are here my angel.
Post a Comment