I couldn’t bear to sit across from the Rickards that day in their clammy overheated apartment, eating dry cakes and sipping sherry, which they always insist upon. I couldn’t bear to listen to their reminiscing, their exaggerated stories of their only child’s remarkable achievements, their musings about all the ways she’d be changing the world, if only she’d lived. I couldn’t bear to sit there and look at the framed pictures the Rickards keep everywhere, on the walls, on the windowsills, on the kitchen counter, even on a shelf in the bathroom. Everywhere you’d look, Trine Rickards would look back at you, suspended in time, young and alive. Sometimes it feels good to be there with them, and speak of their beloved daughter as though she had only just left the room, even though she’d been dead for almost two decades. But that day I just couldn’t bear it.

Out of the three of us, Trine, Elisabeth and me, I was the lucky one. I’ve had years of trauma therapy and built a good life for myself. My traumatized brain shielded me from reliving what happened and I have made my peace with it. Elisabeth wasn’t so lucky – though she escaped, she didn’t really; she was held hostage by trauma, and instead of facing it, Elisabeth tried to run from it through her addictions until she couldn’t outrun it anymore and it ultimately cost her her life.

And Trine… No. I’m not going there. I never do.

So much grief, so many dark corners, so many things lost forever. I allow myself a few thoughts that never fail to center me. The view of the royal palace gardens from our kitchen windows, and the way being in my home makes me feel so held and so safe. The feeling of my husband’s arms closing around my waist from behind, drawing me close. These are mindfulness techniques I use to select the thoughts I allow – I see my thoughts as floating past in little boats on a river. It’s up to me which ones I pick up. If there are too many dark ones, I remain patient until a good thought comes floating downstream. It doesn’t mean that dark thoughts are suppressed; it means that they are observed, acknowledged and released. I do it now, and it takes me a long while to build the image, because tonight the river runs red with blood and all the little boats are overflowing and jostling each other, snapping this way and that on a churning current. When my mind is finally calm, I keep reading.

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Supernova