'My heart is breaking wide apart'

TALK to Theresa Cave about the whirlwind of deep emotions within her and eventually she'll give up trying to explain and point you to her poems. A record of rage against the man who murdered her 17-year-old son Chris, they also contain words of the blackest despair.

They are so powerful that they may be used by NHS counsellors in her local area to help other people cope with bereavement. But grief counsellors say they are nothing unusual. Using poetry to express grief is extremely common and encouraging the grief-stricken to write poems and create art has long been a recognised counselling technique.

Some of the world's greatest art and literature through the ages has been inspired by the emotion of intense grief: the Taj Mahal built in memory of an emperor's beloved wife; the suicides of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; every image ever made of Mary holding the broken body of Christ. Perhaps one of the most famous poems is that from an anonymous author, regularly chosen to be read at funerals: "Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep, I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there, I did not die."

But for Theresa Cave, in her house on the troubled Burnmoor Estate in Redcar, a few yards from where Chris was stabbed through the heart, poetry is a simple unburdening of the soul.

She says: "I would love other mothers who have had to go through this to read what I've written. If it could give them some support and show that we're not alone, that would be fantastic."

Some of her poems are a straightforward lament for her son Chris. In one she imagines he's simply gone away for a while and will soon come home. It reads: "I know it's going to be a surprise when through that open door you'll come, but hurry up, it's getting cold, and the candle's running low, and my heart is breaking wide apart, while where you are I do not know."

OTHERS take on other issues about day-to-day life dealing with grief. In one Theresa overhears being talked about on the bus as "the lass whose son was killed," but when she turns round everyone looks away. The poem goes on: "Don't avoid me on the street, or pretend you didn't see me wave to you from just a few feet, don't clam up when I say hello and don't feel you have to understand, just listen to what I have to say... and take my outstretched hand."

Still others are filled with rage about the killer, those involved with him and the whole world: "I am rotting away festering inside like a volcano waiting to spew its lava over the world and rid it of its filth."

Theresa, who had a difficult upbringing and at one point was living on the streets of Manchester and in a hostel aged just 14, has often been questioned on her estate about why she has not taken personal revenge against the killer, Sean Matson, and his associates. In an essay called They Ask Why, she says that she has lived among junkies and thieves - but her son was anti-violence and would often not tell her his problems on the estate for fear of causing trouble. It reads: "It is through love alone that I act this way, the way of my son's beliefs. I am just so happy that I stopped and listened to him stand up to me with his beliefs and argue back and understand my son was not a fighter but a pacifist."

Annie Kiff-Woon, of the Cruse Bereavement Care organisation, explains that bereaved people like Theresa Cave often turn to poetry. She says: "It is a very, very normal thing to do and I've done it myself. A lot of people naturally think they've written something unique and want the public to see it to help them.

"It is wonderful, wonderful therapy, especially done with guidance. For children writing things down and creating art can be terribly valuable, it can be the only way to learn how they are feeling. It all begins to emerge from their writings and their art."

It is certainly true that there is an awful lot of poetry out there from the grief-stricken. A website by The Compassionate Friends group has a page dedicated to poetry from bereaved people and has been flooded with literally hundreds of poems. Tellingly, a majority are by parents who have lost a child and, as well as simple laments, the poems often attempt to find reason for the death with God and fate often mentioned.

Art therapist of 20 years Avril Allen designed and ran Art From Within workshops for ten years in London and still works with bereaved people.

"It is amazing the works that people come out with," she says, "and often no-one is more astonished the people doing it. They look at it and say, 'Who the hell did that?' It is almost as if they've given themselves permission to do it on a subconscious level and it just flows from them.

"Sometimes bereaved and depressed people do something black and sad but often you'll find they create these huge expressions of rage with strong colours. Then they'll do another picture in response to the first one and create a kind of dialogue. It certainly does help and some people never stop."

Meanwhile, Theresa Cave asks for not pity in the poem where she describes unzipping her son's dead body from his body bag on the night of his death, only understanding. The poem is part of Theresa's conversation with the world and the emotions she unleashes in it are almost beyond plain prose.

"I want you to see him zipped up in a bag, and hear my sobs as I hold him and lose my fingers into his back, I don't want you to hold him, his body still warm, like he looked on the day he was born, I won't share how I feel with his cheek next to my cheek, my tears flooding his face so pale and so weak, but I want you to see the hole in his chest, so perfectly aimed through the bone in his breast, do you know how it feels to feel like a child? Nobody to help me even though you're outside."

* The Compassionate Friends website is at www.tcf.org.uk. Cruse offers help for bereaved people. Their helpline number is 0870 1671677 and website address is www.crusebereavementcare.org.uk