Grim Reaper Time.

I don't think this is going to be a morbid post. Just merely a reflection of the last few months. As I age, I lose many people I care about or have good memories with.

In the last 4 weeks alone I have lost 3, 2 of my personal friends and one a dear blog friend many of you know.

I have written about the first two and not about the blog friend.

Joanne was known to many of us, she was a creative and an activist. She was brave and committed to family, raising her grandchildren, carefully balancing her budget, and making life decisions which inspired many of us. Particularly when she moved into an assisted senior living apartment with her big loom and her cowardly cat. I remember we wrote to each other about that particular transition when I was faced with a similar conundrum of selling up my beloved property and moving into an independent senior living building.

Her voice was loud when she saw injustice of any kind and she had many health challenges. She bought herself another car but then didn't hesitate to admit the mistake of this and promptly sold it. She continued working that loom and marketing her wonderful towels (I have a few and gifted quite a few) which are everlasting. Her struggles were tough in the last couple of years and blogging became sporadic.

She was blessed, as I am, with a caring daughter who watched out for her and helped when necessary.

These caring daughters should, honestly, get medals. I know her Beth (she always called her "My Beth" ) was a huge comfort to her.

I will miss you dear Joanne. I always looked forward to your posts and your adventures in the markets where you sold your goodies.

A bright star for many of us as you navigated your challenges, your hopes and your dreams.

"Rest Aisy" as we say back home. You were one of a kind.

Miscellany

Something not talked or written about much is the challenge of pulling oneself together after grief. And there's no time line allotted to grief, is there? It takes as long as it takes. Often it's delusional. We think we're adjusting nicely after, oh whatever length of time, and bam, it hits again out of the blue, a memory triggered by something small, something large, an old song, a beloved poem, a photo falling out of a book, a bookmark. And it knocks the breath out of the body. 

Another friend died during the past week and I feel a little suspended in time. Well, a lot. Little projects swept aside, a commissioned article I am unable to start, an editing job sitting in my files. I didn't know her very well but enough to like her when our paths crossed. She was outspoken and opinionated on her politics. And like myself, had no time for small talk. So we clicked. If we lived in the same province we would have made the friendship closer. Cancer is taking a lot of us. Frightening. Even for the so-called "clean" livers, the hikers, the vegetarians, the "honour the bodies".

I drank and smoked like a fiend for years. And yet here I am, cleaned up and sober now, and surveying the wreckage of other lives taken far too soon. The ones who would gently lecture me about my "unsustainable" habits, my "out of controlness."

I don't know why I'm jotting down these random thoughts here and now. But I'm happy, in a weird way, that the writing muse has struck me tonight in these ramblings. And maybe it will ignite the unfinished reams of writing around me.

I go through my bloglist now and it's looking mighty slim. I have an RIP section and it startles me as to the number on it. My old blogmates. Some vanish with no reason, some let us know. One sent out a bunch of postcards to us a week before she died with her photo on the front. 

But I wouldn't have missed the ride in blogland for the world and hope to continue and more frequently.

As I picked up my daughter from the airport I was astonished to see 3 RCMP officers on horseback, casually riding by my car as I waited. You will have to embiggen. 

Loss

Losses are painful and all part of living. At times it's the small things that hit the hardest. I check my emails every morning and the one I looked forward to the most is missing. And will be forever. And fresh tears leak. I know that too, will diminish in time. I tracked down this post I made when another died. It helped then and it helps me now. For all those who miss her and those who have suffered more than their share in the past year. I'm thinking also of my dear brother who died last November and I think of, especially, Andrew and Kylie

On those days when you miss someone the most, as though your memories are sharp enough to slice through skin and bone, remember how they loved you.
Remember how they loved you and do that, for yourself.
In their name, in their honour.
Love yourself, as they loved you.
They would like that.
On those days when you miss someone the most,
love yourself harder.

Author : Donna Ashworth

 

Grief

Many of long time readers will know that I went through grief-counselling some years back when my physical health began to suffer and my doctor of the time referred me to this amazing grief therapist. I had lost 8 close friends in the space of 18 months and the symptoms of my grief were not what you'd imagine as in crying all the time or depression. No, I was wound tighter than a drum with my blood pressure soaring through the roof and my tricky kidneys beginning to fail.

I was with the therapist for a 6 months of weekly sessions and he was incredibly understanding. He passed on much wisdom to me. One was when you suffer a severe heart breaking loss it opens up all the other losses in your life once again. Yes.

Well reader, I am there. All the chickens, so to speak, are home to roost now. My missing daughter's birthday was last week and that compounded everything, all the losses.

I tried to track down Peter, my grief therapist today but failed. I will try again. He was, I think, older than I. My siblings appear to be all cheerful and getting on with things so I find I can't/won't attend the weekly Sibling Zooms. I can't handle cheer. A friend dropped off a poinsettia and a fresh caught salmon yesterday and I could barely thank her but cried like a baby after she left. Kindness does me in.

I light a candle for the last photo taken of my brother every day and talk to him, hoping I'm not going right off the ledge.

I have delayed reaction to loss and I am hoping with Grandgirl staying with me by the end of the week I will climb out of this pit as it is affecting my overall health. I'm constantly nauseous and exhausted and not fit as we say out here.

The fact I am writing all of this down is a good sign, n'est pas?

Any shared stories of grief would be appreciated. 

I feel massively alone.

Blog Buddies

 I've been fortunate in the friendships I have formed over the many years I've been blogging. A few I have met in the flesh and interestingly the friendships are just as solid and connected when that happens. A few stayed with me in my last home. I held wee dinners for some there and the conversations never ran out.

Many have died too. Which took the heart right out of me.

Marcia was a gifted woman, a teacher, a writer, with a tremendous wit. We had personal correspondence and Facebook chivvying and then 9 years ago she reconnected with a man who used to work with her years before. He had lost his wife. And the rest is history. He became the love of her life and they travelled the world together.

She didn't maintain her blog, unfortunately, life was too full I imagine, and there were his and her grandchildren to entertain and visit all over the country.

On Friday, she died. The Big C took her too. 

She was a vibrant soul, one I will always remember.

Marcia: a kindred spirit indeed. You will be missed.

This Day

This day rocks and slides around every year. The day in 1969 I gave birth to my second child. The day she was placed in an incubator beside me, I couldn't touch her immediately as her skin was too delicate. In those days there was a long post- natal recuperation in hospital (8-9days) so she was laid out at the end of the nursery beside a huge window, stark naked, below the weak December sun so the Vitamin D could embrace her. Which it did. I read many books and smoked many cigarettes as I recovered. (Smoking in a maternity room sounds impossible now, but yeah, us funky daredevil hippie mothers all did.)

I got to hold her when the sun went down in the first couple of days as I healed and then could go to the nursery and be with her as she sunbathed. It worked. Her skin cleared up.

She was a bright and curious child and when she was in kindergarten she sat me and her father down and asked us seriously if there was a night school she could go to as her days were far too busy for day school. She ran with boys mainly as she found girls far too wishy-washy to her liking as she climbed trees and built a small tree house with the assistance of her far more "proper" older sister. Her seventh birthday, which took place at the Ponderosa Steak House (her choice) had only boys, her gang, in attendance apart from her sister. A cowboy outfit we bought her was worn to shreds on her. She wore her socks with one matching her sweater and one matching her pants or skirt. That made total sense to her. And to me.

She was unique and different and extraordinarily bright with illuminating insights on how the world worked. There was a patch of enormous trouble with her at fourteen when she found drugs and ran with an alarming bunch of teenagers. I didn't deal with it well at the time, I had my own demons. But through Tough Love, a support group for parents which was absolutely fantastically helpful, I began laying down tough rules and curfews and she ran away from home for a few weeks. It was a hellish time, but she did come back (long story), bedraggled and subdued and got back in school and off the drugs, shining in scholarly achievement after the first semester. 

She lived with me, just about, until she was twenty-eight. And subsequently back- emigrated to Ireland.

She is currently in the UK. And about twenty years ago now, cut off her entire blood family and her friends here.

So there is this huge chunk of wandering love chopped right out of all of our lives. I understand that not being a mother herself she has no idea of the pain of loss I and her father suffer. Or her sister and niece. 

It's like missing a limb. And the phantom pains never leave. 

Blog Jam

A long time blog friend passed a few days ago. It's a wrench and particularly so in Marianne's case as we sang from the same page of the political and feminist song-book. Her posts and her comments were incisive, intelligent, wise and compassionate. She went far too quickly, but comfortably, at home and in the warmth of her family. She joined the ranks of quite a few of my blogmates who have passed. Time from diagnosis to death has been swift and unrelenting in the cases of the many, both in real life and in internet life, who have departed my world in the last few years. And their losses never get easier.

I find I wrap up most of this grief in the void that Ansa has left. I only realized this recently when I was in the car and I saw a dog that looked like her and I was overwhelmed with sobs. Unreasonably I felt. But I learned from grief therapy that this is often the case with us mourners. We will find something that triggers a whopping outpouring but it's yelling into the void of pain and absence of the many. Of all, I think. Opening up every single loss. This is one of the reasons why so many seniors gamble and drink as the stats are simply frightening. Undealt with grief and depression would be a foundation for this I would speculate but it would be enlightening if more studies were funded on this possible correlation.

Daughter and I fielded a table of our wares on the weekend at a fair. We sold a little but boy I felt it when people raced through my prints and knitting and jams without comment or question. Surprisingly, a shot I took of a miniature village a few years back was the hot item as the old man who created and built it tore it all down after a couple of tourists banged on his door. He was over 90 and terrified and thought he'd stop this harassment if he destroyed his magnificent work of art. I know, sad. But I'm still getting calls from people who heard about this picture and want a copy. It is large, 11"X 14" but captures the sense of the beautiful wee village of Oderin. It was where the old man grew up. The residents there were resettled as happened a lot in rural/outport Newfoundland but his heart remained in the idyllic place now long abandoned and forgotten. But not by him as he painstakingly recreated it.

Here it is in video format:

Fun

I didn't think I could have fun again, so much loss my dears. So much I didn't write about the half of it, it sounded like so much fiction. Like a fantastical situation, my gawd, you'd say, the woman has to be exaggerating. So I didn't. I just carried it. Sometimes not so bravely. Under covers. Not functioning too well. Performing life, one might say. Knowing life will never be the same again is a huge adjustment. Knowing that those who purportedly love you absolutely do not.

And then this little one walks into my life in a hell of a mess. I've written about her here and here.

And the fun starts to happen. She is dyslexic but has a photographic memory so if she's seen something once, her memory stores it. Very handy in a store where I was looking for a small fan for a bedroom and she whizzed off and came back with one small white convertible one and I said "perfect". And we laughed. And she got her hair streaked foiled today for the first time in her life and she looks amazing. And she bought stuff for her kids and a big rosebush for her mother and a special halogen light bulb for her father ("how do you know which one?" - "my photographic memory!"). And she was so full of joy and gratitude and just plain into life that I realized that for the last week or so, some huge black heavy object has been lifted from my heart. And it's all due to her pushing me out of my own misery and she wouldn't even be aware of that. She connected me with fun again.

I see the world through her eyes and she's funny and talky even though her life story would make you cry for her. She doesn't cry for herself.

I hope she makes it. I truly do. And so far so good at 2 weeks and 2 days.

Safety

I ran into an old friend yesterday. I hadn't seen him in a while and he asked me how I was doing. I said it had been a rough time and he asked me why and I gave him the briefest of versions of the past year in my life and it was the oddest thing. Without a pause or reflective comment or even sympathy, he launched into this long narrative of how he was so much worse off. Ten minutes later I broke away from him. I felt like I'd been slapped.

I had a session with my counsellor an hour later - previously scheduled - and told him what had happened. I recognised that I needed to be even more careful with whom I share anything with for I can feel far worse afterwards. That crying in the wilderness thing.

My counsellor had me focus on the gifts that have sprung from my losses. And there were many. Not least of which is reevaluating my life now in light of these. He also had me talk about Missing Daughter and revisit that with the heart numbing thought that I am "dead" to her and may remain so. It's a fresh way of looking at this and I am grateful for that.

Healing is the underlying scaffolding of all of this. I keep thinking I'm ready to brace myself against the real world and then find I'm not. I'm unable to live superficially, it's a gift given to many but alas, I didn't make that particular cut. Many, many times I wished I was light and fluffy and could fiddle-dee-dee life's trials, both yours and mine. Or stay mum and wait for them to pass or even bury them.

The last few days have been rough, that Black Dog thing. I know there's an end in sight, I wish I knew when. Change is always nerve-wracking and emotional, even the changes wrought by intensive counselling sessions with the healing acceptance of the losses of former confidantes combined with the rejection of those I hold most dear.

No one gets a free pass, particularly as we age. It comes down to the tools we have to just deal.

I am grateful for those.

Mind over Matter

I would consider myself fairly in tune with my body, my emotions, my mind, you know?

Imagine my shock when my doctor adamantly, adamantly disagrees with me.

I thought I was cruising along nicely, yeah, it's been a shyte year, so many losses I can't count them at the moment.

And yeah, I feel on the edge a lot of the time. The edge of what I couldn't tell you. Disaster I suppose. Another awful thing maybe looming around the corner ready to grab me by the throat.

And Doctor tells me my health is really, really suffering. My blood pressure is now worse than before, my blood sugars are all over the place, my body is not happy, my outlook is depressing. And to top it off my eyes are red like I've been on a bender.

Surely to gawd, I say to him, grief couldn't cause all this havoc in my body.

And he laughs at me.

List all the griefs for me, he says, pen poised.

And I do. And I was surprised, the list was so very long.

And he says: death of many major friends, loss of family, loss of emotional connections, a dying dog, a long-time missing daughter - you need grief therapy. Stat. Meanwhile I'll up your meds again, but this is it. There's no more up, we ran out of ups today.

I've obviously lost the run of myself.

Out of Left Field.....

Is when it hits me. What a bloody awful year of loss and pain and grief.

And days go by and I think I'm dealing well with it. And then I'm caught sideways and I just want to cry all day long under the covers.

Any friend I would have shared this maelstrom of feelings with is gone.

I had to force myself out the door today and then pull over several times in the car as grief just overwhelmed me. To say I was shocked and, yes, ashamed, is to understate it. The day was glorious which made it even more poignant. The two words "Never Again" kept reverberating in my head.

Some emotional states you can't think or reason your way out of. It just takes you like a tide of longing and despair. I haven't felt that alone in a long, long time. It's a horrible feeling.

And I go into this cheap dollar shop, I'm sure I was a total mess but I didn't care. I wandered uselessly in the aisles, talking inwardly (I hope) to my dear, lost BFF, when a voice hailed me by name and I cringed as I turned to face her and drew a blank. I had to sort through all the filing cabinets in my head and there are many. You come to a new province and meet well over a 1,000 people and it's difficult to place them. My daughter was on TV and that was her opening gambit. And then she fell into her proper file box - a member of my book club but she hasn't been for 6 months.

I yanked myself forcibly out of my own pit of despair long enough to notice how dreadful she looked and discovered she'd had multiple serious surgeries, been divorced from Husband # 2 and husband #1, father of her kids, had died. Plus her only son, brother to her two daughters is transitioning to female.

Reluctantly, feeling whiny and rather stupid, I filled her in on my year so far and you know what she said?

"You must feel like a cork bobbing on an ocean, all adrift, all by yourself, pretending most of the time you're fine when you're not. Not at all."

And she gave me one of those hugs that lasts and lasts. And I attempted a joke about her taking me home and she said:

"Anytime, honey, anytime. There's always a chair at my table and a spare bed somewhere upstairs."

And slowly I felt much better, her kindness so genuine in the midst of her own anxieties and troubles, a fragile connection with all that's so good in the universe.

30 Days - Day 21

The resilience of the human spirit is amazing. I was struck by this poem the other day and resolved to practise its principles:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi -

It seems to me I've experienced so much pain, loss, sorrow, injury, fire, flood, grief and malice recently. I was talking to the facilitator of an event where I was asked to be the after dinner speaker. I told her I'd been through so much hell in the last four months I had nothing inspirational to offer anyone, so please find someone else.

"Oh," she said,"You have everything to offer. You got through it all. How did you do that?"

I agreed to speak.

Grief

I remember on one of my many trips to Dublin we were reading side by side on her patio, birdsong trilling around us, the scent from the overhead baskets of tomatoes and strawberries perfuming the sun warmed air.

"You know," she said, "You're the only one in the world I can do this with. Isn't it perfect?"

Perfect. Yes.

There are multiple aspects to grief, thousands of manifestations. An enormous sense of never being the same. Ever again. And that's just one.

In spite of myself I go to the labelled email folder last night. Helen. Thousands of emails. It's like a compulsive first bite of something decadent, sinful and addictive.

And I realize some things that weren't obvious to me before.

She played her buttons close to her vest. She didn't let too many people in. Maybe it was the long history we had. Nothing could sever the trust, the implicit faith in that shoulder always being there. That acceptance. The sheer unconditionality of it. I really don't feel that way about anyone else. I always think I will be rejected, abandoned, condemned and shunned once I show you the inner me. It's happened far too many times before. It's my default setting. Therapy hasn't helped. It's like a permanent internal condition akin to an irremovable birthmark. Part of my psyche. And we knew these things about each other. In particularly bad patches we would sign off: "Remember I love you."

And we meant it. All warts exposed, all insecurities, all struggles. It didn't matter.

We'd speculate how we could do better, help each other climb over the stiles of our challenges and pain.

We'd talk each other through depression and bafflement over loved ones' behaviours.

And a little nugget:

A Canadian friend emailed me yesterday and said:

"Remember that day in Ballydehob and my nails were all a mess and Helen went off immediately and bought me stuff to deal with them."

I'd forgotten.

She'd only known my friend for a couple of days.

But her caring expanded to friends of friends of friends.

I miss her so.

Healing Gifts 2

One might never meet someone or talk to them but when you do, pow, in the first 20 seconds you have an ease and comfort that is astonishing.

It was this way with a young woman who came up to me at the removal of my BFF from her home to the church.

"I know you. " she said simply.

"Yes," I said, "Of course. You're Gillian."

And we hugged and cried.

BFF had loved the ex-partner of her elder son's. Like we do. We hate to witness the breakup of our children with those we become fond of and whom we consider "ideal".  For us, the elders, perhaps, but not for those who move on.

Against the odds BFF remained close to Gillian as both her son and Gillian moved on to other partners and started families.

BFF was a tower of strength when Gillian ' s 1st daughter died at 5 months. I remember the daily emails from that period (BFF & I exchanged 1000s of emails). I had two miscarriages so understood a little of the grief and relayed words of understanding through BFF to Gillian.

So to finally meet her was wonderful. She adored BFF and was devastated by her death.

And the best news of all was that she's now the mother of two healthy little girls.

And yes, we're staying in touch.

Words

I have a clearer understanding now of the old expression "words fail me." The inadequacy of language to convey the depth of sadness, the never-agains of death, the disbelief, the overwhelming loss, the guilty rage of the eternal screaming of WHY?

Why not? Is flung back against me. Why do we consider ourselves and our beloveds so immune from the chilly skeletal fingers of the Reaper?

I am glad I returned to Ireland. Glad I was there for family and friends. Glad I let myself be comforted by dear ones. Glad to hook up with a long lost friend who showed up at the funeral with the dim hope I'd be there.

But the enormous loss. Words are completely inadequate.

Solitary Moments

The beach. Yesterday.

Sometimes I am all alone and the pain and joy of living in this world overwhelms me.

Odd that.

I mean: I would never share, in anyone's presence, these tears. They are private.

Right now is one of those times.

When I've been over-peopled and have finally found myself alone by choice.

I mourn the death today of a dear long term blog friend no longer with us who shared every step of the dying process with her friends. Her bravery, love and courage in the face of a far too early death and a very tragic life inspires me and continues to do so.

And still.....there's always more to it.

It's that time of the year, isn't it?

Where so much hurts.

And so much inspires.

And there are memories.

And losses.

And yes, tears flow.

Intensity

When I was growing up emotional extremes were a defect of character. As if I could change my intrinsic nature. Even though at times I wanted, badly, to toughen up.

Yes, I feel life too intensely. And my feelings are often worn on my sleeve. Or shut away so tightly (you might see the real me, you know) that it hurts.

Like those quilts in the wake-room. All hand created by my friend Patricia. Thrown over every surface, every chair. Every piece of scattered fabric in her life tied together so beautifully, so creatively. Colours of the land and the ocean and the boats and the wonderful drenching of colour that residents flood their buildings with. All you had to say was "I wish I had one of your quilts" and next thing, she was on your doorstep with one.

Picasso is honoured. Why aren't these handcrafters of such beauty so respected? Women's work of course. There should be many female only art galleries, flooded with the colours of the creations of artists like Patricia. With knitting and embroidery and weavings and crochet and lace. And many, many quilts.

It seemed like my floodgates opened today. I had been locking so many tears inside me, for what seemed like a month or two.

It was Jennifer Johnston who started it. I am reading "The Gingerbread Woman". And it struck chords. And more chords.

Life is about loss, isn't it? Mainly the loss of what went before. What formed us. What ignited us. What sustained us. What we leave behind. She writes of this like no other I've read.

And I had myself a really good cry.

Update

I am still processing a trip back to my home country.

A trip which started with an enormous shadow cast over it.

A shadow which crept into every aspect of it, which had me telling extended family members or close friends as I sat down to table or met them in cheerful places:

"I'm really, really sorry if I appear sad and distracted. It's not you."

And then I would creep off stage to take or make a phone-call on my Irish mobile.

My very best friend, my friend of over 60 years (how rare that is, a friend from kindergarten, from everything and everyone important in one's life who knows all your secrets and you hers)was sick when I arrived. Doctors had thrown anti-depressants at her, she wasn't eating, her brain wasn't functioning, her balance was precarious. This I saw when I arrived.

I was shocked, appalled, frightened. She is a livewire, had completed a marathon in June, was on the Irish bridge team, formed her own successful book club and was a host, along with her husband, of salon type gatherings of interesting, wonderful people, one of which she'd planned for me the following night.

The wheels were set in motion from that point. Immediate medical attention from other consultants if necessary.

Within days, she was under a surgical team of 4. The brain tumour was huge, 5 centimetres. And they didn't get all of its evil tendrils as it would have impacted her mobility and intelligence.

And I haven't written about it until now, even my personal hand written journaling of the whole scattered time of it brings me to tears.

I am frozen in the processing, something inside went numb and scared and can't get up.

I don't know what her comprehension is of what is going down. Only her husband's. He is being so brave and positive for their adult children but lets more of his bewilderment and loss and fear out with me.

To say we are stunned is to put it mildly. To say we are lost for words when words are lost to us seems trite.

The magnitude is incomprehensible.

I can't imagine my life without her, without her cheerleading, without her daily emails, without her chat. Without her, my glorious, wonderful friend.

I had thought to stay on in Ireland to dither around the edges of the pain and loss and helplessness.

I thought long and hard and alone on this but decided against it. Our usefulness can often be more helpful in the simple carrying on of our own lives.

Pretending everything is okay.

When the heart is shattered.