Clinging

 We do cling to life don't we? And the more we age, the more we cling. I took huge risks with my life back in the day. Cliff climbing, racing a motorbike at 100 mph (by myself) - on a flat straight road, mind you - but still, one false move and bingo, meat on the pavement, driving way beyond tiredness, falling asleep at the wheel, jerking awake, driving in blizzards on highways in the dark. Pushing myself far too far in road races. Unkillable. That was me.

Friends and I joke  are semi-serious about when Alzheimer's or dementia comes knocking at our door. Stashing little supplies of pills, looking at towering cliffs with a keen evaluating eye on the ocean below. We'd stop that baby in its tracks. Or would we?

I have observed the onset on this mental breakdown in fellow tenants or listen to the anecdotal evidence. Two recently "forgot" to eat and were carted off in ambulances to go on an IV for a week to bring their bodies back into balance and then released to their own devices back into our building. Only fellow tenants checking in on them. Families all on the mainland. Apparently forgetting to eat is a sign of the "middling stage" of dementia. 

Point being jumping off cliffs will be forgotten along with the meals we're forgetting to eat or the pills we don't know what to do with. Dark humour there.

I have been here long enough now to observe some of the final stages of mental collapse. Stoves unplugged permanently, licences yanked, cars sold, medications put into those automatic dispensers that beep at you, all services paid for by family members if they can afford it, helpers, launderers, cleaners, companions. shoppers, Then evacuation to long term care, quietly, silently, with no farewells.

Offing oneself when the time came is now a long ago idea, buried with all the others in the dark grave of yesterday's plans.

Interestingly enough, anecdotal again, it's the readers and doers and creators and puzzles-solvers that don't join the legion of these sufferers. And I do wonder if mental acuity along with exercising of the brain regularly keeps that particular wolf from the door. Learning new skills is a good workout however challenging and frustrating it can be at times.

So, thoughts? 

Carol Doesn't Say Goodbye

I wrote about her a while back. Here. Just over 4 years ago. Carol* moved away to the city and we stayed in sporadic touch. She finally met the man of her dreams she told me only a week ago. And sent a picture.

And then, her daughter, who gave birth to Carol's first grandchild a few months ago, messages me today that Carol took her own life yesterday.
I can only conclude that the latest knight in shining armour had clay feet too. Or Carol just gave up on her dream.

After my initial shock and a welter of tears, I am still baffled. Carol was beautiful in an exotic way. Dainty. Petite. Her childhood was one of the worst I'd ever heard of, full of foster homes and abusive men. She lost a brother she was very close to about 5 years ago and told me she could never get over it. He was her pillar of strength.

I met some of the men she was involved with but not the latest. I was not impressed with any of them for a variety of reasons.

Over the years, I got to know Carol at a deep level and understood far too well her motivation in wanting a safe life with her very own fellah and security. Security was important to her as she'd never, ever had it in her entire life.

I don't think she really understood what it meant. Apart from the fairytales depicted on television. I had suggested a few times that the only security she could ever find and hang on to was the security residing within herself.

I weep tonight for all the Carols out there.

And for all the "if-onlys" of life.


*a pseudonym

Another One

I don't personally know these famous people who choose to die by their own hands. Alone. No goodbyes. Unable to go on. Unable to suffer another hour in addiction or depression or hopelessness or all three or even more.

Feeling their lives are worthless, placing no value on themselves or their gifts. Feeling their pain is unheard, their connection to others severed, strained, vanished.

Seeing no other way out. None.

Thinking everyone and everything shallow and hopeless, their lives one big sham. One never-ending pretence of laughing on the outside and dying inside. Wanting it over. Finished.

Nothing does the "trick": Expensive clinics or the love of a spouse or lover or child. Or grandchild. Or a parent, a sibling, a best friend.

This death. This death. I understand. I know how he felt.

And the extraordinary thing, the most extraordinary thing today, when the news was released: Two of my dearest family members in far flung countries reached out in a tight little circle to me to write communally about this. It was a group hug of the finest love. The awareness of each other and our common familial struggle with those demons of Robin Williams. And Philip Seymour Hoffman and so many others.

We three have been there. Their pain is our intimate.

And we can never, ever be complacent in our recovery.

RIP Sweet Robin.

Thanks for the laughs and the genius of your mind.

A Death in the Outport.

You asked about Carrie's husband Jack? Well, it was awful. The kids came home from school and there he was in the bedroom, bloody bits stuck to everything, walls, ceiling, floor, bed. He blew his brains out. Thirty-seven years old. A gambler and a drunkard.

Carrie's husband Jack? You saw the grave? We had a card party and raised nearly $6,000 dollars, paid for all that black marble and the photos. Expensive. But it helped the widow. Only thirty five and three children to raise. But all the money went on the grave.

Jack, Carrie's husband? Yes, eight years ago now. Not much of a loss. He kept getting fired even from jobs that never fire you. Know what I mean? Drunk by breakfast every day.

Poor Carrie, trying to hold it all together working at the fish-plant when the kids were small while Jack spent every bit of it on booze and VLTs. Awful life.

Jack was tortured, poor fellow. What with Carrie carrying on with his brother Vinnie for the six months before Jack finally took his own life.

We still can't get over it. There was Jack, a ball of blood in the bedroom and all the neighbours had come into the house when they heard and there they were sitting in the kitchen as if it was some kind of party with all the bottles laid out like soldiers on the table. So the ambulance comes and they have to wait for the cops, can't touch anything as he is so dead that his face was gone off him. And the party got louder and louder. No respect. And then the cops when they got there sent everyone home.

The hard thing was, is that Carrie's story kept changing. From one day to the next. First she was with him in the kitchen when he went off to the bedroom with the gun. Next day that was changed to she was next door and heard the gunshot. And the following week she said she's been off over to her mother's at the other side of the bay when he did it. The cops said it was shock, but, who knows?

What I meant was, I think she put him up to it. No, no I can't see her shooting him in the face and they have tests for that kind of thing, right? But she made him. As God is my judge.

I remember seeing Carrie at the grave, her red hair flowing down her back, and looking like a movie star with her aunt's black hat on top of it. And I saw a bit of a smile on her. A small one, you'd hardly notice. And I thought to myself, she's enjoying this. She's enjoying the attention.

After all, how much attention does anyone get out here unless you create it for yourself?

Skid Row is Everywhere

The news was already there when I got up this morning.

Harry* set out to drink himself to death when he was only thirty after the wife and daughter left him and the only one who could put up with him was his mother.

And then she died five years ago. And the family home started to fold in around him. A light fell off the ceiling, a toilet leaked. Furniture collapsed. Newfoundland Power cut off his electricity and the wainscotting hung off the walls. Floorboards went missing - used for firewood, more than likely. From the outside of the house you'd never guess of the devastation within.

It got so bad that someone lent him a camper and he moved into this, parked on his own driveway, with his dog and a kerosene heater. Things worsened and Health Services were called and they moved him into a unit in a senior residence which he proceeded to destroy. His dog was taken by kind neighbours and is a playmate of Ansa's.

Health Services tried to get him admitted to a detox and rehab programme but he would get belligerent. They called the wife and daughter to try and force the issue to no avail, they had washed their hands of him.

He weighed 300lbs and was completely yellow in appearance when he had a stroke 5 weeks ago. They managed to dry him out in the hospital during his month's stay and his residence was fumigated and cleaned out while he was gone. He was told if he wanted to go home to his government housing unit it would be under the condition that he have a full time personal home care assistant provided by health services .

The assistant started yesterday and brought healthy groceries into the unit. When he left at the end of the day Harry was seen getting into his van and went missing for 4 hours.

He finally showed up around 9 last night, looking the happiest he'd ever been seen, they tell me.

It was the assistant who found him. On the second day of his job. Harry was sprawled on the floor in his living room with his arms open wide, looking like some kind of angel, my friend said. It wasn't long before the police came with forensics and yellow tape and cameras and abrupt words to tell the specators to leave the scene.

Speculation has it it might have been murder.

My take is suicide.

He was 49 years old and had been trying to do just that for the past twenty years.



*not his real name, but all other details are actual.

Please: Can We Stop Already?

I find it incredibly sad as a human being on this tiny planet of ours that so many of us show extreme intolerance and hatred for people of colour and people of other sexual orientations.

These views are inevitably passed on to the children in our care, who then turn around and start harassing classmates at school.

The child of 11 that you see above was the victim of endless, daily bullying and anti-gay taunts.

He chose the final way out. He killed himself. His 10 year old sister found him.
His family had moved to Atlanta only last year.

The suicide of Jaheem comes just after the death of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, a sixth-grader in Springfield, Mass., who hanged himself after relentless antigay bullying.

I grieve these innocent children and their suffering families.

This rings very close to home for me as I have a nephew who was bullied and insulted with gay epithets every day of his school life.

I wrote a post a while back about 2 dear gay friends of mine who have become immune to the endless catcalling.

When on earth is it going to stop? When will sexual orientation and skin colour and gender be totally irrelevant to our lives?