Just memories.

There are so many memories. But they are mine and wouldn’t have the same resonance if I tried to share very many, I don’t believe. 

 

You see, tomorrow, January 21, will be five years since Magucha died. Now it never has been my intention to solemnize this day into a “mourning” day.  Magucha would never have wanted that. It is after all just another day – the sun will still rise in the East and set Westward over the Indian Ocean (viewed from Perth).

 

Tomorrow will, in a sense, be a day of celebration for a life well lived. Magucha refused to be cast down. Her whole approach to life seemed to be “Life is to be lived. Live it. To the full!” And so she did. She was never still, just like a sparrow – my pet name for her was “pardalito” – Portuguese for “little sparrow”  – always busy with something or someone. 

 

Rather than adopt an attitude, “What can I expect from Life?” Magucha approached it differently with a, “What does Life expect from me?” So she was always up to something – more often than not helping some wayfarer who has stumbled on their journey through life. 

 

And I was glad to be part of that. And I respected her, almost unconscious, desire to help others. And I hope I helped too. I loved her, you see! 

 

But in retrospect one always remembers the better times – the many rushed journeys to hospital and the many days spent in hospital, just became part of the background and tend to recede further as time goes on. Just as does the fist full of medications she had to take twice a day – I still have her hospital pharmacy list.

 

Magucha was  tough. Ever since her late teenage years she had suffered from kidney failure – she died just short of 63 years old – so nearly 50 years of illness. This she endured with stoic fortitude, never complaining, always ready for tomorrow! She was like spring steel – always bouncing back with a smile and a thank you.

 

In many respects I think that what the American rebel and “Gonzo” journalist, Hunter S Thompson, wrote gives a good insight into Magucha’s whole approach to life:-

 

“ Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow! What a Ride!”

 

And it was a ride – being her partner, lover and friend! I wouldn’t have missed any of it. But it is the memory of her gentle side that I remember so fondly. She loved children. Having been told not to have a child - that having a child of her own would overload her compromised kidneys, she was so proud to give birth to a healthy little girl. Her love for Caroline was palpable and wonderful to see. 

 

Being the person she was she gave equal loving attention to Rob whom she refused to call “step son” but always “MY son Rob”. And I loved her for that – her innate kindness and sense of justice.

Then when the grandchildren arrived she was always there to offer help. She was their beloved “Vovo” (Portuguese for grandmother).

 

So, as you can see there are so many memories.

 

As the anonymous poet Atticus wrote:-

 

“What a beautiful thought” she said,

“that even death does not conquer love and sometimes even makes it stronger.”

 

And:-

 

“She had an uncanny energy for life, 

thankful for every little miracle it bestowed –

and it made her entirely impossible to live without.”

 

I know I have used this poem before but it fits my mood so I’ll end with it:-

 

My Wife

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The Great Artificer
Made my mate.

Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The Mighty Master
Gave to her.

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The August Father
Gave to me. 

             

                            Robert Louis Stevenson

Trying to understand

I know that I have written about this before but it is a subject that certainly engages my attention – what, actually, is LIFE – that essence, that vivifying factor that makes something alive which is absent when something that was alive is now dead? This is the ultimate in pointless questions I suppose, as I don’t believe we will ever know. It may be that we are never supposed to know.

And yet I try. And I’ll keep trying. Always.

The various forms by which life expresses itself is astonishing. Take for instance the very small black ants that I find in my kitchen sometimes. They are no more than, possibly, a millimetre long and yet they are aware of danger and will scurry out of the way if they see my thumb, or the shadow it casts, descending on them. They are alive and sensitive to danger and aware enough to try and remove themselves from any threatening situation as quickly as they can.

I find this extraordinary – that something just one millimetre in length has (possibly) the same awareness of danger as I have. But that is Life. Yet it puzzles me still – it always has.

This, by a rather circuitous route, gets me to consider another aspect of Life - my feelings -my sense of loss and grief. This is certainly not a new topic for me but that doesn’t stop me from always seeking answers.

There is a difference, I believe, between mourning and grief. Grief to my mind is more than a deep sorrow. To me grief is similar to a deep knife cut. It hurts. But the wound can be bound up and healing will begin. The wound may heal but the scar will always remain.

There is also a time element associated with grief. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about grieving and loss in his letters, “Time does not console, as people say superficially, at best it assigns things to their proper place and creates an order.” After the great stillness that accompanies death, life gradually becomes normal again. The hours and the days, that had been so disrupted by the death of my wife, Magucha, seemed to swing back, slowly, into their habitual rhythms. I had to eat; regain some regularity in my sleep; greet the world and its people. Life continues.

Mourning on the other hand has a connotation, at least as I think of it, with lamentation. Now I did lament, not outwardly but in my heart it was a different matter entirely. But no one can lament forever. Lamentation is necessarily rather brief. 

One deep lesson I have learned, however, is that death, and the realisation of death, especially of someone we love, never exceeds our strength to bare its burden. Death does after all “bookend” our life – where there is a birth, there will ultimately be a death. Just the way it is.

I am sure that through love and through death we, all of us, learn that Life entails the loss of others and the abdication of any ideas of “control” over events that we may think we have. A true awareness of this gives us a greater understanding of the pain needed to reconnect with the life we lead. We need this pain to explore, as difficult and confronting as this may be, in what specific way our loss has impacted our life. This can and possibly should be, a transformative moment. 

As always in moments of high emotion I resort to reading poetry and prose I find emotionally enriching. From a small book called “Fruit Gathering”, by the Bengali Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore, I offer the following simply entitled “LIX” – 59 in Roman numerals:-

“When the weariness of the road is upon me, and the thirst of the sultry day; when the ghostly hours of dusk throw their shadows across my life, then I cry not for your voice only, my friend, but for your touch.

There is an anguish in my heart for the burden of its riches not given to you.

Put out your hand through the night, let me hold it and fill it and keep it; let me feel its touch along the lengthening stretch of my loneliness.”

Love - the greatest gift of all

I know that I have written on this subject before but it is still something that, as I get older, is of interest – grief, mourning and the cause. There is after all only one end to life. But this subject, for some reason, is studiously avoided. So while I’m not sure how to introduce this I find that grief has many facets and is very puzzling. We are, after all, mortal beings. Trying to make sense of death, however, is very hard. We will all, at some stage of our life, have cause to grieve and mourn. 

There was, in my case, the death of my wife Magucha whom I dearly loved.

Then there is, now, the harsh reality, still not fully absorbed, that my life will never be the same. Her love, her intelligence, her insight, her emotional support, her wonderfully infectious laugh, her mischievous quirky humour – is now all gone.

Then, now for me, there is the settling into a new way of life that is part acknowledgement of her memory and the way we used to do things together and part acknowledgement that from now on I’m on my own without her at my side. This is still a work in progress.

Then there is most difficult part of my day, not so strange really I suppose, difficulty in actually going to bed. I defer this necessary function until the last possible moment – 12 mid-night, even 1am. Then I might read for a few minutes before I “crash”. Once asleep I sleep well. It’s just getting the “courage” to actually go to bed. Bed is not the same now, you understand.

Then there are my own questions. But I do believe in something that is above and beyond us all to which we are “attached” by the essence that common to all living things - Life itself. Call this God if you like.  And then where did my Life come from – the same place it will return to? It makes sense to me, that death is a “transition” from this life to the next – just as a birth transitioned me from “that place” to this. This is a subject we, all of us, usually avoid, ignore or change the subject when it is introduced. Why?

Then there is the problem that we humans are unable to imagine “God”, or conceptualise “God”, so we bring “Him” down to our level and imbue “Him” with human attributes that we can understand – passion, hate, vengeance, anger, jealousy and such like. Reduced to this level we now need to propitiate “God” and get “Him” to agree to our point of view – hence the requirement for sacrifices (hopefully symbolic). Is this because humans are all supposed to be born sinful (because of Adam and Eve)? With a sacrifice, it is posited, we can attach our “sins” to whatever, or whoever is sacrificed, and so be absolved of “sin” and be “cleansed”.  

Surely, surely, any God who can be “altered” by anything men do or say, or by the sacrifice of an animal or human (even if symbolic) cannot be a perfect God? God, surely, doesn’t need a reward? God, surely, cannot be bribed? Why load, even symbolically, some poor animal or human (that God created in the first place) with the wrongs that we commit?

But personal sacrifice is a different matter. Is this what grief is – a form of personal sacrifice? That the more we love the more we grieve?

I believe there is a Spanish proverb that goes something like this: “Take what you want from Life, says God. Take it, and pay.”

And so it should be – we reap what we sow! The Law of Cause and Effect applies to all. This is justice and by my book, this is Love – maybe tough love – but Love none the less.

I like to think that this place, this planet Earth, is but a school for what comes next. We all need this school, to learn to Love – and to forgive.

All this, of course, gets me no closer to understanding what Life is; that “essence” that is present when something is “alive” and is absent when something that was “alive” is now “dead”.  

To me “God” is pure Love and understanding - this is “His” greatest gift of all, even if it is the most difficult to accept.

This is all rather circular and brings me back to the point where I started. I still grieve.

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

    Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,

    Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave

    There lives a prophet who can understand

Why men were born; but surely we are brave,

    Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

                                                            James Elroy Flecker

Can or should grief be medicated?

It is with dismay, bewilderment and some disbelief I read that grief has now been medicalised and been classified as a “pathological” condition. Grief is the most natural emotion or feeling experienced when someone they love dies. I mean even swans grieve (or at least show signs of loss) when their mate dies and will remain near the body of their mate.

Humans have suffered grief and have mourned since they first walked the earth – some 1.5 million years ago so why is it only now in the last few years that it is considered in the same category as a “mental illness”?

Now (as “defined” by the American Psychiatric Association – APA, in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual version 5, DSM 5) there are Major Depressive Disorders (MDD); bereavement-related major depressions (BRMD); Later Bereavement Disorders (LBD); also - possibly - an Adjustment Disorders (AD) – adjusting to the now changed circumstances. Then there is also apparently research into the validation of intense lengthy grief to determine if this is a “pathology”, (in other words a biological “illness”) - a pathology called “prolonged” or “complicated” grief (PG or CG). Validation, I understand, rests on the risk of “future harm” – thus confusing the (possible) risk of a “illness” with an actual “illness” – if you get what I mean! Or even (gasp!) that grief has been “derailed” and become “frozen” or an “interminable” grief!   

Furthermore, apparently, those who determine these things have decided that grief should only last for two weeks. Any longer and it then becomes depression. Once it becomes depression antidepressants may then prescribed.

One is left to wonder if these “experts” have ever grieved or mourned.

It has been written that: “Grief is an automatic reaction, presumably guided by brain circuitry activated in response to a world suddenly, profoundly, and irrevocably altered by a loved one's death.”

There is one HUGE assumption in that statement; the presumption that grief is the result of brain function. But is this really the case?

In my case it was my “heart” that felt the pain of loss – a gut loss - like a wrenching, a tearing of something. My reasoning – my head – tells me that my wife is dead but it is my heart that feels it, that feels the emotion of the loss. Her love; her companionship; her emotional support; her intelligence; her sense of humour are all now absent.

And I still feel the loss – eighteen months after the “event”. But do I need to be medicated; am I depressed; am I suffering from a “frozen” or “interminable” grief?

Apparently, and totally unconsciously, I have adopted an ancient method of coping – writing and reading about grief and grieving. I certainly find this helps me.

But I know that I will always miss her.