The daily grind, bereaved parent style

Wednesday, 06 March, 2013 22:06

The day looks like any other.

I get up before the sun, pull on shorts and a tee, grab the dog’s lead, tie my laces and we’re away. Half an hour later, I check plants in the front garden. Check for new shoots on the baby gum we planted around Christmas time. Come inside, flick on the kettle and the radio.

After the school dash, I return home. Work a day. Pay some bills, hang some washing. Clean mouse shit out of the pantry from an unexpected visit – for when are rodents expected? Really? – and restack the shelf. Admire my handiwork with those Ikea shelving units I bought a few months back. Collect the LGBB from school again, take her to her after school sport. Come home, give her tea. Say goodnight to Dad via the phone, tuck her into bed and marvel at the skin on her forehead, all rosy-smelling from her bath.

I helped bring that skin to being. This flesh and blood. My own. My only. Her brow furrows. I forgot to read her the story of Little Ella, she reminds me. Ulp. Forgot or conveniently overlooked in the hopes you wouldn’t remember I had promised, I wanted to ask her. [It was the latter, by the way]. So I trudged up and got the story out, brought it back to her bedside and began reading.

Half way through, changing words and skipping some of the harder bits (for her) here and there, she sits up. “Where am I?” she asks. “I want to see my name in there.” I grapple with my maternal instinct that wants to tell her to give her sister a turn…. It’s impossible. I have to try and explain to this kid that sometimes, it’s right for us – her, me and her dad – to give Ellanor some of our conscious attention. Some brain time. A loving thought. A gesture like reading the story about her is one way we do this.

I’m not prepared for nights like these. There have been plenty in Lolly’s young life – but probably not as often as you’d imagine or expect – and they still grip me by the heart. Twist my insides. Keep me close to my fears over Lolly’s own mortality. It reminds me how close underneath the thin surface they lie. Lurking.

Today, I found out about a technique – kinesiology-linked, I believe? – that gets a body in touch with where it is holding its trauma. And helps the inhabitant of that body to actually release it. I’m thinking my current health issues are related to the ongoing post-traumatic stress I have. Most days, months, years, I can walk with it and I’ve learned to walk with it and chip away at it. Sometimes, I even pretend it doesn’t bother me that others in similar shoes to mine seem to be able to “move on” far more quickly and not bring these things to the surface.

Then I slap myself around a bit and remind myself this can’t possibly be true. They just choose to surface it in different (and likely more private than a blog) ways.

“I just want a sister.” My beautiful blonde-haired girl is sobbing deeply into her Scrapsy. His ear gets gently rubbed across her cheek, a comfort move she has done with her little soft dog since she was twelve months old. Thank God for that bit of fur and stuffing. Where would we all be without Scraps, I muse. And how the hell do I reply? So I tell her honestly.

“We tried, darlin’. And you were the only one who stayed. Out of all Mummy and Daddy’s babies, you are the only special one who stayed with us.” And now I’m dripping silent tears I hope she can’t see in the dark.

“I’m sorry, Mummy,” she reaches her hand out and cups my cheek, rubbing it slightly.

“What for?”

“You’re crying,” she says, crying herself. Damn. I assure her my tears are not for her to worry herself over. She goes to sleep knowing she is loved. Holding Scrapsy tight, a smile on her lips.

Each time I think I might turn away from this blog, that it is too morose, that I am not putting enough “fluff and light and funny stuff” here, I am pulled up sharply. By my reality, by my responsibility to actually help to balance out the rest of the privileged world’s crud and fluff and light (and gossip and obsession on material things and image and looks and gains and wins and competitions with each other). There are plenty of places for those things to be found and tapped into.

I’ve got to be real. This is my reality. I can’t say yes all the time, be all the things to all the people. The more peripheral, the more likely they’re the first not to be said yes to, their gaze not going to be met by my eyes. I can’t engage all the time. I’m in constant preparation for the energy it takes to sit by the side of my daughter who hurts in bursts.

I don’t begrudge any of this, regret anything. This is my daily grind. And it is – truly – beautiful.

Judge dread: 15 Categories of Verbal Abuse

Wednesday, 20 February, 2013 13:13

6 Comments

It seems no matter how you try, you cannot stop the judging. Or… can you?

The old saying “What someone else thinks of me is none of my business” turned into something deeper for me around Christmas time. I was a captive audience to a loose acquaintance when she levelled me with the recounting of an alleged opinion of mine (which I had never actually had and never uttered, so, therefore, had never shared). When I rebutted and told her she was mistaken, she smacked me (verbally!) between the eyes with a counter-argument, which was, basically, “Yes you DID say that!” Given that it was a feeling I had apparently had towards another person, I was shaken to the core that I had no control over convincing this person otherwise. The story had already been shaped and decided, without my input (and despite my protests now).

I realised as the days wore on that, when I looked at it in more depth, not only are others’ opinions of me not my business to know or try and change, nor are their recollections of what I’ve said in any way mine to own. I can’t possibly own my own words or actions once they’ve been interpreted by another. Their perspective of me by then is so far beyond my control or power to change. Any number of varying factors – their upbringing, their historical family patterns (and their subsequent conditioning by same), their state of mind and their current environment (including whether any mind-altering substances are shaping their views and memory), who and/or what influences their view of the world, and any other subtle factors – too numerous to name – affecting their very state of wellbeing… – all go into how an individual is likely to reach their conclusions about you. The more familiar they are (or think they are) with you, the faster they will make up their mind.

The incident would not have even registered on this other person’s radar. The conversation continued in another direction and I threw a blanket over it energetically to douse any flames (or retaliations or objections in me that would have only served to highlight this as a sore point for me, which would have no doubt inevitably led to an even more inflamed situation where I would have had to argue my innocence to someone who had clearly already made up their mind about this fictional opinion I had [not] shared with them in the past).

The weeks went by and I was distracted by the busyness of occupying all spare space I had with my dying stepmother. Recently, I was interested to discover amongst her many things a document on verbal abuse. Many moons ago, I spent some years with her as a co-facilitator in the Alternatives To Violence Project (or AVP) and violence, in all its varied and obvious as well as subtle undermining forms, was highlighted in my everyday life. The document brought my awareness back to those times over my recent past where I may have relaxed any or all of these points below.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have felt the sting of any and all (mostly, all) these verbally abusive digs. As a child growing up, I heard them over and over. As a teen, even more. By the time I was flapping my own wings, it was under the weight of years and years worth of conditioning to expect hurtful comebacks – slights on my sensitivity, telling me what I was feeling, telling me what I was feeling was wrong or incorrect, trivialising whatever I did say when I got up the nerve to say it out loud, name-calling at its most horrific (delivered by a parent, it doesn’t get much more hurtful when you’re a kid) – and so I began adult life unwittingly very much hypersensitive to such abuse. So aware of it was I that I found much of it very easy to avoid inflicting on others.

But my respect has slipped from time to time. Nobody’s perfect – I’ll be the first to put up my hand and say I’m not trying to pull a shifty here and pretend I am! The time is now for me to remember this list, though, and get back to being mindful of my language. If I want my daughter to avoid being hurt by such abuse, she must not be exposed to it as much as I am capable of ensuring (so that the chances of being attracted to it are greatly reduced). I can see already the points that could quite easily become commonplace as a desperate/heavy-handed parent, even in my diligent and aware state, and it is simply not acceptable of me to justify this sort of verbal abuse. Whatever the reason.

Where once I could read that list and believe I was only the recipient and never the perpetrator, now I revisit it and discover I am, indeed, both. That if I am not perpetually vigilant and mindful, I too am perpetrating violence in what I say. It made the scenario with the acquaintance who now harbours this recollection of something I never said even more important as a lesson for me. What I can do – in fact, all I can do – is stick to the teachings of the 15 categories of verbal abuse and ensure I neither perpetuate it or put myself in a position where I am the brunt of it.

This will ensure I am taking a soul stance of rejecting that form of energy and simply not allowing it the space in my awareness or pattern.

Do you ever reach stages where the only option you feel that you have left is to mind, monitor and be diligent with your own behaviour? Do you ever stop to realise how much that helps not only you, but your neighbour?

15 CATEGORIES OF VERBAL ABUSE

WITHHOLDING—“There’s nothing to talk about.” “What do you want me to say?”

COUNTERING/CONTRADICTING—always saying the opposite to what your partner thinks/feels (e.g., “It’s cold outside”/ “It’s not cold, its cool.”)

DISCOUNTING—denying the experience of your partner. (e.g., “I don’t think that is funny—it feels like a putdown to me.”/ “You’re too sensitive.”)

VERBAL ABUSE DISGUISED AS JOKES—comments disguised as jokes often refer to the feminine nature of the partner, to her intellectual abilities, or to her competence (e.g., “What else can you expect from a woman!” If the woman says the comment was hurtful, the man may respond: “You can’t take a joke”/ You have no sense of humour.”)

BLOCKING AND DIVERTING—the abuser refuses to communicate, establishes what can be discussed, or withholds information. The primary purpose in doing this is to prevent discussion and communication, or withhold information (e.g., “Did anybody ask you?”)

ACCUSING AND BLAMING—blaming the partner for own anger, irritation, or insecurity: “You always have to have the last word.”

JUDGING AND CRITICISING

TRIVIALISING—communicates that what you have done or expressed is insignificant.

UNDERMINING—not only withholds emotional support, but also erodes confidence and determination

THREATENING—“Do what I say or I will get really angry”

NAME-CALLING—all name-calling is abusive, even terms of endearment with sarcasm.

FORGETTING—involves both denial and manipulation—forgetting promises, forgetting abusive episodes (“…therefore, it didn’t happen.”)

ORDERING—denies equality and autonomy. (e.g., “You’re not wearing that are you!?”/ “We won’t discuss it.”)

DENIAL—“I never said that, what I said was…”, “You’re getting upset about nothing.”)

ABUSIVE ANGER—angry outbursts, accusing and blaming the other person, making the other person the scapegoat. Attempts by the other person to find out what is wrong do not work because the abuser will deny the anger (“I’m not angry”), or simply blame the other person.

The lone star

Monday, 11 February, 2013 07:36

28 Comments

Her tears fall as she looks at me, incredulous and bursting with enthusiasm.

“Of course I want to read your bloody book!” she says with a happy wail. So I post it to her, complete as it stands right now – a full two books’ worth, if truth be told – and hope for the best. Hope she will at least begin reading but tell myself not to expect much, either in terms of feedback or length of time it takes for her to get through it. I can only wonder if she will get time to read it over the months before her imminent death.

“Kirrily, is it too late to call you? I have some things to say about your delectable book,” she says down the phone. It’s 10:30pm. I sit and listen as she accurately pinpoints every little nuance, every detail I have subtlely woven in. She can see them. She has lifted all the tiny rocks in my story and waited patiently for the creature within to reveal itself. She gets it. She gets the pain and the anguish and the ever-present over-arch that comes with persistent infertility for the first time in her life, she says. She gets me. This time, we only talk until midnight. I thank the Universe silently, once again, that this is all happening during the summer holidays so that our family can roll with the late-night punches and routine interruptions a little more easily.

“It’s getting harder now. I came the closest to death yet yesterday.” She sounds weaker on the phone this time. Her emails are becoming confusing and confused. Yet still, she perseveres with my manuscript. I regret out loud that I sent it to her. She finds the strength to push back to me, “No, don’t you do that. Don’t say that. This is vital.”

I worry. I phone a mutual friend in despair. What if this is sucking the life force out of her? I ask. The wise old friend says to me, “Hey listen, the dying do this. They seek and find the loose ends. They tie up the big things that have claimed so much of them in life. You are helping her rest in peace.”

God. This is getting too much. Little did I know when I wrote the book that it would become something that held so much significance for someone so close to me. What is it? What is it she is searching for in those pages?

“I’ve finished your baby.” She tells me with great relief. She is sitting in her chair. I have come to visit for what turns out to be the final time. The read-through has taken her two painstaking weeks. We talk some more about the relevance of the book. We move on to other stuff. I help clean out her room a little more, I finger the books on her shelves. A lifetime of reading and research, some of them her own published works. This woman is a book. I grimace internally again at the loss to the world that will come in her death. I daren’t say any such thing out loud because I know she will counter me with a wave of her hand and a reminder that we are all teeny tiny grains of sand. But can’t we shape shift entire mountains together, as grains of sand? I want to ask. It’s impossible.

“Now you listen to me.” She grabs my hand with surprising force once she is propped back up in bed. Today has been very hard on all of us. Traumatic to witness. Ultimately, I am thankful I have been here in their home, her sole audience. I have just finished packing up the books and cards I have helped her to pick out. She has written to as many grandchildren as she can. She could hardly hold the pen to the surface by the third one. She is very tired now. So tired.

“You must get that book published. And listen…” I lean in closer. Because she’s making me! “You are an incredible writer. I love, love, love the way you write.” She fixes me with her steely blue sharp stare when I begin to shrug off her high praise. Coming from her, this is too much. I have viewed my stepmother as a great wordsmith for as long as I have known her, which is nigh on twenty-four years. Every letter she’s ever written me, every book, every work manual… meticulous in their pitch and prose. She made them so. She waggles my arm and stresses her point. “No. Now, stop that and get that look off your face. You are a writer. Know it. You simply are. I only wish I could have done more, I don’t think I have done my job…. Now get it published and don’t stop until you do. It will happen.”

She breaks her grip and waves casually to the paper bag containing my manuscript next to her on the bed. “Here it is back again, and you might find some other things in there as well that could be useful.”

We lock gazes. She’s not the same as she was a few days ago. Her thoughts are drifting, I can almost see it. Like vapours shifting to another realm, already she is heading there. In three short days, she will be gone.

When I get home late that evening after the three hour drive, I pull out the contents of the bag onto my kitchen bench. It has burned a hole in the passenger seat all the way and I have been itching to take a look inside. The manuscript. I flick through pages. Half-way through, I turn to my husband (still working hard at his computer) and muse, incredulous, “She’s edited the entire fecking thing. She’s amazing!” Sentences I have struggled with for several years have been flipped and corrected with her familiar hand. Little trips and quirks in my writing, cleaned up with pinpoint accuracy. I can hardly believe my eyes as I consider the super-human effort this must have taken her. She didn’t just read this for herself. She read this for the world. I get it now. I try to stop the feelings of guilt rushing up and gulp them back down. No, she wanted to do this. The book hasn’t taken the life out of her. It’s allowed her to die not wondering, I tell myself.

Alongside the manuscript is a notebook. I open it to discover it is one of her diaries. I see quickly that they contain entries right back to 2002, many of which hold conversations from her perspective that I had with her back then about “this little presence” I had begun to notice around me. I am floored. I am humbled into silence and feel the pounding in my chest. She has captured Ellanor too. She was holding her all along, right behind me. The deep significance of our first child to my stepmother, and the magnitude of this read-through, becomes painfully, beautifully, hopelessly clear.

A week after her funeral, I look out at my backyard. Under the cover of fast-falling darkness, the greens appear more rich, the leaves hold more secrets. I turn my gaze up to the clear dusk sky and see the bright, lone evening star. Like her piercing blue eyes on me, the star is holding me in its presence. I stare at it. It appears to be focusing on me just as intently.

Can lone stars achieve anything? Or are they destined to stand out for a little while before getting lost amongst the eventual light of billions of other stars around them?

I just don’t know. But I do know one thing now: I’d better bloody well try. Just as soon as I make those edits she’s marked….

Thank you, Sus

The scrubber

Thursday, 07 February, 2013 21:28

9 Comments

I should have been a teacher. I wanted to be a play therapist. I even got so far as doing my work experience in the Play Therapy department at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. I never wanted to go back to school after that. How could my life be the same after I had spent those precious few days in paint up to my elbows all in the name of “getting away from it all” with the tiny patients with the tubes taped up their noses and gruesome bandages and bald heads and all sorts? I was changed.

But I didn’t do any of that. And I forewent the opportunity to remain immersed in the wondrous world of the young human being. I love the way children see things, I adore hearing what they have to say. When we were in Japan last year with our family, one of the most fun outings we had was to my nieces’ elementary school. Japanese children are just as comical and inventive as any child in any other classroom in the world. We heard about outlandish mind-reading robot inventions and flying sneakers and food that had wonder-powers. That’s kids’ imaginations for you.

I forgot until I had a daughter who made it to primary school age that children have THE most delightful way of saying things. Cringe-worthy ways. Hysterical ways. Tiny tots become troopers who become little comedians. I hope all those kiddies in the hospital have gone on to amuse their parents in the wildest, most embarrassing ways.

Yesterday, I found myself being talked at (six year-olds have that habit, don’t they?) by one of the LGBB’s little buddies. And even I, with my enthusiasm for what children are saying, found it hard to follow along.

“My mum has a scrubber friend,” she told me with authority. Out of the blue. No lead-in and no “that reminds me…”.

“Oh?” I said. “Wait… she has…. a what?”

“A scrubber. A lady scrubber.”

“Oh! Really!” How the hell do you reply to that?

“Yeah. And she’s got funny hair and a zebra dress.”

Geez. This kid was really not impressing her mother’s friend on me. Was it her bestie? A new friend? Some unfortunate woman with questionable dress sense and a nasty hairdresser?

I sidled up to her mum a few steps later as the girls skipped ahead and said to her, “So… I hear you, uh, have a friend who’s a scrubber. A…. lady friend.” Thinking on it now, that was very bold of me, wasn’t it? No gentle enquiry, but something more along the lines of, “What kind of friends are you keeping?” How did I know their child hadn’t been overhearing a conversation in which she used that term to describe…. ummmm, me? Or someone else I shouldn’t know about? I walked right into it.

The girl’s mother stopped walking, paused just a moment, then bent over double laughing. When she composed herself she explained. Turns out, it wasn’t…

{ source }

It was, indeed, a scrubber…

And that is why I never doubt children. Not completely. There’s always an element of truth in what they say.

Somewhere.

Thank you. Here’s some fish.

Wednesday, 06 February, 2013 14:59

25 Comments

You know I appreciate you, right? Even you passer-by readers who never stop to comment but come to my blog as soon as I hit ‘publish’. In fact, in recent months, that’s the majority of (non)interactions on this site. But I don’t mind. I feel like this blog isn’t mine to own any more. Hasn’t been for some time now.

While I settle in to new life in 2013, one that looks vastly different to 2012, I want to take this moment to say a big resounding THANK YOU. To all of you. My life has irreversibly changed, the moment I walked in to that hospital room in Castlemaine in November and my stepmother laid her sharp, clear blue eyes on me and let me back in to the fold. Her fold. Tears shed, faces well watered, by the end of that visit I knew I had stepped up a notch as a human being. I got it then. I had reached the other side of a 10 year-old estrangement and discovered, post-humously via the diaries she left me to read, that her views and assumptions and opinions of me and what she surmised about how I felt about her – something she’d gathered from a few words I spat at her during an argument in a tiny flat in London in 2003 – were not able to be explained. I couldn’t take back those decade-old words. She was dead now. I couldn’t even correct her. Couldn’t even explain.

She accepted me anyway. In the end, as she said, “Minutes. Wasted minutes. Every one of them from now until the end. Don’t waste another one.”

It helped me chase away the remaining doubts I had about whether I should do more in the face of estrangement. In the face of any other person’s opinion of me (or recollection of conversations they supposedly had with me, ever, in the history of our association) and whether I had any right to try and correct people in that opinion.

If I do or don’t, it doesn’t seem relevant to me any more. One of the last sentences my stepmother (“there is no step any more, you are simply…. my daughter”, she said one day a few weeks ago. One day, I too may be bold enough to remove the step, although she will never be considered my mother. Sister, perhaps…) said to me that final Sunday was, “What you’re doing, here, right now, is upgrading as a healer. It’s bitterly hard. But to go through it is to hold a hand out to someone else once you get there and show them the way through it.”

How can I deny this? For, surely, it’s what we all do after a major loss or trauma. We just have the choice whether we stand in service or move on and not. That’s the only difference I can see.

So, again… Thank you for reading as I share my realisations here. Heck, it just sounds so trite that I haven’t done it in a long time. But what else can I do? If I don’t say a simple (yet genuine and deeply heartfelt) thanks, I’m coming off ungrateful. If I do say it… well, I overstate it. Like now.

Heh… Heh-heh. Moving on.

Before Christmas, in the flurry of driving overnight visits and bedside stays, on one of the rare days I was home we noticed the fish were gone. All gone. Every last one of them. It was something I decided I would have to put mind to feeling sad about “later”. I didn’t have time to be sad about our lovely 12 month-old fish in our memorial pond going missing. Presumably to the birds. A few weeks passed and Steve and I decided we needed to rescue the pond from the fate of consumption by string algae (a nasty, invasive and persistent pond killer once it takes hold, unless you remove it diligently and treat the water). For weeks now, it had become somewhat of a meditative weekly (if not back-breaking) practice – scrubbing the pond…. not a euphemism.

When Steve lifted out the filter to give it a good clean, all but one of our fish scurried out from beneath it. They had been there all along, probably frightened at one point by a hungry but inaccurate bird of prey. We could cope with one lost goldfish. We rejoiced! And bought three more, which Lolly named.

Oh dear. I worry when kids name fish and guinea pigs and other little flaky animals that may or may not survive. Poor little “Carly” turned belly up within the fortnight. However, Lily and Steve are still going great….

And the goldfish we have decided to call Ditzy even turned up. From somewhere. I found her yesterday, hovering in the water current and mistaking her breath bubble for food. Over and over. “Oooh! Food! Oh no, it’s just a bubble *spit* Ooh! Food! Oh no, wait… it’s just a bubble *spit* Oooh! Food!” Perhaps we ought to have called her Dory.

The peace and tranquility of fish is undeniable. I wanted to resist, I did. Steve and I built our first pond the year Ellanor died. The fish were great to watch, growing and having babies. We had to leave them all when we left that house. When Pepper died last year and I dug that big hole, I started to see this very pond in my mind.

Now, twelve months later, the plant life is responding and the fish are growing. They’ve even had two babies who have so far survived. Teeny tiny little things (they start of almost invisible, transparent as they are, but the largest of the two is now just barely 2cm, if he’s lucky). I go and stand above them, letting them reset my stressed mind. I relax into watching them float and dart and twirl their impromptu dances. Swishing and swaying in the pond currents. Beautiful.

And I thank them too. But they don’t respond much either. I’m okay with that, they’re doing what they do.

I hope you’re receiving my thanks, truly, as you go about doing whatever it is you do when you visit this blog.

Lunch in an underwater world

"Bubblezzzzzz!" Yes, Ditzy-Dory

I Am Me

Tuesday, 29 January, 2013 18:42

10 Comments

Many moons ago, I was involved in a project (begun by the Quakers, of which my father is an active member) called AVP – or, Alternatives to Violence Project – which is active in many countries across the world, initially and primarily in prisons and similar institutions.

This Thursday, one of the more prevalent meditations during the 2.5 day workshop will be read out at my stepmother’s funeral. I will remember fondly the weekends we shared together, as participants and then as trained facilitators, conducting these workshops in Victoria. I can’t think of AVP and not recall these most precious hours with her.

Here it is, for you. A beautiful reminder of the obvious but sometimes overlooked. Never forget: You are You. That is more than plenty enough.

I am me.

In all the world there is no one else like me.

I have this one life to live.

The way I live my life can make a difference:

To the people close to me;
To the people I live with – work with – play with;
To the community I live in;
And to the people I may never see.

I can use the love given to me to help others.

Sharing this love makes me happier and others happier.

When I am unkind to others in words or actions,

I destroy something in myself.

Love brings people together and builds.

Violence separates us from others and destroys.

Let my life be built on love.

Let me find the good in myself and the good in others.

Let me be a part of making this world a better place.

Let me be the REAL ME.

I am me.

I am a valuable person.

There will never be another me.

For Susannah. Who taught me the meaning of strength and being me, in her actions rather than words. And in her genuine strive to live it rather than voice it. The soul knows the true wisdom beneath whatever we are saying on the surface, know this. It also knows who it needs to be with to properly survive. Listen.
And below, the LGBB. Among the bamboo. Strength personified. A plant whose wisdom, had it not been imparted by Susannah, would have otherwise been completely lost on me. I find it not a little comforting and coincidental that the below photo, taken two days after she died during an outing to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne (on a promise to her just last week that I would take Lolly to see the outdoor production of The Wind In The Willows) , is one of my most ‘liked’ and commented on on Facebook. It seems we all see the beauty in the long strong stems, a gift from that Plant universe within a universe, and are touched by it on levels possibly unnoticed.

I find great comfort in the fact that I will be subtlely replenished by so many unseen things.

In fact, I rely on it.

That’s not an App….. THAT’S an App

Friday, 25 January, 2013 23:11

16 Comments

{ source }

“YESSSSS,” he says, two fists pumping the air.

I look up. I can barely keep my eyes open. There is so much to be done. I almost forgot to remind a friend he’s needed as a pall-bearer. The date’s been brought forward a day, there are flowers to arrange and sound system and catering and slideshows and orders of service to organise. We can’t find the cemetery guy. We’ve got his number, I spoke to him only just before Christmas – “we’ll be needing a plot, but I don’t know how soon,” I told him then… turns out, we need it next Thursday – but he can’t be found now. Maybe he’s on holidays. How inconvenient. That’s the way things go in the country: it’ll all work out, don’t stress.

“I think I finally got it,” my weary husband’s voice says to me through the fog of my own bereaved thoughts as I struggle to finish a website I’ve promised. I have a sales team waiting keenly now. Pressure’s on. Death can be so inconveniently timed. He has been working night, day and all hours in between (wherever they are to be found). School is back next week and they have created something out of thin air, these technical wizz-kids (wizz-men sounds so totally wrong, although Steve is the youngest at 40). Yesterday one of their sales team was *actually* hugged by a teacher who loved their App presentation so much she just had to express her gratitude.

THAT’S an App.

And he’s done it all in between ferrying, herding and nourishing our little Lolly. He’s here but he’s absent, forced to work until he works this out. They’re relying on him. Hundred of students and their school faculties. Equally forced to look after the LGBB single-handed because I simply cannot take her with me when I have been travelling to help my father and stepmother. She’s missing her Dad very much. She hasn’t been together with us all for weeks, it feels like. I’ve not been here more than two nights in the past week. I’m taking her back with me on Sunday night, we can’t leave Dad alone to wake up on his 70th birthday on Monday with an empty house.

“What?” I make the error of asking. For my own amusement, I capture most of what he says – he’s barely caring if I’m listening, assuming I’m typing as I stare blankly ahead. But really, I want to document a little of how in awe I am of what he’s helped to create here.

After a year of planning in between their day jobs, four blokes have put their heads together and come up with a winner. I daren’t count my eggs before they hatch, but I hear those chicks a-tappin’ and they’ve got “pay off the mortgage” written on them…. But they hit a stumbling block last week. The App was refusing to accept the data. The orders are coming in daily – school after impressed school – but the App… oh, Mr. Hart, what a mess.

Until tonight.

After days of solid concentration and silent internal hysteria, he thinks he’s cracked it tonight. Just for humour’s sake, let’s see if you can follow along (for the record, I couldn’t – I usually can, but with this…. nup. He lost me. I partially blame my current emotional state):

“I’ve been tailing the access log and the error log for the NGIX web server looking for errors in the PHP-FPM. The error code #502 said the upstream header was too big so I modified the NGINX.conf and added into the http section fast CGI buffers of 8k, 16k and 32k (I think that’s what I did), restarted NGINX and accessed the server from the App, requesting a full refresh of data and instead of getting a 502 error, I got a 200 response from the server… which means it’s all ok. And the app loaded the data it was getting. Finally. Was that Lolly, do you think she’s asleep yet? When I refreshed the data from the app, it sends a json packet to the server which is passed through a PHP page that requests data from the MYSQL database which loads it into an array (in memory) encodes it into json xml that’s returned to the app where it’s decoded and stored into the SQL database within the app to display all the various information.”

The moral of the story is, my husband is a freaking genius.

Oh, and… his middle name is Jason. See? All true geeks have a json in them somewhere. Fact.

Coming through the fog and waiting for the life after

Tuesday, 22 January, 2013 18:46

25 Comments

I write this in that space so very many of us have been before. The waiting space. The one between worlds, between veils. It’s imminent, yet all of us are still on a hair’s breadth. Waiting. Wishing it wasn’t so but on our haunches ready to accept the inevitable.

I’ve done death before. I’ve done between veils before. Heck, I’ve even done there and back again! But not as close to home as this. Not when I knew it was coming either.

Tomorrow I do the drive again. My bag is permanently packed now. But this time, I will probably not have a coherent conversation with my stepmother. The hours and hours of contemplative, making-up-for-lost-time, soul enriching chats we have had with each other since her condition became known in November have fuelled me.

On Sunday night, more loose ends were tied in neat bows. I knew, she knew and Dad knew – somewhere in the background there while we were thick as thieves in her office of full, high bookshelves and creative whorls of energy – that the more bows we tied, the more ties to life were cut. I opened the covers of books she pointed out on her bookshelf and told her to write in them. Write to her grandchildren. We only got so far. But it will have to be far enough.

I have taken charge of her beloved Green Oil. I cannot quite believe it is now under my roof. Under my care. The Green Oil is a wondrous potion – many of you probably know of it, know the name or have experienced the healing quality of it (when applied to anything from tinea to mosquito itches) – and her particular original Mother batch is now in my den. The baton has been passed. It is my honour and my duty to pick up where this quite incredible woman left off. She would be so angry at me for writing that. Praise is not her “thing” and she said to me as recently as this past Sunday – when I told her for the longest time I had held her in such high regard – that she was not happy and almost offended by that because she had (what she thought was) painstakingly ensured she was not seen as the creator of this amazing legacy.

Her knowledge of plants is not gone along with her. She has shared it every which way before she has left. Even in the years we were not on speaking terms, no visit into my garden for any length of time – not one – was undertaken without her voice reminding me of long-ago wisdom on how to tend a plant, care for it, learn from it, appreciate it. Where the garden faeries live. Where the wonder and beauty is to be found in the smallest, most seemingly insignificant of weeds. I cannot properly articulate how interesting and life giving her contribution to a vast body of work has been that I (and many others) have been privileged to study. What she has left undone she has passed now to me to study, learn, intuit, interpret and complete. I’m still agape and agog and in awe at how I will possibly do this (and do it anywhere near credit). And I have probably just alienated my remaining readers of this blog by even writing all of this.

But there you have it. Main spiritual task for 2013 has been set. I am going to be learning from the Plant kindgom where my stepmother was up to. I’m ready. I hope she continues to help and guide me. But mostly, I feel I am back in true service after quite a long lull. It’s not that I didn’t already have great purpose before, but this is a renewal of life-giving energy for me that had become depleted by simply “living the daily grind”.

This is the beautiful thing about death. It enlivens the living.

{ Source }

Do you believe in fairytales? No one said this would be easy

Sunday, 13 January, 2013 07:23

13 Comments

Another year passes and my senses focus back in on the dream that was borne and lost so long ago now.

It has been nine years today since Ellanor was born and made us sit up and take notice. Of ourselves, of each other, of the significance in the life in all things, right down to the finest blade of grass by the roadside. In these intervening years, I have sought strength and comfort in a great many things, my aim being to share what I found and how I actually came to (quite early on) find my peace. I’m still unsure if I ever explained all that adequately, but it will have to be enough. But if I ever thought the magic in her coming had been well and truly done and dusted now, I would be mistaken. This life is orchestrated so minutely, the present so interwoven with events from long ago, that only once I reach the point of closing another door to the past do I fully appreciate the absolute beauty of the learning that is to be found in all sorts of painful lessons.

One of the few teachers around me who would have had the strength not to shy away from this ordeal was actually out of my life this entire time. For ten years, we were estranged by … well, I still don’t know. Besides, the reason is no longer relevant. The point is, this person wasn’t there. And yet… she was! Just tantalizingly out of my reach. I’m not talking about Ellanor this time. No, I’m talking about my stepmother. Although we had not been on speaking terms (rather, I wanted desperately to speak with her and have a relationship with her but she had stepped away most definitely and remained mysteriously and consistently distant and cold for reasons unexplained and still largely unknown to me), it was she – even through the estrangement – who wrote and offered us this most magnificent story which might very well have Ella’s, Steve’s and my names in it but is a message with universal implications, all the same.

If you haven’t read the true fairytale “Little Ella: A Universal Love Story” yet, it’s about time you did I should think. Especially today, in honour of her 9th birthday.

Anyway, all this time while I have been reading and studying and learning, I have felt separated from my stepmother by some necessary, unexplained, force. It’s not been the first (nor is it possibly the last) estrangement of its kind in my life. But this one has smarted the most. She was my closest confidante when we parted ways, if not physically (for there was always the common connection of my father) then certainly energetically. I was confused and would be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes wonder how it could be that someone who seemed to “get” so much of how this strange and beautiful world ticks, and sought meaning in whatever she didn’t understand yet, could be so seemingly callous as to not even come together with me over my child’s death.

Most of all, I wondered how it could be that I had this word scholar (one of two in the family, this one married in, as you might remember Dad is a dying breed of top notch editor) who would never read the book I had penned about my universal journey through grief.

Well. Never say never, I’m here to remind you. Two months ago I got the message that my stepmother is dying. Is, in fact, very ill with secondary tumours that are taking hold quite vigorously and giving her a good chance to get last affairs in order. There was no question, I needed to go to my father’s side. But the unknown was… would I be welcome at hers?

Without thinking about it terribly much, I moved through the doors of my own pained ego and stepped into the embrace of a dying person eager to reconnect. The spell had been broken – although for the record, I never saw a frog prince get kissed – and the shackles dropped away. Being who we are, because this is just what we do, the two of us immediately came together eager to draw a defining line in the sand that symbolised “No slipping back” but allowed room to ask burning questions or express pains. I had just one: “You never read my book and when I found out you were dying, I thought you never would.”

Her tears sprang out like jetstreams. Of course she would love to read it! This Plant woman, who has spent a lifetime reading and studying and learning, this fount of knowledge on the Plant Kingdom and the energy of the Faer Realm, this believer of the importance of spell-making and spell-breaking, all for the sake of the continuation of this golden planet we live on… she is going to read my offering now. I’m almost choking on the opportunity here and couldn’t print it off fast enough for her. Time’s a-wastin’ when you know you’re leaving soon!

Significant paths through any – ANY – hardship or estrangements in your life are being constantly given to you. Sometimes, with all that has befallen me that is just so beyond my control even if I wanted to try and control it (for who is powerful enough to control or prevent death?), I have to remind myself while I am in it that this too shall pass. This is not a test, not in my view. This is life. Simple – and simply complicated – as that. No stage rehearsal, we are living the real thing every day. When it’s shit, yes it’s shit. And it can get really… really shit. But it’s still not a practice run. You don’t get to do over that exact day ever again. In some respects, thank goodness for that, ‘eh?!

I have learned one thing from this reconnection if nothing else: Life is a fairytale, if we choose to see it. Fairytales aren’t always sweet and light (but they have their moments). They can be dark and downright grisly. They can be scary and confronting. The messages are there, and it is our choice how (or if) we interpret them as we go along with them.

And as I type, my daughters’ story – and that of Steve’s and mine – is sitting in transit somewhere, most likely in the post sorting plant, on its way to the lap of a woman whose insights I have highly regarded since I was 15 years old. May her spark and her will be with her until all her Earthly plans have come to pass.

They may be gruesome and downright sad at times. But fairytales can also come true, you know. And in her own words, my stepmother quite accurately says:

“People can eventually handle things when they have the common language of story.”

What’s your story?

(and don’t worry, that’s merely a rhetorical… unless, of course, you want to share in the comments)

Our birthday girl. Thankyou, Sweetpea x

“Why am I here?” Life as we know it

Saturday, 05 January, 2013 07:40

9 Comments

I filled my cup this morning. That first coffee has taken on more than a habitual practice over the years. It’s become a comfort. A reminder. An appreciation.

A comfort that whatever I am currently facing is but fleeting. I have survived the hardest. I will get over harsh words, I will move through the grief of death of a friend and family member, I can ride out the sticky situation in any social circle. The sun will set on this day I started with a coffee enjoyed in solitude and my body will rest.
A reminder that I am capable. I am able. I am able-bodied, and emotionally sound, to carry whatever the day may bring. I can do and take on whatever needs to be done (or endured).
An appreciation that I can do and feel all these things with a healthy sense of detachment, no matter how close to home… or the bone.

Why? Because I know the difference between allowing myself to be consumed and affected by any and all things that come my way and truly having something to be consumed by.

When someone you have created with someone else dies, your body knows it. On a cellular level, you know it. Beyond your thoughts and your feelings, your Soul knows it. There is no way to properly convey or describe it. It must be lived to be truly known.

Lovers speak of literally having a sore heart; in matters of the heart that sometimes happens. And it’s true. There’s nothing that can prepare the young innocent heart for the physical pain of the thwarted love.

I choose daily to be thankful that I found a way through. And my “Grateful” comes in the form of staying out of most things with many people. It might come across as aloofness, shyness, apathy, perhaps a lack of social know-how. It’s actually none of these things. It is merely energy conservation. In times when I am not being called on, I sometimes wonder why I don’t just get involved and join any number of social/online conversations. I mean, heaven knows I am online often enough to see them. But I don’t join. And then I get the phone call, the email, the text message.

“I lost my baby.”

No fewer than three such occurrences over the summer holidays so far have landed in my awareness. Bereaved parents directly seeking me out to find whatever comfort or solidarity there is to be found. So I am reminded once again that I have chosen a great task this lifetime. Even in setting up an online social network for myself, I might have liked to fool myself it was about me…. It never was. I am humbled by the reminder as I hold these parents in my thoughts and light a candle again today.

It’s not all play. It’s not all about working for the dollar either. My job is tremendously enriching in ways that go beyond the fun, go far further than any dollar could stretch.

As I finish my cup and wrap up this post, I am grateful. This is my life now. This is the life that lies beyond the searing, unmentionable soul-tears that have left now-healed scars on my heart. This is me. This is them. This is you, too. We are all moving forward – regardless – each moment we are still here. And for as long as I am breathing and can saunter in to my kitchen, able-bodied and clear of mind and enjoying making a simple cup of coffee, I will give thanks to whatever view lies outside my window. Because I can see it. I can think freely again, unconsumed by pain or grief. Detached and ready for my next call to service. Passing it on.

It’s a beautiful, fragile thing, this life as we know it.

The daily grind, bereaved parent style

Judge dread: 15 Categories of Verbal Abuse

The lone star

The scrubber

Thank you. Here’s some fish.

I Am Me

That’s not an App….. THAT’S an App

Coming through the fog and waiting for the life after

Do you believe in fairytales? No one said this would be easy

“Why am I here?” Life as we know it

Let’s Connect

Follow on Facebook:

Grab Me!

Looking for something?

Latest Posts

Follow Sunny Side Up

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Want to dig a little deeper? Related posts:

Let’s Connect

Looking for something?

Latest Posts

Follow Sunny Side Up