New and Old without Ruby

I have to go through new experiences without Ruby in my life and I also have to revisit previous experiences without Ruby in my life. 

To hear a new song, read a new book, try new food, to make a new friend, I have to do these things without her. I can't share the encounter with her or feel the joy of a shared adventure. The lack of Ruby is all-pervading. There are different levels of understanding and appreciation of these experiences and, in all of them, I am slightly more alone than I used to be. From now on I am the new me in my new normal, that is to say, I am missing something. Maybe it is like seeing a beatiful landscape newly blinded in one eye or hearing a symphony unable to appreciate half the tones. New experiences can be chromatically faded or atonal. I am in the present but without. 

To revisit an old event- to hear an old song, to read an old book, to eat food she liked- hurts in a different way as it reopens recently closed wounds. There are many songs I can't listen to, lots of food I can't go near, streets I can't walk down. There are, very gradually, songs I make myself listen to, food I force myself to cook, streets I will tentively and hastily take a short cut through all of which have a direct route to my heart and to my grief.

Occasionally I am caught unaware by a song on the radio that I know she loved or catch a few seconds of a movie on TV she may have incessantly watched, as children do, and the suddenness of that unique jolt is like putting my hand on a hot kettle- I recoil instinctively and with tears of shock. 

These different but similar occurrences, with their variations of effect and connection, evolve over time like a sand dune shifting under a persistent zephyr. I know this is all part of griefs' evolution and I know I must expect the unexpected but the constant reminders of something not present can be grinding. It shifts though and that's what counts. 

The Foreign Land

Being shocked into grief is like crash landing into a foreign land. We are unaware of the new culture and customs. We have no language with which to communicate our feelings and we wander aimlessly in a daze, disconnected from the alien reality we are forced to engage with. 

We can continue to wander and be dazed and disconnected or we can choose the usually more difficult option of facing our grief head on and try to make sense of it all. It is sometimes easier on our fragile minds if we maintain a sense of disassociation as we are "hardwired" to do- a coping mechanism that has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years- to psychologically distance ourselves from trauma so we can continue to hunt, gather, make shelter, procreate, etc. Sometimes it can simply be too hard, through our fog of exhaustion, to put in the now extraordinary effort needed to stare at grief through subjective eyes. If we wish or if it is demanded of us we can maintain our sense of being a foreigner with no common language and try to look out through the opaque prism of anxiety and otherness. But we would be forever distrusting, vigilant and alert, squinting at an angle through our half-closed eyes. 

But there comes a time in the life of most aggrieved people when we have to learn how to navigate this new place. Maybe this comes from the loneliness and aloneness of grief, maybe this comes from griefs' ability to be an occasional mirror to our own character and we recognise our own poverty of control, maybe this comes from an evolution of language creation, of an increased communication in this new place as individual words, sentences and eventual conversations are exchanged. However this comes about we need to learn not just its geography but its customs and habits, the newness of things without our loved one, the considerations it forces upon us. We have to map the roads, learn the side-streets, make ourselves familiar with the locals. Simply put, we have to put the hours in. There are no shortcuts. 

What does this new place- grief- look like? This new place looks as unique to us as the uniqueness of grief is to all aggreived people. This new place is us. My grief is a reflection of me because when I take great time and great consideration of introspection I find myself looking back, albeit a facet of me I have never seen before. 

We find that this land is not fixed. Some roads were put down a long time ago and are cracked with the weight of age, some are freshly laid but some, with courage, we can pave ourselves. Always there is the unfamiliarity of walking through new places without our loved one beside us, a nearby vacuum where there will never be light. But as they have helped shape the person we have become through our shared love, their past life will help us shape our future. They might not be with us in our new land but their influence is ever present. If our love for them, and theirs for us, is so influential that it makes us look into our grief with courage and curiosity, maybe this new land might not be so daunting after all. 

Beautiful things that have caught my eye recently

Man Ray- Hand on Lips, 1929

This one is purely for joy.

Whenever I see this photograph I feel like I am falling in love.

Coping with change

It is a truism in counselling that one's ability to cope with change is strongly connected to how one views change- if we see change as the end of something then it is likely to be much harder to come to terms with but if we see change as creating potential for an interesting and constructive future then we are more likely to come to terms with this newness earlier. 

In and of itself grief seemingly has no constructive use. Why do we grieve? Why have we evolved the ability to feel such incredible fissures through our mind during grief with no discernible use for such pain? I don't know why we grieve but I know, through personal and professional experience, that we can have courage to continue and live a new life, of sorts, after great loss. 

I have endeavoured to create a greater sense of control in some aspects of my life because it is possibly the most positive influence towards good mental health (the obverse of this coin is that a great deal of mental distress comes from lack of control and autonomy- assault, illness, neglect and grief put us into psychic pain due, primarily, to being "out of control" and, often, the less control we have during a distressing incident the greater the trauma as seen in people who develop severe and complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Help can come from a desire for control which can be damaging (such as the development of an eating disorder or ingestion of psychoactive drugs) or constructive (such as exercise or psychotherapy). Our long term coping ability is strongly influenced by our sense of personal control. 

I have worked hard to force myself to consider positive changes after Ruby died, to force myself to consider any good that can come out of it all and to regain control of my life. This has lead me to consider my life in a way I have never done before and to not be afraid to ask the largest question I have ever asked myself, maybe the largest question anyone can ask themselves- how will I live? 

Everything changes. Some things more, some things less, but everything changes. To help me cope navigating these changes I have to consider my route or I will remain forever floating in a directionless sea, a slave to fatalism and the whim of others. If I consider my own fate, if I live how I want to live, I have control. And if I make my future I can become what I want.

So what do I want to become and how will I live to achieve this? I want to become someone that Ruby would be proud to call her daddy. I have high but reasonable ambitions- I want to do no harm, I want to do good, I want to love more, I want to play a greater part in my friendships and in my community of human strangers, I want to defend the vulnerable, I want to take care of other living organisms and the environment. All these things involve active participation and consideration in my world so how do I do it?

I did, and continue to do, what I can- I have become vegetarian, I stopped all sneaky cigarettes, I exercise more than ever, I try very hard to be sociable and to interact more warmly (this is harder than it sounds because I am a bit of a loner and tend to prefer my own company), I consciously identify and try not to concern myself with things beyond my control and, instead, I consider things over which I do have control, I am more concientous at work, I am more dismissive of irrelevances, I put effort into finding and identifying beautiful things (whether this is pottery, food or flowers), I challenge bullies and so on.

There are other potential positives worth considering through this process of change:

Ironically, my consideration of control and change has identified the need to let go, too. Knowing what I need to dismiss, and then dismissing it, has helped me. I have no control over Rubys existence now, she is not alive and never will be, I will never see her again (it has taken two years since her death for me to have the ability to even write such words). I have worked very hard at dismissing the idea that I will see her again and instead try to focus on the things I do have control over ie. what do I do instead? I have been forced into realising the importance of letting go and the therapeutic benefits this has for me. 

Grief has brought a new found sensitivity in me providing an increased responsiveness to subtle maltreatment by others. In connection it has also sensitised me to fragility and tenderness and has matured my appreciation of delicacy.

I am not alone among colleagues, friends and my patients who have been through traumatic loss in using humour as a foil to abstemious pomposity, a very useful coping mechanism. When communicating with people who take themselves too seriously (inflated egos, over-confidence) I now have the strength to suggest a gentle deflation. Many people I have met who have been through strong distress have an ability to raise their head up to a universal perspective and have an acute sense of what really matters and, more importantly, what doesn't. If something is not essential don't take it seriously. 

There has been the kindness of strangers, the new knowledge that everyone has a story worth hearing, an increased understanding of great distress, treating everyone carefully because I don't know "what battles they have going on down there where the spirit meets the bone" (as beautifully put by the musician Lucinda Williams), giving everyone new that I meet the same foundation I give a new painting-  the advantage of a good light. 

The essential expectation and hope is that my future has potential and it can be in my control. It has potential for suffering, of course, but also laughter, love, growth, warmth, beauty, reward through endeavour and maybe eventual happiness. 

Father's Day

It was Father's Day two days ago and my heart broke all over again.

I had almost forgotten this unique and extraordinary pain. 

I also know why the caged bird sings

I run three times a week. I run for many reasons and feel its worth in many ways but the most rewarding experiences I have are the thoughts that can run free in my mind. I may run for two hours at a time. I cannot make a conscious decision to focus on a particular idea but, as I run, my mind is in the moment and It is free to float across thoughts that can sometimes take root. When this happens I can spend an hour or more examining this idea in total freedom without the restrictions that somehow impinge on ideas during normal times. Sometimes, in that moment, I am happy.

I went to a cafe this morning and ran this evening. This is what I thought when I ran. 

Very near my table were two men clinging onto their 40's in suitably conservative striped shirts, socks that are too bright and both had shaved heads because they have to. They both wear glasses that were designed with "aspiration" as their primary aesthetic. They say things like "twenty k" and "five mil" and "hard engineering" and "shifting units". I feel no connection to them. 

There were two women in their 70's sitting in front of me. One is wearing a mint green top the other a light blue top of exactly equal shade and from a shop that must sell only these type of clothes to only these women. They went to the same hairdresser on the same day and asked for matching designs. They appear to be expressing distaste for whoever has left their church recently. I don't understand them. 

In the corner, among the toys, sat three women in their late twenties. Each of them is a slightly different shade of orange and they each have yellow hair. They are nattering over each other as if in competition. There are four toddlers, oblivious to everything except the toy in front of them. I don't know the subject of their conversation but it appears to change by the minute. No one is doing any listening. 

There is a man and woman sitting in the far corner. Their eyes are fixed on each other. Both are married although quite obviously not to each other. He is sitting upright trying to force his stomach in and his chest out. He is animated, strutting, displaying. She is laughing too loudly at his jokes and keeps fiddling with her neckline. Twice she leant forward, lowered her voice and whispered something whilst touching his knee. In response he swept his eyes from side to side in a mock "are we being watched" way and responded to her enquiry with a confession, causing more giggles. They are a million miles from me. 

I could be their ghost, haunting them all if I could be bothered. Any second now someone will walk over to me and sit through me onto the chair below. 

As the cafe got busier and the volume rose and rose individual voices became a murmur in a formless swarm. The busier it became the more formless the drone and the more distant I became. I put my head into my hands, closed my eyes and focused with all the energy I could to single out one voice. I was throwing a lifeline to anyone to connect to but, at what felt like the end of my search, there was no one to pull me back. I was free-falling. 

I started to leave when an elderly woman approached me with a warm and genuine smile and asked to share the table as it was so busy. In an instant I was thrown into human connectedness again by the six second relationship she offered me. There were businessmen doing a deal, old friends catching up on the gossip, new friends sharing parenting tips and a flirty couple helping each other feel fun and desirable again. That woman brought me back. 

Twenty five years ago I read Mayo Angelou's biography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". She died one year ago this morning at around the same time I listened to a radio programme about the history of the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" brought to life by Billie Holiday. I have always known Angelou as the caged bird, with bound feet and clipped wings imprisoned by white oppression, black disempowerment and violence. I know she sings for freedom, for her rights, for dignity, for love. But I never understood WHY the caged bird sings. Until today. It is obvious- the caged bird sings because it has to. The caged bird can't not sing. It doesn't sing because of desire, because it wants to, it sings because it has no choice, it is compelled to sing. 

I can feel caged by my grief. It can imprison me. But I still sing because I have to. I sing for human contact, for warmth, for mental rest, for hope. And that stranger in the cafe, just for a moment, set me free.