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. 

The universe should mourn

There are so many people that will never meet Ruby. I want the world to grieve with me. I want everyone alive to know what they have missed out on and I want them to feel forever sad at their loss. Every human should be aware of not knowing her. Every wild animal should know she will never look at them and wonder about their lives. Every building that does not contain her breath should want to crumble. Every landscape she has not admired should be in shadow. The sun should dim, flowers bow their heads, forest should be in winter. Every rock not climbed on should become mossy or fall into the sea, they have no purpose. Every star in her sky should fall away into inky space. They have no reason. All the water not drunk by her, washed over her, swam in by her should wish for permafrost.

Every pillow should be cool and plump, every sheet flat. All those brushes unaware of the contours of her head and her teeth. 

There are billions of brains unchanged by their lack of Ruby. Billions of smiles and tears of joy that will not happen because billions of ears will never hear her. There are billions of hands that are a little colder because they won't have her touch, billions of eyes that sparkle less bright because they have not seen her. I pity them all and I am angry with them all for their ignorance. 

Whether it knew Ruby or did not know Ruby the universe should mourn its loss. 

A thousand years you said, as our hearts melted. I look at the hand you held and the ache is hard to bear - Lady Heguri

Little dragonfly hunter, I wonder where you are off to today - Chiyojo

A love letter to Ruby

It is nearly two years since Ruby died. I don't feel like writing. I wrote this letter for her funeral. Two years is a long time to not see your child. 

In praise of point and counterpoint

A point and its counterpoint are not opposites but are complementarily different. A counterpoint is a contrarian foil and not an absence of something. It encourages illumination of the subject ("the point") sometimes without casting a light on even its own existence. A counterpoint provides the space to weigh and consider without refutation. It is exploratory and safely adversarial. Above all it promotes clarification, understanding and balance. 

Points and counterpoints on the tip of my brain:

-Honourable prizes are gained from meritocratic effort and not by being a fortuitous recipient in the right place at the right time. 

-It isn't being at the foot of the mountain that provides the summit's reward, it is the endeavour of the climb. 

-Leaves don't simply die, they decompose and provide sustenance and hence life. 

-It doesn't take hunger or thirst to appreciate repletion, it takes food and drink. 

-Being unloved didn't make me appreciate being in love. That took a broken heart. 

-The greatest reward I receive from helping someone is when there is absolutely no recognition of my assistance or no knowledge by the recipient. 

-It isn't knowledge of death that has made me appreciate life but that I understand loss. It took loving someone so much, and then losing her, for me to live with consideration more than any other experience. It wasn't Ruby's death that made me examine my life, it was my love for her.

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers - Lucretius

Combat atrophy and routine. Question the obvious and the known. Doubt everything - Christopher Hitchens

Reverence and Reality

It is natural to idolise those we love or about whom we are infatuated, to elevate them to a status verging on the inhuman. Similarly for those who die time can dull the clarity of their outline and they shapeshift into an idealised version of themselves. We view someone through a crystalline prism ignoring all but their most clear-cut, obvious and desirable qualities. 

Maybe inevitably this has happened to how I perceive Ruby although I wasn't insightful about it because I had no current reality of her existence to compare her absence to. Until now. I watched film clips of Ruby for the first time since she died 22 months ago. 

Looking at photos and watching home movies and film clips had been impossible for me, too upsetting and painful. There are, of course, familiar pictures in frames all around the house but I am so used to them my eyes barely graze them. They can wash past me fifty times a day with hardly a nudge of recognition. But those less familiar images of Ruby, thousands of them stored on the computer and in my phone, taken every week of every one of her 140 months alive are only one unpressed button away. 

Claire and I have very different experiences of this. She regularly listens to Rubys audio diary, hundreds of entries each minutes long recorded on her iPod over the years. It's pretty banal stuff- "got up, breakfast, school, homework, dinner, played at Poppy's house, bed"- but it's Rubys daily banal stuff. Claire receives great warmth and a closenes to Ruby from this. I, on the other hand, find it torturous. On the rare occasions my iPod randomly skips onto Rubys voice I lose my breath and I buckle. 

I know that to navigate through the process of grief I have to put the hours and the effort in. There is no shortcut. Pushing myself to look at photos of Ruby would be disquieting, I knew that, but I didn't expect it to be as painless as it has been. So far it has been progressive and not too displeasurable. Watching Ruby dance and sing and eat and talk and be bored and stare at the TV again was a spectral experience at first. Also warm and beautiful. And upsetting. 

But the most unexpected emotion, and the most welcome, was irritation. One five minute film clip was of Ruby lying on her bed and filming herself singing the popular song of the week from beginning to end. After five full minutes of total self-indulgence getting utterly lost in the music she panned the camera to one side where two if her friends were perched on the end of her bed staring at her with looks of horror and bemusement. This was very "Ruby". She had a level of precocity in many qualities (intellect, relationships, creativity, logic, interests, literacy) but in other ways could occasionally be infantile, irritating and naively overconfident as children can be. And it was totally wonderful to see again. It was joyous to be reminded of these touching but easily forgotten aspects of her character. That song, that damn song, was sung again and again and again to the point where, as soon as the first note passed her lips I would throw her a minor glare, say "Ruby?" and the song stopped. This may read as a little authoritarian but I am sure parents can easily understand that the things repeated by a child so many times they become painful to hear can occasionally irritate you to the point of requesting immediate cessation. 

When I watched another clip I noticed that tiny scar on her forehead from when she contracted chicken pox. I hadn't thought about that scar for nearly two years. 

I picked up her trumpet recently for one of the first times and got a few notes out of it. It was the cue to recall memories of encouraging her, night after night, to practice, practice, practice. She wasn't the jazz genius I was beginning to remember but a normal human child barely scraping her way through a grade 1 exam and who never wanted to practice. 

In all the photos her hair was perfectly placed. But, as proved by the film clips, she would run her fingers through her hair a thousand times a day to maintain the perfect side parting for those photos. I had forgotten that gesture, her long elegant fingers, the balletic arc of her arms. At times she looked almost gangly like a spidery tangle of limbs and hair but at other time she swooped with the grace of a gliding bird. The film clips clarified this to me. I was beginning to forget. 

On Shrove Tuesday this year I made pancakes for us. Pancakes were Ruby's favourite food and they have always been my favourite (I sometimes consider myself a sophisticated "foodie" but my final meal of choice will always be homemade pancakes with lemon juice and sugar). Ruby and I made them every weekend as a breakfast treat and I made them for her last breakfast the morning she left for the fateful trip to Scotland in May 2013. I had not made pancakes since then. But I pushed myself into making my, and Rubys, favourite food. Of course it was upsetting but they were very tasty. After all they are pancakes.

I must remember to remember and I must provide cues for provocation. Then I can simultaneously smile and cry remembering my irritation and joy together. My reflections and grief can feel more holistic, more human and more personal to Ruby. It is easy and comforting to remember the faceted crystalline Ruby shiny and glinting and perfect but, in the longer term, it feels warmer and more genuine to bear in mind other traits. Her chicken pox scar, the way she threw her head back in a guttural laugh, her body odour, holding her iPod too close to her face, scraping her shoes on the pavement as she walked, asking me to make her excuses when she wanted to stay in and read instead of socialise, leaning so close to her dinner plate her hair would drape across her food. The irritations and the love, this was the reality. I revere it all. 

Kintsugi: the beauty of brokenness

The Japanese revere Kintsugi, repairing as art- broken pottery is fixed using gold dust mixed with the adhesive to create an improved, stronger, more beautiful artifact elevating it from mass-produced sameness to a priceless and desirable treasure. In and of itself this has a breathtaking beauty and I would encourage everyone to look up Kintsugi pots online. Philosophically the item has been imbued with an enhanced aesthetic and a sense of individualism. It is only itself and resembles nothing else, certainly no other, uncracked, pottery. Its flaws and imperfections are to be embraced as symbolism of the experiences it has survived and that can be celebrated as its strengths. Breakage is not the end, cracks are not flaws but are natural elements in one's lifecycle that prove flexibility of use, embracing change as inevitable and encouraging safe detachment from the non-essential. 

In ideas of personal identity and as a method of highlighting imperfections and the variations of experience, Kintsugi provides us with a framework to consider our own lives- its ups and downs, fragility and sensitivity, brittleness and toughness, fortune and fatalism, creative point and counterpoint, trauma and reparation, equality and difference and a host of other essential aspects of self and others. Kintsugi celebrates this variety and individualism. 

Repaired things can be more beautiful and of greater value than unbroken things. With such great potential for transformation our scars can symbolise transcendence and therefore embracing damage, and then celebrating restoration, is a necessary part of life's natural cycle. 

Kintsugi also encourages us to admit our fragility. There are times it is acceptable to demand gentle handling due to our delicacy and we should be confident in sophisticated treatment from others. At times we can be translucent and frail maybe as a by-product of compassion or sensitivity- our altruism can make us thin-skinned which, in turn, demands delicate handling from others. We should be treated with tenderness not because we were poorly made or because we are already broken but because we should be allowed to demand a response to our mature fragility that is respectful, moral and based on equality. This is a human duty we can assume from others and which should be afforded from us in return. 

Kintsugi reminds us of our mortality. As Seneca stated "it is not that we have a short time to live but that we waste a lot of it". Nothing is eternal. And if we are not eternal what should we do with the time we have? Maybe we can start by appreciating scars as a sign of life lived adventurously or of grief endured. 

Dream #4 and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

I dreamt about Ruby last night for only the fourth time since she died 21 months ago.

It was a long aimless dream as I wandered around a large Hogwarts-type school, avoiding running children. But it ended when I entered a long corridor and stood still, waiting impatiently for what I knew was about to happen. A teacher smashed through the door at the other end of the corridor and shouted to me "it's OK, I found her" and then Ruby walked in. She was wearing an outfit she loved which made her look like a character from Middle Earth- pointy ears, cape, short hair, bow and arrows acrosss her back- she saw me, shouted "DADDY" in that way she used to and ran full tilt towards me as I ran towards her. When we were only yards from each other I woke up.

I was cheated, I didn't get my hug. I cried in a way I hadn't cried since I was deep in the raw pain of early grief. 

It was a mini-grief all over again. I was ragingly angry and I felt pain, ache, denial, cheated and, after an hour or so, eventual acceptance that I had to fully wake up and face the day. 

I have been startled how much it hurt because only last week I had written about how much I have moved on and that the raw pain of longing has decreased. But this dream threw me back to the harshest early days of vulnerability and fragility. 

What follows is a brief explanation of why some experiences become "traumatic" and why we have to spontaneously relive such negative feelings. There have been various theories over the decades but there is general agreement between neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and others about the basic brain processes that explain why some people develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or a similar post-trauma psychological distress that takes months or years to be resolved. The area of cognitive neuroscience is bounding ahead of other brain research and has tendrils of influence that help explain my chosen field, psychopathology (mental illness):

Our sensory experiences are processed by the hippocampus into memories to be stored. When we are under great duress during those experiences, such as having a serious accident, being assaulted or during a disaster, our "stress hormones" such as adrenaline are greatly raised which inhibits the effectiveness of the hippocampus. Our related memories are then stored incorrectly as the hippocampus struggles to cope and, in the future, we have little control in recalling those poorly processed memories. In addition, as we recall those memories our adrenaline levels remain high which cause anxiety and poor sleep.
The most common symptom of PTSD is "reliving" the trauma through flashbacks and recurring nightmares. In essence these two symptoms of reliving are simply a spontaneous, undesired recall of those traumatic memories in a way that is frightening, realistic and reminiscent of going through the original event again complete with the smells, sights, sounds, etc. Other common symptoms include hyper vigilance, whereby you feel constantly "on guard", as if you may be at risk of attack and have to be on the offensive all the time and avoidance/ dissociation, whereby you psychologically distance yourself from the event and can become numbed and disconnected from everyday life.
Flashbacks can "just happen" but can also be triggered by sounds, smells and other sensory stimuli and can be a distressing, horrifying experience.
There are gradations of distress caused by trauma. This can range from the occasionally triggered upsetting memory, spontaneously recalled from goodness-knows-where, towards diagnosable PTSD through to the more extreme types of complex disassociation which causes a serious breakdown of relationships and coping mechanisms.
There is help for all this distress. This type of problem is well researched and there is a breadth of professional experience relieving such suffering. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR, in which I am partly trained) are the primary psychotherapies for trauma and some antidepressant medications have been proven very effective too, not only in helping one's depression but in the actual successful processing of those distressing memories.

By far, our greatest help comes from an initial recognition of symptoms and then telling someone, anyone. Maybe someone has read what I have written above and it has echoes. Maybe the self-education of coping can sometimes be a myth, that maybe underneath it all we are naked, alone and just want our mummies. Maybe this is why we deserve gentle, moderate handling from others. Maybe our fragility is a sign of our humanity. Maybe a delicate approach from others is a sign of their sophistication and sensitivity and maybe it can be applauded.
Grief, distress and trauma are well-studied phenomena. A great deal is known about their aetiology, diagnosis and prognosis. There is successful, evidence-based treatment that is easily available and I can vouch for its effectiveness through professional and personal experience. Don't suffer needlessly.