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. 

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.