Magical Thinking

Warning: Brevity Ahead:

When I was told of my father’s death I thought I heard a thread snap. The longer you live the more losses we sustain and we develop coping mechanisms to deal with this.  For reasons I find difficult to explain I use magical thinking. So when I viewed my father’s body I found myself thinking  ‘If he is not here, then he must be somewhere else.’  I still cling to that belief.

It was a belief that sustained me throughout the aftermath of my father’s passing.  I did not cry.  I prided myself on my stoicism.  I read aloud during the funeral service and although I was pale and trembling my voice was unwavering.  I received undeserved compliments for this.

But, according to some, I was wrong to react in this way.  I was too cold, too calm.  Later I was told that I had never really grieved properly because I didn’t dissolve into tears every five minutes.  I did not respond because my interlocutor was well meaning. But, deep down, I resented it.  People grieve according to their character. Histrionics aren’t my thing.  And just because I am not an emotional exhibitionist, it doesn’t mean I am not being shredded to pieces inside.

My Late Father

I missed the anniversary of my father’s death. He passed away in July 2013.

I had been sitting here for years waiting for someone to rescue me. A knight in shining armour perhaps. Or maybe a member of anonymous. For two years I waited on this island nation otherwise know as my sofa, surrounded by a sea of red carpet. But nobody came.

And then they told me that my father was dying. He had terminal cancer. But to my eternal shame even this failed to break the spell. I remained unable to tear myself away from the excuse for a life I had created for myself.

(And let me emphasise this: I did this to myself. What I did is widely know as ‘narcissistic withdrawal.)

I only visited my family three times a year and left the burden of caring for my father to my immediate family. They shouldered a heavy responsibility. I have no excuse for letting them do this without me. They spent a large part of their lives on the cancer ward of the general hospital, negotiating with consultants and making my father as comfortable as possible while I sat isolated on my sofa, paralysed by anxiety which sometimes spilled over into sheer terror, rocking backwards and forwards, playing ‘This Too Shall Pass’ on a continuous loop.

My father fought his cancer valiantly to his last breath. But in July 1913 I received the phone call I had been expecting. My father only had ‘He’ll be gone by the morning,; my aunt told me. ‘Come home if you can.

I whispered back, ‘I don’t think I can.’ And then a voice in my head said ‘You must. You will never forgive yourself if you don’t.’

So, in the end I did manage to tear myself away from my tiny  four-walled country. I caught a train for the first time in a decade. I arrived at my father’s bedside at the last minute. The heart was still beating, the motor still running. I kissed him on the forehead and he responded by whispering my name.

They said that he had been waiting for me but the blanket skeptic in me rejects this notion.

A few hours after we returned home from the hospital my aunt kocked on the door of my childhood bedroom to tell me that he had died. ‘He’s gone, Louise’. And her choice of words somehow comforted me. For if he had gone then there was a possibilty that he might come back.

In situations like these magical thinking seems like the only option.

A Little Late Maybe But…

Suffering in Silence

I can only begin to imagine the kind of pain the family of Mark Saunders must be feeling right now. Losing a loved one to suicide (and that’s exactly what it was) is one of the worst things that can happen to you.

Because of my situation (I have a mental illness and have spent rather a lot of time in hospital) I’ve lost several close friends to suicide. The repercussions of their actions cannot be underestimated. Journalists have repeatedly emphasised the fact that Mr Saunders was a barrister, destined for great things, as if that somehow should have rendered him immune to mental illness. I would imagine, if anything, that his situation exacerbated his condition. He was intelligent and resourceful, a ‘high flyer’; he was not expected to ask for help and so he didn’t.

Last year an ex boyfriend, A made his fourth suicide attempt. Like Mr Saunders, A was also a high-achiever. He worked in the City and it was amidst the intensity of that world that he had a nervous breakdown. He goes further: he calls it a meltdown. His name for it is his ‘Chernobyl’. After his first suicide attempt he requested help. He didn’t receive any. All the health services in his area had to offer was a cocktail of medication. People have asked why Mr Saunders did not ask for help. I’m speculating wildly here but maybe he did and was turned away like one in three people suffering from mental health problems who appeal to the NHS for help.

The authorities will conduct their inquiry. We’ll shake our heads and ask ourselves why it had to happen and why it should never happen again. But nothing will change and it will happen again. Over and over again.

Loss

If you have never lost anything then it means that you have never had anything. The only way to avoid loss is to avoid having anything. And what kind of life is that?

GhostCat: Where are YOU?

There will never be a perfect time to have a pet. I am being bombarded by offers from my friend Andrew who works at a cat sanctuary – He has found a lovely little affectionate cat called Bounce. I don’t even feel like visiting. I am so tired. I don’t think this will be a good time to bring cats into a still grieving home.

Bella has been my (almost) constant companion. For a decade she has been by my side. (Apart from my trip to America and Europe when Bella stayed in Birmingham with my parents). But I thought about her, I dreamed about her.

But Bella was a stubborn little Madam and would make me endure lots of silent treatments when I returned which were resolved when Bella felt that she had made me suffer enough. She wasn’t nicknamed ‘Bratcat’ for nothing.

I know I will never find a cat like Bella again. One night, back in 1996, I opened the front door to let a friend out and, as the friend left, this little white cat invaded by apartment. She slipped through the door and let out a piercing miaow, a miaow that said ‘I’m here and I’m here to stay’. And stay she did for eleven years. A lady downstairs had one more cat than she needed. The youngest(Bella -6) was being bullied by the Top cat. So, she came to live with me. Melissa, her first rescuer, told me that she’d been wandering Mill Road – emaciated, with no fur on her back legs – when she found her. She took her back to her flat and was surprised to find that she was house trained. She had also been spayed. My neighbour nursed her back to health but cats can be fickle creatures and Bella began to explore other flats in a bid to find herself another home. Bella had made up her mind. Every night she stood outside my door calling for me to let her in. I did. And every night she came. I made an agreement with her human who found it difficult to have to deal with night after night of hissing, spitting, snarling.

So she surrendered and brought Bella to me. She sat perched on my chest that night and the purrs she emitted soothed me into a sleep devoid of dreams. She became a permanent fixture in my life, almost to the exclusion of everyone else. And she was loyal to the end. She died in her sleep. Next to me. The best way to die some say. I’m not so sure. Doubts are setting in

If anybody’s interested Bella was 17

More Later

Mismatched?

What are Doug (92 year old war veteran) and I to do on these long, dark nights when I pop across the expanse of lawn that separates his flat from mine? Doug was known as Nubby throughout his time in the RAF and then the army. Apparently, everyone with the name ‘Clarke’ in the army is automatically known as ‘Nobby’. No one thinks to ask why,. Well, we sit, we watch TV, we talk, we reminisce. Sometimes I think that some supernatural force has pushed us together. Often I picture us as two helpless, stranded sailors cut adrift from our nation’s territorial waters and everything we once knew. Because the alliance of two people as different as we are is unacceptable in conventional circles. And it is those circles that squeeze the world by throat. So we delicately sidestep the demands made upon us by those who have never been where he has, who have never been where I have and, please God, with a cherry on top, see to it that they never do.

And, yes, another Remembrance Sunday has passed without a remark from Doug. He is more than a war veteran is his constant refrain but nothing can change the fact that when he closes his eyes at night, he sees things that most of us could never even conceive of.

Stepfather

I am merely an object moving through space
Out of place and lacking in grace and you begin
With a disclaimer. You tell me I am essential
But incomplete. You desecrate my disordered dreams
‘Your mother is gone. She died in the night’
No one cried and then the great divide arrived
You only die once, after all. You move in on me
You disagree with my methodology. You disapprove
Of my every move. My words are unheard and undeterred
You detach me from all context and you begin,
Slowly and deliberately, to deconstruct me.

Loss: For the Irretrievable Ones

Morning

You feed me sweet mouthfuls
Of syrup or something similar
And your spirit comes
And drags me through the sky

No one hears my cry
I learned to fly just so that
I could be with you
I soar through
The dawn’s cool dew
And, oh what a view
I have of you.

I Remember

I remember
My lips against her cold cheek
My hand resting on a dying face
My body, weak and trembling
As they lead me away

At night I walk upon water
At night an angelic being visits me
In the land between sleep and consciousness
She takes my hand, leads me out of my body
Through the air, across the land and into the sea

And death shall have no dominion
Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.