When things fall apart

 I am struck by this experience of accompanying someone in a dire prognosis. No doubt, for each person or couple the experience is unique to them. In my case, my husband has made no bucket lists but rather sees each new day as an opportunity to reach for a cure to his condition.

It's incredibly frustrating to both of us that a potential cure is not allowed in this country and we may in fact soon have to board a plane to purchase the no-harm medication elsewhere. I am no conspiracy theorist but there's no doubt that there is profit at the heart of such decisions to refuse access to potentially lifesaving medications currently inexpensive.

 I have been forced to look inside my own mind for a way forward, for a way to approach each day, navigating his approach and my own, one more centred in the facts before me. I have seen this positive thinking bear fruit and I have seen it become a failed harvest. 

I am reminded at just this very moment of the title of Pema Chodron's book, 'When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times'. I must order this book today for it seems timely.

There is no question that it is indeed a difficult time. I dreamt last night of being in war, of having to navigate around the enemy to be safe and I woke, needing to escape the dream. I lay there, aware of the reason for the dream. I was in a deeply vulnerable place.

I think when you are in a long marriage, especially when it began when you were still in your teens, the thought of losing that mate is so confronting, hiding in denial, or anger, or disbelief, seems far better an option than sitting in the facts of the matter. I have used this strategy for quite some time.

Who knows why or when one begins to let that outer shell of security go, but it has gone. My mind seems to be stuck in the moment. Will this be the last anniversary, will this be the last year. Every transaction, every 'good morning', every decision seems so poignant.

I once heard Blanche d'Apulget talk about her last year with Bob Hawke (a former Australian Prime Minister) and she said it was the best year of their lives because it had been so intimate. I am not sure that my husband will be so vulnerable in the last year of his life if it is to take time away from the task of staying longer. I am not sure he sees the value in that sort of approach, and I am not expecting it.

Rather, right now, it's an accompanying kind of task, and in many ways, my role is to provide comfort and support for him to do what he thinks he should do.

We both are not inclined to share distress or worry with our children, but my eldest son was in town last week and it was impossible to completely hide my state of mind from him. Goodbyes are never easy and he saw my tears as we said goodbye. It rattled him and he has been checking in on me as much as he can in his busy life. I noticed him say in one telephone call, 'It will be better when...' and of course that's not a bad thing to say. It was a rough day when I saw him, no doubt about it, a sort of rock bottom from which I have risen.

 I remember once much earlier this year say to a confidante that I felt "stuck". I don't feel stuck any more. I feel like I am truly living the days as best I can, not expecting too much of myself and at the same time not giving up or giving in.

My youngest son is here until he finishes his Masters degree in Counselling. He chats with me about the material in his course and it's the material on Attachment Theory I find so fascinating. There's no question I have not always been securely attached, nor my husband, but I like to read that this attachment is flexible. It can get better.

I'd love to sink into the arms of someone - anyone - who was willing to be the comforter. It's not easy to be the source of strength for others, to be the one 'all right', 'fine'. There's the temptation to fall apart and wait for someone to come along, perhaps, to save me. Since I doubt that could or would happen, I find myself a little avoidant, for sure. I am soaking in my own company. At the same time, there is a voice whispering in my ear a great deal, 'You will be okay. I am here with you.' I am not sure who exactly is whispering, but I appreciate her company.

Love

 This will be short. I don't mention it here too much or in my life generally, with the children or extended family or friends. I guess we are both being stoic, he and I.

However, I am the spouse of a man who has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and for some reason today I want to say that, to myself.

I want to acknowledge that I may lose, earlier than we ever anticipated, my husband whom I married 43 years ago.

One's brain does everything to save the Self pain and my brain is no different. I can assure myself my husband will beat the odds and be totally healed. It actually is possible.

The facts are thus: I would be devastated to lose him. I have loved him, and he has loved me for nearly 50 years.

I have the rather unenviable ability to imagine the future, of walking into our holiday home, a place he loves, when he is gone, and that moment fills me with intense sadness. 

It makes me realize how very much I love him.

A note to self: to cherish each day.

The Gap

I cannot say I have a great deal of experience with the loss of loved ones but each loss has been felt acutely. In the case of my father, it was a sense of regret that he was alone at the time of death. I had visited him a few weeks before his death but needed finally to return to my young family. And there was a mix up with contact details for my mother so they couldn't reach her. 

I felt sad about his dying, and when I returned again to Australia for the funeral I remember the weight of the feeling just as I was about to enter the Church; the Church where he had been married and I had been married. I recall it as a sinking feeling; like I was being pulled down and back.

Thinking about it now I felt he had a good life; the life he wanted. It wasn't a privileged life and he had his sorrows like us all, but he had a marriage that fulfilled him, largely, and work and interests that engaged him. Although he died relatively young, almost 77, it had been a life such that when he passed, there was a relative lightness about it; an end to the cancerous state.

I have lost others I was close to. The loss of David who I met through his blog 'Room at the Top' is still felt. We were chums and could shoot the breeze about almost anything. He had an old world charm about him, a man that shined his shoes, you know, and I appreciated all that. 

 

He was a darn good friend, and someone who offered sound advice lightly; respectfully and sometimes quite firmly. I suppose I just look back on all those conversations with gratitude and affection. Again, it wasn't a privileged or perfect life, but he had so much sense and he had made peace with the world and his world. The sense of his passing was also a degree of lightness.

In the case of Deity there is a sense of heaviness about the passing; that it should never have been this way. I am struck with this sense of weight about it at the same time as a sense of release; for him and for me. For whatever reasons, this world was too weighty for him and as I think about it now perhaps no one that finds the days so heavy should be asked to endure beyond a certain point.

To be clear, he had a sense of silliness that was light and breezy, but the darkness was never terribly far away. He just couldn't get out of its clutches. It wasn't like Churchill's 'black dog' at all; not depression. It was the difficulty that ensued when carrying the wrongs of the world; when searching for relief not easily found.

It has a sense for me of how I felt when my father in law died. There had been so much passion; so much angst, drama, anger, intensity; conflict; resolve, commitment, that on passing, the world did seem lighter for the passing; the warrior at rest; the battle over.

When we lose someone who has made up our reality, it's a new reality for us. Everything looks a little different. There's a gap and we have to decide what to do with that gap.  It's an opportunity to look out at the world with fresh eyes. We need quiet time to process the passing at the same time as we need to engage with this new life of ours.

It's a strange phenomena for me right now. As much as I know with absolutely certainty that Deity is gone and  will not be returning in that form again, I do feel him around me and I sort of want him to be proud should it be that particular cloud above my head from which he is peeking down.

Do you ever catch yourself walking down a street and looking out with a sudden understanding that what you see isn't actually 'real? I am not at all sure that here we are on Earth and there are the dead, somewhere else. Souls linger about, at least some of them; maybe those we want to linger about.

Maybe that lingering we sense might also be called the love that remains in the heart. As a Buddhist might say, rupture becomes rapture.

This too shall pass

The end of a relationship, particularly a relationship in which a power dynamic has been played out, is never easy. I think there are reasons why these sorts of relationships are particularly painful when they come to an end. A power dynamic assumes that one person is in charge; one person is the authority figure, and thus the other person is the humbled entity; the child, if you will; the vulnerable soul. The submissive partner is not just losing a union with another person. She is losing the opportunity to express her self in a way she can't do in other relationships.

I'm not implying for a second that the dominant member of the union doesn't suffer at the end of such intense couplings. I think that they too are vulnerable to suffering and pain when the submissive is no longer under their care and guidance. But my point is that since it is the submissive partner who may have spent years learning how to yield and 'let go' to the other, it's a particularly hard task for her to find her own personal power; to stand on her own two feet. There's a very strong possibility that she (or he) will remain in a sort of grief state for a prolonged period of time.

It was interesting then to hear Oprah talk to Stanford Graduate School of Business students and mention a time when she sat with Dr Phil and a grieving mother whose child had died. This mother didn't want to go on living.

'Why,' asked Dr Phil, 'do you spend time in grief rather than celebrating the life of your child and the love  you shared?' (words to that effect).

Ophrah said she could feel a shift; a transformation of mindset. It gave me tingles to hear that.

I immediately thought about my submissively inclined friend in her grief at the end of her power dynamic with her partner. I thought about how she needed to reframe what had happened to her; that they had had a wonderful opportunity, the two of them, to explore themselves through a relationship that had lasted years and years, and that whilst it was now sad, very sad, it had been a glorious time in their lives, and one they would not have missed for the world.

Oprah was especially impressive that day talking to the students. You don't hang about with people like Maya Angelou and Nelson Mandela and not gain some wisdom. She said this:

'Your life is your greatest teacher...to bring you home to yourself...connect to your energy force and then you are your best.'

She also said this:

'When the personality comes to serve the energy of your soul that is authentic empowerment.'

She believes that we are walking towards our 'supreme moment of destiny'. How incredible that after all she has achieved she believes she is still walking that path! Still, she understands that on her path she has the opportunity to connect people to ideas and stories and to help them live better lives. Oh yes, I get that!

After all her years of interviewing every kind of person from every walk of life she believes that every person in the world wants the same thing and asks the same questions:

'Can you hear me? Do you see me? Are you fully here with me?'

There is no question that a power dynamic is an opportunity to explore these very deep, universal questions and themes. We tend to bare our soul to one another in such a dynamic in a way that we can't do with other relationships. Or, we try.

'Here are my failings. Here are my needs and my wants. Here is my hurt and pain left over from childhood. Here's what I haven't got a handle on yet. Touch my vulnerabilities. Look deep into my heart and my soul and get close to the shadow that follows me relentlessly. Embrace the darkness. Love me. Love the whole me with your whole heart. Be a whole hearted person. I'm vulnerable, show me your vulnerability too. Show me your fear. Open up. Be free. Safe, with me.'

This is what we are saying, perhaps not in words but in actions and deeds; in our efforts to reach the core and embrace the core, imperfect as it may be.

Is it any wonder we feel pain when that very special person in our lives is suddenly not there?

Yet, if it is true, and I believe it to be true, that every experience is a step closer to coming home to ourselves, what an amazing opportunity to get so close!

The waves above the water may induce a tempest, a storm of life threatening proportions at any given moment in our lives. An hour later the waves may settle; perhaps only ripples are noticeable. Yet, underneath the sea, there is always calm. The waves of our lives don't effect that which is always there, steady. That's home.

This too shall pass.