Ring ring

August 20, 2010

My mobile phone rang today
I answered
“Could I speak to Mottsu?” someone said
“No” was all I said

Someone introduced himself, from a vineyard in the Hunter Valley
A marketing call

“Mottsu died about 6 years ago” I said
“I am so sorry” someone said

“Thanks, you couldn’t have known” I said and then explained that Mottsu didn’t have a mobile phone and I could easily that we had signed mailing list with his name and my number – we had holidayed in the Hunter a year before he died.

More apologies, more consternation and more reassurances and we hung up.

I felt dull. The whole sequence was quite surreal and I couldn’t help remembering the time I had been shaken by the realisation he wouldn’t call me. I hadn’t imagined someone would call him.

Weird (especially given my musings in the previous post on remembering).

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. Mark Twain

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Crossing me

May 10, 2010

You get to the edge of who you are and there’s no going back you have to cross.

Cross with care or cross with abandon.

My experiences shape who I am, and recent experiences, the ones I write about, have certainly taken me beyond what I had imagined was me and what I would have regarded as my limits. I have crossed edges, boundaries, and borders.

I could label my experiences as personal development but that makes travelling my course sound self directed. I’ve wandered without a destination in mind, and although I would like to boast otherwise, I must quietly admit that I’ve presented my id or passport, with trepidation more often than boldly.

It’s also true that I could never quite have cracked up and quit, not even when I sat listening to the fridge. I did what I was able to and gently pushed at the edges, redefining me as I went. It’s ongoing work.

Somewhat paradoxically, there is less control and more abandon in who I am now. I’m not without fear, any solo traveller will appreciate there are inevitable moments of self doubt and cross and I grow.

I live a beautiful life, I know that when I can smile to myself on a morning tram packed with commuters, and I swear not much smiling happens on those journeys. Then there’s the almost boundless joy of taking a deep breath of dog, or those moments when I clumsily hug someone who’s not expecting to be hugged, I make it all up as I go along.

I don’t know how it all happened, how I got to where I am. I am thankful to have crossed me and kept on growing. I lost Mottsu and I managed to find the best of me.
I don’t know how that happened.

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Bring it on world 3

April 14, 2010

For all the coping, recovering, and staying strong I did, there were some oddly disconcerting episodes too. I managed to set fire to my house, and not realise until woken by neighbours. A bit later on, I fell off my bike, knocked myself out and broke my collar bone.

Both events helped me realise I was not completely invincible, I needed to make space for vulnerability as well.

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Bring it on world 2

April 13, 2010

I mentioned feeling invincible, it happened.

I went on living, kept breathing. I didn’t crack up and quit. With that came a sense of wonder, a sense of boundlessness.

It wasn’t like having super-powers but I did have an unusual sense of safe.

I was working in Tampa, Florida as hurricane Charley approached. There were warnings and mounting concern, the almost 400,00 people in the area were advised to evacuate. I decided to stay. I envisioned standing by the quay, leaning towards the sky, lashed by wind and rain. Defiant.

First the office closed and everyone was required to go home. I thought I could ride out the storm in my hotel. The hotel closed, I had to check out. By the time I arrived at the airport there were actions afoot to close that too. So much for pitting my self against the elements.

I made arrangements and brought my flight across the country to Portland forward a few days. The airport was crowded and filled with nervous energy. I was bemused, feeling cosseted from the building threat. It was odd to feel so removed.

I think that facing down the wind would have been and expression of the anger I hadn’t felt thus far. Good old stage 2 of grieving full of anger and resentment could have manifested, except that I had to leave town.

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Clunkers

April 11, 2010

Suz replaced the broken teapot with a sweet little earthenware teapot. It was kind of her to do, and she felt it was the right thing to do.

The new pot is small, Suz fretted that she had bought me a one person pot. A pot for one that one would serve to remind me of my aloneness.

Although it is a little pot it holds almost 3 cups worth, or 2 mugs, that makes it a pot to use with friends. I can’t help but look at it and be reminded of being alone, mostly due to Suz’s expressed concern that it should not do that.

Dear are the friends who tried to console and help did just that but not without the odd ‘clunker‘. I love Suz and the little pot, happy to be clunked with caring.

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First try at counselling

April 1, 2010

With some trepidation I turned up for my appointment for grief counselling. Our meeting didn’t go well from the outset.

Baz had been counselling people in Mottsu’s workplace, since Mottsu’s death, he is familiar with the case. When we meet Baz gets my name wrong and can’t recall Mottsu’s name. He puts me off-side in the first two minutes, from there it gets steadily worse.

Baz reads a poem aloud, it is one I chose to include in the funeral service, I can’t help but wonder where this is leading. I find myself holding back, defensive, waiting to see what he’ll do next, the ensuing silence seems to make him nervous so he starts talking.

He explains the conscious and subconscious mind, inexplicably, writing those terms on a white-board. I watch…

Baz related the story of a young girl on a family picnic, she chased a ball into some low grass where she saw a snake. He said that she picked up the ball and carried it to the car. After putting the ball into the car her arm was caught in the door, which (as Baz told it) left her scared of snakes. Even today I am unsure of the point of the story, because he didn’t say.

It sounded like a stupid story with no relevance to my situation. I did try to mull over possible links as he rambled on.

Next, in my counselling session, Baz related the story of a man working in a manufacturing plant who lost his arm in an accident involving industrial machinery. On the anniversary of the dismemberment, apparently, the man would experience the sensation of a whole arm. Again, the connection to my own situation was not obvious to discern and being unsure of what to say I just nodded and stayed silent.

Baz hurried on to another story, this time about a man who was mugged at a Melbourne train station car park. The man was so shaken by the experience of being beaten and robbed he was unable to return to the car park. Baz had helped him by slowly bringing the man closer and closer to the site of the crime. First a few blocks away then, the next week, a little closer until they stood together, somehow triumphant, at having returned to the site.

Irreverently, I wondered if the consultation wan’t working, as I wanted to laugh. It wasn’t mirth, it would have been an expression of disbelief and despair. If this was professional care I might never recover.

After about an hour there was a temporary lull in Baz’s dissertation, but not before he informed me that expressing my grief would be important.

If only I could get a word in…

I had been expressing my grief at home and in the streets, my pillow wet with expressions of tears. This might have been the first dry eyed hour I’d lived through since Mottsu’s death.

I had to tell Baz how I was feeling and let him gently know that I wouldn’t be returning. I told him that he may have made some assumptions or drawn some conclusions about how articulate I was, or wasn’t, based on the little I had said during the session.

I informed Baz that I had failed to establish a rapport with him and that it might be better for me to see another counsellor. Strike one.

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Somehow I became a runner

March 17, 2010

It’s an Art Hotel and there’s no gym. Milan at the front desk advises that the Hobart Aquatic Centre is 3-4 minutes walk away and gives me a map. “Just go up Davies St and it is over there” he says, vaguely waving his arm over his shoulder indicating a southerly sort of direction.

I walk out the door in my running gear and head away from the harbour towards the nearest main road and walk along looking for Davies Street. I’ve been working in the Hobart office and my colleague, Katey, knowing that I recently started running, suggested I might like to enter the Hobart City to Casino Run this weekend. It sounds like a good idea, I’m here and I have been planning to try a 10km event in a couple of weeks. I am not a confident runner, the Hobart race will be good preparation.

Tonight will be training my first session on a running machine. It takes me 3 or 4 minutes of walking to establish I am on Davies Street and, according to my map, heading in the wrong direction. I call into a bottle-shop and buy cigarettes, anticipating the pleasure of a cigarette post run.

Cigarettes and running are both post-Mottsu habits. It’s complicated.

The nameless guy in the bottle-shop point me towards the Hobart Aquatic Centre, telling me I need to use the pedestrian underpass and cautioning that it can be a “a bit dodgy” this time of night. It’s 6pm.

It is $12 for a casual pass and a green hospital id tag is fitted to my wrist. The running machines are daunting, but my whole life is daunting, the machine has lots of options for gradient and speed settings. I set a flat terrain and opt for manual speed control. The machine demands to know my weight but I am coy about revealing it. It wants to calculate how many calories I burn, I just want to run.

The machine records time, distance and speed, regularly flicking it’s Led display to my workout statistics, meaningless. I run in cycles of 10 minutes and then walk for 2. The sliding surface takes a little getting used to but I settle into running at 8k/hour and walking at 6.6. In my head I plan covering 6 kilometres but the machine decides it has had enough and slides into a cool down before I am ready. I get confused about the distance and the simple addition of the first burst and this subsequent bout gets hard to do while feet are pounding. I feel I should have covered more distance for the effort. I decide to stop fooling myself and count the distance run not the distance I wish I had run.

When I’m done and the machine has forced me through another cool down cycle I can hardly walk. My legs are expecting the floor to slide along at the speed of the machines and I experience a strange skating feeling. Finding my way back to the Art Hotel is easier than the original journey and I feel great, now confident about finishing in the City to Casino on Sunday.

My mind is made up I’ll play it safe and stay injury free by running the 5.8 km course rather than the competitive 11kms course. It’s only two weeks until my first planned competitive run so I convince myself not to over-do this running business.

While showering my decision is affirmed, I feel tension in my upper left leg, I’ve stretched a muscle, as far as I can tell, my bum knows I have exercised.

Sitting in the clear autumn night I enjoy a glass of chardonnay, while scribbling in my journal and smoking a cigarette.

The clock in the Hobart town hall strikes 8 as I wait for Katey. Despite the wine and cigarette I feel athletically accomplished and enjoy my post run endorphins. There’s a still and velvet black sky illuminated by lights reflected by the harbour. There’s a dull constant background hum of traffic passing on nearby Davies Street. I’m content and contained and not bothered by the Friday joviality of passersby. I am going to do the fun run, my first. It’s possible, my bum will recover. I can do this…

The bin on the nearby rubbish bin warns “Don’t waste Tasmania” and I have no intention of doing that I am making the most of Tasmania, and the most of me.

I recommend running,preferably without the post-effort cigarette but even so…

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Anniversaire

March 15, 2010

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title. Virginia Woolf

Today marks another year as past. I’m hoping that by using the French term in this post’s title that it sounds less like I am counting. I’m counting – of course I am.

At the risk of sounding like someone giving an Oscar’s acceptance speech, there are some people I’d like to thank:

I’d like to thank my parent’s for these genes that contain a resilience I would not have imagined possible. Someone will probably tell me resilience isn’t inherited, goodness only knows where it came from. I am very lucky and very grateful to be who I am and just where I am.

Thanks again to my parents for the weepy genes. If I couldn’t love, it wouldn’t hurt.

Thank you to others in my family and Mottsu’s family, who might wish they could disown me but have hung in there for the journey.

C Robin, my brother, one of the first on the scene. Always will be.

My friends who have stuck out the last years with me, thank you for all the dinners shared with your families, the conversations and the joy of good friends. The refuge of your lounge rooms, a bed with breakfast. I am nourished by your unconditional friendship.

Thanks to the same friends who sat around waiting for me to come home from everywhere I went off to alone, when I couldn’t bear to be home.

Thank you too to the one’s who didn’t make it this far, the strains of friendship, the burden of me and my experience. I hope we each remember the other well.

Thank you to the Qantas Flight Attendant who thrust a wad of tissues at me during a particularly teary flight. All gestures of caring have been gratefully consumed. Funny how that particular event stands out…

I am grateful to the therapist who asked me to be clear about what I wanted from them, having to finding clarity through my fog has helped.

My brilliant neighbours, who take my bin in when the responsibility of looking after myself is too much for me to manage.

The friend who came to take Wally to the vet for his last visit, and then dug the hole… I know too many beautiful people.

Thanks to Bill who assured me that Wally would die, realising my worst and most realistic fears.

Thanks, Orange cafe staff, who have looked after me and the roundelay of friends who have sat with coffee at their tables season after season. Laughing and crying, occasionally tipping.

Thanks to the guy, the friend, who hosts this web-site, and asks nothing in return, and the dear people who ‘read’ me.

My big eared listening friends deserve a big hug from the ‘dumper’ in me for letting that dumper part dump away. Endlessly. Thanks too to the hardship suffering friends who shared their experiences with me. Generously.

A special thanks to the little girl next door who doesn’t quite comprehend what happened to Mottsu, she doesn’t even remember him, and she politely asks about him, direct questions that seek to understand. She makes him real and remembered – remembered by me that is.

The friends who have taken my calls, fielded the emails with me wailing, thanks for being there. I know you’re there and I hope I can be there for you (even if I have dropped the ball. Forgive me). I love you for telling me I am OK when I have been least OK.

Thank you to all the people I can never repay. Too many special people who have bestowed great gifts of caring and love.

Thanks to all the dear people who know where the ashes are stashed and haven’t pressured me, even gently, to scatter them or place them somewhere more appropriate. One day

Thank you time for passing. I asked the clocks to stop, thanks for not listening.

My heart is full, today empty and full.

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The day after St Valentines day

February 15, 2010

If you believe the research (and I do), money and acquiring doesn’t make us happy. What does?Gretchen Rubin spent a year researching what makes us happy, her work is published in her blog the Happiness Project, and her book of the same name. On the day after Valentine’ Day I am reflecting on her 12th commandment of her personal guide for happiness: There is only love…

I need to balance that with what the President of the Association for Psychological Science in America Professor John Cacioppo, observes in his new book, Loneliness: at any moment, one in five Americans, or 60 million people, feel so isolated they are deeply unhappy.

Maybe there is only love and at the same time it is only part of the story.

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Valentines day

February 14, 2010

I would rather spend one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (2001)

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