Who cares?

By admin on January 28, 2012

I have sat through more aircraft safety demonstrations than I can count.

“A loss of oxygen at altitude may lead to a loss on consciousness. If emergency oxygen is required your mask will appear from above you pull down on it firmly to activate the flow of oxygen put it on quickly and tighten the strap. Once you are breathing normally you can help others including children.”

On a plane I rarely lift my eyes from my book for the safety instructions but tonight I am thinking of the role of a carer. I am thinking of how much love and selfless effort can be invested in supporting someone you love while I am also wondering about caring for the carers.

We care as best we can. In my own case, I could not have cared any more. Nor could I have cared any less. Despair brought my partner to a crisis, hopeless and isolated. I was right there amid the grey and the drizzle, trying to warm him and keep myself dry.

As I listen to the experiences of others, and the concerns, the hopes, the dreams of a carer, I can’t help thinking that the cabin crew are right, fit your own mask first.

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The first Tuesday in November – 25 years later

By admin on November 1, 2011

This morning I passed an elderly man in my street, it is his street too, I said “Good Morning” he said “Good Morning” neither of us missed a step or changed our pace. We shared a greeting in the early quiet of Melbourne Cup Day. My eyes filled with tears, not sad tears, something about that simple exchange, on this day, touched me. Something about me and the passing of time moved me to tears. Not floods of tears, I mean just a special a tear or two…

“The essence of emotion [is] the collection of changes in body state that are induced in myriad organs by nerve cell terminals under the control of a dedicated brain system, which is responding to the content of thoughts relative to a particular entity or event.” Damasio, A. R. (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Grosset Putnam Books.

Mottsu and I met on Cup Day 25 years ago. I have known him for 25 years. Wow, I think to myself, that’s a long time and an odd thought, but I have continued to know him after died. My relationship with Mottsu didn’t stop when he drowned. Our relationship didn’t stop or start with the presence or absence of either one of us, it is something between us, in a space that is harder to quantify than it used to be when he was here, and it still a special relationship.

Today is the first Tuesday in November, Melbourne Cup Day and this year I let my VRC membership lapse. For the first time in many years I am not wearing a hat on Melbourne Cup Day, I am not at the track, not drinking champagne, not missing the crowds… and I am smiling to myself as I write. Changes,and I’m happy today, in a quiet sort of smug and almost indescribable way. I am content with who I am, and how I am, I’ve placed a bet on The Cup race. I am happy with where I am today, and even happy with (most of) the trek that got me here.

Time passes and nothing stays the same, I grieve and I continue to consider myself as bereaved. Some say it gets better but it doesn’t necessarily get better. Part of me remains bereft, bereaved, and bewildered. I can’t count how many times someone has said that time heals all… and some wounds never heal. Time doesn’t heal,things change, nothing stays the same.

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Distressed by calling Lifeline?

By admin on October 20, 2011

Publishing help line numbers is standard protocol if a story mentions suicide.
This helpline was published in The Age on-line this week and it particularly annoyed me. The structure of the statement and the punctuation means it doesn’t really say what it is trying to say and it has brought out the pedant in me.

Mottsu worked as a journalist and an editor for The Age, he worked on the old fashioned printed newspaper. He would not have liked the clumsy sentence above, it probably would have brought out the pedant in him too. Like the old-fashioned journalist that he was, he knew words grammar and punctuation better than anyone else I know. He was a walking dictionary with no need for a spell-checker. He was unbeatable at Scrabble, so good that I was reluctant to play…

Thanks to that clumsy sentence I am remembering things I loved about him.

I sometimes use a help line at the bottom of a post, because I want to do the right thing and, as I said, it is standard protocol. I also believe that sometimes it is helpful to talk to someone and there are telephone services to do just that. I imagine the service is impersonal, or anonymous, but with people on the other end of the phone who are trained and caring enough to offer the service. I don’t know if Mottsu ever called Lifeline, maybe he would have been distressed by calling Lifeline, I don’t know.
If he called, I don’t know what they might, or might not, have said to him.

If you, or someone you know, needs emotional support call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Crisis counselling is available around the world.

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No way to communicate, no way to understand

By admin on June 28, 2011

I was going to talk about Marsha Linehan in my previous post and I got distracted by something the journalist wrote. Today back to Dr. Linehan who said of her own experience with depression: “I felt totally empty, like the Tin Man; I had no way to communicate what was going on, no way to understand it.”

Tin Man, there is something about depression that, like the Tin Man, has no heart, no feeling. With all that he was experiencing and feeling Mottsu was convinced he couldn’t connect with anyone, that he couldn’t feel anything. Not knowing how to reassure him and feeling confounded about how be in any way helpful I cast myself as the Scarecrow with no brains, no ideas. Wally, our timid terrier, was the Lion without courage. Shortbread was just going to tag along, our own Toto.

I didn’t appreciate how helpless the Tin Man was or the depth of what must have been a hopelessness. I was a bit consumed by my own helplessness, I didn’t know what to do. His despair bought him to a crisis and left him isolated and without hope. I couldn’t make things better with a story, not even a cute one where we might dance down a yellow brick road.

I can’t quite reconcile that he didn’t feel anything, that’s what he believed and I don’t know for sure. I do believe he was overwhelmed as the full force of his feelings were all turned inwards back onto himself. Unknown dark feelings. There is a line from a very odd song by America that has been playing in my head “But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man, That he didn’t, didn’t already have… “. The dear Tin Man in my life had no way of knowing what he already had, he was convinced that he was malfunctioning and he was wretched. I couldn’t reach him, and he in turn didn’t find the words to tell me how it was for him.

Dr Linehan’s approach, when faced with a suicidal Tin Man, is acceptance, she has “…found that the tension of acceptance could at least keep people in the room: patients accept who they are, that they feel the mental squalls of rage, emptiness and anxiety far more intensely than most people do. In turn, the therapist accepts that given all this, cutting, burning and suicide attempts make some sense.”

By understanding and accepting as she listens to her clients experiences, maybe Dr Linehan restores their voices, and in doing so provides some hope.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

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You don’t know me

By admin on June 16, 2011

A long time ago, in the early dawn of romance we shared ourselves and our backgrounds through our new found love, as couples do. In the early glow of intimacy we edited and adjusted our stories. We must have liked the new selves we saw reflected back through adoring eyes of the other. The disclosures between Mottsu and I may have painted a portrait more of who each wished they were, than of who we knew ourselves to be. Did we construct ourselves as loving and lovable each wanting to be deserving of the love of the other? Did I do that?

When we whispered our hopes fears and expectations we may not have told the whole truth about ourselves. For our own reasons some things remained private unshared. Parts of us, or whole episodes from our lives sat buried in our histories, undiscussed.

It’s easy to love somebody for whom we perceive them to be, or for something we see in them. It’s hard to know how much of that persona is created by the beholder, sculpted into someone we want to love. In my case I think both parties were co-conspirators to this deception neither wanting to disillusion the other. It was all too easy to read the title of someone else’s book, the chapter headings and then skim the content ignoring the gaps. However I read Mottsu I felt I knew him. How many, like me, settle for a synopsis while believing they have read the complete unabridged version of their partners life? Like Virginia Woolf said “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”.

At the time we met, Mottsu was building a new life in an unfamiliar country with no apparent need to unpack his history. I know now I didn’t piece together the whole jigsaw of who he was. I loved and accepted him for who he appeared to be. I didn’t doubt his completeness, didn’t guess the omissions and he had no compelling need to disclose the whole truth. He didn’t see a need to alarm me with his darker parts.

Episodes from the past can be moved into the shadows and remain there, undisclosed and undiscussed. Maybe some of us get away with it, if we’re lucky, or like Mottsu, sometimes darkness you thought was hidden in the past will rear up and overtake you. When that happened to him I found myself disbelieving and dismayed about his partially disclosed depression. He didn’t share the full story. I barely dreamt into what he was really going through and I realised too late that I didn’t know him.

I didn’t even guess at what I didn’t know.

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Days for remembering

By admin on August 18, 2010

Memory days are perfectly ordinary days when thinking about Mottsu sort of sneaks up on me. Some days just remind me of him, quiet rainy ones in particular.

Rainy days evoke memories of Mottsu, maybe because I love how the rain falls and quietens a day. Everything shushhed, like the sound of car tyres on the wet road. I think those are days when you huddle in closer with someone, share an umbrella, shelter together. Rainy days and Mottsu and I would slip into a cinema for the afternoon. Rainy weekend evenings we’d cook, bake, roast, time in the kitchen warm and safe, nurtured. Together with nowhere else to be.

Memory days, are different to anniversaries and birthdays, or special occasions. Days when you perhaps have anticipated the remembering of someone who’s no longer here but you can just feel them present. They are days I feel more alone – if it’s possible to be more alone than everyday regular alone. Importantly I feel wistful more than bereft, and that’s comforting to recall.

He is quietly remembered and I am grieving differently. I like to remember him well.

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Another shade of blue

By admin on March 11, 2010

There is a building in my street that used to be painted blue, not any shade of blue but the most wonderful shade of blue. I constantly admired it. I recall I admired it to a point of being annoying.

I would skip down the street with Mottsu (and I not he) gasping in with excitement about discovery of the most marvellously coloured wall. Blue.

In appreciating that wall I would be flooded with appreciation for the life we shared.

“How lucky we are” I said.

“Can you even imagine the odds of us finding each other?” I said, “ …luck of the draw, a fluke of chance to be born here, to live with such privilege…”

“I feel so blessed, so lucky…” I said.

“We share such a beautiful life” I said.

“I love our life” I said.

Notice one person was doing all of the talking.

One of us was admiring our beautiful life and one was listening and nodding. One of us would wax lyrical about the wall of perfect blue. Who was I trying to convince?

He must have nodded, I can’t recall with certainty now. His response wasn’t enthusiastic, nor mean, merely weary of natter. Blue was something different for Mottsu than for me.

The building has been renovated and painted grey. It’s a similar shade but I miss the blue. My blue was different to his blue.

I like to remember this story. I feel silly about how often, and enthusiastically, I tried to convince him of our good fortune without ever noticing that he wasn’t quite with me.

I remind myself how difficult it was at times to live with someone who suffered depressive bouts, which isn’t to say it wasn’t difficult for Mottsu…

Different blue.

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Mottsu and me

By admin on February 25, 2010

This blog is mostly about the loss of Mottsu, the circumstances his depression and suicide, my struggle to come to terms with the trauma of that loss, my complicated grieving. It is hard to live with a person suffering depression. He said he couldn’t feel anything, that wasn’t always how it was. Way back, as early as our shared history stretches, we had been out for dinner with a group of mutual friends and a couple of stragglers were sitting in my kitchen close to midnight when the floors and walls shook. Each looked only at the other, both wondering if the other had felt the tremor. The earth moved when we met.

We soon learned the Turkish consulate a few streets away had been bombed that night. So it was a bomb rather than emotion that moved us. Even so our lives were changed when we met, as a couple of me people became a we.

We were a fabulous we, particularly he:
*we went to the supermarket together after gym
*he played eye-spy while we were horse riding
*we held hands at the movies
*he was a punter
*I loved him
*sometimes I was horrible to him and other times I just didn’t think
*he was a journalist and writer, who briefly kept a journal about his depression

This is my own journal. Suicide is hard, hardest on those left behind, that’s the story of Mottsu and me.

Left behind and on my own I am keeping it together. Sometimes surprise myself and I just as often disappoint myself. I keep on talking, writing and dreaming…

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It’s only words

By admin on January 24, 2010

A wordle of this blog.

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The super pillow incident

By admin on December 9, 2009

We were browsing through a bedding shop when I noticed the goose down pillows. They were plump and pliant and stupidly expensive. Extravagant more than generous I bought one for Mottsu. I loved that pillow, it was a spontaneous gift. I loved him.

We christened it the ‘super pillow’, luxurious and better than the average pillow. It was a gift for him and over time it was mostly me who appreciated sleeping on the super-pillow.

The week Mottsu started his journal I was in New Zealand working. My Saturday flight home was delayed for more than 8 hours due to rain in Auckland.

I spent the afternoon and evening in the airline lounge. Mottsu was updated about my lack of progress home by phone. I wouldn’t be home for dinner, I would be lucky to be home that day. I looked forward to eating and sleeping on the plane. The longer I was delayed the more home was beckoned. When it finally departed, the flight was terrible, through storms, and circumstances dictated that the flight was un-catered. I arrived home after mid-night hungry, grumpy.

He hadn’t waited up, I was annoyed and disappointed. 002

He was asleep, I didn’t know he hadn’t been sleeping. I muttered away to myself and got ready for bed, and noticed his was head was resting on the super pillow. Annoyed I ripped ‘my’ pillow (the one I had bought for him) from under his head and flounced onto the mattress. Feeling unappreciated I made my point vengefully. Petty, I didn’t know he’d been to consult a psychologist that week.

I grabbed the goose down treasure and yanked, without thinking. I ripped the pillow from under his head.

If I could turn back time, I would have left the super pillow under his resting head and I would have recommended reading an author other than Cormac McCarthy.

Non, je ne regrette rien, I am vaguely haunted by the guilt of the damn super pillow and the gloomy book …

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