Monthly Archives: March 2010

Talking about it

March 31, 2010

Get me to a counsellor….

I thought help would help, and as self-sufficient as I like to be regarded, I needed help. It seemed only sensible to draw on some professional help. Navigating through grief on my own wasn’t something I felt capable of.

Counselling was also something I felt uncertain about. I hadn’t participated in counselling before. Mottsu saw a psychologist for a couple of weeks and, ultimately, that hadn’t gone so well. There was no blame to be laid. I don’t exactly know what went on for him, but counselling didn’t kill Mottsu.

Along with being self-sufficient, I knew myself as critical of others, particularly others who might have been trying to help me. Sharing with a stranger was going to be difficult for me and woe-betide the counsellor across from me in the client’s seat. I decided to try up to five counsellors, before giving up on that avenue of potential support. Five counsellors? It must have been me against the world back then. Fortunately I made a pact with myself to be patient with the process and find someone with whom I had rapport and could work with. I decided there was no better option than counselling. Did I have another option?

Bereft and almost disabled by grief I was unsure of where to turn mainly because I didn’t know where to look, how to start. I didn’t know anybody who was in therapy, not anyone who saw a counsellor – it later turned out I did know quite a few who had that type of support, we just hadn’t talked about it back then.

There is something in Australian psyche where we are expected to suck it up or toughen up and get over it. That is how we are, asking for help didn’t come easily for me.

After a rocky start, I now unreservedly (not entirely without reserve but that’s another post) recommend counselling, I prefer to call it therapy – for me it is the treatment.

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Vets and suicide

March 27, 2010

A UK study has just reported that Veterinarians are four times more likely than the general population commit suicide. Several theories are put forward as to why the risk is higher for this profession in particular.

When vets and suicide are reported, it is usually war veterans. For example, in 2009 there were 442 US soldiers who died in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the same period and 334 died by suicide.

I wrote in a previous post about a suicide epidemic among US veterans, the statistic in that population is almost understandable, I am surprised and saddened by the statistic about Veterinarians. Shocked.

I can’t think of anything to do but talk (given that blogging is talking) about it. It’s what I do.

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Destiny…

March 26, 2010

A little after Mottsu died, someone put me in touch with Sally; a woman in similar situation to mine. We met, we had a lot in common. Sally described the suicide of her husband, there were disquieting similarities in the lead up to our losses and in our experiences afterwards.

Sally warned me that the second year was harder than the first, that was news I didn’t need to know. The other thing she told me that I didn’t want to know was that there is an increased risk of suicide among people touched by suicide. I think Sally said the risk of dying by suicide was double for me than others. Was it prophecy?

She didn’t know she was talking to someone as coerced by suggestion and believing in destiny as I am. Being told I was at risk was an unwelcome omen. I remember the nun’s at schools telling a class of girls that some of us would receive a call to become a nun. They said it was important we not deny that calling if we heard it. I used to pray “Dear God, please don’t pick me, don’t call me, please don’t, please don’t… Our Father not me…. Angel of of God, my guardian dear – not me – not me…”. I still worry I might have ignored a calling. If it was there I denied it. I denied Sally’s forecast too.

I have tried to look up the suicide risk of grievers of suicide. There’s no data, only estimates, and apparently the likelihood of suicide after you have lost someone close to suicide is estimated as up to 5 times that of the population at large. I think that is still a very small number, a tiny risk.

There was no denying that suicide might have been easier for me than for others, just my familiarity with it would have increased the risk. Damn lies and statistics.

Whatever Sally could foretell, suicide is not for me.

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The real me

March 22, 2010

An email I received today from an executive coach was signed with a quote at the bottom:

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.” William James

Its in the the same vein as Joseph Campbell’s questions about finding what works for us as individuals.

Easier said than done and its worth searching for those things that allow you to be really you – I mean allow me to be as much really me as I can be. You do need to find you first. I’m working on that part: I am finding me, so far so good… (admittedly I am a little lost at times).

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What would lead you to not crack up and quit?

March 21, 2010

It was 21 May 2006, I was returning to Melbourne after the City to Casino run, flight QF1012 and sitting in 4C. I still have the boarding pass it has been preserved between the pages of the book I read on that flight.

Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation.

“You might ask yourself the question: if I were confronted with a situation of total disaster, if everything I loved and thought I lived for were devastated, what would I live for? If I were to come home and find my family murdered, my house burned up, or my career wiped out by some disaster or another, what would sustain me? We read about these thing every day and we think, well that only happens to other people. But what if it happened to me? What would lead me to know that I could go on living and not just crack up and quit?

…In our day, however, there is great confusion. We’re thrown back on ourselves and we have to find that thing which, in truth, works for us as individuals. Now how does one do this?” (p. 88)

There are some big questions asked in that passage. I was finding my feet, clad in running shoes. I was up and running, my direction was not so clear, but becoming clearer. There was no set destination. Importantly/amazingly/defiantly I had gone on living, I hadn’t cracked up and quit, it had almost happened while on auto-pilot, without thinking about what next…

I did sit around for a while hoping to be wakened from a nightmare, or to be rescued. That evening Campbell’s words resonated, I realised the importance of finding what worked for me as an individual. It was two years and two months since Mottsu’s death, that’s how long it took before starting to emerge from mourning.

That was me, it will be different for you.

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Moore Moore Moore

March 20, 2010

Two actors, Demi Moore and Nia Vardalos, directed police to the home of an 18-year-old Florida man, on Friday. The man had written a message on Twitter saying he had and was “thinking about killing myself”. He tweeted that he had “messed up my life bad” and had “no reason to live anymore” then saying he was “about to go hang myself from a tree outside my house and end my life”.

Moore tweeted back ask the man if he needed help. He responded, “yes”.

I’v heard a lot of labels put onto people for their suicidal thoughts and actions. People are not selfish, or bad, or stupid because of their state of mind or the solutions devised for themselves in that state. I am deeply conflicted about suicide prevention, our assumed right to save someone and their right to make their own choices.

I have struggled to accept, if not understand Mottsu’s choice. He planned his actions so carefully over days, in secret and with determination to attain his goal. If I could have changed the outcome I would have. He knew that, hence the careful and secret planning.

I am glad Demi Moore was able to facilitate an intervention yesterday. For me it is significant that she asked if the youth needed help and he said “yes”. I am less troubled by the incident knowing that a “yes” was given.

I think we need to listen to and respect people with suicidal thoughts before acting or judging.

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Living each day

March 19, 2010

However far I have run and however far I have come, some days have more sadness than others.

Loneliness sort of creeps up…

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. CS Lewis

That was true before, it is mostly easier now.

Grief and memories and sadness still lurk around.

There in the shadows.

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Crossing the line

March 18, 2010

I did the run, finished and crossed the line. The course has a slight downhill gradient for most of the way, fabulous. The feelings that crossed the line with me were extraordinary, I was exultant with achievement and enjoyment, and at the same time depleted by loneliness. The person I wanted to tell was Mottsu, he would hardly have believed I had started running, let alone this achievement. I missed him and his support. I cried, tears didn’t show against the sweat.

I was doing better than surviving, but each mini-triumph made me as sad as I was joyous. Each was a reminder of my changed status.

I recall my friend Hero asking what running meant to me. I had to think, running sort of evolved, almost unintentionally. Running gave me strength, it gave me confidence that could escape should I ever need to. Running helped me to feel physically fabulous, coping and advancing.

Running, or physical exercise in general, is recommend for people with depression or anxiety.

BeyondBlue is one of many sites that report: “Research shows that regular physical activity significantly reduces the risk of people developing depression. People who do not take part in physical activity are more likely to have depressive symptoms compared to people who exercised regularly.”

Running is one way you can look after yourself. Running can lift my mood with surges of feeling able and exceptional. The other welcome side effect is sound sleep.

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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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