Talking about it

By admin on 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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What would lead you to not crack up and quit?

By admin on 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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Living each day

By admin on 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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Marie Osmond’s son, Michael Blosil, died by suicide

By admin on February 28, 2010

Today my thoughts are with Marie Osmond and her family after the suicide death of her son, Michael Blosil. Apparently Michael left a note outlining that he felt he no friends and would never fit in…

I remember Marie and her siblings, The Osmond Brothers, as teenage pop idols. They sang songs I liked to sing along to. I was sad to her name in print reporting a tragic loss, the Osmonds were always recognisable by the mega-watt smiles. I know Marie as a happy smiling singing person, until today at least.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the media did not report deaths by suicide. Suicide is serious issue and it should be reported, with sensitivity and in a considerate way. It is a complex issue that needs to be reported.

I am sorry I didn’t know more about the treatment and the risks of depression before Mottsu died. I am learning and sharing and, in my own way, raising awareness.

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“My son took his own life…” Walter Koenig

By admin on February 26, 2010

was said to have undergone “periods of depression” prior to taking his own life.The body of the actor, activist and comedian, Andrew Koenig, was found in Stanley Park in Vancouver. He had been missing for over a week.

Apparently Andrew sold or gave away many of his possessions and moved out of his apartment in Venice, California, before travelling to Canada, where he died by suicide.

It seems that one’s suicide can be so carefully planned and executed, it is hard for those of us not in the grip of depression, to comprehend. The determination to escape the domination of depression provides only a hint of the severity of the affliction.

He had a history with depression and had been despondent. I still struggle with how invisible depression can be, even at it’s most unbearable.

My heart is heavy for Andrew Koenig’s family and friends.

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…and his dog cried

By admin on February 21, 2010

The summer heat was oppressive this week, tropical, humid, and uncomfortable.

I say ‘was’ because Shortbread and I were in the park this afternoon as the weather started to break. The afternoon was disturbed by thunder which exploded across the sky. In between rumblings, I could hear a further agitation as the unsettled dogs across the neighbourhood lifted their heads and bawled at the clouds.

Big drops of rain percolated and plopped to earth, damping the crackle of the air, quenching the dog chorus. Shortie and I hurried home, she was hyperventilating when we got to the door, breathing more rapidly and deeply than normal.

Shortbread is unsettled by storms, panting and tail down.
Wally was unsettled by Mottsu’s disappearance.

Wally was Mottsu’s dog, it was unclear who owned who. A perfect coupling from first sight. The day we went to see the puppies to chose one, the smallest dog, the runt of the litter, threw himself onto Mottsu’s foot, straddling his shoe and clamping puppy teeth to the man’s lace. Tenure was assured for the terrier we named Wally. Ten years later, on Wally’s 10th birthday, Mottsu left.

The weather in our house changed when Mottsu disappeared. The air was fractured with mishap and disbelief, it rained inside day after day. Wally couldn’t have known what was unfolding but he certainly sensed something, and it was confirmed by his best friend not coming home.

Abandoned by meaning Wally, Mottsu’s dog, sat in our hallway and howled. His unbridled release of distress, his canine lament, further split my already ruptured heart. There is a saying that only a dog loves you more he loves himself. It’s true.

Wally wept.

Yesterday I wrote about grieving for our dogs. Our dogs grieve too, I know because Wally wept.

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Questions unanswered

By admin on February 13, 2010

At Mottsu’s funeral the same things were whispered and shared by those of us there:

WhyWhy? (I didn’t know anything was wrong)

Why didn’t he tell me? (I could have done something)

If only I’d known. (I could have done something)

What happened? (I don’t know)

Why?

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I measure every grief

By admin on February 11, 2010

“I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes–
I wonder if It weighs like Mine–
Or has an Easier size “

Emily Dickson: I Measure Every Grief

Tragic things befall other people from time to time. Mercifully, and distressingly, adversity is democratic. Accounts of another’s misfortune, inevitably start “This /is not as bad/is nothing like/doesn’t compare/ to what you experienced/went through but…” and distress is shared.

I’m always taken aback by the opening, hedging, preliminary statement. It comes before someone’s story of pain or loss. Surprised by the opening line, I tend gape, always unsure of how to respond. In this situation my intention is to empathise, so my gold fish impersonation is a poor start.

It is uncomfortable to think that I have been through is regarded as worse than the experiences of others. It is a painful thought that loss might be calibrated or measured to determine who is more injured. We don’t grieve bigger, harder or stronger because of the circumstances, do we?

I don’t know that afflictions can be sized. I don’t believe you can estimate the weight of another’s grief. There is no easier size, for each of us it is unbearable.
Immeasurable

…and nonetheless I admit; I too tend to measure every grief.

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*I couldn’t care less

By admin on February 5, 2010

I could always care more, but I can’t care any less – that is I couldn’t care less about people traversing emotional peaks and valleys. I do care.

I was talking with James recently when he dropped his voice to confide that a counsellor he’d been seeing, since a friend’s suicide, asked if he had been angry yet. “Angry?” James said, “I haven’t been angry”. Maybe it wasn’t what he meant but I understood James to be asking if there was something wrong.

Anger, the accepted second stage.

Sancho

Was the counsellor suggesting that without it he might not be healing? The only thing wrong with James was the growing suspicion that there might be something wrong with his grief. There was nothing wrong, or even complicated with James grieving process. As far as I could tell he had good grief, and a healthy capacity for resilience. I think it is more that grief is not understood and (angry or not) we don’t get to share it enough by talking about the experience.

In unrelated circumstances James and I both discovered that: “Many mourners experience grief as a kind of isolation—one that is exacerbated by the fact that one’s peers, neighbors, and co-workers may not really want to know how you are. We’ve adopted a sort of “ask, don’t tell” policy. The question “How are you?” is an expression of concern, but mourners quickly figure out that it shouldn’t be mistaken for an actual inquiry.” Good Grief: Is there a better way to be bereaved? Meghan O’Rourke: The New Yorker, February 2010

I don’t think it is that friends and colleagues couldn’t care less, they just don’t know what to say, or how to care more.

*Thanks Kate, who turned around the phrase ‘I couldn’t care less’ to explain why one cares so much.

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Finding a better way to grieve

By admin on February 4, 2010

I have railed against the Stages of Grief, and thank my dear friend Charlotte for sharing a recent article; a meaningful analysis of the work of Dr Kubler-Ross and others on bereavement.

“Though Kübler-Ross captured the range of emotions that mourners experience, new research suggests that grief and mourning don’t follow a checklist; they’re complicated and untidy processes, less like a progression of stages and more like an grief and grieving process—sometimes one that never fully ends.” Good Grief: Is there a better way to be bereaved? Meghan O’Rourke: The New Yorker, February 2010

For me the discussion in the article normalises an intense experience that brought out a personal, if at times crazed, response. When it comes to healing, we have an internal medicine cabinet stocked full of emotions to draw on. As you might expect when self-prescribing some responses might be considered less healthy choices. Be reassured, there is no right answer.

O’Rourke quotes Gorer who has noted a silencing of the mourner: “Today it would seem to be believed, quite sincerely, that sensible, rational men and women can keep their mourning under complete control by strength of will and character, so that it need be given no public expression, and indulged, if at all, in private, as furtively as . . . masturbation.”

Soused in grief I was bereft, bewildered and at times punchy. There were times I felt so disapproved of, I might as well have been masturbating in public. The ‘tuts’ and ‘tsks’ were palpable. It is good to recognise that the process is only as predictable as it is unpredictable, and not expect too much of others, or yourself.

To recap and align my own experience with the well known Stages of Grieving, looks a bit like this:

Stage 1
Dr. Kubler-Ross: Denial and Isolation: “This is not happening to me.”
Me: Realisation and weeping; “This is happening to me”

Stage 2
Dr. Kubler-Ross: Anger and Resentment: “Why me?”
Me: Guilt and self recrimination: “I did it”

Stage 3
Dr. Kubler-Ross: Bargaining: “Yes me, but. . .”
Me: Running away “Get me out of here”

Stage 4
Dr. Kubler-Ross: Depression: “Yes, me.”
Me: Depression: “Not me”

Stage 5
Dr. Kubler-Ross: Acceptance
Me: Emptiness

When dealing with loss, trust your own compass and make your own path through, grief is good. Complicated, untidy, ongoing, and good.

To my loved friends who stuck with me a warm and heartfelt thanks, it has been some trek. Namaste.

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