HelenzArt-life-musings

Month: Dec 2023

  • Misuse of new learnings, being human.

    That’s the thing with being human, we learn new stuff and then apply it historically to events. 

    How does this apply to guilt? In my observations and conversations with my hubby over the last few days, the question of guilt relating to events of our sons death and the hospital visit prior to that my husband feels a guilt for taking him to emergency care at the hospital rather than calling an ambulance. On that night Gavin was in alot of pain around his back and shoulder. Unable to get comfortable and having trouble breathing and a rapid heart rate. He was usually able to recover his heart rate through experiences and techniques learned for endurance cycling. Yes, he was scared and between him and my hubby they chose to make their own way rather than potentially wait hours for a paramedic crew. So they made a choice given what they knew and supposed in those moments, a considered course of action. When Dave found Gavin dead, and paramedics turned up Dave was asked about the previous circumstances and here’s where the new information comes in. As paramedics they often get called to those sorts of scenarios and blood clots are usually seen as presenting with Gavins symptoms and that is communicated to the hospital for when they hand over the patient. Being human and a dad, Daves brain shifts and says, ‘I know this now’, and applies it to an event where he didn’t know it in the past. Hence he now feels guilty about taking Gavin for a hospital assessment that wasn’t fully considered or delivered. This is the human bit that makes a sweeping generalisation, as we happen to do over many things. One sour experience, can put us off trying something similar. 

    As a kid I felt guilty through experiences with my mother. Guilty that I wasn’t what she seemed to need of me. That became a guilt that I wasn’t worthy of anyone’s company or love even. It shaped a self perception and behaviours to people please and seek out validation from relationships with others.

    Guilt is often misplaced because we aren’t taught any other way, and self learning through experiences seems empirical proof until something else, other experiences, change that. My feelings of guilt around this loss and the grief is always that I should have done more to help Gavin through his depression, that he wouldn’t perhaps had medication and the one he was changed to, where blood clots could be a side effect. Yet as time has moved along I can accept that I used my own experiences with depression and self learning that until some one is ready to step into changes by themselves no one else can force a change in them. It could have been quite damaging to have continuously ‘nagged’ for him to ‘pull himself together ‘seek counselling’ etc. I would tell him that he had my support for what ever he needed to do, I always told him I loved him when ever we parted, as I did the night I dropped him home a day before he died.

    Atleast that’s one thing I don’t have to feel guilty of, I didn’t have ‘unfinished’ business. That’s often another big guilt tripper when a loved one or estranged loved one has passed. We can’t go back and change things, yet we can still say sorry, or speak our piece and bring a peace. They can hear us still!

  • Seasonal grief

    Grieving is hard no matter when it occurs but there are times of the year that will seem to bring their loss closer to the surface. Their birthday, the seasonal celebrations where families generally come together. Christmas and Easter for those who celebrate that way.

    What ever the occasion maybe its still OK to remember them and feel the mixing of sad with glad. I’ve found that being sad can easily turn to glad when I start recalling antics from those celebrations in the past. To create new memories with them held in the heart, being part of the spirit of celebrations and laughter. Even when that first event comes round it is OK to laugh, to find something to smile over. 

    when Gavins affairs were all wrapped up and monies received we actively made a choice to over lay that sadness of the time of his passing with a totally new experiencing. We took us off to a full experience of Lapland. that 1st year anniversary saw us go as a family to Finland. to ski and snowshoe. Meet reindeer and huskies. Sledge over the fells, toboggan down slopes and hope to see the auroras. Even with out the money he generously gifted us, we were given opportunities to change how we faced those known possibilities of when it could be hardest to bear his loss. 

    Perhaps is because we look back linearly at the time line that the Finland trip comes before the date of his passing. The laughter and shared tears in the snow that have somehow eased the weight of grief. The very first Christmas, less than a month after his death, was awful and now we make allowances each season to recognise and hear that loss and then start celebrating how lucky we have been and still are to have him in our hearts.

    Would that there was a magic wand with which to conjure away the pain. Yet there is not, there is only stillness which can bring that. Stillness and giving yourself permission to feel what needs to be felt. 5 years on and I still give myself permission to shed a tear when needed. It doesn’t matter when it happens as I can simply allow it to come. Despite the list of emotions to be felt, it’s not a road map. There’s no wrong order or wrong way to go through grieving. It’s going to happen at some stage in the life journey. 

    For me, the one thing that lingers still is guilt, which is something the list doesn’t mention. That will be something to write about next year.

    if you have read this far, I thank you. The year of 2023 is drawing to a close. its been a surprise to me to start these writings, yet it feels right and the year to come shall be interesting as I try to express how the loss of Gavin brought me so much to be grateful for.

  • Why the guilt?

    I’m angry, so why did I feel guilty too? With all the emotions that were being felt in waves, there was always the sense that I was feeling guilty too. It was an under current, yep I’m back to my ocean analogy! In fact my mother-in-law said something that was reminiscent of guilt when we told her of Gavins passing. She was in hospital having had some stents fitted. She simply stated that it should have been her who was taken, she had lived a long life and it ought to have been her passing not Gavin. He was too young, with a life ahead full of potential. Yet we all said that’s not the way it goes, he was called and she wasn’t, not yet. Maybe that’s where bargaining can come in when it’s someone young who has a potentially terminal or life changing disease, yet something like an embolism isn’t necessarily foreseeable. Though Gavin did have symptoms that were misdiagnosed. 

    So why guilty? For me it was expressing regret and wishing I had done more. Yet once more I come back to that being a mother who was allowing him to be the man he had become. Still my boy, but old enough to make his choices, to make mistakes and learn. The apron strings were loosed. Yes, I could express concern yet it was still his life. I felt guilty of failing him, of failing in my role as mother. Yet a mother has to stop mothering and smothering. That is not to stop caring but it is to stop interfering, as too much of that can be detrimental to a healthy relationship. There’s also the guilt at not going to his home and finding his body earlier. He went silent in the Tuesday, my husband went round on the Friday. In all likely hood he died either Monday night or sometime on Tuesday. The thought of him laying there all that time is difficult to bear. Yet bear it I do, I made the choice to allow him privacy and space as I have done as he was growing up. As I chose to do when he was at University, I never needed or expected daily contact. That we spoke regularly was enough. To be honest that has always been my way, I didn’t speak daily to my dad once I left home. 

    There’s also the looking back over events through our life together as mother and son, nurturing and disciplining that may prompt a guilt that perhaps if.. .. Yet that past can’t be changed, no matter how much one may wish it. If I could have done things differently I would have. Over the 5 years since his transition I have have transitioned too. That guilt is part of who I am, its OK to feel it so it can find its place. It doesn’t ‘eat’or ‘nag away’ inside, because its accepted as having a place within. I give myself permission to feel all that needs to be felt. Opening up to the learnings they offered in their time. Gavins departure gave me a gift, and yes we all like to find a meaning to events in our lives, yet this was more than just finding a reason to his passing this was finding a pathway to living fully in what is left of my life. 

  • More of that cosh

    That cosh is self wielded. We batter ourselves with ‘if only…’, and ‘I should have.. ‘. Focusing on what we wish had or hadn’t happened, what we think we did wrong or didn’t do at all! That, too, is sending feelings into a void, a place where there is no answer. There is no answer because what has happened, has happened. A death can’t be undone. The circumstances are that the loss is now to be lived with. Whether that death was through disease, a tragic accident, or even that their life was taken by another’s hand, the truth is that our loved one is no longer here in physical form. That hurts, and pain that deep needs to be felt. I have seen my husband struggle with feelings. That anger, at others and himself. That despair of depression at having his purpose of being a dad to Gavin taken from him. Especially once the sorting of Gavins funeral and estate, an immediate purposefulness, was completed. Those final things that could be done for Gavins earthly presence. In the grieving there are those moments of forgetting that they aren’t physically here anymore. Wanting to show them something or talk about some thing that interests us and hope would interest them too. For me it was sat on a break in my car and seeing a man walking to the shop and I fleetingly thought, ‘what’s Gavin doing here today!!’ Those moments catch us unawares. Can make us feel silly for making that mistake. They can be painful reminders of our loss, yet they can be a catalyst for letting more emotion move through us. The more movement there is of emotion, the easier it becomes to feel and release.

    My choice to embrace each emotion as it arises was to fully feel and be sad or angry. Its liberating to give ones self permission to feel fully. To show the others in our lives that it’s OK to feel what ever we feel in each moment. That emotion isn’t to be caged up or denied to spare the feelings of others. By giving permission to ourselves we actually give permission to others to feel too. There’s a holding of space to allow expression. That’s what funerals and wakes are for. A coming together to mourn and celebrate the one who has transitioned to a new phase of being. No longer a physical presence but a spirit held in heart. Remembrances of the love they gave, the wisdom shared or simply the joy they spread whether they knew it or not. It was 3 weeks til we could have a service for Gavin. It was 3 weeks til we were able to have a service for Daves mum last year. A suspension of grief that awaits the humanised ritual of farewell. A ritual that we have come to expect as a permission to grieve perhaps.

  • Under a cosh!

    A cosh is simply a weapon, yet, for some it may feel as though this grief is a thing that is keeping us from being ourselves. The self that we knew before we lost someone dear. That had a place, a sense of purpose in the human that we have lost. That person was a rudder to steer our lives by and is nolonger a physical guidence.

    Our son was a nurtured part of who I was. His mum who birthed him, breast fed him, just as I did with my first born, his older sister. Children become a purpose when they enter ones life. My purpose to raise them as best I could. To see them safely through their lives for as long as possible. For the rest of my life. Certainly not seeing that it would simply be for the length of his. To wipe snot from the nose, dry their eyes. Laugh with them at simple sunbeams and butterflies.

    Even with our parents as they age, we take on a purpose to care for them as they once tried to care for us. To ease their way through to the end.

    Perhaps that’s where the depression can take hold. Losing our purpose, to feel that we have failed in our duties to love and protect. To feel that the void caused by their leaving, their travelling on to new beginnings is a void in our reason for living. As darker spaces tend to do, they draw us in. Become a vortex, a spiral that feels too strong to step away from. Yet step away we must. The platitudes of ‘they wouldn’t want to see us like this’, that we are ‘not carrying on as they would want’, don’t feel terribly helpful in the depths of pain and sadness. Yet, it is true. There us not to be a denying of the loss, of the hurt and even of the loss of purpose. They were only part of life’s purpose. Granted possibly a huge part for their lifetime and ones own. As an infant, the child is all consuming. Yet as Gavin grew and learnt, my purpose as mum went from doing everything to nurture his survival reduced and evolved. A letting him become his own person, to make his own choices. Hopefully secure in that I would always love and support his choices. That’s where ’empty nest syndrome’ may cause depression, because they are no longer a sole purpose. There is our own life to be filled with other human shaped purposes, our soul purposes to live as best we can with what we have of our own self being. So yes, I can understand that depression fits into the stages of grief, but did I feel that? In honesty and with hind sight? No. I had already shifted purpose to a supporting role. I was already letting go, letting him lead his life. I was a smaller part of his life than I had been when he was a child.