HelenzArt-life-musings

Category: Uncategorized

  • What do I care!

    When the ‘boyfriend’ turned up after school, I wasn’t too bothered. The relationship hadn’t really ended as such, just drifted as I hadn’t seen him for a month or so. I’d never actually told him about being pregnant, but he had been spoken to by the police. His family made choices for him and those hurt him somehow, and he took me and I was back to being his sex on tap. As I was in a smallish town it wasn’t exactly easy to avoid him and I never really thought to try if I’m honest. I went to school, went home. If I had sport training after school I had to take the bus from town, or walk the 3 miles, by the same route, he often found me at the bus stop, or he’d step out from the houses on the route home. To take me by the arm and I’d go with him. No resistance on my part. There never was resistance. Perhaps I’d had a learning felt deep inside that resistance was futile. Just like the Borg say in Startrek! Reflecting back it’s easy to say that I dissociated and compartmentalised. I didn’t consciously do it, it’s just the way I was. He wasn’t brutal as such but certainly not gentle. He didn’t need to threaten or keep hold, I was acquiescent to his wants. Even when he invited his friends to have sex with me. Yes, that’s abuse, some of it I recall some I don’t.

    The inevitable happened again quite quickly. This time I didn’t see a doctor. I couldn’t do that again, yet what was I to do. Sort of didn’t care enough to ‘do’ anything! He stopped seeing me and at that time I didn’t know why but that was a relief. Now it was pregnant me, on my own. Me, hiding sanitary products so my dad didn’t know. I didn’t want to be a disappointment to him! Going about my life but not really engaging with school work. The usual reports of ‘could do better’. Not confiding in my best friend. Summer came and I took casual work with my dad. Working in the fields where I was happiest. Getting fatter, dad not seemingly concerned, probably thinking it’s that female, laying down fat stores or something! I was a brides maid at my brother’s wedding that summer. Him, 19, his wife to be in her 30’s with 3 kids. The dress I’d had a fitting for too tight! Almost the last time I saw my brother!

    Heading for 16 and the exam year, finally a teacher sat me down and expressed concern. My skipping classes especially sport. I told her. So that began the process, I saw a doctor, my dad was told and I was determined that the choice was for the child to be adopted. Altruism perhaps, as it would give someone a chance to be a parent. The child would have better chances, I hoped, of not having a poor start in its own life, to be wanted and chosen and cherished. Selfish, self preservation, in that there was no way I was going to be able to give it the financial and nurturing support needed, and that was important to me. I had no support network, none was offered either. I recall no discussions with social workers or other support agencies. I made my choice and that was it. So that was me, home schooling ‘til the child was born in December. Appointments at the doctors, until the time came for the hospital admission to induce me. All vague as I had a Caesarian due to foetal distress. In a room of my own, dad visiting and telling me he’d been to see that boy child I’d had delivered. I never went to see him. I signed the paperwork. My scar healed and life went on. Back to school, no questions no follow ups. Which, on my surface, was ok.

    My year of being 16. I never gave much thought then about how that could have, or even should have, changed my life. It happened, it was dealt with and that was it. Never brought up again. Did it make me shy from relationships? Not really. The only difference was that I started using contraceptives. Did I change in behaviour? Only in that I started skipping school more. Took to climbing out my bedroom window at night to take a walk and stand on the bridge over the main dual carriage way near my home. Watching the traffic, wondering where they were going. If a car or truck stopped and offered a lift for a drink or chat I’d usually get in. See! No sense of personal safety. I didn’t care for me, it seemed that those drivers cared more than I did.

    Different times then perhaps, though the people who do horrendous things have always been around. With the instancy of media at our fingertips now we just hear about it more often. Yet, I met some nice people, non threatening, gentle, lonely people looking for something too, however transient! I was always willing to have sex if that came about, but it wasn’t always the case. And it was sex, a commodity of reciprocation. Even if I wasn’t in the mood it was doable, as I could sink into the sensations. A whisper of breath over bare skin, a tease of tongue on nipple or elsewhere. The wish of some to rub their member on full breasts. Nothing kinky or truly bizarre, just fleeting connections of contact. Some even became ‘friends with benefits’. No strings, just companionship.

    The next few years were of a similar vein. Didn’t do great at those exams but I stayed on to do ‘A’ levels. A new friendship at school, her mother caring more than my own had ever done. Caring enough to express concern over my ‘careless’ behaviour. No career in mind though knowing Uni or art college not an option. I wanted to make a living, earn money and have a husband and family. Make more of life than I had.

  • An idyllic start?

    The loss of a loved one causes a reflection on the past.  For me that was my relationship with Gavin and family interactions. Laughter, tears, hopes and wishes, his and mine.  When that has settled, and it does settle. That looking for purpose, arises again. Looking back over ones own life, my own relationship as daughter to parents and being a sister. Perhaps even trying to see where those influences of my childhood reflected in my own parenting of Gavin. 

    So what did I recall of my childhood. From my recollections, it’s wide open spaces, in a rural setting.  Playing outside for hours. Ditches and streams to build dams in. Clay delved out with a toy spade or simply my hands to craft mini cups and plates for the fairies and creatures that were my heart felt companions.    Living in a home that came with my dad’s job, mum worked for a while at the same place.  A plant nursery.  Summers of blue skies, tall grasses. The scent and sight of a rainbow coloured field of roses. Stretching row upon row along the fields. The out-buildings, old pigstyes, that now smelt of flowers and earth, derv and oil from the old tractor.  Echoing with the Swallows that nested through the heat and Robins that sang in the winter.  A short walk to the village school with my older brother.  Sunday roasts round the kitchen table.  No other children nearby, no play dates only birthday parties with school friends.  Idyllic!? Yes, in its way.  Dad, quiet and a dry sense of humour. His smell,  of earth and tobacco in a woollen jumper that itched a bit when he gave a hug.  Mum loud, long nails that she filed and painted. over powering perfume.  Occassional seamstress or knitter.  Smoker and failed dieter.  Brother who is 4 years older.  Clever, had a spiteful streak. Chinese burns. Dropped me once when giving a piggy back! Cracked my head on the hearth.  Yet I still looked up to him.  I love them all. They were family, I knew no different, I didn’t know any other families to compare them to,  even if I had a notion  that comparisons were to be had.  So I read my books, an avid reader, and those famous fives and faraway trees of fiction were the fiction of different lives to mine. I didn’t want to be like them. I just wanted to be in the adventures with them. Crayons and colouring, crafting and glueing.  Life was good, at least I felt so in those early, seemingly care free years of not knowing anything other than this was being loved. The safety of a bed in a room of my own, a toy or two, food on  the table, clothes, even if hand me downs.  Mum, dad, brother, dog, and other pets all as it ought to be for a young girl.  Things changed a bit when I got to 8. That is for my next instalment…..

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • Not Neat and Tidy

    Emotions aren’t neat and tidy. They don’t have a specific box to be kept in. They don’t necessarily arrive one at a time. Though when I went through therapy intensly, there was a separation so that each could have a focus, like a sun’s ray piercing into that in that moment. Those will be spoken about at some stage. As for now, I’m expressing what brought me to wanting that therapy.

    So with my experiencing of grief, I can see how the conceptual list of stages seems to correlate though the order is somewhat more random than is supposed. Acceptance of the loss was quick, I knew he was gone, not to return in that known physical form. Anger, for sure, ebbing and flowing in a sea of sadness. A sea that would also swell and calm yet ever present. Bargaining however doesn’t feel right in my own circumstances. There’s no doubt that all the consequential gains that Gavin gifted to ourselves and his sister by naming us as beneficiaries on the event of his death in service to the company he worked for, have delivered a lightening of financial burdens. To pay off a small mortgage and undertake alterations to the family home was indeed a gift, yet I would rather have Gavin here and present in the flesh. Though that is not a bargaining after the fact. Having observed the rest of the family go through the decline and passing of my mother in law. I saw a bargaining of sorts. That decline, perhaps, instigates an early grieving process where bargaining can take place. Promises to a ‘higher power’ outside the human condition that may ease the loved ones burden of supposed pain and suffering of we are to offer a change of behaviour or some such. That bargaining that aligns with a watching so.eone undergo treatment for a life changing illness or cancer. Where we offer parts of ourselves inexchange for a speedy recovery or a relief from hurt or distress.

    On consideration perhaps in grief, there is a bargaining for ones own salvation from the pain of the sorrow. An asking for relief of feeling as we do. That wasn’t my experience, yet it may be someone else’s.

    As I write though, emotions are messy and entangled and what starts as one thing morphs to another or just feels like a huge confusion. That’s OK. To be confused is to allow those feelings to sift and sort. For insights to be offered when we actually sit and feel. Accepting tgat these feelings are to have their way for now so they may settle for awhile. Allow a respite to come and calm the body for a moment. Sift and separate the big, lumpy, gulpy sobs to subside and let the more nuanced feelings rise to be felt fully. For me that’s where guilt surfaced from the depths.

  • Ocean of Emotion

    I mentioned in my last blog about how my anger would come in waves, as does all emotions. Strong emotions ask for release in the moment they are felt. Yet the thinking mind can step in and say,’I’m not ready for this’ ‘not now as I dont feel in a safe space’. A survival mode possibly as there is that idea that it will make us too vulnerable and hurt, and that would also hurt others more than if it is suppressed. A needing to be strong for the sake of not hurting others. Feeling those emotions as and when they arise, to acknowledge them, to allow their expression is to allow space for others to be how they need to be. Being vulnerable can be a strength, where there is allowing others to see that it’s OK to sob with sadness, rail at the world for the seeming injustices done to onesself and others. To also find a gratitude in awful circumstances, for what we can learn about ourselves and what it is to be human. I’m sure many have said that emotion is simply ‘energy in motion’ and its a felt truth for me. The current of anger, grief or sadness can be an undertow that pulls me down, yet to feel that is to allow it to flow. The flow releases its force and I can bob up to the surface and take a breath. Even float on the tide for a while. Be brought to a place where my feet can touch the bottom and support the body until the next roller washes me out to sea again. As in the months and years that follow, there will be an upsurge, maybe even a tsunami of overwhelm that takes me away from and into my self. The paradox where by feeling unfastened from safe shores of what I think I know, anchored to what is thought to be my place, to a place where I feel everything so as to become unburdened. As for the anger it has been brought to balance as I now see that all did the best they can with what they had and knew in their moments. A combination of circumstances that ended in Gavins’ demise. Lessons to be learned for all of us. Awareness to be raised about PEs and DVT’s that can save lives. It’s a condition that doesn’t discriminate by age or gender, weight or fitness

    There is also the sub-consciousness that will take upon its self a suppression of emotion, solely and soully for survival, as to feel fully of that moment would be overly harmful for the body. My reflection of my experiences is that one day that will all resurface to be felt one day. I have seen that be embracing all emotions around Gavins death I opened the possibility to my subconscious that there may be a readiness to rewitness past events that though suppressed beyond conscious knowing for years. They may finally be felt and heard. More of that another time.

  • Angry? Yeh, but at what? or who!

    My anger in grief was at a time when there was such confusion, overwhelm of emotions. Yet what was I angry at? The Doctor that Gavin saw 10 days before he died that perhaps didnt try hard enough, wasnt experienced enough to look beyond the tick box of triage. The system in hospitals for having a tick box exercise, that perhaps over smoothes the symptoms, reduces everything to statistical probabilities, to speed things up. Humans arent one size! We have aberations and outliers. Then there’s the anger at Gavin as he didn’t go back to the Doctors. Why didn’t he take better care of himself ? Following the trail of emails and texts on his phone, as part of the investigation that had to be done at the hospital, we could see that he did his best. As for the hospital the NHS system failed, the Doctor did what he thought was right, given what he knew at that time. He has to live with and hopefully learn from that. Then theres anger at what ever belief system is held. Be that a god, gods or simply a power out there that decides fates. For me it was a generalising of why did he have to be taken now. Leaving us, here, in pain and sorrow. To deal with all the details and feelings that come with being a parent suddenly losing a child, no matter how old they are. The anger that perversly turns to that power and says why is this happening to me, to us, the family left behind.

    An interesting phrase ‘left behind’ is it because we innately believe that they have moved forward, gone onward to a different phase of being, and we are still here in our bodied state.

    Anger then turned onto myself, why didn’t I do more to help him! He was a grown man, that allowing, over his growing up years to make his own choices. Live his own life. I couldn’t frog march him to the Doctors, yet there’s always the feeling I should have done more. That is when guilt comes to visit.

    I don’t ‘do’ anger, that is, I have difficulty expressing anger. I tend to swallow the feeling and stuff it down. I see now that it is my conditioning from experiencing others’ anger, whether directed at me, as a child, or simply seeing its effect on the one who is angry. My mother looked ugly and scary when she was angry, and that was often directed at me, a child. Anger was not a good experience as I only ever saw its unhealthy expression from others. A harming that was taken deeply to heart. I am aware that within me, there is still anger from many past circumstances that will surface to be expressed in some way.

    So for me, these focal points of anger though right-fully felt and acknowledged, were not sustained, perhaps the overwhelming sadness, which is emotionally strength sapping allowed them to diminish in magnitude. To become accepted or perhaps simply put away, with little expression required on my part, then. The opening up to surrendering to my innate ‘not knowing why but doing it anyway’ of being in grief and all that entails. I do feel that anger does need expressing in a healthy way and that if its not discerningly done in the moment it will be revisited.

    I have no doubt that for many the anger becomes fuel for change or becomes a defining emotion to be held. That may have both positives and negatives attached. For my husband it has coloured his perception of his life, become a force to raise funds for Thrombosis UK, a charity that helps educate the medical professions and others about how DVT’s and thrombosis can affect 1 in 1000 people no matter their age or fitness. Yet that too is now exhausted. Anger is exhausting when sustained over periods of time and not brought to balance. Its good to feel angry, yet it is to be expressed in a healthy way, not with harm or violence, as that, potentially, not only harms others but yourself too. To not express it harms our inner self too, in ways that may not be seen, yet felt now and then for no apparent reasoning, simply asking to be felt, heard, acknowledged and eventually accepted.

  • Again with the pain

    There is a list of the stages of grief. A list created by humans to formulate a process that through observations many have gone through. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are listed. It’s not a one-size fits all, as emotions are complex and though we may think we are done, something will arise that requires a revisiting to part of a natural process that will, in all likelihood, vary from person to person.

    I offer here my own experiences and how subsequent perceptions have given insight into my own grieving process.

    Denial was short and transient. I had taken Gavin to his home on the Monday after he had dog sat for the weekend whilst we visited my family and attended the committal of my stillborn nephew. Gavin wanted to go home though he had had the best nights sleep for ages in his childhood room and old bed. For the next few days he didn’t respond to texts and that was not unusual, but come Friday evening my husband felt the need to go round and make sure he was OK. We have a spare key and that was the beginning. Dave phoned a neighbour, and our daughter to come and sit with me. He then phoned to break the news that he had found Gavin dead on his bedroom floor and was now having to deal with emergency services and the Police. That is when denial hits. It can’t be true, yet no way could he or Gavin play that sort of game. To wake the next morning to that thought already expressed here, that Gavin was nolonger in my world was a seeing and feeling that his body was gone. A beginning of acceptance. A ‘gain’ with the pain.

    What comes next is simply hurting, a deep ache in tbe heart, a stab in the chest. That pain kept his loss a reality, an undeniable fact. That pain was ever present in all the formalities that had to be done with his passing. Registering his death, nor a committal service could happen until his autopsy. Yet we made arrangements, told who we could, his place of work, banks, family and friends, few though they were. A putting aside our pains to deal with essentials and processes. Waves that ebbed and flowed depending on where we felt we were at or not.

    The anger would float on those waves like flotsam, waiting to be beached and taken notice of. That will be my next blog. When? When I have the courage to write.

  • Waking up

    Waking up on the morning after Gavin died was to wake with the thought that I ‘lived in a world without him’. That was overwhelmingly sad. Tears welled, and nothing could stop that. I came to see that nothing should stop that expression of sadness. That it’s OK to be seen to be grieving. Other members of my family would have to deal with their own emotions their way. I was invited to embrace all that losing someone near and dear would offer. To do otherwise would be to deny what being human in nature really is. Yes, I write this with hindsight and insights gifted through the subsequent years yet even now, almost 5 years on, that initial pain of heart can be as sharp as a blade that pierces the skin. I embrace that, to sob or gently weep is to allow that feeling to have a place, a space to be accepted and loved as part of who I am now. Its OK to feel a sadness and to express that. Its not there to make you feel ‘less than’ its there to show love and kindness to the one who is sad. By allowing my feelings to show, to express that sorrow became a space where others could do what they needed in their moments. In the days and weeks following, whether clearing out his home and possessions. Organising his affairs and a funeral, or dealing with hospital investigations and a coroner there is a putting aside of emotion. Yet always an invitation to return to that in quiet moments. Some can allow and many can not, because it hurts and that is not pleasant to feel. It is to be avoided, perhaps simply to survive one can’t allow that pain to the surface as many other pains will ask to be felt too.