The ultimate full stop?

Sunday 3 July 2011

Picture: I took this about two weeks ago, on a rainy day. Cape Town winter in all its glory. Brrr!

Why do I blog? Why do I enjoy it so much, and why do I look forward to recording my thoughts in this way? I’m not quite sure, but I think it has to do with a number of things – firstly, I enjoy writing, playing with words. Secondly, I now know that people enjoy reading what I write. Thirdly, and here’s the rub, I suspect, it’s a form of putting down, for posterity, a side of myself that I’d like to leave behind. Is this bordering on the morbid? I don’t think so. Death is as much a part of life as the common cold – in fact, for anyone lucky enough to escape the latter, here’s a newsflash: you’re not going to be that fortunate with the former! Death is the ultimate full stop – or is it? Depends on your view on what happens afterwards.

Someone I know chose to end his life, exactly one week ago, and his memorial service was held yesterday. Since I heard the news, his family have been on my mind: his wife, his daughters - who, in recent months, I’ve come to know and become fond of - and his family of origin, not to mention all the other people whose lives he touched in some way.

I think the details of someone’s death shape the way we deal with that loss – when it’s an old person, there’s a certain inevitability, one has a feeling of closure, and people are heard to say things like, “She lived a full life” or “He had a good innings”, etc. And even though the person is sorely missed by the loved ones left behind, there is a level of acceptance. For those of us who are middle-aged (so strange to realize that I now fit into that category!) and still have one or both parents, it’s an issue I’m sure we all think about every now and then – I’d always wondered which one of my parents I’d have to part with first, and it turned out to be my dad. When he died, I accepted that he’d been sick and that that had caused his death, but over the years I’ve thought a lot about his lifestyle and wondered if he’d have lived longer had he made healthier choices. He died at age 74, and I wish he’d been around today, 5 and a half years later, for so many reasons. I didn’t realize, when he was alive, how much like him I was, and now I’m sorry I didn’t acknowledge and celebrate that more, share more of my life with him.

When there’s death after a long illness, that has its own peculiar set of issues, including relief, I would imagine. It must be very hard to see someone you love suffering, hanging on for months and months, going through all the phases of deterioration before your eyes, knowing that there’s going to be no healing, and that the only outcome is death. That person’s quality of life is reduced to almost nil, while those around, deeply affected, go about their daily lives desperately wanting the limbo to end, one way or the other. I would imagine there’s a fair amount of guilt experienced by people who have to nurse chronically or terminally ill family members for extended periods of time – I’m sure there’s a yearning for normality, for fun and laughter, and that the guilt arises because that yearning presupposes the absence of the dependent person.

Accidental death hits us hard, because the suddenness of it knocks the wind out of us, flings us into a state of shock, causes us to look at our lives differently, even if only till the shock wears off and we slip back into the routine of our normal lives. Death as a result of violent crime must have its very own set of issues, as well. This is something we read about in the newspapers, and people’s traumatic experiences become statistics, until we’re touched by the same horror, ourselves.

But how families deal with the suicide of a loved one has been on my mind this past week. How do you make sense of it? How does a child handle the fact that that was a choice made by one of her parents, one of the people whom you assumed knew all the answers and looked up to as role models? If I sound judgmental, that is definitely not my intention - I don’t know the specifics, so I’m unaware of what pushed this person to commit such an extreme act. All I can say is – if you haven’t walked in someone’s shoes and been fully aware of all the things he was dealing with, you can’t say what he should or should not have done. Nothing gives me the right to say he was wrong to have done it. As I said, all I can think of is how the close people in his life, especially his wife and children, his brothers and the rest of his family of origin, must be feeling now, the questions they must be asking themselves. For a child to lose a parent is profoundly traumatic as it is, but to suffer that kind of loss must be so much more so.

I got the news late on Monday evening, and my children were with me when I read the sms and reacted with shock to its contents. I told them what had happened and we ended up having a long discussion about dealing with life’s stresses and strains, about exercising all options, about never giving up, no matter what, about being prepared to talk about your most embarrassing situation to someone you trust, with a view to getting through and past the problem, no matter how long and inconvenient the road may be. Of course there was a lot I couldn’t discuss with them. They’re aged 12 and 16. As open as I am with my children, I always keep things age-appropriate.

For example – if I believe that euthanasia is acceptable, under certain circumstances (as I do), then why do I struggle with suicide as one of a set of options? I’m not religious, I don’t believe in Heaven and Hell, not to mention Purgatory, so what’s the issue here?

Personally, I can only base whatever I believe in, on this topic, on what I’ve experienced thus far. Yes, I’ve been in extremely unhappy situations, where I’ve wondered how I could carry on living under those circumstances, and yes I have wondered….. But somehow there was always an alternative that entailed giving tomorrow a chance. I extricated myself from an eight-year-long, intense relationship that had robbed me of my spirit, but guaranteed me material comfort, and moved on to live a life without the emotional blackmail and daily suspicion, drama and unhappiness that had characterised that time of my life. Aaah, blissful relief! Eight years – and what seemed like a lifetime – later, I uprooted myself from a marriage that had long ceased to be mutually fulfilling, where all kinds of boundaries had been crossed and respect had got lost along the way. Having come from a divorced family, it had never been my intention to walk that same path, and yet I did. I stayed longer than I should’ve, always giving others the benefit of the doubt, lacking the confidence to walk away, not trusting my instincts, not listening to that little voice inside my head, but when I did, I knew it wasn’t the easiest path I’d chosen. And now, 11 years later, I know for sure that that was the best thing I could’ve done. Yes, once again I incurred extreme material loss, but time has taught me that material things will never be more important than the people issues. You can always earn the money yourself and buy the things you like, and you’ll be much happier away from the toxicity of the dysfunctional relationship.

In any part of my life, when I feel I can’t breathe, when I feel my energy is being depleted, my oxygen levels dropping drastically, I know it’s time to exercise new options. I know myself well enough to know that it will always entail giving tomorrow a chance. Living my life incorporating the exercises and practices of the book, “The Art of Possibility” (Ben Zander and Ros Stone Zander) has intensified my curiosity about what tomorrow might bring.

In fact, I’m still in bed! Let me get up and see what today has in store for me!
Oh, wait, I have to write about yesterday’s event – looks like another day of two blog posts!