Grief

Coping mechanisms

Six homes

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These worlds, like multi-coloured balls in a kid’s play pen in Ikea overlap, intersect, collide, clash and merge constantly. They clang as if  at VT station, Mumbai at 8 am on a Monday morning.

At the core of these spheres is a mush of thoughts, words, impressions and feelings, ground into a thick viscous treacle. At their margins are bright green woods.

I live in the shifting woods that border these globes. These borderlands are safe. Nothing can be taken away from me here. If one world vanishes, I jump onto another. All of them are home. They tumble along and slosh about merrily in a pool of love, inside and outside of me.

Sanity & Insanity
Life & Death
Reality & Illusion

I have six homes.

Ref:

A 4 minute conversation, Si and I : The Listening Project on BBC Radio 4 (19th Sept 2018)

I-Player (only available in the UK)https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b0bk1fc0

Shauna’s Mum says

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” A schoolgirl’s been murdered in our area. It’s a horrible, horrible thing to happen – never should have and is just another reminder of this shit world we live in. I’ve been trying not to follow the news on it but they released CCTV footage of her last known moments and it was actually somewhere my brother drives past on the school run four times a day so I did watch it all and check the timings to just make sure he wouldn’t have been there and possibly seen something. (Different time of day)

I’ve just been struck by how it’s pulled the community together. There’s been balloon releases, marches, leaflet drops – the mum is clearly being very much supported ….I couldn’t find one person willing to have a cup of tea with me; three years on I still can’t. And I know suicide is different. Murder is evil; what was done to this poor girl, there’s absolutely no doubt people should be outraged by it…and I know suicide is about making a decision – albeit a stupid and flawed one…. but there are things I don’t understand why they’re quite so different.

The Head teacher of the girl’s school implored students to come forward because answers were needed. We needed answers with Shauna and anyone at her school who knew anything got told it wasn’t an appropriate thing to discuss. We even had a girl go to her teacher with some information, get told off for it and then to choose to write independently to the Coroner’s Court (with info we found hugely relevant but was promptly disregarded.)

Today the girl’s school announced that they’ll be making a memorial garden for her with lots of nice words about there always being a place for her and her never being forgotten. Shauna’s name wasn’t even allowed to stay on the Year 11 hoodies. The gesture is nice but the words; it would have made such a difference to us if someone had said stuff like that to us.

There was just both girls of a similar age and it’s just really brought it home how differently people see these things. I’m glad this Mum has the support that she so desperately needs, I don’t begrudge her it – I just wish it wasn’t so glaringly different how people reacted – this Mum is a heroine because of what she’s had to endure, we’re just potentially neglectful parents who should be forgotten about/ignored 😦

I don’t know if I’m making any sense. Like I say I do understand it. It doesn’t stop it hurting though. 😦 “

No more thorns

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The bridge rumbles, shakes and shudders
as trains thunder over it.
I sit under the bridge and everything around me
rumbles, shakes and shudders.
The verticals, horizontals and things in between
judder
Outside and inside of me
I live under this bridge. It threatens to snap and bury me in rubble
Some trains are overloaded.
They crawl on top of my chest.
Crushing me to pulp.
Others come galloping,
Turning me to fine flying dust.
Almost non-existent
Yet, here.
Feeling. Breathing.

Thousands of us huddle under this bridge.
Wondering why our love wasn’t enough
Why no one said anything
Why it keeps happening at a maddening pace
Why we were blind
Why we didn’t know what to do
Why the Earth keeps spinning
Why the breath keeps oscillating
Why the heart keeps drumming.
Why?

4 years ago, it was all happening in September.
He didn’t know he was so close to the end.
I didn’t know I was so close to his end.
Now, I know.
Everyone’s talking.
Was I deaf or is it much too late?

Kingdom of Us: Lucy Cohen presents a film about the life of a family affected by suicide https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/08/the-kingdom-of-us-review-netflix-teenagers-lucy-cohen

Horizon: Stopping male suicide by Dr Xand Van Tulleken on BBC2 on 22nd August 2018
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bgv82g/horizon-2018-6-stopping-male-suicide

House of Commons, 5th September 2018: Transcript of a debate by Helen Jones, making a case for changing the standard of proof from ‘criminal’ to ‘civil’ for deaths by suicides
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-09-05/debates/B8A2C436-64BE-4694-B4AA-F6535E49E31E/SuicideCoroners%E2%80%99Courts

NICE Guidelines: September 2018: Preventing Suicide in community and custodial settings.
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG105

M is for Moraine

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Born and brought up mainly in the plains of North India, my geographical vocabulary is meagre. The feeling of being at the toe of a glacier is a thousand times more awe-inspiring than looking at its picture. The expansive agelessness of it! It goes back thousands of years, slowly and steadily, giving. It makes me feel small, as I am reminded of the angst on the railway platforms in London when the 7.12 is delayed by 4 minutes. Time adorns a different cape in the white light of the glaciers.

The debris revealed on the sides and the toe of a glacier as it recedes forms landmasses called (lateral and terminal respectively) moraines.  Often there is a bowl of icy water in the centre as if artfully crafted by a deft potter.

The glaciers have their own weather system. A breeze blows downhill over them cooled by the icefield. It is denser and heavier than the air it replaces. These winds have the staccato name of ‘katabatic’ winds.

The Athabasca Glacier spills from the Columbia Icefield, flowing over three giant bedrock steps like a massive slow-moving waterfall. Although glacial ice is solid, it deforms and flows under pressure, moving like a thick pudding. Gravity and the weight of the ice pulls it downhill towards the valley.

And the valley offers splendour and beauty in abundance.

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Pink Dinosaur

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She was 29. She had suffered with severe anxiety and depression since the age of 12. She was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and other things.    “I have never been happy – I don’t know the concept of happiness”, said she. Aurelia had spent a couple of years in a Psychiatric unit and a couple in a prison. She wanted to be freed from her body. Doctors in the Netherlands agreed to assist her to end her life. On the 26th of Jan 2018, she drank the poisonous mix of drugs (supplied by medics), cosy in her bed, in the presence of her pals and 2 doctors, clutching her soft, pink, toy dinosaur and peacefully slipped away.

This is the beginning of the death of hope. I have full sympathy with Aurelia’s suffering. The question is:
Had every other option been fully explored and found useless?
Had she read Buddhist teachings or volunteered to help conserve a local park or anything else?
Had she tried travelling to a different country with a different vibe?
Had she tried Homeopathy, Ayurveda or Chinese traditional medicine?
Reflexology, Aromatherapy or Kinesiology? Music, theatre or art therapy?

The range of options explored are limited by the limitations of the imagination of ‘the system’. A purely medical approach is useless without attention to social factors. Many social issues cannot be fixed but they can be understood and imaginative alternatives offered.

Her death wish was most likely a symptom of her illness. No?
Does this euthanasia make it easier for many others to give up?
Can we be a 100% sure that she had considered all her options?
Had she received appropriate bereavement support when her mother had passed away?

My deepest condolences to her friends and her Dad.
RIP Aurelia. I am sorry you couldn’t find a reason to live.

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Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySVKF5_6gfM