Mental Illness

Understanding BipolarDisorder, depression and other illnesses

Come home, my darling.

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I still hear the key turning in the door from the outside and you stepping in. Can you believe it? I still see your face, darkened by the sun. Dressed in your cricket whites, you drag your massive cricket-bag-on-wheels behind you by your left arm.

“Did you take the sun-screen with you?” I ask.

“Yes, it’s in the bag.”

“Did you actually put it on?’

 “Mamma, I’m hungry.”

I still wait for you to join us for dinner. I cook the foods you like, especially on your birthday: spinach-paneer for mains, chocolate mousse for dessert. I wonder what you’d be doing in this realm if you were here. Job? Girl-friend? How silly! Isn’t it? I can’t help it. It’s involuntary. It’s got something to do with the heart. With longing. With missing. With love. It’s not supposed to make sense. You would have had a good old chuckle at my expense if you were here. But you are not and I am. How random is that?

I still remember the first time I felt you elbow-ing or knee-ing me from inside my tummy, as if we had an inside joke between us. I remember holding all three kilos of you in my arms for the first time. I couldn’t believe you were for real. You were all mine. Now my arms ache with emptiness. Is this real?

Do you miss me sometimes?

Happy birthday my darling.

Heaven

It will be the past

And we’ll live there together.

Not as it was to live

But as it is remembered.

It will be the past.

We’ll all go back together.

Everyone we ever loved,

And lost, and must remember.

It will be the past.

And it will last forever.

                      – A poem by Patrick Phillips, on the New York subway.

(“Ghar aa” is a Hindi phrase that means “Come home”)

The world is less beautiful without you.

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I am told it’s common for those at the end of their tether to believe that everyone would be better off without them. I don’t know if Saagar believed that but if he did, I want him to know that’s not true. They are far from ‘better off’. They hurt for as long as they live. They try to keep walking, with their painful unanswerable questions shouting in their ears. They make repeated futile attempts at forgiving themselves for their real and imagined, seemingly unforgivable mistakes. They try to uphold a light of hope for themselves and others, inside the well of their desperate darkness. They try to find purpose and meaning in their lives, when they can hardly move from one breath to the next.

Three years back I went traveling to the USA and Australia, as a Churchill Fellow, to find answers to a few of my unanswerable questions. I met some amazing people and learnt a lot, some of which I shared on this blog in October 2019. For the last two years, I have been compiling my findings with the aim of producing a report. It has been a challenging task and has taken a lot longer than I thought it would, thanks to the multiple distractions of the last couple of years.

The report has now been published and I am delighted to share it here with you. It is called ‘Bridging the Gaps in Suicide Prevention’ . I hope it will inspire compassionate ways of dealing with human fragility. I hope it will reach all those who can influence change from within – governments, communities, professions and hearts of individuals. I hope it will keep our hopes alive, for a well-connected, understanding world.

Report: https://www.churchillfellowship.org/ideas-experts/ideas-library/suicide-prevention-efficacy-of-multisectoral-approach-and-bereavement-support

Invitation to the Circle of Remembrance

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Towards the end of 2020, a series of phone calls with mums and dads from the USA, Australia and the UK resulted in the formation of an on-line peer support group that has met every other Saturday evening for an hour and a half. The first meeting was held in the middle of January 2021. We’ve recently had our 32nd meeting. The group provides a warm space for sharing and offers non-judgemental listening and understanding. It provides a fertile ground for post-traumatic healing and growth. We call it CORe: Circle of Remembrance.

The loss of a child is different from other losses. The purpose of CORe is to honour our children, to create an opportunity for sharing our inner and outer experiences and to seek tools and mutual understanding for establishing a firmer ground of compassion, from which to live our new lives.

Over time, I have come to appreciate my need for a tribe to belong to. Other people who are also living through the loss of their child validate our experiences, witness our pain and help us feel less alone.

After many years of trying to make sense of something so treacherous, I now know that it is impossible to make any sense of it. However, I also know that it’s possible to create a new path for ourselves. A path of learning and peace.

It has been an honour for Si and me to facilitate the CORe group of roughly 20 friends and witness their journeys. The rich, life-sustaining conversations and friendships within the group are a delight to be a part of.

It therefore gives me great joy to invite bereaved parents to a new group that will meet on alternate Wednesdays from 7.00 – 8.30 pm (UK time). Please visit the website of CORe (link below) for more details and testimonials and sign up if you would like to join.  In our experience with the Saturday group, the upper limit to attendees is 25. Once we have about 15 members, we’ll get started. The tentative start date is 4th May 2022.

https://www.core-community.com/

Two lessons

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“He loved me in the purest sense and I loved him. That’s how he kept me alive.” says Marsha about Ted, a catholic priest.

This relationship taught her two important things that she applied to her work as a therapist for seriously suicidal people. She wrote about these things and taught them to her students, the future generation of therapists.

  1. ‘I was unable to say thank-you then. Now I can.’

If you’re giving unconditional love to help someone cope with the hell they are in, if you’re holding them emotionally and physically, don’t interpret their absence of ‘thanks’ as a sign that you are not giving them what they need. You probably are.

2. ‘Keep loving them.’

When someone sees no point in living, they are like someone walking in a mist. They don’t see the mist. They don’t see that they are getting wet. If you’re walking with them, you may not see it either. But if they have a pail of water, you can collect the water that was mist, in it. Each moment of love adds to the mist, which adds to the water in the pail. By itself, each moment of love may not be enough. But ultimately, the pail fills up and the person in hell can drink that water of love and be transformed.

Like Marsha, I know this to be true. I’ve been there and drunk from that pail.

(Inspired by Marsha M Linehans’s book: ‘Building a life worth living’.)