I am alive.
I am alive because of my cats.
I am alive because I connect.
I am alive because of talking, laughing, crying and sharing.
I am alive because inside of me there is a seed of hope.
I am alive because I can make a difference.
I am alive because I know I am loved even if I don’t always feel it.
I am alive today because I remembered the feeling would pass.
I am alive because some people realise how difficult it is for me to be here.
I am alive because I am moved by music and stories.
I am alive because I am open to whatever the universe might bring.
I am alive because someone told me it would matter to them if I died.
I am alive because someone knew how to talk to me about suicide.
I am alive because I take responsibility.
I am alive because I love.
I am alive because I can see that in a strange way life is still beautiful.
gratitude
Day 501
Ikebana is the ancient Japanese art of flower arranging in practice for the last 600 years. It developed from the Buddhist ritual of offering flowers to the spirits of the dead. By the middle of the fifteenth century, with the emergence of the first classical styles, ikebana achieved the status of an art form independent of its religious origins, though it continued to retain strong symbolic and philosophical overtones.
In 2012 Saagar left home for university, about 5 hours away. I missed him so much that I avoided coming home in the evenings. After attending an Ikebana exhibition and a few demonstrations, I was enamoured by the beauty and creativity in those arrangements. I started taking lessons in Ikebana once a week. The classes were held in the evening. They brought me close to the smells and textures of various kinds of fresh flowers and foliage. I learnt some lovely musical names like Lisianthus and Zantedeschia. I also learnt to match them with their faces. I could now appreciate the depth of the redness of dogwood and the palpable tenderness of rose buds. It was a whole new world of shapes, materials, colours, techniques, spaces and movements. It was meditative in its own serene way. A couple of hours went by in the blink of an eye.
After a gap of nearly 18 months, I restarted the lessons last week. It is heart warming to be reunited with old friends.
Day 492
She is 40. Fit, healthy and smiling anxiously. She is in the hospital because she needs help with being able to be a mother. The doctors have given her some medicines to increase the number of mature eggs in her ovaries to help her with in-vitro fertilisation. She is on the operating table. Her husband waits outside. She is deeply sedated for harvesting of the eggs. The surgeon can see 2 follicles and he drains them both. He makes doubly sure that he has done everything he can to get the eggs out of those follicles for her.
My assistant sits in the corner, praying with her eyes closed and all of us have our fingers crossed. The embryologist from nextdoor comes back – ‘No eggs.’ There is a stunned silence in the room. Unbelievable! Everyone stops. The energy in the room drops to the floor.
We keep her asleep for a bit longer and take a few moments to mourn the loss of hope. The loss of a possibility, a future. The loss of what could have been. The loss of something that didn’t actually exist in that moment.
While feeling this way, I was utterly grateful for having experienced motherhood with all its joys and trials.
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.’ – Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Day 490
Time to Talk – A service for people affected by suicide.
This year it will be held at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar square. London on the 27th of February from 10.30-11.30 am.
It is a non-religious service and all are welcome.
“Gentleness is an old-fashioned word. I want to describe what it means and why it is so important.
To be affected by suicide is to be surrounded by enemies: sometimes memories, fears, isolation, shame, guilt, regret: the enemy of loss, failure, doubt – the unknown. It’s not hard to feel powerless and out of control when it feels like there are so many enemies.
One of the most paradoxical of all the sayings in the Bible is, ‘My strength is made perfect in weakness’. The way to address our vulnerability, our fear and our self-destructiveness is not with some great show of strength. It’s through making friends with our weakness. And the name for that is gentleness.
It’s all very well to say, ’Be gentle with yourself.’ But what does that mean? Possibly 3 things :
The first is silence. It can feel like a great enemy, because if you stop moving or talking or tuning into some kind of gadget, then your mind can go into overdrive. But silence can become a friend if it turns from a place of absence to a theatre of presence. Silence is for listening to the abundance of what’s out there, birds that sing and tweet, breezes that stir and swing, a tiny, busy world of insects and creatures. Silence is for watching, paying attention to texture, depth, hidden beauty and delicate detail, wispy cloud, distant blue sky and intricate snowflakes. Time, instead of being a threat or a diminishing commodity, becomes irrelevant. Silence stops being the interval between distractions and starts being the place of exhilarating, infinite discovery. It’s a fruit of gentleness.
The second thing gentleness means is touch. Many of the feelings associated with suicide are violent, sudden ones. Gentleness embraces those feelings but issues in tender touch. Holding a person’s hand says, ’I’m here. This is good. You can trust me. I am not going to run away. I’m not in a hurry. Your body, your life, your presence, your hand – it’s good. I’m not going to grab it. I am going to cherish it. Holding your hand I can feel the mystery of your flesh, the blood coruscating in your veins, the warmth and softness and creativity of your fingers. These are mysterious and wondrous things. We were made for solidarity. We were made to stand by each other in times of sorrow and distress. No one is an island. Together we are a continent. Those are the tender things touch teaches. They are the fruit of gentleness.
And then, when we have made a foundation of silence and touch, then you can begin to try words. In the absence of silence and touch, words can seem disembodied, arbitrary, meaningless. But if you have made friends with silence and trusted yourself to find good ways to touch, words don’t have to be too much work. Actions have already spoken. Understanding is already there. Words are faltering attempts to give feelings, images and ideas a name. If they are surrounded by silence and touch, those words usually come out very gently. Harsh words hurt. Gentle words heal.
Sometimes it may seem that happiness is way out of reach. But the truth is that happiness seldom comes to those who go looking for it. It’s only discovered on the way by people who are seeking something more important. Silence, touch and words are that something more important. They’re the way to show solidarity to one another.They’re the way to dismantle the enemies that sometimes seem to surround us. They’re the way to be gentle with ourselves. They’re the way, slowly, carefully, cautiously, to learn to live again.”
-An excerpt from Revd. Dr Sam Wells’ address from Time to Talk service held on 28th Feb 2015.
Day 471
The burglar alarm was serviced today. The technician asked me to review the phone numbers on the panel. These numbers are called if and when the alarm rings. Saagar’s number came up. I smiled. I didn’t really know what to say to him. Keep it? Delete it? I hesitated and then asked him to remove it. It doesn’t matter if his number is gone. His blessings are here.
I was struggling to carry a heavy suitcase up the stairs at Moorgate station. A handsome young man came up to me and offered to carry it for me. I smiled. I had tears in my eyes. I let him carry it. It was not Saagar. But his kindness is still here.
The trainer at the gym walked me up to a set of elastic straps hooked on to a metal frame. I recognized it – the TRX! Saagar never travelled without it. He would often hook it on to a door-frame and demonstrate the incredible exercises he could do with the help of the TRX. He would have loved to see someone making me use it. He is not but his wicked sense of humour is still here.
Even though he is not here, he is so ‘present’.
This moment is filled with him.
kidsaregifts 