Day 710

Can someone press the ‘Refresh’ button for me please?
Hello! Anyone there?
Nope.
Just me.
I’ve got to do it myself.

Many people ready and willing to hold my hand while I do it. Many waiting patiently for it to happen.
‘Re-fresh’.
Re-invent. Re-define. Re-create. Re-invigorate.
Re-enthuse. Re-affirm. Re-generate. Re-vive. Re-vitalise.
Re-make. Re-vamp. Re-novate. Re-build.
Re-model. Re-store. Re-new. Re-instate.
Re-live. Re-smile. Re-settle.

It’s coming up to two years!
Is that a measure of anything though?
Time means nothing.
The absolute finality of death brings Time to a halt.
The suddenness of it puts emergency breaks on Time and forces it to come to a dead stop.

The question I ask myself – how much of this being ‘stuck’ is natural and how much is generated by my ‘ego’? I am sure Eckhard Tolle would ascribe a lot of it to my ‘pain-body’.

“It is not so much that you cannot stop your train of negative thoughts, but that you don’t want to. This is because the pain-body is living through you, pretending to be you. And to the pain-body, pain is pleasure. It eagerly devours every negative thought. In fact, the usual voice in your head has now become the voice of the pain-body. It has taken over the internal dialogue. A vicious circle becomes established between the pain-body and your thinking. Every thought feeds the pain-body and in turn the pain-body generates more thoughts. At some point, after a few hours or even a few days, it has replenished itself and returns to its dormant stage, leaving behind a depleted organism and a body that is much more susceptible to illness. If that sounds to you like a psychic parasite, you are right. That’s exactly what it is.

The beginning of freedom from the pain-body lies first of all in the realization that you have a pain-body. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the pain-body in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you.

It is your conscious Presence that breaks the identification with the pain-body. When you don’t identify with it, the pain-body can no longer control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore by feeding on your thoughts. The pain-body in most cases does not dissolve immediately, but once you have severed the link between it and your thinking, the pain-body begins to lose energy. Your thinking ceases to be clouded by emotion; your present perceptions are no longer distorted by the past. The energy that was trapped in the pain-body then changes its vibrational frequency and is transmuted into Presence.”

Conscious Presence.
Awareness of the ‘self’ which is infinitely more expansive than thoughts and feelings.

Day 709

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Often I feel like I am hanging in between life and death. Neither fully alive nor fully dead. Will this plague stay within me forever or set me free one way, or another?

Andrew Sullivan, who suffered with AIDS and its accomplices writes :

“ And for a precious short time, like so many other (HIV) positive people, I also sensed that the key to living was not a concentration on fighting the mechanics of the disease (although that was essential) or fighting the mechanics of life (although that is inevitable), but an indifference to both of their imponderables. In order to survive mentally, I had to find a place within myself where plague couldn’t get me, where success or failure in such a battle was of equal consequence. This was not an easy task. It required resisting the emotional satisfaction of being cured and the emotional closure of death itself. But in that, of course, it resembled merely what we all go through every day. Living, I discovered for the second, but really the first time, is not about resolution; it is about the place where plague can’t get you.”

The grief of loosing Saagar is not the plague. It is unbearably sad but the plague is that voice in my head that screams – “You didn’t love him enough to save him. You could have done more. Love is in actions, not words. Love is not just an emotion. All this campaigning and writing is a cover-up. You will be found out. You didn’t care enough for your own child.”

That is the plague.
Living is, to find a place where the plague can’t get me.
To find a place where it can’t get me.
Cannot get me.

Day 704

Posted by kidsaregifts20

I love Mondays!
Yes. I did get strange looks when I made this declaration at work one time. But it is true and I don’t feel like a sad old soul for saying it.

Today is a Monday but I don’t like it. After being here for 5 lovely weeks, my parents left for India this afternoon. I got back to an empty house after all these weeks of coming home to beautiful aromas emanating from the kitchen and a nice cup of tea with them. This evening the house was dead quiet and I went straight to bed.

Not having them at the dinner table was really sad, especially because Mum had cooked our favourite okra dish for dinner before she left. They left the house filled with colourful lilies and chrysanthemums!

I feel envious of my friends when they say – ‘I am going for lunch with my mum’ or ‘we are going to see our folks this weekend’. I can’t do these things normally as my folks live more than 4000 miles away. But it’s been party-time everyday they’ve been here. We’ve had a great time together and I am very grateful for every second of it.

Good byes are always hard but now, more so than before.

Day 703

Posted by kidsaregifts20

If music be the food of love, play on…

Listening to the melodic sound waves coming from the vocal cords, strings and drums on stage was exquisitely pleasurable but my mind was trying to understand it. How many beats in this rhythm? What raga? Which set of notes? Whose composition? And so on… I was struggling to ‘know about’ it instead of relaxing and allowing it to reach my heart.

It was time to do nothing but feel the music. Immerse myself in it. After a while I was not there any more. All that was left of me was the tingling in my ear-lobes, the tapping of my fingers and toes, the goose-bumps on my skin, the tidal waves of love in my heart, the surges of pathos in my being, the soothing meditative calmness in my mind, the slow joyous breaths in my chest, the merging of the tunes with me, the submergence of my self in the sea of harmony, in perfect unison with it, whole and complete, pure and pristine, flowing, dancing, drowning …

“Oh Khusrau, the river of love
Runs in strange directions.
One who jumps into it drowns,
And one who drowns, gets across.”

–Amir Khusrao (https://allpoetry.com/Amir-Khusro)

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Day 700

Posted by kidsaregifts20

When our GP heard of Saagar’s death, the first phone call he made was to the Medical Defence Union and they advised him not to call us. Despite having known us for more than 7 years and seeing Saagar every 2 weeks with us for the last few months of his life, he did not call us on his death.

A qualitative study of GPs’ experiences of dealing with parents bereaved by suicide by Emily Foggin et al was published last month in the British Journal of General Practise.

It acknowledged that bereavement by suicide is a risk factor for suicide but the needs of those bereaved by suicide have not been addressed and little is known about how GPs support these patients, and how they deal with this aspect of their work. 13 GPs in the UK were interviewed in a semi-structured format. It explored experiences of dealing with suicide and bereavement.

GPs disclosed low confidence in dealing with suicide and an unpreparedness to face parents bereaved by suicide. Some GPs described guilt surrounding the suicide, and a reluctance to initiate contact with the bereaved parents. GPs talked of their duty to care for the bereaved patients, but admitted difficulties in knowing what to do, particularly in the perceived absence of other services. GPs reflected on the impact of the suicide on themselves and described a lack of support or supervision.

It concluded that GPs need to feel confident and competent to support parents bereaved by suicide. Although this may be facilitated through training initiatives, and accessible services to refer parents to, GPs also require formal support and supervision, particularly around significant events such as suicide. Results from this qualitative study have informed the development of evidence-based suicide bereavement training for health professionals.

Ref : http://bjgp.org/content/early/2016/08/15/bjgp16X686605

This evening a vigil was held by SOBS (Survivors Of Bereavement by Suicide) at Hyde Park to remember those lost through suicide. Some of the people there had lost a brother 25 years ago or a sister 5 years ago or a friend 1 year ago and so on. Some of the families had not been able to speak about it for many years. Others had kept quiet as they were not sure if anyone would understand. But in that space, we sat together on the brownish-green grass with the pictures of our loved ones and lit candles in their memory and we opened our hearts. For about 2 hours we claimed that space and made it our own knowing full well that we are being listened to and perfectly well understood. What a rare gift that is!

When it comes to suicide, post-vention is pre-vention.