It was my intention not to post anything for a while, as you may have figured out from the title of yesterday’s post and the reason why being clear to you if you read the labels, but now it is the middle of the night and I find myself at loose ends, as I have read all the blogs that I normally read and I must fill up the wee hours. I went to bed tired and early last night, because I didn’t take a nap during the day and if I don’t do that, I don’t last very long past the evening news. I have a tendency to get instantly sleepy and go from being quite alert to being quite unconscious in a very short time and that is not due to my medication. So, as a result, I am up early too.
Anyway, now I find myself writing a post after all and I have not prepared myself and must think of some subject matters. Normally, I make notes during the day and I use them to help me write down something halfway interesting, but now I don’t have any notes at all, so I’ll just do it from the top of my head. I think that is how the expression goes.
I can tell I have been reading a lot of Dutch language novels, because my Dutch is improving, but I am getting it mixed up with my English, or so it seems to me. Let’s just say that sometimes I am not so sure of myself. I think I am using the right expression, but then I wonder if I am not translating it literally out of Dutch.
Being unable to describe my weekend to you, I must think of something else that is entertaining and I am sure I have all sorts of bits and bobs in my head, but it is just a matter of remembering them and pulling them out in a coherent fashion.
When my son was growing up, we used to call each other Martha and Johnathan. I don’t know why we did this and how we got this idea to do it. We used to have very melodramatic dialogs and call each other those names. Sometimes we would get mixed up and call each other Marathon. I would see him enter a room and pretend to very delicately swoon with my hand to my brow and call out, “Oh, Jonathan!” He would then reply in the appropriate manner and off we went with a whole little scene we made up on the spot. He had a good sense of humor and his favorite movies were Monty Python ones.
He was a great kid and we had a lot of fun together. I think it was because he was such a sensitive kid, that made him so humorous in such a dry and witty way and he would always come up with great one liners out of the blue. He was definitely a big source of humor to me and I had many good laughs because of him. He was especially good when we had to travel long distances in the car and we all went silly with boredom. I remember instances when I had to unbuckle my seatbelt because I was laughing so much and was writhing in my seat from it. The kid was a prime example of absolute madness within the realms of sanity.
It’s been more than three and a half years now since he has died. I am able to talk about him now without it hurting so terribly and I talk about him in an offhand way regularly, as if he is someone who is still alive and matters. I refer to him when I discus different issues with other people and I can do that easily.
His death was traumatic, even though we were expecting it, because he was very sick. It is always a very traumatic thing when you lose a child, because your children are supposed to outlive you. I had to travel to Alaska where he lived and it is a journey that I will not soon forget and it was very intense and exhausting and like some bad dream. I got to say goodbye to him, though, and I am always grateful for that and I am happy that I got to see the place where he lived and where he always vowed he would live when he was a little boy growing up.
So, his death was traumatic, but somehow manageable and the grief was within human proportions and something I was strong enough for to bear. I cried a lot and felt stunned and shocked and I had all those feelings mothers have when their children die, but I managed it and I was able to mourn in a more or less sensible manner and in the healthiest way possible. It didn’t damage me.
There had been a death that was very much more traumatic than that, and one that caused me a tremendous amount of emotional damage, and that was my mother’s death and this because it happened at the hands of my father. I also had to make a long journey when it happened and that one was of nightmarish proportions and I was not sure if I would survive the journey, let alone the aftermath of the deed that was done. My father murdered my mother in cold blood and it was such a traumatic experience that this one deed influenced the whole path of my life after that.
It seems a shocking thing to write it down here and I don’t know if I am wise to do so. While I write this, I feel some of that anxiety rise up in me again and I know I will have some of that with me always. So maybe it is best not to dwell on it too much, but merely point out that there are different kinds of death and there are different kinds of grief and there are different kinds of mourning. All pain is not equal.
It is always very important to me to live in the here and now and whenever I threaten to get bogged down in the swamp of my memories, I call myself to order and I tell myself out loud to live now in this moment and to stick to the reality of this day and this day only. It is a good thing to do and it normally works very well, especially if the reality of the moment is a good one and your life is going well. Therefor, I do whatever I can to make sure my life is going well and it is a mission of mine to have it be so. I try not to look back too much on yesterday and I try not to project myself too much into the future.
Well, I am calling myself right back to this moment now and that means that I am sitting here with a very good mug of hot decaf and a lovely cigarette. Toby is sitting behind me on the coffee table and he has his legs folded under him in such a way that he looks like a teapot, as if I can pick him up and pour tea from his nose. All the other animals are in the bedroom with Eduard.
Yesterday, it rained nearly all day and it is supposed to rain again today and tomorrow. I don’t mind it too much, except for when I have to take Jesker out for his walk. We looked up the pain medication that he takes on the Internet and found out that he can take it indefinitely and if it is okay with the vet, we would like to keep him on a maintenance dose, because he is doing so much better.
Well, I guess that’s all the writing I am going to do for this morning. I feel a little
bit drained, as if my emotions have been wrung out. I don’t have anyone to blame but myself, because in my effort not to discuss the weekend I have tackled other intricate subjects.
Today is Miserable Monday. At least it is for those people who have to go to jobs they are not too happy in. Others of us stay home and make the best of that. Whichever sort of Monday it is for you, do make the best of it and enjoy it anyway.
Ciao, tutti voi cara gente.
P.S. Image courtesy of John Mora.