....while you’re busy making other plans” (John Lennon)
Well, we have been struggling the last two days, Sunday and Monday. Must be the let-down after Kids’ Day. Then again maybe not. We think it’s our neighbour’s death that keeps haunting us. Not so much a loss, as we really didn’t know her that well, but our “relationship” with Death. We just have such a hard time with it. We know, who doesn’t. Some people seem very accepting of it but not us.
Back in 2007, we were working at CMHA. There was a group of us who used to teach workshops on mental illness. It was a good group, we liked everyone. Then one day we get a phone call from our boss, that one woman in the group had committed suicide. It was devastating for everyone at CMHA. For us, it was another loss for the year. Our psychiatrist had closed her practice in Vancouver in the spring of 2007 and we had little warning about it. We had worked with her for 17 years. At first we thought we were okay about it. Then in July we had to move. Not far mind you. Down one floor. We live in a housing co-op and because our son had moved out back in 2000 we were “overhoused”, had one too many bedrooms. So we were expected to move to a one-bedroom as soon as it became available. In 2007 the apartment right below us was available and it was a good thing. It’s a beautiful apartment. Nonetheless it was hard moving from a home we had lived in for 21 years. So many of us had done our healing there. So many had felt this place to be their first home and they loved it. We were grateful that it was in the same building. Our co-op is a “scattered” co-op meaning we have buildings on different streets. We might have had to move to a different building on a different street and that would most certainly have been very difficult.
It was very hard at first to be in a new apartment and it was hard hearing the people above us, living in what still felt like our home. So by the time our colleague died we had already suffered two significant losses. The loss of Lyn and the loss of our home. After our colleague’s death we spiralled downwards and pulled into ourself and into our bed. We had a nice cozy bedroom in our new place and a great set-up with the tv sitting on our dresser. We often snuggled in and watched tv trying to soothe ourself. We felt like our life was out of our control and that freaked some of us out.
We did find a temporary therapist to work with but we kept our multiplexity out of the way and focused on our present day life. In January of 2008 we quit CMHA, just didn’t want to do the workshops anymore. It just felt too stressful. Instead we “drove” ourself into research on climate change and global warming and built a workshop around it. Although we are proud of all the work we did and all that we learned it didn’t really take off as a “business” so we let it go.
Eventually we got busy with other things and recovered from our losses. This time, as we said earlier, is not so much about loss as our dealings with Death, with a capital “D”. As much as we try to deny its effects, we have lost some kind of ground since our neighbour’s passing. We look over to her front door from our bedroom window to see the constant reminder that we are not going to live forever and it scares us greatly. We so do not want to die yet. We feel like we are just getting started with our life. We have plans and things to do yet. But that’s not life is it.
So depression has re-entered our life. We don’t want to go for our walks anymore, though we forced ourself to yesterday. We don’t feel like meditating and we want to withdraw from the world and cocoon as much as possible. We are dreading more significant losses such as the death of our close friends, if they die before us. We are also worried about the effect of our mom’s death. Even though she is 97 now and you would think it wouldn’t be as hard to accept, we are afraid it might trigger memories. Especially since we will have to face her home, the place we lived from age 7 to 18, alone. It will be the last time we will go there and some of us are not sure what that will feel like. We can’t worry too much about it as it hasn’t happened yet but it sits there anyway.
The bottom line is we feel scared. Scared of death and scared of life. Scared of pain. We want to escape but it all just chases us. No getting away from it.
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