181: All is Said and Done

 My son and I this morning - 9 August 2022 - watched the penultimate episode of a long-running saga called Better Call Saul - ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 12 Recap: Hit the Road - The New York Times (nytimes.com).

The reason I bring it up is that the first many minutes of the episode shows one of the main characters living a very mundane, everyday life - as described in the article linked above. This was shown in black and white and in contrast to the exciting and riotous life (in colour) that this person and the other protagonist (Saul) lived in earlier seasons and episodes.

(Of course, those other bits of the show chronicling the times of a small time hustler and drug dealers and so on are not really 'exciting' but they tell a story and a fable with exciting music and good acting.)

The life that is shown as boring - weekend lunch with friends, office work, a bit of humping - is of course the lot of most of our lives. And I found it hideously true to life and depressing. But there it is.

Yesterday morning I was chatting to a good friend of mine - someone I have known since we were at school together. She lost her parents years ago, she lost one of her brothers (in his 50s?) a couple of years ago and now another brother (early 60s who appeared to have recovered from jaw cancer) has been diagnosed with throat cancer. On top of work issues, she feels completely exhausted and beaten down.

And we were discussing that, as we get older, the little bits of calm where life seems stable are increasingly short false dawns - some tragedy is coming around the corner.

So, what is the point that I am trying to make?

I am 53 now but at one time I went through all the phases of being excited about work, build a career, make a meaningful contribution, be a good son, husband, father. What is the balance, therefore, between considering / knowing all of that to be completely and utterly mundane but also trying to find value and give oneself some purpose?

Where is the balance between being happy with 'good enough' and just being lazy? Is it wrong to float along but is it right to continually 'go for it' - in both cases affecting other people's lives in myriad ways.

And, in many ways, this goes to the heart of what I have been writing about since I started in 2011.

Yes, we lead mundane lives. But we are healthy, we are able to spend, we have lived in nice places, we have a lovely child, we have good friends, we have visited great places, eaten in fancy restaurants - and, yet, for much of our married life this has not been good enough.

I have not achieved the heights of Managing Director or CEO, we do not fly business class. This has been due to a lack of drive, ambition and talent but life has not treated us badly - and I am very grateful for so much.

Life is mundane and in the end we all die. That much we know. And all that can be said about living a good life and love and ambition and purpose has, I am sure, been said and done ....

I was going to write that we know modesty, the middle way, collaboration, community and all those wishy, washy things are the way to a contented and useful life. But, is that true? Perhaps, never being satisfied, driving forward, pushing, pushing, pushing is what moves ithe world forward and improves lives?

It is that eternal balance in the diversity of thought and action that drives 'the game' forward, I suppose.

And, it seems to me, as we lead our lives, that there is no need to find the 'right' way because there isn't one. We all have to find our way through - minimising damage to others and oneself as we go. 

The final balance is between looking out for me - being selfish - and erring on the side of  the duty to help others - if they coincide, fabulous.

I have no answers, perhaps it is pretentious and condescending to even have these thoughts, but the question of 'me' and 'us' will come.

180: A Timely Reminder

 I wrote yesterday about staying because of guilt.

Well, this morning I got a timely reminder of why, despite good times now and again, I need to make a move.

Our son is in the middle of important exams and, by all accounts from school, has worked pretty well through the year. He is on a mid-term break and She is working from home.

When she isn't here, he gets up of his own accord mostly and is down to his books by 10:30 or so. Today, there was much nagging and he stayed in bed. Then there was some diatribe which went for many minutes as she vented about something. I was in a meeting on zoom and so I did not get the subject. But it almost doesn't matter - it was loud and it was rude.

Yes, he takes time to do what he is told but that would be in common with 99.5% of teenagers around the globe. And, of course, nagging is the most effective way of getting someone to do something - everyone knows that!

She creates the tension and the drama but then expects everyone to get on with things as if nothing has happened. Does she speak to anyone like that outside her immediate circle? Yes, as it happens - call centre people or shop assistants. The common denominator - people who will not answer back.

I also discipline our son from time to time but in a fashion that is more low-key, trying to explain - as I would in a professional setting.

But, anyway, though a small incident, if I needed a reminder, this was it. A leopard does not change its spots and I need to escape before I am devoured.

Evening update: My son is clearly made of stoic material - as I have noted before when he has come under stress. I wrote that, 'Our son – unlike me – is a bounce-backer and in that sense more like you. He will take your punishment and then be as cheerful as before but how long will he carry on like that?'  in a rather long post: 71: What I really think but cannot say

So, by the evening she was chatting away to him about our upcoming summer holidays and he was fine with her. I would have stewed for days. But then she has told me in the past that confrontation is good and just because I don't like it does not mean that she will not carry on doing it.

The pleasant atmosphere at the end of the day creates amnesia ... perhaps I am just a snowflake but there will be a next time and a next time and a next time ... after twenty one years can there be a last time?

179: Generally peaceful but small examples

Life has been ok lately - she goes to work, I work from home and look after most things. Trying to keep it peaceful for our son who is in the middle of public exams.

My brother, who lives a couple of hours away, invited us to lunch. For 1 pm. I said we would set off about 11 am - theorising that even with bad traffic we would be there for about 1:20 / 1:30.

So we get ready to leave as planned and, all of a sudden, she says she has to go to the shops. In the end, we do not really leave until 12. Luckily, traffic is not terrible and we arrive by 2.

A small thing really. But it reminded me of Entry 112: Toxicity and point 2! There is no apology from her, just, 'we set off late.' It is a lack of respect - perhaps unconscious - and a need to control. For her own appointments, though, and to meet her friends, all is always on time.

The last few weeks we have had friends and family over and I have done most of the cooking. Her brother and another friend were coming over and, as usual when she is cooking, everything is stressful and last minute and messy. When I cook I never ask for help. But this morning, 'do this, do that ... I didn't ask you to do that ...'

'Do you still have a headache?' she asks.

'A little.'

'Thought so. You are slow when you have a headache and become like your brother.'

Thanks ... particularly so as I only appeared slow because of your multiple instructions and often contradictory ones. And how typical to bring my family into this - her's of course are paragons of virtue. 

And they're not bad in reality - I like them. But her parents would routinely turn up an hour and a half late to things - to everyone to be fair, friend and formal alike, and it would be ever so charming!

While drifting around blogs myself, came across this.

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/dear-gt/after-32-years-im-ready-to-leave-my-wife-and-take-a-chance

This is clearly not my situation but I am well aware that what I am thinking is in common with millions of others. And, in some of the comments in the blog above, I see the effect leaving has on the partner. 

But do I stay because of guilt - because of the effect it might have? She is about to turn 50, has a job, is outgoing ... tells me often that I am stupid ... can she not survive?

178: Feel free to comment!!

Been seeing a few hits recently on this blog.

While this has been entirely an exercise in self-counselling and a stress reliever, I have always kept it open and kept it anonymous.

But, hey, if you are reading and feel like chucking in a comment, please do so - it would be good to share some thoughts. 

I am one of many millions in this position ... I get that. But, like everything else in life, the experience is both common and individual.

To reprise a famous quote from Joseph Conrad: 'Only the young have such moments. I don’t mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.

'One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness—and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn of the path has its seduction. And it isn’t because it is an undiscovered country. One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed that way. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects an uncommon or personal sensation—a bit of one’s own.

'One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the predecessors, excited, amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together—the kicks and the half-pence, as the saying is—the picturesque common lot that holds so many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes. One goes on. And the time, too, goes on—till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left behind.'

For sure, I am at the other end of life to the 'young' and many shadow-lines have come and gone, but 'the landmarks of the predecessors' and the 'picturesque common lot ...' still hold true. 'One knows well enough that all mankind has streamed that way.'

I feel I know what I must do, cliched though that is ... but can I?

177: Dealing with Grief - one idea

 I came across a beautiful article which chimed with me. I too have found myself suddenly breaking into heaving sobs while cooking or driving or ironing. And I realise that I will turn 54 in December whereas my cousin will always remain 53 - well '49' if you asked her.

I add the link here and pick up some resonant passages below. 

So, what is it saying? Do something with the grief - turn it into something positive. There will come a time for that I am sure but, right now, my question is 'what for'? What is the purpose? Something to think about, though.

After my sister died I didn’t know what to do with my furious pain – but poets and horses led the way | Bereavement | The Guardian

I was heartbroken and angry but horse riding and medieval poetry revealed the quest I was on

Clover Stroud

Sat 16 Apr 2022 15.00 BST

This April, I will be older than my elder sister Nell. She died of cancer in December 2019. She was 46 when she died, two years older than me. This year I will be 47. Nell will always be 46. Writing “Nell died” still disturbs me as it did in the months after her death. She was my older sister. She wasn’t supposed to die. As little girls we learned to talk lying in beds beside one another. We sat in the same bath water, shared the same toothbrush, wore the same knickers, fought over the same toys.

I was undone. My bright world turned dark with a physical, emotional, spiritual pain that overtook it. I felt ripped open and often all I wanted to do was lie on the floor and scream. I have five children so I knew I wouldn’t take my own life, but I fantasised about vanishing into the place I’d come from, before I was born, and finding my sister there.

“How are you?” kind friends said, and I didn’t know how to tell them the truth, which was heartbroken, demented, bereft, insane and very, very angry, so instead I said fine, I’m fine, and they would reply they could not imagine what I was going through. I felt alone, quickly learning that society really doesn’t want heartbroken, demented, bereft, insane and very, very angry people walking around, although believe me, there are many of us, all around you, since the people we love are dying all the time.

I needed actions that matched the enormity of my feelings, because there was a cathedral collapsing inside my soul every day, and I wanted to know how to express it.

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The other place I found solace was in poetry. In Gilgamesh, perhaps the oldest poem in the world, I read: “Death lives in the house where my bed is and wherever I set my feet, there Death is,” which was consoling, since wherever I set my feet, death was there, too. The older the poetry I read, the better I understood that these massive, difficult sensations going on inside me while I was also making a cheese sauce for lasagne, or pulling wet washing from the drum, were feelings women and men like you and me have been experiencing since the beginning of time.

Our society might struggle to provide us with the language of grief in everyday life – I cannot begin to imagine what you are going through – but writers in the Middle Ages had all the words for loss. 

Losing someone you love very much and are closer to than anyone else alive, is lonely. No one can feel what you must feel but you. We are left with a life we do not want – since the person we love is dead – but the brutal fact is that this is the only life we have. For a long time after Nell died, I wanted to stretch backwards to return to live in the time when she was alive. I wanted to do this but, of course, I could never get there again. So grief is agony, but after some time I realised this big, unwanted feeling could also be something I could use in a different way, by using it as the impetus to create a life that’s more vivid, because of my experience of becoming acquainted with death, not despite it. This isn’t easy. It requires daily practice to make it happen. It’s also something that will happen to everyone. In our lifetimes, we will all be changed by death. We will all lose people we love who we thought we couldn’t survive without. This is an inescapable fact of life. Our society may not have the language to help us navigate this, but as individuals, we can find our own beautiful, odd ways of getting through it.

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Horses, poetry and writing my book were where I found this, but as more time passes since Nell died, the more I learn about these beautiful ways we heal through mourning and the extraordinary and normal places we find comfort. Since his daughter, my sister, died, my father has practised his guitar and sung every day. He now sings at open-mic sessions, and I know this is an expression of both the way he misses Nell, and his love for her.

I also see the teenage boy who is a friend of my son’s, who shapes his grief for a friend killed last year on a motorbike, by sitting meditating on the riverbank where they fished together; the mother who lost her child to meningitis, setting up a charity that will save thousands of children; the friend who is moving forward from her partner’s death in embroidering stunning, multi-coloured tapestries. There are so many ways grief teaches us new ways to live.

And I find solace in the idea that a good life, a vivid life, might be one in which we are, like those knights, called out on our own quest to reimagine and recreate our lives after great loss. Because if you asked Gawain whether his life had more meaning in the safety of court, or out alone as he rode towards the Green Knight’s castle, I think he would reply he was most alive, out there, on his quest. I chose my knights and their poetry to take me across the plains of loss, because they were the symbols that made sense to me. I wonder, what would you choose?

176: Obituary - my lovely cousin

 I wrote earlier about the tragic loss of my cousin. She was, by far, my closest 'person' in the family - my supporter, the only one who suggested that I was of some value. I hoped to be and was asked to speak at the funeral.

I was asked to say a few words and took the precaution of putting them down on paper, as the awful reality of standing here and having to say them makes it difficult to focus.

Like many of you, I imagine, I am expecting Mi. to burst through that door any second. A little frazzled, probably late – and late because of issues with her hair! But then that throaty laugh, a hug … and away we go.

I am her cousin, her brother, as she used to say, and in emails and letters, Goofy to her Minnie. Though we grew up separated by continents and oceans, I like to think that we also grew close. I have a bucketful of memories to keep me smiling but I cannot believe that we will not have the opportunity to make more, and that we will not share the journey ahead – you always a little in front of me!

We were seven or eight and up in the hills north of the capital – a little town. Mi. forced me on to a horse – a horrific experience. She trotted off on her’s while I lay flat and clung on for dear life – my father running along on one side and my uncle on the other. Looking back, her father must have been in a quandary – does he stay with me to stop me falling or go after his daughter who has disappeared up some by lane in an unknown town! I never forgave her!

Teenage connection was limited but it all started up again with college and adulthood. I heard about sororities and sisters and spring break and Daytona. She started work at the same time as me and I got letters about snowstorms and adverse weather – which led to higher show ratings!! In the nineties I used to have to go to Kansas for work, much to the East Coaster’s amusement, and generally found a reason to stop by here for some critical meeting or other – but really to spend time with Mi. I visited the TV station and met H., spent a Thanksgiving together, often woke up at odd hours as time zones when calling were never Mi.’s strongpoint!

We travelled together to visit our grandmother. Once, she was fiddling with her hair and a cabin baggage landed on her finger – rather than her head. We laughed because a doctor on the plane verified that all was ok but said he was only a doctor and didn’t know how to make a sling - a nurse usually did that!!

On one of the visits,, I met W. for the first time. In the two and a half decades since, I never heard one word of unhappiness with you, W.. She always spoke about how she had lucked out with you and thanked you for fighting for her. She spoke so warmly of the wider At. family who provided emotional support and the sheer physical presence that we could not. I heard about Sh. – her ‘sister’ here. And, of course, her beloved daughters who completed her and of whom she was so immensely proud.

To them, and the rest of us, a poem by Christina Rosetti: 

Remember

Christina Rossetti - 1830-1894

Remember me when I am gone away,

   Gone far away into the silent land;

   When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

   You tell me of our future that you planned:

   Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

   And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

   For if the darkness and corruption leave

   A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

   Than that you should remember and be sad.

 To my friend, my supporter, my confidant, my cousin, my sister, take good care – I will miss you deeply and remember you always but, in turn, do not forget me either - we have work to do. Love you. 

175: A Good News Story - a Marriage; and a future

(My son is in the revision period of some big public exams and it is a long 4-day weekend here. I am not that busy but am not undertaking leisure activities (going out for golf for instance) so that I can appear to be working and role modelling good behaviours!!!. Seems wrong of me to be having fun when he is studying. So, there might be a few more entries in this diary while I have some spare time!)

This weekend I was supposed to be travelling north for a good friend's wedding - but, following my father in law's death - am staying down south with my son as my wife has flown to be with her mother, brother and rest of the family.

So, P..

She was the one I wrote about in Entry 37: The One that Got Away I was in love with her and, I suppose, I still am. Another prescient friend of mine asked me a few months ago whether I had been affected by the news that P. was getting married - or had I assumed that she was someone who would 'be there' should I get to separation from my wife.

And, look, yes, I admit I did have a glitch when P. first told me that she had 'found a fella' and, in turn, she mentioned that she had struggled to find the right way to tell me. Because I believe she, from time to time, may have had a soft spot for me as well - but we never explored that, though we may have hinted at it now and again. I still have the card where, while congratulating me on my marriage, she joked about who she would spend time with in an old people's home - and we often joked about knitting socks together in our golden years! 

But all that does not matter any more as I am now at a stage where I hope to 'be alone but not lonely'. I have no wish to think about someone else and I do not want to let anyone else down. And it's not all self-deprecating and modest. As I wrote when a friend of mine opened up to me and told me she found me attractive, 'to place an ounce of my happiness into someone else's hands and to be even minutely, formally accountable for someone else's is now beyond me.' 

In this context, I met up with another friend of mine the other day. She is in her late forties, divorced early from a marriage that was not working and is now in a relationship again. One that pretty much models what I might have wanted - independent, separate places, companionship, sex, travel and, I suppose, a loving environment. Sounds ideal, non?

Probably, and I am very pleased for her. However, she told me a story that - later on - reaffirmed where I want to go. She is a strong academic and a feminist. So, her partner really worked his way round and agonised and explained the thoughts behind giving her a Valentine's Day gift! It was a funny story, of course it was. But why should one partner have to agonise over this? Give a present if I want, not if I don't or forget - don't worry about things, just know that there is love and security underneath it all.

Anyway ... back to P..

She and I shared a house some twenty-five years ago and, even then, her mother was not very well and nor was her father - her close sister also then began to suffer from a degenerative illness. So it was that, when her mother and sister passed away a few years ago (her father had died some time before), after 16 years, she finally had time to herself. 

P. is the most lovely person - warm, kind, hard working. And to see the universe paying her back generously is to see virtue rewarded - and I wish her and her husband all the luck in the world. Take good care mate! xx