Cancer

After Nan died, I moved through my world like I was in a fog. I was shattered and a grey fog seemed preferable to anything else. After all, I had small children and things to do, I didn’t have time to be crippled by grief, no matter that I felt shattered inside.

There is something about watching someone you love die in front of you that can leave you a bit broken you know?

And so that is how things continued. I moved through my days, bundled in a fog of I-refuse-to-feel-anything until I got to the point when I forgot how to feel anything. I internalised all of my grief and hello fog, you’re like a warm woolly blanket. Comforting and a little bit hard to get rid of because I might need you.

Nan died almost 10 months ago and while outside, I am coping, inside I am still shattered.

If I think about it, or her, I fall apart.

So I just don’t.

I don’t look at photos of her, any more than merely letting my eyes slide over them.

And I don’t speak about her, unless it’s a little bitterly, with a dose of realistic philosophical thrown in to stop it hurting quite so badly.

There are still things that make me happy though and at this point, I need all the small doses of happiness I can get.

Watching the world from the other side of a camera lens, that makes me happy. There is something about laying almost flat on my stomach and taking photos of toadstools or flowers that makes everything else easier to deal with. From the other side of a camera lens I feel like I can breathe again.

The simple act of taking photos, and coming inside to see how they turned out, it makes everything easier to deal with somehow.

Focusing on the small things leaves the big things to take care of themselves.

I am also the first person to admit that I can get a little obsessive when things make me feel happier or fulfilled.

A long time ago now, I used to work in a kitchen. The fast paced lifestyle left little time for thinking about other things and food, well, food is a huge passion of mine.

So when I discovered that making my own pasta sauces/jams/chutney and then photographing them gave me a small measure of happiness and fulfilment, I did a lot of it. Currently I’ve run out of jars and I’m itching to buy more strawberries because dammit, at least then you can see the results of all my hard work. I have something to show for working hard at it.

Grief isn’t like that apparently. No matter how hard I work at ignoring it, or even trying to deal with it, I’ve got nothing to show for it. It still hurts just as much when I poke the hole, so I leave off the poking and move back to things that make me happy.

Small things.

Gardening makes me happy. The simple acts of picking my own produce, that’s seeing results from hard work.

We planted our six gum trees on Sunday. When we were done, I wished for another ten trees, another twenty even. Something to show for traipsing all over the yard, digging holes and dragging a hose around. I didn’t want to stop planting, because playing in the dirt, it made me feel something again. And I’ve not been feeling very much since Nan died.

I sat in the middle of the yard yesterday and just sat. With a camera in my hand and more toadstool photos on my memory card, I just sat. And I looked at the sky and I looked at my poultry, free ranging fifty metres away. I thought about how hard missing someone is and how much work grief is, for very little result. I thought about all the little things that make me happy and realised that I need all the happiness I can get.

Because even though the little things make me bounce with excitement, the bigs things are going to be there, waiting to be dealt with. Sitting on my shoulder, just waiting for a stray thought or word to bring me undone.

I am not a bouncy bubbly person. I am realistic and a little bit cynical. I am philosophical and I am rather snarky.

And at the end of the day, I will always be the kind of person who wryly tells her dying grandmother ‘Good thing it’s not leprosy, or you would have just pulled your ears off.’

Because that’s how I cope.

Happiness in small things.

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A year ago we sat around an outdoor table, surrounded by family. Easter had coincided with Nan’s birthday and we were barbecuing and celebrating, knowing in the back of our minds that it was likely to be the last birthday and Easter Nan celebrated.

We were of course hopeful that that wouldn’t be the case, but we were wrong.

A year ago we laughed and played and Isaac napped, a small baby still, asleep in his bouncer.

Slowly everyone left and I stayed, curled up in Nan’s armchair, reading her cookbooks and discussing everything under the sun with her as we pointed out likely recipes. Amy ran around, eating chocolate, while we waited for Isaac to wake up.

Nan was in the middle of chemo and horribly sick.

It was hard to watch, knowing that we couldn’t change it, or fix it.

However, it was warm and comfortable, talking.

Of course, we discussed her cancer – we always did.

We didn’t know that almost 10 weeks later Nan would be laying dying in a hospital room while we stood in a ring around her, giving her permission to leave.

Of all the things I miss, the common sense advice, the phone calls, the visits, just because, I miss curling up in the chairs at Nans and just talking more than anything else.

I miss her.

So much.

April has always been Nan’s month, her birthday and Easter intertwined always.

Today would have been her 65th birthday.

Happy Birthday Nan.

I miss you more and more each day it seems.

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I want to run myself a bath.

Slip under the water and feel it swirl around me.

I want to lay there, in the warmth and day dream, imaginary conversations between me and people I’ll never meet. I want to let my imagination run wild and emerge, warmed through and ready to write something, anything.

But, it’s the middle of the day and Isaac has just woken from a nap. Amy is asking for food and Isaac is laughing at me.

There is no peace, not for baths. Not for daydreaming or imaginary conversations.

***

Everyone is talking about Haiti.

And I want to ignore it.

Because after getting emotionally involved with Black Saturday, with Hurricane Katrina, with the Tsunamis, with everything, I just can’t.

It comes on the news and I purposely zone out.

I can’t think about it, I just can’t.

I need to protect my emotional integrity, in order to have enough for myself.

I can’t take on board the suffering of hundreds of thousands of strangers.

Not this time.

***

It’s been almost 7 months since Nan died and I miss her more every day.

But it’s been 7 months and it’s harder to say that I miss her when I’m having a bad day.

It’s not an excuse.

It just is.

It’s also the reason I can’t look too hard at the eyes of the Haiti victims.

Because I need my emotions for myself.

And I’m sorry.

***

I thought I was over the bitterness that trying and failing to conceive brought out in me.

I thought I had lanced that wound with the successful birth of a healthy baby boy, who seems to have made it unscathed to his first birthday (more on that tomorrow).

I’m not though.

The announcement of a pregnancy this last week, from a girl who I will say should not be pregnant again, has me bitter all over again.

That poor child.

The mother, and the baby to be.

She sounds pleased about it.

I can think of people who would better deserve a child.

And I’m a bitch to think that, I know.

Who am I to say that she shouldn’t have a baby? Who I am to judge?

I’m no one.

I don’t get a say.

But I still think it.

And I discovered, from this, that having trouble conceiving a baby leaves wounds.

It leaves wounds, that while they might disappear under the surface, they never really heal.

So I can safely say, that while I am happy now, I can still be bitter.

I want to not be bitter.

I want to read her pregnancy announcement and be simply happy for her and not terrified about what it means for everyone else. About what it means for a system already clogged with women like her, babies like hers.

It’s a horrible thing to admit.

***

I want to curl into a ball, and hibernate for a while. I want time to be sad, to be bitter, to ignore the world for a while.

There is no time, not for me.

Eventually.

Maybe.

I’ll be less busy.

I’ll have more time.

***

There will be a doctors appointment soon, where I discuss my panic attacks and hopefully, get something done about them.

Because they’re crippling.

And horrible.

But I have a tendency to be matter of fact about things.

And doctors don’t take matter of fact seriously.

‘Oh that? I just dislocated my shoulder. I’ll be okay.’

‘It’s just my knee. Hang on, I’ll put it right.’

‘Meh, it will be okay.’

I want to say –

I hurt and

I keep panicking

and I’m not sure it’s normal to wake up at 3am and not be able to breathe because you have something sitting on your chest.

But meh.

I’ll be okay.

I just won’t look the Haiti victims in the eyes.

At least,

not until I’ve got my head back together.

***

Isaac turns ONE tomorrow and I will certainly have a post celebrating that. We had a good day today, with my parents coming over to visit and gift him with a wooden train. It was a good afternoon. I’m just a little flat this evening.

If you want to donate to Haiti you can click here to donate through the Red Cross. Just because I can’t watch them, doesn’t mean they don’t need helping.

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