by Michael Angus | Apr 4, 2018 | Blog
To all my friends,
These past few months have been spent working on a variety of bits and pieces, trying to finish off a book I began almost three years ago entitled ‘being sad, ain’t bad’, plus finalising the aforementioned books of reflections on my various treks in China, Arctic and the Rockies, and the associated training diaries.
In the process I’ve been reading back posts I made a year ago, specifically around the time of the Arctic trek – and I’m unquestionably conscious of the fact that I am since, fundamentally changed. I am not as subject to the extremities of emotion that grief inflicted. I do not grieve any less today than I did then, but the explicit effects do not cripple me the way they did.
I have to be grateful for that latitude….mighty small mercies ….
Another thing that strikes me though is the language I employed – I was clearly searching for words and phrases, suitably imbued to properly convey what I was feeling. It reads now as overtly melodramatic …… and yet, I know it was true at the time. I was ‘out there’ …in a place where language basically, fails, where I could not source suitable vocabulary or make any statement accurate enough to properly describe the magnitude of the circumstance, without the inevitable consequence: melodrama ….for how does one describe the indescribable, the unbearable, the untenability of the loss of ones child, without resort to the dramatic? It’s hardly a slight affair ……
Today I feel myself more centred, and more able to distinguish ‘me’, in my place, with, of all things, a viable future. A year ago I couldn’t …I was holding on to a ‘me’ from my past. perversely somewhat because of an inability to fully embrace ‘future’. ‘Future’ was only an idea I could understand as an academic proposition – but now I can feel it, with cognition, that future properly and rightfully as a product of this most recent past.
I will never be the me of old; but I am genuinely accepting the me of today….which makes for a more positive future.
Melodramatic?
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Perhaps …… but as oft re-iterated, it’s no less true ….
In the meantime, I’m incredibly grateful for my efforts to write when I did. I have a record of how I felt, but more so, I have a measure of myself. I can look back and see how far I’ve travelled, which helps to look forward, I assume to the day when I can read all of this back and be able to say with authority: not me, any longer.
That will be the day I stop writing …… because on that day, I shall have exhausted both the need to write, and matter or circumstance about which to write. Perhaps ….
Either way, I suspect that day is some ways off…….. and there shall be, between now and then, a record of this future pursuit, which I don’t doubt shall continue to serve as an invaluable commodity, as method of measuring the ever greater distances travelled. Normal tools of measurement don’t really apply any more, (something I’ve been thinking about but will keep for another post) – but distance has been covered, without doubt; I hold an authoritative record, and I think it worth re-iterating what an invaluable resource this is, under the circumstances.
I could easily imagine having not moved an inch, and that simply is not so …….
Song for tomorrow : ‘A New Day Yesterday’ by Jethro Tull
Love to all,
Mx
by Michael Angus | Apr 4, 2018 | Blog
To all my friends,
It’s been a while since posting, a while since closing down what was initially conceived, a diary in six volumes to record training for challenges only undertaken because of loss.
I’ve been busy consolidating those diaries and selected writings regarding those challenges, in China, in the Arctic, in Canada. At some point this year I shall be publishing these collected reflections …. but in the meantime, I’ve realised that it was false hope to think that this grief would subscribe to a timescale so arbitrarily derived, that the grief would likewise, somehow conclude ….. it has been shaped, perhaps, by the writing, tempered to an extent, tamed even – but it has not been curtailed.
With the new year, initially I felt a sense of expectation; positivity abounded – but it’s been nagging at me that something wasn’t quite right. Something was missing …..
I have come to a realisation what it was……. : it’s the posting ……
It’s fine that I can focus on certain endeavours. Good things are in hand: with my friend Grant we are forming the Purple Heart band, to hopefully record and perform for charity; my next challenge is booked, trekking in the Grand Canyon in October; fundraising plans including organising the GLASSGOW walk again are being expedited; training is ongoing, including walking Hadrians Wall in June; and at last, I’m finally in a band of Substitutes playing the best music ever written, by The Who of course (….. I may be somewhat biased….)
But …… nevertheless, some sense of overarching purpose has eluded me, and I know why: precisely because the writing stopped, the posting stopped ………
When I first started posting, a friend at the time made me feel terrible for doing so – the underlying critique was predicated on what I’ve subsequently learnt is simply cultural and personal self-defence: that grief is not a topic for public discussion – and that by doing so, by posting, so publicly, I was indulging the grief, and, more so, I was also in the process unequivocally upsetting (certain) people.
I’ve learnt that such demand, to be silent, was a fundamentally selfish act on the part of this ‘friend’. It may have been deemed well intentioned, but it was uninformed and ultimately damaging behaviour.
Nevertheless, the critique lingered, despite my best efforts to quell it’s disabling influence. But – the truth is, it does not matter whether the writing about grief is upsetting or comforting to those who read it. This is not the point. The actual point is: whether it is beneficial to the one grieving…….
And of course, the answer is yes ………. it serves me to do so.
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Ultimately, it may also be of service to those who have struggled to acknowledge my grief. Grief will enter everyone’s life – and we do ourselves a terrible disservice by pretending it’s something to be ignored. The more we talk openly about grief, the more we dispel the ignorance (and ignorance about grief, especially how to respond to one who grieves, is definitely something that needs dispelling…..)
I went walking on Sunday – I did not walk perhaps as far as I intended; no matter ….. something prompted me whilst walking to confront the reality: that three years plus have passed since Christopher died. Three years ……. I’m not the evidential mess that I was, I function better, I breathe better, I conform better – but these rivers run mighty, mighty deep; the wrong has not been righted ………and there remains a considerable amount unsaid.
Such reflections have brought me to this particular moment, to have provoked me to pick up the metaphorical pen and paper, and to try and set down again what it is like to grieve so – not because I want to bring anyone down, not because I want to indulge the loss – I don’t want to continually restate my loss – but because I want to re-connect; I connect if I post, and I do most definitely need to connect. Grief inhibits connection – it persists, right up to and including this moment. If I pretended otherwise, that I was fine, I might on the surface indulge an aspect of connection. But I cannot pretend – I am grieving, I grieve today and I always shall.
To those friends I’ve lost, I wish you could accept my grief, as it is become so securely a part of me (for how could it be otherwise? My son will always be my son; how could I ever expect to stop grieving the loss of him? To think so is ludicrous …. ). But my priority is to my friends who have stayed with me, and to those new friends I’ve made…. I miss the conversations that we held, here in this Facebook forum.
This site is now established to that end – and once I get my head round the technology I’ll be posting through my website blog; meantime my hope is to be able to converse right here, as openly and freely as we might wish on matters that so oft concern many of my friends, basically as pertaining to how we feel about our loss – amongst other things ….. This is my author site, other things will no doubt come up, but it would be impossible for me to avoid acknowledging the matter of greatest concern that continues to shape my life …..for despite it having been a while since posting, nothing has fundamentally changed. I have perhaps a more consolidated understanding on my part of how this loss is manifest, but the absence is eternal ……
Therefore, I wanted to square up somewhat to this nagging absence, to the implicit need, to the grey weight, to the time that has passed without permission, to the indeterminate implication of a door, left ajar and forever so; and in response, I wanted to restate the vow, of my commitment made to you: of my commitment to rise.
It is to those friends who have stayed by me that I make this re-iterated commitment, and to take this opportunity to welcome all to this Author page.
Loss is the making of me – I’m learning to live, all over again, and I’m delighted to be able to do so in your gracious company.
Song for the year: ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’ by Bachmann Turner Overdrive
Love to all,
M x
