The phrase "What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate" is a famous line from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.

Heather wrote, as a comment to my blog, ‘You have experienced an inordinate number of deaths.’  I felt sure I knew what that meant, but I looked it up anyway, if Google is to believed, it is defined as;

‘Unusually or disproportionately large; excessive.’

Well, that is exactly how I feel.  I feel that the deaths that I have experienced have been unusually or disproportionately large.  I often wonder why I seem to lead such a complex life.  Yesterday, I went for one of my sessions with the psychologist.  It is amazing to think that my journey in the mental health service began as a result of depression this summer.  Uncharacteristically I went down when the hitherto, fairly predictable cycle of my illness said that I should be on the up.  I am not 100 per cent certain of what the trigger was although I suspect that raking over old ground in my previous blog was more painful than I had anticipated.  Perhaps, even now, there is stuff that lurks within, that is unresolved.

The psychologist agreed that my life is complicated and that is was difficult, in the initial stages of her assessment to keep up with the threads.  I guess that is because they are woven through two marriages, a failed engagement, an intense, platonic relationship with a man, an affair with a married man, teenage pregnancy, a further pregnancy, a miscarriage, two continents, almost three, if you count the lead up to our certain departure to Canada, two islands, here and Guernsey, the loss of my sons and several house moves.  Of course there was also the two years we spent living on a boat.  There is also, to complicate matters, the apparently incestuous nature of my current marriage, which has its roots in my first one, very closely woven, enmeshed; the mothers of both my husbands having attended the same school.  I am also a step mother although I have to say that thanks to my step children's attitudes, at least as far as I am aware, that I have escaped the stereotypical label.  Though if this is not true and either of you or anyone else feels differently, please be kind and don't disabuse me of this notion!  My head feels quite cool in this sand.

Then, there is the unpredictable nature of my experience where it seems that I am destined, always, to be the one pulling a cupboard over onto herself, being driven over by a car, sailing through a plate glass window, being hijacked not once, but twice in a year when the statistics showed that there were only three hijacks in total, in the area, in that year!  Then there is the small matter of slowly discovering that I am ill; that I have a mental disability.  There is also, the time I spent three weeks in hospital, several days of which were in intensive care, when I developed a lung abscess.  This, when I felt that at long last, I had found heaven on earth, my true calling, as a nursery school teacher!  It was not to be, as I never quite built up the required immunity and the consultant said that my empyema was, in his words, ‘Bad luck!’

Suffice to say, with all this seemingly bad luck, there does not appear to be a corresponding degree of good luck.  Although, I have to say that it is sheer luck that I met my husband at my ex husband’s wedding.  He says he was forced to go by his mother - I can attest to her power to persuade - and had it been any length of time thereafter, I wouldn’t have gone either because my relationship with my ex husband has now deteriorated to the extent that we don’t speak, period.

Who would have thought that Tanya, so vibrant and full of life, would snap her spine in a drink driving accident and die of septicaemia, aged 27?  I suppose we could reasonably have expected my father to die at 69 because he had a fondness for Capetorio.  That’s Cape to Rio cane spirit, to the uniformed.  He was also quite keen on the idea of making chips in the middle of the night and knocking on doors in the house, till he found a willing recipient, eager to share his midnight feast spoils.  Then there is the question of my lover, who died of a heart attack, when he was little over 50.  Again, the stress of his job and the fact that he smoked could have predicted his early death but I witnessed Aunty Olive in late old age, with dangling fag ash that defied gravity - it always fascinated me.

Then there is Flap and Jabulani, who both died of aids.  Again, in a country rife with aids, should I really be surprised that they both died before or just as they reached, their thirties?  Then, there was my friend’s step son’s suicide, when he was not yet 20 who not only took his own life, but his girlfriend’s too.  He made a complete hash of his own death, needing her to decide that his badly burned body was not worth keeping a machine on for.  Is it any wonder that years later, she attempted to take her own life, too? Still, she wasn’t even 70.  She had not had her three score and ten years and something about that, in itself, rankles!  Her circumstances at the end of her life were so dire and so bleak that I found the challenge of seeing her insurmountable, in the end.  She had barely recognised me the last time I saw her and her face was blue, green, yellow with bruising.  I was told that she regularly fell over.  There was a note affixed on the wall in her small room in an old age home, which I failed to notice, asking visitors not to sit on the bed.

Too late, for me, because I had been sitting on a discarded nappy and it took a while to register that my bottom was becoming wet.  That memory clings, as the fabric did, infused with lack of dignity and care.  I will always remember though, that the floor of her room was highly polished and that if you discounted the immediate locale, with its decay and prison like security, the view was quite lovely.  The home she was in was in Malvern, I think, and it was shocking to see the extent to which the surrounding suburbs had deteriorated.  I was pretty close to catatonia myself, as my son drove me there, avoiding potholes and making a ‘pulling the trigger’ motion with his hand to anyone we saw as we drove past them and towards her home.

He explained, and I am not sure whether he did this to allay my fears or as a joke or whether it is some accepted code, that that particular hand signal indicated that he had a gun.  Details are hazy because the whole experience was foreign to me and I was fast becoming detached and simply going through the motions.  There is a code of conduct, particularly with driving, that astounds me, even in memory.  Driving is so frenetic and frightening, even when not in company of a testosterone fuelled 20 something driver!  

And of course the decay in the infrastructure and houses, in some areas, is unimaginable.   I couldn’t quite compute the extent to which the area around Kensington, Malvern and Yeoville has deteriorated.  There were rats running around on the road, litter everywhere, potholes and makeshift, ‘Lo Stores,’ on just about every street corner, the ubiquitous Coca-Cola signs indicating their provenance as shops, rather than dwellings.  Or, the home made signs of someone with a Buzz-cut effectively designating a former house as a hairdresser, or perhaps they were one and the same. 

I suppose I should take heart in the innovation, the inventiveness, the entrepreneurial flair but I can’t.  It just seemed that poverty was sprawling further, whilst neighbouring walls were growing higher.  The demarcations were starker and the juxtaposition more jarring and frightening.   I still feel sadness that I could not find the resource to say goodbye to my friend and visit her one last time, before coming back here and before she died. 

She was and is my mentor in living a life with a mental health disability.  She was so brave, in the face of real adversity and she never gave up, except, right at the end when absolutely everything she held dear, was taken from her.  I do not blame her, not for a single second on making the decision to end her suffering and to draw a line under that which she was.  Selfishly, I wish she had succeeded because then my memory would have been of her being in control of her life.  Instead she relinquished everything and the consequences thereof are not befitting of this page. 

What is though is my memory of her.  She loved and was loved, she was abused but never did, she held down a job, was a mother, experienced ECT, battled always to get the levels of her drugs to meet her half way, homed countless abandoned pets and people, was generous beyond her means, spent time in Tara and always, always loved me! 

That is, in itself, a massive achievement and something I still struggle with because I fail sometimes to feel love.  It is, for me, one of the cruellest consequences of my disease.  There are times that I am incapable of feeling love, not necessarily that I am incapable of loving.  I know that I do love, but on those occasions, it is simply theoretical, because the sensation, the energy and the life of something inexplicable but real, ceases to be. 

The Cool Hand Luke saying popped into my head and it just about sums up my inability to effectively communicate what love is or means, to me.

I decided to do my death graph myself - I made a comment on my wall about it.  It seems to me that for some reason we are conditioned to accept that death comes with ripe old age and that anything prior to that is somehow abhorrent, anathema.  Consequently we view it as negative and therefore questionable and something that we should seek to understand and demand an answer to.  That somehow the person who died and, we ourselves, have been cheated out of what is normal and usual.  In saying that, it does not mean that I believe violent premature death should not be viewed with the horror that it evokes but maybe, if we did see all death as part of life, rather than distinct from it, if it falls into a category outside of normal, we may not raise the question, ‘Why?’ Because in raising that question, we are challenging the person who is no longer there, in as much as we are challenging our preconceived, indoctrinated view of what normal is.  If this graph is anything to go by, then the norm is simply an illusion. 

Here is the small graph of the people who have died in my life.  I am now 44.  If the world is to be believed, the graph should be consistent, at the very least.  I am not quite sure how to interpret my results but the line which has no rhyme or reason echoes how I feel.  Death has not, in my experience, been the result of slow, lifelong expectation that eventually peters out when the body has decayed to the point that it can no longer sustain the person.  Instead it has been sudden, unexpected, haphazard, violent, surprising and has most certainly not been consistent with the demise of old, frail people.  Of those closest to me, only two of my grandparents made it to old age (although I accept that’s 50/50).  I didn’t even get to meet one of my grandmothers who died before I was born and my mother’s father died when I was about six.  I think he was two years into retirement. 

With thanks to Adrian

The graph here just goes up and down haphazardly.  I don’t see the slow, incremental, gentle line that I was expecting.  Of the people on this graph, four attempted suicide and three died directly through their attempts to end their own lives.  The fourth person’s failure to succeed in ending her misery merely extended it for a little longer.  It seems to me, something of an indictment on humanity at large, who persist in feeding us the illusion, as Heather so aptly put it, that temporary fragile things have a predictable and allocated time span.  The evidence in my life suggests that there is nothing predictable and in fact, that which I would have hoped would be (because it is what society reinforces) is more the exception than the rule. 

I wonder whether life would be easier if I simply accepted what is, rather than measuring what happens against an unrealistic yardstick, which leaves me feeling slighted.  On the subject of suicide too, I had something of a revelation in the days following my friend’s death.  As I have said in previous posts, I was not in a good place.  I stayed in bed for two days torturing myself with the futility of it all and my feelings of utter helplessness in the face of such random evil.  But on the second day, I found the courage to call my husband and to ask him to come home to support me.  That will be something of a first though a decade ago he made his way home, unbidden, to ensure my safety and the continuation of my fragile self.

He joined me in the bed with his laptop which is packed full of cinematographic diversion.  There is no discernment there and we had to sift through it with a fine tooth comb to ensure that nothing slipped under the radar to further undermine what was happening in my conscious and subconscious mind.  ‘The Secret Life of Bees,’ seemed to tick most of the boxes - lack of violence, bloodshed and it starred the ubiquitous Dakota Fanning so it passed muster, although I am not a fan.

Somehow, thankfully, it did make its way into my space.  It was not easy, delightful, happy Hollywood, in any way.  It touched on themes with which we are very familiar.  The theme of racism, which had raised its ugly head in our home, because of her death, and my husband’s deep sorrow that all that he did and the personal price and others paid, to help bring and end to apartheid, seems to have opened the floodgates to entitlement on a level hard to compute.  But somewhere within it, it also touched on mental ill health and in a way that I found comforting and reassuring, rather than frightening.  I think a lot of my response to my condition is in my fear of myself.  Fear that somehow, I am not normal.  Fear that the pain of my existence is such that from time to time, death beckons, mockingly because I fear it most.  Yet, here, in this distraction from our mourning, was a woman who decided that she had experienced enough and that she was going to determine when and how she would draw a line under her own suffering.

There was nothing frightening about it, nor shameful.  It was a decision that she made and much more than that, a decision that her siblings accepted without recrimination.  They did not seek to blame her, nor did they seek to blame themselves.  They treated her death as much a part of their lives as the joy of an impending marriage or news of an unfolding career. 

Something in those couple of hours set me free.  Set me free from the fear I have created in myself and it was liberating.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to raise the theme at the writing group I attend.  We were touching on the subject because of something someone else had read.  The lady next to me said, ‘What about those who are left behind?’  It was not simply a question, because it was loaded with tone!

It was the stock question.  The usual perspective and view that somehow, those that remain, should question and feel guilty, ashamed, angry, saddened, upset because they put themselves at the centre of the equation and judge death from there.  What if we did not put ourselves centre stage?  What if we were not conditioned to view death as so unnatural if it came prematurely?

These questions are not designed to somehow belittle premature death.  There is not a day that passes where I do not picture my friend and see the hole that she has left.  But I wonder whether we could all be a little more forgiving about the should haves, could haves, might haves that we seek answers to, even from her.  She did not, could not and has not behaved in such a way as to protect herself from what happened. 

Perhaps we should not even question, at all, and instead allow those questions to go unasked and unanswered.   There is no answer except that which is.

Baby steps give new perspective...

There is an update to the coffee shop story.

Since that fateful day back in the summer when I ventured out to delight in what I thought was going to be a welcoming new world, many things have happened.

First of all, that particular coffee shop was on one of the routes to the Post Office which is a place that, despite anyone’s best efforts, they find themselves in.  Funnily enough, it is a building that I invariably find myself in, when there are long queues.  Even funnier, is the fact that after I have waited patiently in line whilst someone decides whether to post something first or second class, whether they want it recorded, special, air or any other delivery method, or buys their car tax, or asks a question about their driving licence application or decides now, that they will enquire about renewing their passport, when I leave there is not a single other person to be seen.  It is as though I am destined to wait, patiently, regardless, because I cannot remember, ever, finding myself in that Marie Celeste zone!  I am always at the end of the shuffling, smelly, indecisive, fractious peopled queue.

Anyhow, I digress.  When in company with my husband we have been bold enough to voice our opinions loudly whilst passing the coffee shop establishment.  ‘Up their own arses, pretentious arseholes,’ we intone, with little regard because we are not actively staring in the window making faces and pulling zap signs, though I would have loved to have had the courage to do so.   He is happy to sneer and pass judgement because he loves me and does not like it when I am rejected. 

One day, we did our customary two people mad expletive laden rant only to find that the second access door, which is normally shut tight, was wide open.  Our nastiness would have floated right into madam coffee maker’s domain, landing unbidden somewhere between the pavement and her, and potentially her customers’, earshot.  We walked a little faster and giggled like naughty school children, feeling guilty but righteous.

Then some months later the window display which had been so inviting for budding and published authors was replaced with a sad note as to the fact that they had decided, after several years, that their venture had no further life or merit and that it was regrettably shutting its doors.  A tiny victory for the incomers who shared a, ‘Well, that’s what you get for being clubby!’ conversation and small sense of satisfaction that the wheel, if slow to turn, does.

But we were naïve.  How on earth could that woman be cowed by a mere downturn in the economy?  The answer is clear; she is too formidable and self certain to lie down.  The heartfelt regret was soon replaced by 70s retro chic and other expensive paraphernalia, the shop transformed almost overnight into a new venture.  There is still the offer of a warm drink and a slice of cake to be enjoyed during, after or before looking at what’s on offer.

Since my hyper vigilance has taken hold, I have not been using that route to the Post Office.  The reason is complex and involves all sorts of reasons including a small strip of housing where I have been aware of loud music, people effing and blinding in the road and I have also seen the same people that attend the drug clinic a couple of doors down from our own, in that vicinity more often that not.  Yes, hypocritical, vis-à-vis the swearing, but sufficient for me to view the 30 metres as holding some danger in traversing the distance.  Also, the route means that I have to walk past the tenacious, unscrupulous estate agents who phone me, urging me to make offers on property I do not even like!  My inability to deal with their zeal, because of my lack of assertion, has also helped me to trace a different route.

Something must be getting better because yesterday I was able to walk straight past the potential trap of estate agents bounding out - I kid you not - to accost me on the pavement and past the 70s shop, past the potential aggression and marginalized people, to the Post Office.  It was raining, cold and already the light was fading to distort my view of the world.   The next thing, a dark rimmed glasses, goatee wearing man, of an age far too old to be wearing his obvious necklace beckoned to me,  ‘Come in,’ he mouthed. 

There seemed to be nowhere to hide so I did as I was told - lack of assertion.  He was just saying goodbye to someone as I entered that place.  I am absolutely convinced that nothing on earth could have dragged me across the threshold had it still been strung with gingham bunting.  There was, however, the small matter of a calabash bowl, hanging on the wall, which encapsulated every bit of Africa I am longing for right now; bright, naïve, unpretentious, inventive, warm, something from nothing, not 70s and vibrant.  I have been looking for a salad bowl since February and failing.  This was £2.50 and although it needs some modification, to seal the inside, it is exactly what I have been looking for.  I did, however, have to take my husband back with me in order to make the final decision - indecisiveness is a hallmark of my character at the moment.

  Understandably salad bowls of any measurable proportion were superfluous to requirement and had been culled in a car boot sale.  (More of that another day).

Anyhow, Mr Retro 70s dark framed glasses, that reminded me very much of the pair my father wore on his wedding day, late 60s, was rather more chatty than his counterpart.  He even encouraged me to look upstairs, where I saw one of my art teacher’s prints.  I mentioned that when I came back down and why was I surprised to know that a) his son had dated her daughter and b) that Uber Cool Mrs Married To Mr Retro, Colourful Full Length Mohair Jacket Wearing Severe Framed Glasses Coffee Shop Proprietor (waitress, ha, ha) is often a model for my teacher’s life drawing classes!

I’ve often thought about life modelling as a way to make a bob or two, but I get really worried about how one deals with the indelicate, biological processes that could occur whilst sitting still for two hours.  That is before one lays oneself open to being immortalised by variable talent.  Perhaps I am vain, as I have worried about facing an honest appraisal of my body full of stretch marks, cellulite and cooper’s droop, which could potentially find itself anywhere.  Suffice to say that these thoughts have irked me to the extent of never responding to such adverts, calling for models, even though I imagine it’s a darn sight easier earning money that way, than it is typing up the public’s views on hand dryers, or is it?

 I could of course ask UCMMTMR,CFLMJWSFGCSP, but I don’t think I will!

For some reason the song, 'Shine on you crazy diamond,' is playing in my head...

I have long been fascinated by the threads of life, happenstance, choice, random and decision that keep people linked throughout time and space.  Somehow the bond seems able to traverse earthly constraints and distances like continents or time.   It is something that I attempt to explain to others but invariably I fail because I begin to be perceived as one of those.  Those, vary, from Jesus freak to someone away with the fairies.  My bipolar condition has not helped because one of the manifestations, which I have already touched on previously, is a prophetising zeal which comes with mania.  It would be a lie to say that I was not caught up in religiosity and a complete misinterpretation of the Christian faith before I became ill.  But it is fair to say that my own fall from what I had perceived to be God’s grace had the result of my losing my faith and belief in God. 

It occurred to me, though, in the pre-fall time that a) God was a belief and b) that heaven may well be here.  In the absence of understanding what isn’t here and what cannot be seen or known I thought about heaven as a legacy.  That memory and what a person has contributed, through word, what they have done or made or been, who they have touched and loved and been loved by, may be what heaven is all about.  That thought, when my understanding of my faith was so infantile, has travelled with me, through my darkness and it is not one that I have thrown out with the bathwater, though the insistent, demanding infant has been.  I don’t believe that I am all grown up, far from it, but I think I have grown beyond expecting a paternal figure to reach down and pop my dummy back into my mouth because I am uncomfortable about what is.

Death is part of what is.  It is a part of life that I have not known how to handle.  I have been so steeped in believing that the best is yet to come and that heaven is to be reached through death that I have not recognised nor been able to readily accept the end of physical life.  I have dug up dead animals, in the hope that somehow, they will have gained new life.  I have avoided becoming attached to pets because I cannot handle their death.  I have lost young friends, my father and a lover through untimely death but have also had grandparents die which is when convention makes the whole idea, somehow more palatable and acceptable, to me.

Now she has been severed from my life.  Someone or some persons have deliberately cut short the treasure trove of memories that she was contributing and I was accumulating, cherishing and storing in my life.  Those memories are in my brain, in photographs, on paper, in the ether, in bricks, railway bridges, food, jewellery, dresses, swings, baths, a duck (more of that another day), births and now also, in death.  I can see her in death and I can imagine, not experience, her suffering but also her courage because I knew her, she was strong and she was brave.  I witnessed her first son, crowning, during his birth.  I thought that I could or would never manage to erase that picture from my mind, the agony, blood and pain.  But I have succeeded in part, or time has helped, to at least blur what is there; the miracle and diversion that childbirth brings helps.  I therefore know that the vision I have constructed about the circumstances of her death, through what I have read or been told will also fade.  How can the imagination, the past, the conscious and subconscious have such an appetite for deconstruction and fabrication.  Why does it seek to draw pictures, visions, images that disturb, whilst providing a soundtrack of words, terror and abandoned silence?

The word trigger is defined below:

trig·ger/ˈtrigər/

Noun:	A small device that releases a spring or catch and so sets off a mechanism, esp. in order to fire a gun.
Verb:	Cause (an event or situation) to happen or exist.

It is fascinating that a physical mass of cells can, through circumstance, be primed, sitting and waiting to be fired whilst apparently, the custodian of those cells is in control.  It seems so cruel that in some senses there is endemic failure on the part of the conscious individual to protect itself from releasing springs or catches that cause explosions within and without. 

I have been skirting mania because my deepest fears have been reawakened through what happened to my lovely soul sister in South Africa.   How can we not, even for a moment, find ourselves where she was, with her, with her father, with her family retracing steps, hoping for some other outcome, as the full horror of the reality imbeds and becomes entrenched in our minds and lives.  Because with each step I have taken into the darkness, I have tracked anguish, pain, fear and blood through my mind.  It is though, miraculous, that even in that murk somehow, she is managing to radiate through. 

What I see of her shines confidently out, rising above and beyond any human attempt to hold her static, in death.  In that respect she is utterly remarkable and because of that, I miss her even more.

All that glitters is gold!

Today, in my spam folder, there was an unexpected email.  It wasn’t the promise of cheap viagarara [sic], that I get offered.  Or yet another generous offer of a credit card with 325% APR.  It was from the save Gaby’s campaign. 

The day I went up to London for my friend’s memorial, I went to Gaby’s to buy a sandwich for lunch.  I had not been eating very well, merely that which I knew I had to.  Desire for food, flavour and sensations had gone to ground.  Also, with all shock or stress, I begin to clam up, holding everything in and preventing unwanted stuff from entering.  I build walls all around me, hoping that anything negative will be kept at bay.  It is a vain attempt and hope because despite my best efforts, thoughts creep in through the cracks.  Sleep becomes a double edged sword.  It is a relief to be able to spend at least some time away from it all and I have learned over the years that time does begin to numb what is past.  Each sleep heralds the hope of anaesthesia but it never, fully succeeds.  My sleep after hearing the news was characterised by insistent mind chatter, words, phrases and sentences on repeat mode.  My only regret now is that I didn’t capture my subconscious as it made itself insistently known.  There is such repetition and urgency that I am always convinced, in my half terror, that I will be able to recall a phrase or sentence on waking but more often than not all I am left with is a feeling of deep disquiet and exhaustion.   When I do open my mouth to speak, I share what’s in my head and I am learning, still, that it is sometimes preferable to say nothing. 

If anyone knows London, then they will probably know Gaby’s.  It is a Mediterranean deli, close by to St Martin’s in the Field.  They do a mean pastrami on rye with offers of any or all of the following, as I recall, coleslaw, preserved whole chillies, mustard, sprouts, salad, humous and chilli sauce.  I opted for salad, mustard and a little chilli sauce.  As I waited for my sandwich to be made to order, before my very eyes, I noticed a petition on the counter, ‘Save Gaby’s.’ 

It was obvious then and is patently clear now that Gaby’s is threatened with closure.   The petition was calling for names and email addresses, maybe, even addresses.  I entered my details and waited patiently as I was offered yet more toppings to add to my generous portion of pastrami.  The mound between the two slices of bread eventually requiring a jolly good squash by the maker, to encourage the two halves to stay together long enough for him to cut it in half.  Thereafter, it was wrapped, parcel like, ready for me to take away.  I had opted for a takeaway because I didn’t have the courage to make my way through the lunch time throng to find a table and sit on my own.  I felt too exposed and elected anonymity instead, sitting on a flattened cardboard box, conveniently left there, presumably by a rough sleeper, on the steps of the tradesmen’s entrance of the Wyndham theatre. 

The man who put his order in after me, noted on the petition, ‘Even foreigners prefer it.’  I was half minded to tell him not to make assumptions but my accent, as a South African, even if I am now a citizen, was enough for him to use me as further weight to the argument.  The fact is that before I lived in London and visited it, as a tourist, Gaby’s was something of a landmark.  A place to meet and more often than not, to indulge in a range of Mediterranean dishes, though, as a carnivore, I tend to steer my way towards the pastrami, rather than the falafel.  I have no doubt that whatever is served is scrumptious and well worth the money.  In our credit crunched recession times, it seems their portions have escaped, unscathed and the price of my towering sandwich, more than reasonable at £4.00.  I have, recently, in part of my grabbing the nettle mode of living, convinced my husband to eat at McDonald’s - we were cold, hungry and on unfamiliar turf.  There was not much change from a tenner and I most certainly wasn’t feeling the love in the burger, though they never fail to deliver the same, predictable fare and that too is rather comforting, even if our McDonad’s solace is something we seek every other year, if.

It would, if I remember correctly, have been one of her and my ports of call, even if we were too brassic in my single mother days and her publishing assistant ones, to indulge.  It does though, form the rich tapestry of familiarity that she helped me to navigate and negotiate, largely without fear, so many years ago.  Her ability to live life was remarkable.  She was never ever cowed by convention and on one of my dowdy mouse following sparkling jewelled Goddess outings, she commandeered us, me, hovering in her majestic wake, right into the lounge of the Savoy Hotel.  The soft pile carpet so thick that it sucked my feet in, anemone like, with each step, as we made our way into the lounge.

There we enjoyed G & Ts, my first ever, me enthralled by the ambiance that only a grand piano, swizel stick, discretion, fresh flowers, sparkly chandeliers, guarded chatter and in all probability, a lovely young thing, masquerading as a waiter [her words always for a good looking man], could bring.   If I felt any discomfort, initially, in being unworthy of such an experience, it faltered under her giant, unapologetic, colourful wing, where I was encouraged to sit up a little straighter and find a tiny bit of my pre-divorce glow.   Even though my drink cost an eye watering £7, which at that stage equated to half a week’s groceries, it was a watershed in opening my eyes to the unworthy sister routine.  It is fair to say though, that behaving out of character, is always more delicious and heady, when in company and it is always easier for me, when I am being coaxed and encouraged.

To that end, I owe so much of myself to her.  On every single meaningful subject, she was always the spear-header and her courage enough for me to find mine.   So now, as I continue to rake over the embers she has left, I am continuing to find heat and nuggets of warmth and energy that spur me on, day by day, to continue this journey without her.  It is unbelievably hard, as it is for everyone, to know that there will be no further unfolding of her wellspring.  However, it is remarkable to me that she has left, in such a short space, such a packing case of joy filled with generous chunks of magpie sparkly self.  I know that I will always be able to untangle yet another piece of her to hold in the light.  It is the promise of rainbows, unexpected refraction and manifestation of who she was, carried on in who she left behind, and created, that help me to continue forwards, searching and following; rather than dwelling and dwindling.   

There are dangers everywhere, even from the hapless Kebab shop owner...

The day, I heard about the events in South Africa, my world started to take on speed. Everything that I saw, heard, smelt or felt took on an added dimension.   Here is an excerpt from the internet, to try and put my reaction into some context.

Signs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can arise suddenly, gradually, or come and go over time. Sometimes symptoms appear seemingly out of the blue. At other times, they are triggered by something that reminds you of the original traumatic event, such as a noise, an image, certain words, or a smell.

My son’s urgent request for a call back, following my short lived delight at a phone call from him, started the ball of my PTSD rolling.  The tinny echo in my head started as the shock took hold.  It was a Wednesday afternoon and details were hazy. I allowed myself the benefit of denial and non acceptance as everything was being filtered through time, geographic locations and bad telephone connections. I allowed myself the shadow of doubt, that perhaps it wasn't true and that I had somehow misheard. Still, the shock stalked me and by the time I woke up the following day when I learned, irrefutably, that she had been murdered, I shook uncontrollably, wept, became nauseous and began to experience a sense of a limited future (you don’t expect to live a normal life span, get married, have a career).

It is one of the elements of PTSD that I struggle with when I am triggered. I couldn’t venture outside, except once in several days, or in company and locked myself in the flat.  Even then, I was worried that somehow someone could get into it and lie in wait for me, if I took a shower or used the bathroom and couldn't hear them entering. To that end, I would not put on the light, because it has an extractor fan attached and muffles external sounds.

There is a fire escape off our bedroom into a communal stairway and I imagined that would be the point of entry.  So I locked myself in the bathroom, when I needed to use it, but then had great difficulty leaving it.  I armed myself mentally with a scream whenever I emerged and even looked under the bed, just to make sure that no-one was lying in wake.  A scream is something I find difficult to muster when under threat and wonder whether my lack of vocalising my fear during my two hijackings, helped to save my life. 

All the time I was mourning the loss of my beautiful, wonderful, wise, ally and friend and also someone who has been the only professional constant in my battle with mental illness.  I was imagining what it might be like for her beautiful sons to have to face a life bereft of their mother.  A woman who had seized upon motherhood like no other I know.  Her children are 10 and 12 and it is beyond me to think about what life will be like for them.  My own children were roughly the same age, when I was first threatened and the parallels, to me, were uncanny.

Most of the time, I was waiting to hear that it was not true, that somehow there had been some awful mistake and that she was not dead.  In my head, I layered the blood shed and violence I had witnessed during the birth of her oldest son, with what I had heard of her death.  Images surfaced and haunted every recess of my mind, as I created a reality with threads of memory of her with that of my own terror, when faced with certain death.  The days following my second hijacking I wondered whether I was, in fact, dead and that I was living in some sort of parallel universe.  This is, apparently, quite normal behaviour. 

Normally, while I work, I am aware that I can be overlooked by the offices over the road but it doesn’t worry me.  Now, I imagined that someone could be specifically watching me and perhaps had been, during the time we have been tenants. There was every possibility that they could be waiting to cause me harm.  I became paranoid about whether I had inadvertently given whoever it was, a false signal, by exposing something of myself unconsciously.  My desk is in our bedroom and although I am very careful never to do bedroom stuff, like change, with the curtains open, I began to wonder whether I had, somehow, slipped up and had consequently given said office worker licence to come on to me, perhaps violently, if I declined.

I had also been intending to invite the Kebab shop owner and his cohorts into the flat, to show them that we did not have a widescreen television because, as a joke, I had owned up to abandoning an enormous old telly on wheels in the passageway.  They have never seen the humour and to this day, I believe that they blame me!  But I began to see that there were elements of such an invitation which could easily be misinterpreted.  So, the Kebab shop entourage, were filed in the threat drawer, together with a note to self not to fraternize or joke with any of them in future, just in case.

Because of my hyper vigilance, anything that I did see or hear skirted perilously close to my interpreting it as a sign. A sign that I was being guided to see and hear things so that I could sense her presence even though she was no longer here.    I felt that I ought to live my life fully because it was going to be foreshortened. 

I rationalised this as imagining how she would have lived, what she would have done and so I did things out of character.  Normally, I would never accept an invitation to go for a drive in a car with the top down during the week.  Now, I felt that I ought to grab the nettle, even though, once in the car, I thought that it would be ironic, if, in trying to live, I was mangled in an accident.  My drive, as passenger, was a mix of elation at being alive and seeing things in technicolour clarity, feeling the elements touch my skin, rush through my hair, and vibrate through my core and near terror and certainty that my number was up. 

Here is an excerpt about PTSD from the internet.

Many risk factors revolve around the nature of the traumatic event itself. Traumatic events are more likely to cause PTSD when they involve a severe threat to your life or personal safety: the more extreme and prolonged the threat, the greater the risk of developing PTSD in response. Intentional, human-inflicted harm—such as rape, assault, and torture— also tends to be more traumatic than “acts of God” or more impersonal accidents and disasters. The extent to which the traumatic event was unexpected, uncontrollable, and inescapable also plays a role.

I wrote this, two days after I heard.  I didn’t know then that I was hyper vigilant but now, knowing that hyper vigilance was triggered, imagine that this detail and noting it, in the 20 minutes that I sat in the car, is probably an indication.  

I am sitting in our car in the sunshine outside an industrial estate in rural Dorset. My husband popped in unexpectedly for lunch before his next appointment. I didn’t have a work deadline so he asked whether I would like to come for the ride. I think he is more worried about leaving me on my own than he admits.

A last minute phone call and consequent dash out to the car means that I have forgotten to bring a book to read or the book I scribble in from time to time. I do have a hand me down Blackberry- one which failed to deliver what my husband expected of it - but I have gotten out of the habit of texting and have been in contact with many friends and family already today.

But I have found some old directions on a piece of paper shoved in the side of the door and am using the back of the page to write my thoughts and feelings. I have locked the doors but the keys are in the ignition, visible, a healthy sign. I have actually felt the heat of the sun through the windscreen although now clouds are obscuring my vision of it and the physical sensation of its warmth.

Although rural, my view is that which you’d expect from an industrial estate. Green palisade metal fencing, greying, unremarkable buildings, mown lawn, untended flower surrounds and weeds. I see telephone wires strung from pole to pole and signs affixed to old, green, plastic paint lids and attached to a fence that say, ‘No vehicles to be parked along this fence AT ANY TIME.’ There are green hills and trees with autumnal colours. Directly in front of me, a patched tarmac road, gravel driveway and vehicles; one a delivery van with bright neon chevrons on the back door and a roof rack. There’s also a car that I can only see in profile. I’d guess a Jaguar by the shape and the chrome detail.

The sun is once more shining and I can see mini rainbows in a hair that is in front of my eyes. I feel deep gratitude for the privilege of being able to be and to experience this. Some trees appear to be already dead and maybe they are. A great, big, green Scania lorry has just thundered by. The sky is blue with clouds of varying shape, colour and depth. The moon is visible too, almost half. I hear rooks or crows, not sure exactly. Sparrows flit across my line of vision. Now I hear a horse neighing and the sound of an aeroplane. I see a flock of the black birds which I haven’t identified accurately and by the time I look up from writing, they have gone.

I don’t see you here, except in the car, with me, talking and sharing this time. You would have been, as one of your friends has said, fully present. You would not have been living through the moment, waiting and hoping for an improbable rosy future. You would most certainly not have cared a jot what make or model the car was, unlike so many who hang their identities on what they drive or own. In respect of wheels, you said this not so long ago, although just recently you bought something a little more reliable:

No more land rover but I do have a 1973 camouflage green Mercedes Benz, in which we may not entice any young boys but it'll give you a brief Kaddafi-style thrill and the feeling that you really deserve your own personal cavalcade.

No one can believe that it is you that has been severed from our lives. It is the most unlikely future outcome for someone so gentle and alive. You said to me, this year, on my birthday:

Anyway, eat some scones and jam and cream and remember what my dad always says : Never begrudge yourself a birthday. The alternative is always worse!
sorry, bit macabre perhaps. Still, hope it's a good one!
lots love,

To those of us who value material possessions above life, me included sometimes too, fuck you.

For those of you, who spared my life, thank you.

I will try harder to live it, not as her, but in her vein.