The Root of Unreality

On Sunday I took Nattie mountain biking through the woods, on Kay's mountain bike. She did very well covering 5km through wet woodland. But during the ride I couldn't help thinking that it should have been Kay with me. Kay was always the one who wanted so much to go mountain biking with Daddy. I'm currently sat at Bromma airport in Sweden, waiting for a flight home, so I had better not pursue this line of thinking or I'll be sobbing in my beer.

After Nattie had had enough I went on and cycled a further 28km. It was very wet and muddy in places, semi flooded in others. I had quite some fun riding the flooded sections, up to the axles of my bike on occasion.

When I got home I took a soak in the bath. The house was silent, Marion out in the garden, Nattie building her family tree on her computer. Then, in a moment of clarity, I realised what it is that makes a loss so unbelievable. Lying there in the bath, in a silent house, I had only memories of my kids. At that moment, there was no practical difference between Lauren, Kay and Natasha, all three being alive in my head. I have memories of Lauren, who is away at school, memories of Nattie, memories of Kay.

In principle all memories are equal. When we are away from our loved ones that's all we have of them, all that we carry with us. But all of us have an implicit contract with the universe, we trust that our loved ones are more than just memories. We trust that we can just pick up the phone and call them, walk into their bedroom and hug them, call out that we love them and know that we will be heard. And this is how I felt, lying there in the bath. That I just had to get out and walk to Natties bedroom to see her, reach out for the phone to call Lauren to talk to her, call out to Kay to hear her.

The loss of a loved one is a fundemental breach of one's contract with the universe. It is a betrayal of the worst kind. It means that you can no longer count on your contract with the universe, that when a loved one is a memory that there's no guarantee that they will ever be anything else, that you can never be certain that you will be with them again.

Of the ten years that Kay was alive I estimate that I was probably only in her physical presence for maybe 20% of that time, taking into account the hours that she was sleeping, at school, at friends, hockey, tennis and the hours that I was at work or doing other things. The other 80% of the time I just simply assumed her continued existence.

We all do it, all the time. It's standard operating procedure. And the root of my loss, the root of my feeling of unreality lies therein: I naturally continue to rely on my contract with the universe, naturally continue to operate in the "knowledge" that my loved ones are surely there for the holding. So, there I am lying in the bath in a silent house. At that moment, how can I possibly know that my loved ones are there for the holding? At that moment what is the difference between Lauren & Nattie & Kay? Actually nothing, for the truth is we cannot rely on our contract with the universe. All of our loved ones are reduced down to Schrodinger's Cat, occupying some virtual state that means that they may or man not be alive.

Think about it. It's very very very scary. But hopefully for you, as it was for Schrodinger, its merely a thought experiment, one that you can put to one side if it frightens you. For me, it's the root of my loss, my grief, my sense of unreality. It's the reality of my every waking moment, a reality that I cannot escape, a reality in which one of my cats is dead and the state of the others is uncertain when I'm not with them.

And that is very roughly how my loss feels.