Meccano

Natasha has developed an interest in Meccano, based on a present that my brother gave Kay for her birthday last year. We have been building a helicopter with Kay's set. But I as a kid I loved Mecaano and I have a box full of it upstairs, including the Meccano Elektrikit, and lots of gears and stuff. 

I haven't touched this box in probably 35 years, but this afternoon I decided to bring it down and sort it out, with the idea of building some electrical stuff for Natasha. I recently found the manual for Elektrikit on the web and I quite fancy building an "Electric Shock Generator", which in these days of neurotic safety regulations is something that I doubt you can build with any construction set on the market.

Anyway, I have been cleaning out all the rubbish from the box and starting to organize the various components. There are three layers in the box - which was beautifully made by my Dad to look like the famous "Meccano Set 10" box. When I got to the bottom layer, I removed various bits of paper and other junk, including for some reason some Tinkertoy bits. And I was left with the following:

I'm absolutely completely choked up with emotion, there's a lump in my throat the size of a potato, my eyes are practically bursting from their sockets with the pressure of tears behind them.

This is so "out of left field" that I'm just stunned. I suppose that there's a 1/27 chance that it could have been a letter "K", but that kind of misses the point. What's it doing there in the first place? There are no other letters in the entire box. 

I can't let myself think about this too much, otherwise I'm going to crash and burn in another wave of grief and pain. Better get on with my plan to electrocute Natasha.

Thought for the Day

One of the most far reaching consequences of the loss of Kay is the associated loss of everything I thought I understood about the meaning of life. I have to say that this is not a burning issue, I'm not wandering around all day contemplating the loss of overall meaning, but it is an issue that will need addressing on the longer term. 

I have mentioned before at that the moment the only explanation that I can think of that addresses all the facts that I have encountered is that we're just the sum total of our genes and body chemistry, plus the information and experience accumulated by our brains. I have not yet found any fact that cannot be explained by this theorem. However it is also a most unsatisfying theorem in that it writes off all of mankind's spiritual tendencies as merely a side effect of our highly developed minds, a 'symptom' of our powerful subconscious. And of course, just because it's an unsatisfying theorem doesn't mean that it's wrong.

The problem with going any further than this theorem is that, at least from where I'm standing, anything else requires a distinctly unscientific leap of faith. It requires the ability to be able to believe in unsubstantiated things. Now I have to say that there are far too many people for whom I have the greatest respect who believe in these things, who derive strength and peace from their beliefs, who argue that perhaps my problem is that I simply am not in possession of all of the facts and that if I were I would be able to reach other conclusions.

At the moment life is too difficult for me to have any energy left over to tackle this subject. Life today is simply about emotional survival during the worst storm that I/we have ever encountered. And it feels like that storm is going to go on forever. But I suppose that at some point in time the storm will gradually lessen and I will have room to think about other things. At that point I suspect that I will begin a quest to find out if there is any meaning beyond The Selfish Gene.

For now I am reminded of one of my favourite "Peanuts" cartoon, with Snoopy lying on the top of his doghouse, reading a book:

                       "To be is to do"    :    Socrates

                       "To do is to be"    :    Sartre

                       "Do be do be do"  :    Sinatra


At the moment I belong soundly to the Sinatra school of thought.
 

Teeth Ache

On odd thing: for the last few weeks I've noticed that my teeth are aching, particularly those in my upper jaw. Not the sort of ache that indicates dental distress but the kind that comes from biting too hard. So I have to assume that I must be clamping my jaw shut every now and again, which I guess would be some kind of stress indicator.

The problem is that I don't seem to be able to catch myself doing it. What happens is that I suddenly notice that my teeth are aching, but I have no recollection of jaw-centric stress. For example, yesterday I was in a four hour court hearing during which I testified for an hour. When I came out I could feel my heartbeat in my front upper teeth, but I really couldn't recollect whether the stress of the hearing had cause me to bite hard. 

Ditto this morning when I woke up, teeth throbbing away. Had I spent the night with my jaws clamped onto my dreams? I don't know, it's all very weird.
 

A Physical Limit

My energy level pretty much hit rock bottom this week. On Sunday my body started to ache like I was coming down with an attack of 'flu. More or less out-of-the-blue it seemed, I felt a wave of exhaustion rolling in. Monday was hell. I scraped myself out of bed in time to go to work, but I felt terrible, both physically and emotionally. As I was about to leave the house I went to say 'Bye' to Marion and saw that she too looked terrible. I asked her what was wrong and she just put her arms round my neck and burst into tears. I took her to the sofa, sat her on my knee and cuddled her. But within a few minutes both of us were sobbing our hearts out. A wonderful start to the week.

After half an hour or so, we pulled ourselves together and I went to the office. But it was extremely hard to get anything done. The weight of grief was crushing the life out of me. I left around 4pm and when I got home I returned to the sofa and put my feet up. But pretty quickly I was hit by the shivers, I couldn't get warm. So I ended up under a blanket and Marion lit the fire - mid-May and I felt like it was mid-winter. For some reason I couldn't sleep on Monday night, I have no idea why not. But I reckoned that it was pretty important that I get a full night's rest so, for the first time for a while, I took a sleeping tablet. It forcefully knocked me out, to the extent that on Tuesday morning the combination of exhaustion and drug after effects left me unable to stir my ass. Eventually, in the late morning, I started moving and managed to put in a half-day of useful activity, though I probably wouldn't go as far as calling it work.

Since Tuesday things have slowly improved. But I've been useless every evening, able only to read - and as I result I'm on my third book this week. And I've had to drag myself out of bed every morning. I'm sat here this morning in my cycle gear, planning to get out for a short ride to see if I've recovered enough to attempt exercise. It really is just as if I have been sick for a few days, but without the fever, headache and sore throat that goes with a virus. 

A doctor told me a few days ago that basically I've been running on my reserve fuel tank and that it just ran out as well. It's strange to be confronted with such a clearly defined physical limit. In the past if I over did it, I just got sick. But the careful attention of the homeopath and a strict vitamin regime has kept me from getting sick (so far). But I guess even the homeopath, magician that she is, cannot prevent me from running into a more basic physical limit.


The other problem with these days is that more and more memories of Kay are creeping back into my mind. I came home last night and took a tour round the garden, just wandering around in the evening warmth. But I was beset by a jarring discontinuity: in my head I could hear Kay laughing and playing and arguing, but the garden was silent of her. The difference was and is unbearable. At these moments it really feels like I have a foot in two different realities at the same time, one in which Kay is alive and kicking, and one in which she is not. I can oh-so-easily imagine how people can lose their souls, their sanity, in situations like this, where a virtual reality is vastly more attractive than real reality. I suppose I have to be thankful that computer technology is not more advanced, because I suspect that I would have lost Marion to "Second Life" by now, if she could create a virtual world containing Kay. And I have to say that I'd probably be on the way to joining her.

Weeks of Maximum Hope

These were the weeks of maximum hope, this time last year. The oak trees in our garden were that beautiful shade of fresh green that they have when all their leaves are new, as they are now. The whole garden was fresh with spring newness as we brought Kay home, full of optimism. As I was writing this I thought that I'd look up the photo that I took of Kay when she came home after the BMT, but I dare not, it would break my heart. Everything went downhill from that moment.

My body aches for her, everything I do around the house and in the garden recalls her. The last few days I have been opening the pool and I'm constantly beset with memories of her: last year sitting on the edge of the pool with toes in the water, so angry and upset that she was not allow to go in; years past, playing pig-in-the-middle with her and Lauren. It's all so difficult to encompass, to believe, to understand that she is no more. 

Nattie has been away for three nights and two days, Lauren is at school. At these moments the emptiness of the house screams at me, the silence from Kay's bedroom. Life feels so incomplete, it feels like I have failed in the most important thing that there is: to bring all my children safely to adulthood. A failure that can never be redressed, never compensated, one that I just have to live with. It's almost impossible to bear.

I'm also becoming more and more afraid of the summer. We're going to enter the birthday period soon, first Nattie, then Marion, then Kay, then me; one every two weeks from the start of July. Marion's & Kay's birthdays fall during our holiday and we'll be away from our support network. These are going to be moments of high emotion and deep grief, and having to face them scares me stupid. We're too hurt, too fragile to have to face Kay's birthday in particular. I know already that Marion is going to turn into a bucket of tears and I'm not sure that I'll have the strength myself to support her.

On the positive side, I seem to be sleeping better. For the last weeks I have fallen asleep fairly quickly and have slept reasonably well, although generally I've been waking up early. I take a couple of paracetamol and an Oxazepam sleep inducer to help, a formula that worked nicely this time last year. I no longer have the absolute mind-numbing tiredness that I was fighting a while ago, but the result of sleeping better is that I'm more aware of just how generally tired I am, especially in the morning. Although I wake early, I still feel like I could continue sleeping - need to continue sleeping, actually. So I'm still pretty slow out of bed and the days still consume more energy to get through than they deliver.

Oh, would that it were all different. I so miss that mischievous laugh, that infectious giggle, the mock outrage, the loving smile, the warm heart and bold nature. All the things that she was, I miss in every cell of my body.  

Meandering

Yesterday, during a quiet hour, a question suddenly popped into my head: what was the last photo that I took of Kay?

The conscious part of my mind reacted vehemently: I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.

This is the kind of thing that goes on constantly in my head.

Turmoil

I'm suffering from some sort of writers block. For the last week, while we have been in France, I have been unable to form any thoughts clearly enough to express them in words. My mind has been awash with everything to do with Kay. With life, with sickness, with death. With every aspect of her absence. My thoughts have been going round and round and nothing substantial has come out. Or perhaps, tons of stuff has come out, too much to be converted to the written word. Depends on one's perspective, I suspect.

In theory we came to our house in France for a week's holiday. But the word 'holiday' should really be put between quotes: "Holiday". In reality we have spent the week repairing, cleaning, painting and problem solving. Much of this work has been tedious. Power spraying the terrace took most of a day and painting the terrace wall took most of another day. These were long hours of mindless physical activity which left a lot of space in my head for 'meandering'. And these days 'meandering' is equivalent to thinking about Kay. Thus, for the first time in many months I have spent hours and hours moving from one facet of grief/loss/memory/pain to another. From her last moments to her laughter to her difficult nature to her strength to my feelings of loss to our role in her life to the philosophy of grief to the meaning of life and death to the implications for our future, etc, etc.

The only conclusion that I have been able to draw is that very little has changed since Kay's death. I have found no answers, I know no more, I have not been able to explain anything, I have reached no conclusions, I have reconciled nothing. My pain remains the same, the sense of loss has not diminished, her absence remains unbelievable, I still feel that I'm living someone else's life, that this cannot be my life. I continue to wonder Why? Why Kay? Why Me? Why Us? What did we do? What did we not do? What did I do? What did I not do?

In addition to this more and more memories of Kay are coming back. This is equivalent to more and more pain. I hear her more often, see her more often, am reminded of her more often. And the impossibility of her absence becomes more and more impossible; the hole she left behind, bigger and bigger; the whole that we were, more and more distant. For example, for the first time on holiday here, Natasha has been bored. Her boredom has been a screaming pointer to Kay's absence: if Kay were still alive, the two of them would have kept each other busy all day.

After hours and hours of thinking and feeling, there are few points of substance that remain. Perhaps the most substantial realization that has emerged is that I am never going to recover from losing Kay. Like I man who has lost his legs, I will simply have to learn to live with her loss. It's never going to be any better than it is now. The pain is permanent, will never leave me, will never diminish. I will never heal, will never be the person I once was, will never be able to live my life in the same way that I did a few years ago. You could liken it to a loss of innocence, and perhaps in a way that is exactly what it is: the world is a far harsher place than most of us Westerners actually realize. 

It's a shock to think these thoughts, to substantiate them by writing them down. By writing them I give form to the truth of the matter: I'm permanently damaged, will never be the same again. And this is a facet of a larger realization: that I have reached a moment in life when my options have started to narrow. For most of my life to date I have had the sense that my options were unlimited, that I had the freedom to choose and that my choices were only limited by my own vision. But now I realize that decisions that I have made in the past cannot be revisited, that I have to live with the consequences of those decisions irrespective of the fact that I really had no idea what those consequences would be when I made them. 

I suspect that those of you who are older than I will be nodding sagaciously and thinking "Get used to it boy" and that those of you younger than I will be wondering what the hell I mean. Wisdom versus youth.

The second constant factor in the turmoil of my thoughts is that I'm no longer fearful of death. In fact, I have a feeling that when death presents itself, I will welcome it.  There are many reasons for this, amongst which the fact that I find life to be a heavy burden. Now, before you get the idea that I'm suicidal, let me state categorically that I'm not. I recognize that the feeling of "heavy burden" is circumstantial and that improved circumstances will lighten that feeling. But still, on the balance of Quality of Life, this feeling weighs negatively. More importantly and significantly, death will bring answers, one way or another. Either my soul will pass on to the next plain of existence, in which case I'll learn something and perhaps be reunited with Kay, or there will be eternal oblivion, which of itself is a very definitive answer - but one of which I will by definition not be conscious of (Yes, I know: "never end a sentence with a preposition". But I'm too tired to work out how to write that sentence more neatly). 

Frankly, I don't much care which of these outcomes becomes manifest, in either case the outcome will bring an end to the philosophical turmoil that has now beset me for 18 months or more, if not longer. (And the thing that bothers me is that if there is an afterlife, what form does it take? Will I be reunited with Kay? Has Osama bin Laden been granted his 24 virgins? What criteria should one use to separate "fact" from "fiction" when it come to the afterlife?)

Apart from recognizing that my life is permanently damaged and a lowering of my abhorrence of death, I can't actually think of any way in which I/we have healed/improved/moved on in the last nine months. This week has seen tears every day, memories every hour, pain every minute. We're both struggling so hard to just get through the day that it seems like it's only momentum, the arrow of time and the beating of a heart that gets us through the day. 

I'll end on a happy note for once: we have a pool here, but for various reasons the pool heating is not working and since it's still early in the season, the pool is naturally on the cool side, to say the least. However Natasha seems to have to constitution of a Polar Bear and is impervious to cold water. So she's been in and out of the pool all week. But as I mentioned, she's been feeling bored and has been pestering us to join her. Marion has reptilian genes and is warmed only by sunlight or by leaching from other people, namely me. She spends most of the winter complaining of cold and will only go in a pool during high summer and then only if it is above 30 degrees. However, the local water sports shop sells wetsuits for around €19,- and so a deal was struck that if I got Marion a wetsuit she would go in the pool with Nattie. 

Thus, this afternoon, while I was working on the house, Marion donned her new wetsuit and toe by toe lowered herself into the pool in the slowest and worst way possible - best just to jump right in, in my book. Within a few minutes she was swimming around and she and Natasha were laughing their heads off. In fact, as I worked away, I realized that this was the first time that I had heard uninhibited laughter from Marion in a very long time. It was great to hear. But it only lasted a few minutes - even with a wetsuit, Marion didn't last more than 2 minutes in the pool. And it's probably the first and last time that that wetsuit will be used. But I reckon that uninhibited laughter is worth € 9.50 per minute, at least.  

Short Update

We're at our house in France for a week's 'holiday'. But in reality it's a week of cleaning and painting, getting the house ready for the rental season. I'm keeping this entry short because after having been DIY'ing all day, I'm very tired. My head has been full of Kay the whole time - the problem with doing mindless stuff like power spraying the terrace - and I feel emotionally exhausted as well. The last time that I did these jobs there were two kids running around. Now it's one and a lot of very painful memories. Preventing them from overwhelming me is pretty hard work.

Love you, Kay.