As far as is possible, we seem to have got ourselves organized w.r.t. to facing Kay's birthday. We have been keeping ourselves busy, planning an activity everyday. Nattie & Lauren were very keen on the idea of learning to windsurf, so we have spent some time doing that and will continue to do so. We have also been Hobie sailing, which they also loved. So there's more of that on the agenda.
I'm absolutely convinced that Kay wants her family to be together, to be happy, to be doing something, to laugh and to think of her. She's with us, I'm sure, just hovering in the wings of everything we do, wanting us, willing us, helping us to be together and to be happy. But even with this thought, this idea, this message in my head it is extraordinarily difficult to maintain an even keel.
There are good things that are antidotes to everything else. Nattie has laughter in her eyes. She's always chatting and laughing about something. She's naturally a happy bunny. Lauren is more of a dower teenager. But having said that she has a cutting, cynical and twisted sense of humour: a natural Howe, in other words. Together they are a joy, the only joy that there is in fact. I think that Marion and I will be sponging joy from them during the coming days.
We witnessed from close by and extremely nasty road accident this morning. It happened literally under our noses when we were driving out from the local bakers shop. A car turning into the baker's car park was hit from behind by a motorcyclist who seemed not to have seen the car. I saw the motorcycle hit the car and the motorcyclist fly through the air, right in front of me. This moment is now engraved on my mind.
When I got home I called my parents to chat and to vent some of my shock and we ended up in a "guess what's happened to whom?" conversation. It's amazing how we seem to be surrounded by people living tragedies of one sort or another. I know a guy who was very recently diagnosed with throat cancer, young, divorced, two kids depending on him, 15% survival chance. Another guy, very young, talented, world before him, diagnosed with ALS and a life expectancy of three years. And there's plenty more to relate. Our tragedy is not the only tragedy in this world, in fact there seem to be vastly too many of them these days.
I'm still sure that on my flight back from India in October 2009, the aircraft flew through a gap in the space/time continuum and I ended up in a parallel dimension, a much nastier world. In fact very much like the protagonist in Robert Heinlein's wonderful book, "Job: A Comedy of Justice". In this world it seems that very many people are being "Job'd", challenged to the limit of their capacity, if not down right tortured, by "fate". But in this world we also have the other end of the scale, the macro disasters and macro stupidities that seem to surround us. Famine in Sudan, Mass killings in Norway, Nuclear and Tectonic catastrophe in Japan, Economic disaster in Greece and potentially Spain, Portugal and Italy, and rank Economic Stupidity in the US.
What is the world coming to? Where has the joy of living gone? Or is the world just the same and it's merely my perception, coloured by the "wonder' of world-wide 24 hour news coverage? Ultimately I don't know. Probably it's the same world and it's just my perception of it that has been twisted. But it really doesn't seem like it, it seems like a down right nastier, joyless place to live.
Various friends have told us that they will be sending up a Wish Balloon on Kay's birthday. This is a wonderful thing. The idea that around the world the odd candle will fly into the sky in remembrance of Kay is inspiring. We would love to know.
Sunday 31 July 2011
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Decision
We have decided what to do on Kay's birthday: we're going to go to Marineland for the day. Firstly this is exactly the sort of family thing that Kay would love us to do and secondly we went there some years ago an Kay loved it. Thirdly I seem to remember that Kay did a school project on Orca's just before she became ill and used some of the photos from last time we were at Marineland.
We're probably going to follow up by going out to eat with some friends in Bandol in the evening. If I'm brave enough it will be to the sushi restaurant where we celebrated Kay's birthday two years ago.
(I have to admit that I'm digging these pictures up to try to de-sensitize myself to what's coming)
So, this is our plan. A plan that I hope will bring all five of us together for the day.
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| Marineland 2004 |
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| Kay at Marineland, 2004 |
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| Kay conquers Sushi, 2nd August 2009 |
So, this is our plan. A plan that I hope will bring all five of us together for the day.
The A Team
I'm fighting off a major attack of depression, but not being very successful at it. My heart feels like a stone in my chest. I've started sleeping badly again, unable to rid myself of negative thoughts as I try to get to sleep. It feels like the world is falling apart, like it's going to continue falling apart. I'm clinging on to the fact that this should just be a passing moment, that I'll brighten up soon. After all, we had a good week last week and we were as happy as we could be these days. So it must be possible to return to that state, at least. But at the moment I don't know how, don't know where to turn or what to do to brighten things up.
Marion represents the epitome of the problem: she is radiating misery every minute of the day and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Maybe it's a mistake being largely on our own these weeks. Maybe that was the key last week, that we were surrounded by people for a lot of the day. The problem is that if we decide to return home, my holiday will effectively end. Work is already hanging in the wings and my mind has at least in part switched back to thinking about it after a week of not thinking about it at all. At least if we returned home Marion would have her mum around. But for the rest, we would just have bad weather, gloom and depression in a different place. And I would almost certainly end up working.
I still can't think of what to do on Kay's birthday, everything feels so false. I'm sure that Kay wants us to be happy, wants us to be together as a family, but I don't know how to realize happiness. I feel that we should be led by what Nattie and Lauren think we should do, but I've asked them and they don't know either. It feels like being on a collision course with a supertanker, you know that this huge moment is looming but there's already nothing that you can do to avoid it except be prepared to be flattened.
I really wish that I didn't have to deal with this moment, with these days. I wish that I could pass it off to someone else and merely be a passenger for a while. Curl up in a ball and pull the covers over my head.
Anyone got the phone number for the A Team?
Marion represents the epitome of the problem: she is radiating misery every minute of the day and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Maybe it's a mistake being largely on our own these weeks. Maybe that was the key last week, that we were surrounded by people for a lot of the day. The problem is that if we decide to return home, my holiday will effectively end. Work is already hanging in the wings and my mind has at least in part switched back to thinking about it after a week of not thinking about it at all. At least if we returned home Marion would have her mum around. But for the rest, we would just have bad weather, gloom and depression in a different place. And I would almost certainly end up working.
I still can't think of what to do on Kay's birthday, everything feels so false. I'm sure that Kay wants us to be happy, wants us to be together as a family, but I don't know how to realize happiness. I feel that we should be led by what Nattie and Lauren think we should do, but I've asked them and they don't know either. It feels like being on a collision course with a supertanker, you know that this huge moment is looming but there's already nothing that you can do to avoid it except be prepared to be flattened.
I really wish that I didn't have to deal with this moment, with these days. I wish that I could pass it off to someone else and merely be a passenger for a while. Curl up in a ball and pull the covers over my head.
Anyone got the phone number for the A Team?
Sunday 24 July 2011
Trepidation Increases
We have arrived in France for the second part of our holiday after an excellent week's sailing in Greece. The photos below should give you an idea of how the girls spent the week and equally (and oppositely) how I spent it...
These (and other) photos go to show that it is possible for the Howe Family to have a good holiday, especially when they are surrounded by good people. My thanks go out to our holiday friends, old and new, who have kept us busy and smiling even when our hearts have failed us. Indeed, Marion had a number of tearful moments and I struggled to keep myself on an even keel for a day or so.
Yesterday we got up at 6am, left Greece, flew back to Amsterdam and then drove to our house in Provence. We decided to push on through the night and arrived at our house at 2.30am this morning. The only thing that made that possible was that, unusually, Marion split the driving with me, allowing me to get some sleep in the car. However the consequence is that I'm sat here, completely fatigued, head buzzing again with tiredness. And the joke is that for July, the weather is cold - there's a strong wind blowing and sitting outside in 24C with a cold wind is not pleasant after a week cooking in +30C.
The sailing was great because we were kept busy with one thing or another. Now that we have arrived in France there's nothing between us and Kay's birthday and both Marion and I are feeling it. Marion was in floods of tears on her Mum's shoulder yesterday when we passed home on our way from Schiphol to Le Beausset. She has again been sobbing on my shoulder this morning, asking what we should do for Kay's birthday. I'm struggling too. The benefits of EMDR are being pushed to the max, I'm sat here writing this through a screen of tears and I just don't know what to do to answer Marion's question: how should we celebrate Kay's birthday?
Marion keeps repeating that she has lost her partner, her clone. And I understand that this is the unique aspect of her loss: Kay and Marion are two of a kind, whilst Nattie and I have more in common with the way that we deal with things. This is the way that Marion and I experience our loss differently. Kay is my opposite, my counterweight. She represents things that I love, things to which I would aspire (sport, popularity, strength, empathy). For Marion, Kay is her clone, her better self, someone who understands her, who she understands, who is on the same wavelength, someone to whom she doesn't have to explain herself.
I'm explaining this poorly, but then I'm also extrapolating from what I observe from Marion, rather than having heard it from Marion. (And so you should realize that this is my view, not necessarily Marion's). Still, I believe the general point is true.
So, yes we have reached France and we still have two weeks holiday in front of us. But I am filled with trepidation about the coming days. I'm already being pushed to the limits of my newly won strength and it seems to me that Marion is already beyond hers. We're now on our own, no distractions except those that we invent for ourselves. No help or support beyond what we're able to do for ourselves. And the countdown has begun...
These (and other) photos go to show that it is possible for the Howe Family to have a good holiday, especially when they are surrounded by good people. My thanks go out to our holiday friends, old and new, who have kept us busy and smiling even when our hearts have failed us. Indeed, Marion had a number of tearful moments and I struggled to keep myself on an even keel for a day or so.
Yesterday we got up at 6am, left Greece, flew back to Amsterdam and then drove to our house in Provence. We decided to push on through the night and arrived at our house at 2.30am this morning. The only thing that made that possible was that, unusually, Marion split the driving with me, allowing me to get some sleep in the car. However the consequence is that I'm sat here, completely fatigued, head buzzing again with tiredness. And the joke is that for July, the weather is cold - there's a strong wind blowing and sitting outside in 24C with a cold wind is not pleasant after a week cooking in +30C.
The sailing was great because we were kept busy with one thing or another. Now that we have arrived in France there's nothing between us and Kay's birthday and both Marion and I are feeling it. Marion was in floods of tears on her Mum's shoulder yesterday when we passed home on our way from Schiphol to Le Beausset. She has again been sobbing on my shoulder this morning, asking what we should do for Kay's birthday. I'm struggling too. The benefits of EMDR are being pushed to the max, I'm sat here writing this through a screen of tears and I just don't know what to do to answer Marion's question: how should we celebrate Kay's birthday?
Marion keeps repeating that she has lost her partner, her clone. And I understand that this is the unique aspect of her loss: Kay and Marion are two of a kind, whilst Nattie and I have more in common with the way that we deal with things. This is the way that Marion and I experience our loss differently. Kay is my opposite, my counterweight. She represents things that I love, things to which I would aspire (sport, popularity, strength, empathy). For Marion, Kay is her clone, her better self, someone who understands her, who she understands, who is on the same wavelength, someone to whom she doesn't have to explain herself.
I'm explaining this poorly, but then I'm also extrapolating from what I observe from Marion, rather than having heard it from Marion. (And so you should realize that this is my view, not necessarily Marion's). Still, I believe the general point is true.
So, yes we have reached France and we still have two weeks holiday in front of us. But I am filled with trepidation about the coming days. I'm already being pushed to the limits of my newly won strength and it seems to me that Marion is already beyond hers. We're now on our own, no distractions except those that we invent for ourselves. No help or support beyond what we're able to do for ourselves. And the countdown has begun...
Saturday 16 July 2011
Schiphol 3am
Finally holiday has arrived. Psychological preparations for the coming weeks are complete. Both Marion and I have had our last EMDR sessions for the time being and now there's nothing left but to face Marion's birthday and then Kay's.
I feel somewhat strengthened but I still feel trepidation. This is going to be hard, irrespective of my new found perspective. During my last EMDR session I had the strongest sense of Kay's presence yet. However the feeling comes and goes, as I sit here in the middle of the night waiting for a 5am flight to Lefkas, I don't have a strong sense of her. Do souls sleep? Is she doing something else?
Still, for all the strengthening, I miss her terribly, especially as we prepare to go on a real holiday without her for the first time. It's weighing me down quite badly. Marion challenged me yesterday, saying that I looked miserable. It's difficult to acknowledge that actually I feel very miserable, sans Kay.
Work hasn't helped either. One spends the whole week preparing for a quiet departure and break and guess what? In the last hours half a dozen urgent things pop up, starting at 19:45 Thursday evening. I wonder when I'm going to be able to go on holiday without some kind of axe hanging over my head?
Anyway, we have to start thinking about walking over to the gate. Schiphol is incredibly busy at this time of the day, it seems like every seat is taken.
Next week we shall largely be without an Internet connection, sailing round some Greek islands. So fingers crossed I won't need the blog for support. After that we're at our own place in France and back in the modern(ish) world.
I feel somewhat strengthened but I still feel trepidation. This is going to be hard, irrespective of my new found perspective. During my last EMDR session I had the strongest sense of Kay's presence yet. However the feeling comes and goes, as I sit here in the middle of the night waiting for a 5am flight to Lefkas, I don't have a strong sense of her. Do souls sleep? Is she doing something else?
Still, for all the strengthening, I miss her terribly, especially as we prepare to go on a real holiday without her for the first time. It's weighing me down quite badly. Marion challenged me yesterday, saying that I looked miserable. It's difficult to acknowledge that actually I feel very miserable, sans Kay.
Work hasn't helped either. One spends the whole week preparing for a quiet departure and break and guess what? In the last hours half a dozen urgent things pop up, starting at 19:45 Thursday evening. I wonder when I'm going to be able to go on holiday without some kind of axe hanging over my head?
Anyway, we have to start thinking about walking over to the gate. Schiphol is incredibly busy at this time of the day, it seems like every seat is taken.
Next week we shall largely be without an Internet connection, sailing round some Greek islands. So fingers crossed I won't need the blog for support. After that we're at our own place in France and back in the modern(ish) world.
Friday 8 July 2011
In need of Holiday
Some time has gone by since I last wrote, largely because I've been very busy with work, etc. The good news is that I'm still off the Oxyzepam. However this has not been without cost. I've been sleeping badly and dreaming a lot with the result that I'm extremely tired. In the last days the summer work lull has started to set in and I've really begun to feel how tired I am. I'm sat here now with a few minutes to spare before I have to head off for my 3rd EMDR treatment and my head is buzzing with fatigue. Holiday - next week on Saturday - cannot come soon enough.
The gains that I have made as a result of EMDR have largely remained. I still feel much better than I did a while ago. I still have the sense of Kay with me, the feeling that there's a link to her in my head, though sometimes she seems to be further away than others. But at the moment, and probably just because I'm so tired, a mere sense of Kay doesn't feel like enough. I miss her physical presence.
We got through the 1st birthday of the season last Sunday, Nattie's 9th, without too much ado. I had a strong sense that Kay was around and was loving being with her family, seeing her family largely being happy. This sense partially filled in the gap that would otherwise have left a big hole in the day.
The next challenge will be Marion's birthday on the 19th. Marion's having weekly EMDR at the moment, so I hope that she will be adequately strengthened to face her birthday and then Kay's on the 2nd of August.
Kay's birthday still intimidates me. It will be the subject of today's EMDR session - apparently it's possible to do EMDR on future events as well as those in the past.
I notice that I'm still protecting myself from memories of Kay. I avoid thinking about where we were this time last year and what we were doing. In retrospect it was all downhill from the moment she came home after the BMT. The transplant had essentially failed and we just had not caught up with the facts, I suppose. Kay was so incredibly strong and fought so hard to keep her life. But the writing was on the wall already. Actually, I don't want to go there now, or at all... it's still way too painful.
I have to leave for the EMDR in a few minutes. I hope that it will cheer me up and/or that I can get some rest and shake off the gloom and depression that I feel right now.
The gains that I have made as a result of EMDR have largely remained. I still feel much better than I did a while ago. I still have the sense of Kay with me, the feeling that there's a link to her in my head, though sometimes she seems to be further away than others. But at the moment, and probably just because I'm so tired, a mere sense of Kay doesn't feel like enough. I miss her physical presence.
We got through the 1st birthday of the season last Sunday, Nattie's 9th, without too much ado. I had a strong sense that Kay was around and was loving being with her family, seeing her family largely being happy. This sense partially filled in the gap that would otherwise have left a big hole in the day.
The next challenge will be Marion's birthday on the 19th. Marion's having weekly EMDR at the moment, so I hope that she will be adequately strengthened to face her birthday and then Kay's on the 2nd of August.
Kay's birthday still intimidates me. It will be the subject of today's EMDR session - apparently it's possible to do EMDR on future events as well as those in the past.
I notice that I'm still protecting myself from memories of Kay. I avoid thinking about where we were this time last year and what we were doing. In retrospect it was all downhill from the moment she came home after the BMT. The transplant had essentially failed and we just had not caught up with the facts, I suppose. Kay was so incredibly strong and fought so hard to keep her life. But the writing was on the wall already. Actually, I don't want to go there now, or at all... it's still way too painful.
I have to leave for the EMDR in a few minutes. I hope that it will cheer me up and/or that I can get some rest and shake off the gloom and depression that I feel right now.
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