It’s got to the point where I’m telling people about the mikon who is growing inside me. Of course, everyone’s an expert, and the latest piece of advice from my pilates friend is ‘You must come to yoga. It’ll really help you.’ Now I’ve never got on with yoga at all. At best it’s boring, and at worst it’s really competitive. But, I’m trying to do this open mind pregnancy thing, and thought, since I’ve been banned from trapeze, what better thing to do on a Thursday evening before dinner? It’s the old achievement anxiety creeping in again. Now that I’m up the duff, I’m terrified of not being able to things. As a result I’m manically trying to do everything – sanding doors, painting, shifting furniture, gardening, even working. It’s difficult to sleep easy if you haven’t got anything done that day to justify your existence on the planet. I can’t buy into the attitude of some mothers - that bearing and raising children is a duty – ‘someone’s got to do it.’ I’m not contributing to the master race thank you very much. I’m doing this totally selfishly, to serve my own ends, to tick the box marked motherhood. Only please let it be a girl, they’re so much more fun to dress up. Oh yeah, and I suppose there is that continuity of life thing (dead dad = new baby) - as Mr B. said at the scan ‘I’ve had just about as much life and death as I can take.’
So Thursday rolls round, and I’ve made soup for my return, and I have plenty of time and the right money on me. There is no excuse, I have to leave for the community centre. It doesn’t bode well when the first person I see is my neighbour Griselda, the local year round swimming outside witch who gets angry if someone puts a shed in their garden. This is the first person from the street who I have to tell the news, which she is delighted at. Remarkably, she manages even in these circumstances to make a double edged comment on my fertility, ‘Well, it’s about time, I mean you’ve been together how long?’
‘About 10 years’
‘At least 10 years! There’s so many babies in the area I think I’ll have to move!’
The rest of the class comprises the nice pilates friend, an angry lesbian who tells me off for having the wrong mat, and the usual community centre randoms. I don’t appraise the class too randomly, but there are a couple or elderly ladies in leggings, a robust looking young man in cycle shorts, and an antipodean young latecomer named Leah who proves to be very flexible (bitch). They’re all doing strange S&M stretches involving a canvas strap which they tie to various parts of their bodies and pull.
To my horror, the teacher arrives, reminding me of all that is wrong with this quasi-religious exercise. She is English, wears her hair in a long dark low ponytail. She is skinny in a wizened way which makes me think she is younger than she looks, and hersagging tracksuit bottoms are black velour – an interesting variation on the more common faded cotton. It’s hard to make out every word she says since she has that softly spoken quality which is typically accompanied by a slight self-loathing vibe. This is just what you never want to be like. I ask if it’s OK to do the class, given my present condition. She eventually agrees, checking first if there is anything else wrong with me.
As the class progresses, it begins to come back to me. There really isn’t much right with yoga. There’s the yoga people who hate you if you’re too flexible, or if you’re not flexible enough. There’s my response to the competitive vibe, which is to compete, and over extend myself. Why is it that something which brands itself as non-competitive, is probably the most cut throat of activities, where there is even a measure of whether you can relax well enough? Then there’s the aesthetic – that drippy vegan emaciated thing. There’s the fact that my body just isn’t built for this. I live in fear of dislocating everything. This is a very long hour and a half.
The teacher is barely audible, so I have to keep craning round to lip read. This isn’t much help, as rather than telling you where to put your left foot and your right hand, like in twister, she just says, now we’ll do supta padanghasaya followed by pranayama, or something. I find myself wondering who in this class actually knows what she’s talking about.
The final straw, apart from getting chronic cramp in my foot, is at the end of the class. Everyone puts their hands in a prayer position and bows to the teacher and says ‘Namaste’. I just can’t do this. Neither my mind or body will let me, so I sit slightly sheepishly, nod and smile. It’s the best I can do. I won’t be going back.
Sunday, 26 April 2009
I'm sorry my dad's dying - how can I make it better for you?
Now, the thing about people dying is that you have to deal with other people’s issues. I know this is true of many other circumstances, but in death, there really is no escape – you have to do the hugging; you have to do the crying; you have to have intimacy thrust upon you by all sorts of people you don’t choose.
There are two events leading up to my father’s death that come to mind, and seem to be a prelude the onslaught of sitting shiva (albeit a non-conformist, atheist shiva).
The first takes place a few weeks before the main event. I’m at home, about to have one of the many administrative house meetings of the day with Mr Beaten. It’s scheduled for 12:15, and whilst I’m preparing the agenda, I can hear the tinklings of the obsessive neurotic – the sound of my domestic life. I’m enjoying the mundanity of this moment in what has been a gruelling week in a gruelling year of much crying, anxiety, and caring. Hearing a knock at the door, I find Mr Morris-and-co my unexpected guest. Why can’t London be like New York, where dropping in is just not the done thing? I am forced to invite Mr M&C in for a coffee, in spite of the impending meeting. This is a man of such emotional incontinence I find his presence utterly repulsive. A family friend, he’s the kind of man whose dewy-eyed outpourings I’ve had to stomach on too many occasions, and am in the awkward position of not having ever returned his calls when I should have done, and am consequently always on the back foot. Bastard. The pretext of the visit is that he’s dropped off one of his daughter’s friends at the local 6th form. I find myself glad I am no longer 16 and subject to the inappropriate gaze of middle aged men. The meeting will have to wait. I can fast see my one o clock appointment to cut Mr B’s hair being cancelled as I warm the milk for an elaborate drink as directed by our cuckoo in the nest. All pretty annoying so far, but then Mr M&C starts to ask about my father – ‘how is he’. As brightly as possible I tell him the ins and outs of hospital admissions, bed allocations, and pain management. I’m thinking that now is not the time to be sad, as I’ve done a lot of crying already that week. Now is not the time, and I’ve got things to do. But then I see my guest begin to well up. The hands go to his face as he strains to really go for it. I steel myself. There is no way I’m getting drawn into this. After telling me how much he loves my father, his parting shot, is, ‘I just think…if it were me, I’d want to die. I couldn’t let my family go through all this suffering.’ I can’t remember what my response was to this. I only know what I wish I’d said – ‘Fuck off. No one asked you.’ And what I really should have said of the whole episode was ‘I’m so sorry that my father’s dying, how can I make it better for you?’
The second episode takes place during the Lancaster days – perhaps in the run up to Christmas. This is more of a series of events, involving crazy Polish landlady and her desperation to discuss grief with me. I find this distasteful as daddy’s really not dead yet, and surely the grief comes afterwards and not before? As star signs are mentioned I begin to stiffen. When I realise that what she really wants to do is witness my emotion as a way to heal her own trauma, I retreat. Though this is difficult with someone who thinks they can continue a conversation through a closed door.
There was just this terrible lead up to my dad’s ultimate decline. When the talks about getting dad out of hospital came up, our options were very limited. We had the choice between having him at home without enough help or support, or waiting for a hospice bed. At one point it looked like he’d be coming home. I remember being in the family home and speaking to him on his mobile whilst my mother gathered herself to go and fetch him, Thelma and Louise style, from the hellhole ward. I said, ‘So what do you think? Do you want to come home? If you do, we’re ready to get you.’
Long pause: ‘Yep…let’s do it.’
‘Is there anything that’s really worrying you?’
Long pause: ‘…pooing’
‘Well, I’ll talk to mum about it, and we’ll make sure we can find a strategy to make that OK. I promise. Is there anything else that’s worrying you?’
‘I suppose it’s too late for god.’
‘No it’s not. If you want to do some last minute just in case business, I won’t think any less of you.’
[laughs] ‘That’s very sporting of you.’
‘I wouldn’t’
‘Well I would’
There was a lot of loving my dad, but I loved him particularly then. I had and still have such respect for his resolve. Whether or not it’s an anti religious sentiment is not relevant to me. It’s the context of that thought with that man at that time. What I care about is the strength of his belief, of his mind, of his devotion to science, and the committed and serious way in which he decided not to be religious.
As it happens, he never did come home. A fall in the hospital coincided with a bed being made available at the hospice, which was beyond all my expectations (an a really good way).
However, en route to this resolution, the droves of ‘good works’ people kept coming, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re caught at a weak moment. It’s never with someone you’d like to be with. And before you know it, you’re crying, and having to hug Roger! Awful.
There are two events leading up to my father’s death that come to mind, and seem to be a prelude the onslaught of sitting shiva (albeit a non-conformist, atheist shiva).
The first takes place a few weeks before the main event. I’m at home, about to have one of the many administrative house meetings of the day with Mr Beaten. It’s scheduled for 12:15, and whilst I’m preparing the agenda, I can hear the tinklings of the obsessive neurotic – the sound of my domestic life. I’m enjoying the mundanity of this moment in what has been a gruelling week in a gruelling year of much crying, anxiety, and caring. Hearing a knock at the door, I find Mr Morris-and-co my unexpected guest. Why can’t London be like New York, where dropping in is just not the done thing? I am forced to invite Mr M&C in for a coffee, in spite of the impending meeting. This is a man of such emotional incontinence I find his presence utterly repulsive. A family friend, he’s the kind of man whose dewy-eyed outpourings I’ve had to stomach on too many occasions, and am in the awkward position of not having ever returned his calls when I should have done, and am consequently always on the back foot. Bastard. The pretext of the visit is that he’s dropped off one of his daughter’s friends at the local 6th form. I find myself glad I am no longer 16 and subject to the inappropriate gaze of middle aged men. The meeting will have to wait. I can fast see my one o clock appointment to cut Mr B’s hair being cancelled as I warm the milk for an elaborate drink as directed by our cuckoo in the nest. All pretty annoying so far, but then Mr M&C starts to ask about my father – ‘how is he’. As brightly as possible I tell him the ins and outs of hospital admissions, bed allocations, and pain management. I’m thinking that now is not the time to be sad, as I’ve done a lot of crying already that week. Now is not the time, and I’ve got things to do. But then I see my guest begin to well up. The hands go to his face as he strains to really go for it. I steel myself. There is no way I’m getting drawn into this. After telling me how much he loves my father, his parting shot, is, ‘I just think…if it were me, I’d want to die. I couldn’t let my family go through all this suffering.’ I can’t remember what my response was to this. I only know what I wish I’d said – ‘Fuck off. No one asked you.’ And what I really should have said of the whole episode was ‘I’m so sorry that my father’s dying, how can I make it better for you?’
The second episode takes place during the Lancaster days – perhaps in the run up to Christmas. This is more of a series of events, involving crazy Polish landlady and her desperation to discuss grief with me. I find this distasteful as daddy’s really not dead yet, and surely the grief comes afterwards and not before? As star signs are mentioned I begin to stiffen. When I realise that what she really wants to do is witness my emotion as a way to heal her own trauma, I retreat. Though this is difficult with someone who thinks they can continue a conversation through a closed door.
There was just this terrible lead up to my dad’s ultimate decline. When the talks about getting dad out of hospital came up, our options were very limited. We had the choice between having him at home without enough help or support, or waiting for a hospice bed. At one point it looked like he’d be coming home. I remember being in the family home and speaking to him on his mobile whilst my mother gathered herself to go and fetch him, Thelma and Louise style, from the hellhole ward. I said, ‘So what do you think? Do you want to come home? If you do, we’re ready to get you.’
Long pause: ‘Yep…let’s do it.’
‘Is there anything that’s really worrying you?’
Long pause: ‘…pooing’
‘Well, I’ll talk to mum about it, and we’ll make sure we can find a strategy to make that OK. I promise. Is there anything else that’s worrying you?’
‘I suppose it’s too late for god.’
‘No it’s not. If you want to do some last minute just in case business, I won’t think any less of you.’
[laughs] ‘That’s very sporting of you.’
‘I wouldn’t’
‘Well I would’
There was a lot of loving my dad, but I loved him particularly then. I had and still have such respect for his resolve. Whether or not it’s an anti religious sentiment is not relevant to me. It’s the context of that thought with that man at that time. What I care about is the strength of his belief, of his mind, of his devotion to science, and the committed and serious way in which he decided not to be religious.
As it happens, he never did come home. A fall in the hospital coincided with a bed being made available at the hospice, which was beyond all my expectations (an a really good way).
However, en route to this resolution, the droves of ‘good works’ people kept coming, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re caught at a weak moment. It’s never with someone you’d like to be with. And before you know it, you’re crying, and having to hug Roger! Awful.
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