Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

On Sudden Death

What is it about hearing about someone’s death?

I think it’s the finality. It’s done; it’s over.

I’ve lived through two sudden deaths of people I knew – one a very close friend, one a gaming acquaintance – and both times it was the shock of hearing that undid me. It’s the sudden reversal of reality, the unreality of the statement “he is dead” when you saw him just a couple of days ago, that sounds a sour note.

Now there’s another. One of my best (and definitely my oldest) friends — my maid of honour at my wedding — lost her dad to a sudden heart attack last night. Completely out of the blue. I’ve known this man since I was thirteen. He’s jovial, educated, a musician. My parents’ age. Nowhere near the age you start preparing for maybe, just possibly, expecting to lose someone.

Or, he was.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the is/was problem. It’s all so fresh, so new, that in your mind a person simultaneously exists and does not exist. You crumble little by little as you try to impose the new reality of the death upon the X years of life you’ve experienced with this person. On top of it all, the news about the death throws that person’s reality into sharp relief, making it harder to wrap your mind around the fact that they’ve died.

I heard someone say once that no parent should outlive a child. At the same time, though, I think that the most traumatic thing most children live through is losing their parents. How do you accept the loss of someone who birthed you, guided you, supported you, from day one?

When it’s someone else, you’re all at sea in a different way. Death hits us all pretty hard. Apart from coping yourself, and looking at your own family in a different light, there’s dealing with the bereaved. (Bereaved. What a word. Where does it come from? Riven? Be-riven? Bereft?) You love them desperately, and you want to express your own sorrow, but words just don’t cut it. Especially when someone is torn from you like that. When was the last time they spoke? Was it quick, superficial, both assuming they’d see one another again, that there would be a next time?

Death is part of the whole life experience, not a sudden stop, or an intrusion. It’s an essential part of the cycle. So many people fear it. I don’t think I do; it’s the loss of everyone else that I worry about. The change of pace, as it were. It’s the change that I’m uncertain of. Fear of the unknown, I suppose, which is understandable. We’re creatures of habit. Being Pagan means I accept that cycles continue and that existence transforms into another dimension, maybe this one over again if there’s more to learn, maybe another, maybe back to the beginning to grow young again in the underworld until my essence is prepared for a rebirth to do more good. None of that means I’ll go joyfully to my death – or accept anyone else’s death, family, husband, friends – easily. We all have to deal with loss. We grieve for ourselves, for others. Our freshly riven minds must heal. Our hearts must mend. Our tears must dry. I do still cry for my maternal grandfather each Easter, a gentle man who I knew for all of eleven or twelve years. However, I grieve for not knowing him better. Perhaps we grieve for lost chances, opportunities we’ll never have. So often we don’t rejoice in the good times, laugh at the joy the deceased brought. Death encompasses us all. It brings us freedom. However, at the same time, it cuts us off. Another dichotomy we can’t hold concurrently in our bruised minds.

Death means holding two truth simultaneously: the truth of the shining soul we knew, alive forever, in our hearts and elsewhere; and our crushing loss for which there are no words.

Go gently, Eric.

10858753

It’s one of those mornings where I have so much tumbling through my mind that I can’t fix on any single emotion, so I feel vaguely like an emotion-o-scope and a bit panicky.

We have a beautiful home. I’m not boasting, I’m just making an observation. I was walking through the hall to get socks and it hit me: we have a truly relaxing and comforting home environment. Part of that beauty comes from the collective soul that has grown from the mishmash of stuff we own — the books, the plants, the candlesticks, the musical instruments, the art — that somehow works together without any advance planning on our part. It’s just simply beautiful.

Then I was hit with a wave of guilt. How can I be so unhappy sometimes when I have such a beautiful shell to cocoon in?

Then that wave overflowed into the rest of my life. How can I be so unhappy when people would kill to have my job? When women tell me that they wish they’d met my husband first and does he have a brother or would I object to cloning? When I’ve had the opportunity to complete not one but two university degrees? When people repeatedly offer me help, love and support, and keep trying to make lunch dates, coffee dates, pub dates?

Why do I (inexplicably, insanely) try to push all of that away? Why do I still feel that guilt? Why can’t I just be happy?

In other news, I cut my hair yesterday and that was traumatic too. I have a love/hate relationship with my crowning glory. It’s naturally curly, which can be good (as you straight-haired persons know) and evil (as all of you ringlet-cursed persons know). I hate spending time on how I look, so I usually just stick my head under the tap, comb it out, run a tiny bit of conditioner through it with my fingers and leave. Going to the hairdresser is awful. I hate it because they always condescend to me. They pick up a lock of my hair with the tips of their fingers, give me that artificial hairdresser smile in the mirror and ask when the last time I had my hair trimmed. Well, months ago, because every hairdresser I go to in the city makes me feel like a worm for not devoting at least half an hour a day to styling. Besides, in my opinion, paying someone to cut your hair every six weeks is like buying new socks: for some reason I always feel that they should last longer than they do, and that there are other more pressing things that my money needs to address.

I adore long hair. My goal is to have flowing Pre-Raphaelite locks cascading down my back. I constantly struggle to hold that goal in balance with the “if you trim your hair it will grow faster” concept. On top of that, I have on a couple of occasions been so angry at someone or something that I have gone to a salon and told them to cut it all off, only to go home, look in the mirror and burst into tears. It’s never the same again. I carry all that with me every time I walk into a salon, that anger, that anguish, that inferior I-am-a-worm feeling, the inevitable mute stubbornness that rises in response to the worm thing. I dislike hair appointments immensely. On top of it all, I have to rub salt into the wound by paying someone for the experience.

Which is why I have to sort of sneak up on myself and just do it. There’s a salon in Oakville that I love, but I only visit my parents about four times a year and usually during holiday weekends, so they’re either closed or booked. I try a different salon here every time, in an attempt to discover a place or at least a hairdresser I get along with. Last year I finally one who just cuts my hair, no pomp, no fuss, no guilt: the little shop attached to the Zellers near my old apartment. I love them. I get no lectures, no fluff about how if my hair was cut in layers it would curl more (no, it just frizzes more because there’s no more weight to keep it down), no false friendliness. You can’t even get an appointment — you just show up, they write your name down, and you wait. I’ve known that my hair needed a trim for about a month, but we just happened to be in the mall yesterday and I said, well, I’ll just get my hair cut, then. So I did. In, out within ten minutes, no one got hurt. A straightforward pageboy kind of cut. Not that you can tell, with all these infernal curls.

When I was little, my mother used to wash my hair for me, then sit me up on a stool in our kitchen with my dressing gown on and a blanket wrapped around me to keep me warm, spray No More Tears on my thick wavy (read tangly) hair, comb it through, then trim the ends for me. I loved it (except for the tangly part) for the I’m-taken-care-of feeling it gave me. I didn’t like the washing of the hair so much, so Mum came up with this pretend hair-washing creature called Beavie who used to hide in the suds and play in my hair, to make me laugh.

I don’t know why I’m so teary. I warned you — I’m all over the place emotionally today. I miss my parents. I want to know why I’m not happy with such a wonderful life.

Virtues

So I’ve picked up the latest issue of Alan Moore’s Promethea (number 19 for those who are following it), and wow. Wow not only for the lush Van Gogh artistic tribute, but for the portrayal of this particular stop along the storyline.

Okay, having some sort of background in occult studies made following Promethea’s trip through the Major Arcana possible, and I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the journey through the sephiroth along the Tree of Life as it progresses. Then last month I read The Witches’ Qabala by Ellen Cannon Reed to prep myself for a lecture on the Qabala, and it was the proverbial shock of recognition — my brain encompassed it all for a moment, then lost it as I saw that I had understood. (Never make the mistake of remarking that you’ve succeeded at something, particularly grasping the truth of the universe.) I proceeded to devour the first third of Self-Initiation Into the Golden Dawn (for the info, not to actually — oh, never mind) and amused my husband by exclaiming frequently in happy discovery and wearing out a highlight and a half. Qabala is like the blueprint for the universe, or a filing system in which every aspect of the universe is organised. It’s nifty.

Anywhats, all this led to another flash of recognition when I opened Promethea #19 (“Fatherland”) which talks all about Chesed, the sphere of greatness, benevolent ruler gods (excellently illustrated in a double-page spread), and the vision of perfect love. Seeing how the Virtue of this sphere is Obedience, the leap at the end into the unknown is just perfect. The next sphere will be the second to last, that of Binah, understanding and intelligence, or form and restriction, but not in a negative sense; more like a container. Binah is the feminine principle to Chesed’s male principle; the passive/negative side to the universe. It will be interesting to see how Moore envisions it.

Olympic Pride

The Olympics are done and over, and we�re coming home with a record seventeen medals, coming in fourth overall. That�s quite the haul! Of course, the sweetest medals were our two hockey golds, and the gold awarded belatedly to Sale and Pelletier; but every medal is sweet.

What�s not so sweet is the destruction visited on public and private property in the wake of the men�s hockey victory. As we were driving home last night we passed several cars with Canadian flags waving madly through the windows, bearers thrilled that our car sports a Canadian flag license plate in front. We passed people on foot with painted faces and flags as well. In our own living room window, my husband had already hung our huge Canadian flag in celebration. There�s nothing like citizens deliriously happy that their country has won a major victory on the field of honour.

That was in NDG, however. In downtown Montreal, the fans poured from sports bars and clubs, rioted, hijacked a city bus, stopped traffic in the centre of town, and generally made nuisances of themselves. I have never been able to understand why a significant hockey victory is the siren call of idiocy and destruction. Particularly in this case where every Canadian was proud to have stuck it to the Americans, who we�ve always considered slightly less cultured (come on, deep inside you think it too). A pity that the next act was to display boorishness, lack of respect, and vulgarity.

And what�s with the high of 4 degrees C today? It’s still February!