Grieve!

Grieve grieve grieve intones the Doctor-Therapist

A Catholic Priest in his cramped confessional

Recite 5 hail Marys and Your sins will be forgiven (everything will be OK)

Hail Mary (Denial)

Hail Mary (Anger)

Hail Mary (Bargaining, if only…)

Hail Mary (Depression)

Hail Mary (Acceptance)

Absolved of your sins, you leave healed.

No you don’t.

It is never that simple.

This Psycho-Gospel According To Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has been called into doubt: Grief is more complex and varied. Just as well as neither am I a fan of over-simplification nor am I of Catholicism’s lack of interest in sincere acceptance of personal responsibility.

There are losses for which grief is a tsunami and unending: others from which you will rise to the surface and carry on. It depends on so many factors.

At 16 I threw down Anna Karenina in disbelief at her abandoning of all hope under a passing train.

Until I read it all the way through in my 20s, I didn’t believe that a person’s confidence in themself, once acquired, could be taken away by circumstances. I began to understand grief as a loss too great: that life could destroy a person.

My first real experience of grief was for my father. We were very close. Losing him I expelled the deepest of sorrows. Time and place were unique. I was in art school: a mostly safe environment for expressing in no uncertain terms my pain at his death – “mostly safe” because I did lose 2 close friends who couldn’t handle my grief for their own “Father” reasons and because of a professor who, in commenting on another student’s work during class, for her own “Father” reasons, emoted at me : “you see Catherine art can be about something other than pain!”

Next: having to leave my favourite job. In my enthusiasm, I failed to watch my back as I contributed to the organisation’s growth and its renown. I became the scapegoat for others’ fear of drowning. I had no choice but to leave when offered an intriguing way out: ISEA’s Dakar Web project in Sénégal.

With my mother’s death, unlike with my father’s passing, I became the “head of the family” (as they say in Senegal – le chef de famille) and coped and managed, delegating what I could, all the while in emotional mortal combat with she my mother had unwisely left in charge of her last wishes. I no longer had the liberty to cast off responsibility and feel. That had to wait for the completion of a long To Do List.

After more than three years of searching, my diagnosis of PD had taken so long that it too was a case of delayed grief. I grieved as the truth sank in, bit by bit, over time… It dragged in its wake all sorts of other griefs: lost activities; lost intimacies; lost goals; loss itself.

And so I am left sputtering solo with insomnia: yoga stretching at 3am by the distant comforts of neighbours’ lamps, in my darkened livingroom.

Spare diaper // Spare Change

(The story of my life from my 2^nd birthday to the day before yesterday. An Abridged version) 

1962, Vancouver

Well I don't actually know that I was told on precisely the 17^th of August 1962, but knowing my parents, they would have believed that their news would be a gift.

Two years previously, my parents had passed the rigorous Suitability Test for Catholic Adopting Parents (more on that another time) and I was adopted at 5 weeks old from a Catholic institution for "unwed mothers" in Vancouver.  I have a sort of recovered memory that I spoke out in Gestaltian Self-dialogue therapy using my little girl voice: "I don't like how, with their heads covered (was I foreseeing Sally Fields as "the Flying Nun"?), I couldn't smell their hair"... 

In those days, a  Catholic girl "who got into trouble" would leave her family home to go "visit" another city on whatever pretext suited her particular circumstances. She would have her baby and then give it away. My bio-mother left l'ile Perrot just west of Montreal as she had before on one of her frequent trips: around North America or to Europe; and came out west to Vancouver.

(The documentary The Forty Year Secret (2009)

Is an exposé of some of the less savory aspects of that “solution”… )

  

1960, Vancouver

Soon as I was born my bio-mother was applying her lipstick and gushing to the nuns about how much in a hurry she was to get back to Her Exciting Life in Montreal. It is documented in my file that she didn’t even look at me before dashing off. 

My bio-mother was exceptionally free for a Catholic girl, young woman really, in late 50s Québec, where the Church dominated absolutely. 

Much was made of Megan Draper's libertine Zou Bisou Bisou dance at Don's birthday party. It was considered an inaccurate portrayal of a young woman from Ultra Conservative Catholic Québec, even in the early 60s. True, Mad Men got her parents' French accents all wrong as well as Megan's perfect English, but given the apparent liberté d'esprit of my bio-mother in the late 50s I wonder if Megan was just another exception to the rule. She did move to New York to be an actress after all... 

1962, Vancouver

As a baby, or so I am told, in learning to walk I didn’t try: I just waited till I knew I wouldn’t fall down. I was 18 months old when I finally started walking (without falling and with my spare diaper in hand just in case). 

And so the "gift": I was to have a New Baby Sister. From declaration until her arrival a couple of months later, my spare diaper was repurposed as a weapon for whacking every smaller than I child who crossed my path... 

February 1985, California

As a sort of Suitability Test for Travel Companions, AN (Mr Jeremiah from my post:  Endurance: for the Glory or in the Gulag) invited me to hitchhike with him from Vancouver to San Francisco. On our way back up north, while resting in the parking lot of a supermarket in some very dusty, sun bleached corner of California, a rough and rugged Ronald Reagan cowboy type sauntered over and asked if we had any money. Did he need money? Was he the sheriff who was going to harass us for our lack of sufficient funds as had the American Customs Officers who'd Refused us Entry to The USA on our way south, demanding we return with more cash? (Which we did). 

Some, I mumbled as ambiguously as possible hoping to satisfy both plausible reasons for his question. 

He then pushed his large calloused hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of spare change...  

We went into the supermarket and bought a bag of tart green grapes; paying with little piles of American nickels and dimes. 

1987, Seoul

Re-entering the airport in Seoul Korea after a brief wander around a nearby working class neighbourhood, we, CL and I, were stopped by a Security guard. In searching my carry-on bag it became obvious he had never before seen an OB^R Tampon, a spare of which I had tucked discreetly in a small pocket. Without a common spoken language, I was obliged to either toss it out or defend its innocent purpose through mime. After a few minutes of hilarity (mine) and embarrassment (his) I kept my spare.

1993, Montreal

During the summer after my father died, I moved from Hipster Mile End to former working class-turned welfare-class community St-Henri. In the summer my cake baking business was limited and money was scarce. In paying for cake ingredients with the spare change left in the closet by the previous tenant I would visit 3 separate supermarkets to avoid paying with more than 2 or 3 dollars of spare change in any single store. 

  

1997, Montreal

During Global TV’s filming of one of Studio XX’s monthly women, art and tech salons, les Femmes Br@nchées, they kept the camera on a punk girl presenter, at the expense of other costumed participants. (We were big on playing thematic dress-up – it was the era of grrrl power and virtual world avatars). Photogenic punk girl came up to me afterwards and asserted that I (in spite of my Jetson’s era Martian look) seemed the type of woman to carry a spare tampon! 

2015, Vancouver

So the day before yesterday I was waiting as AK braved the freezing AC of the No Frills grocery store on Denman St. Outside on the sidewalk in the sun, I sat on my wheelchair (which I bring just in case Parkinson’s decides I will no longer be able to walk, until it decides that I will). I took off my fav visored-cap - a gift from NZ a friend who loves hats - careful to avoid placing it inside up... 

As a man walked by, I noticed his backpack was unzipped, wide open. Instinctively I raised my hand to get his attention. Before I could explain why I was attracting his attention, he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of spare change. 

Endurance: for the Glory or in the Gulag

en·dur·ance

inˈd(y)o͝orəns

noun

The fact or power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way.

"She was close to the limit of her endurance" (Italics mine)

Synonyms: stamina, staying power, fortitude, perseverance, persistence, tenacity, doggedness, grit, indefatigability, resolution, determination. (Google Chrome)

When I was studying Philosophy at UBC in my early 20s, I took a Russian Lit course as an elective. The gnomish professor, Dr Futrell, would go on to introduce me to Buddhism (and my boyfriend at the time to the principles of Tantric sex!).

In class, we read Solzhenitsyn and I learned of his “writing”, while imprisoned in the Gulag, by imagining, memorizing line by line, each day reciting, in his head, from the beginning of the story…

He possessed sufficient endurance to overcome the deadly situation that had befallen him. A writer without pen and paper, he stayed alive by composing the story in his head.

The Gulag was not a challenge he had chosen. So, my early-20-something year old self asked my prof, how does one achieve Solzhenitsyn’s “overcoming”, his endurance, without being forced by circumstances? You chose to take the difficult path, he replied, as for example Buddhists in letting go of ego, of desires, etc …

It was then that I saw certain challenges as either chosen (and thus for the Glory of their notable accomplishment beyond the everyday-ness of life) or as challenges not chosen but imposed by circumstances (the Gulag). Admittedly a Buddhist wouldn’t use the term “glory”. Seeking Nirvana is nonetheless a choice to go beyond ordinary daily living. It is an exceptional path.

Endurance is necessary for both these types of challenge.

Cycling Vancouver to Montreal in 41 days during the late spring of 1985 was a challenge undertaken for, amongst others things, the “glory” of saying “I did that!” The physical and emotional endurance required, the motivation to keep going, was easily found because it was a chosen challenge. (The endorphins helped…)  This in spite of:

•    damaged knee ligaments;
•    a foot of Rocky Mtn snow outside our tent and still needing  to pee in the -10C night;
•   a young moose on our side of the road making eye contact;
•   a bale of hay leaving the back of a pickup at 120 km/h and hitting the pavement a few metres in front of me;
•  tornado rain 200 kms north of the eye of the storm forcing even cars off the road;
•  endless loaves of peanut butter and banana sandwiches;
•  my friend’s terrible singing voice and very limited repertoire (how many times in a row can one sing Jerimiah was a Bullfrog?).

Before I had Parkinson’s, recalling that trip (its glory) often served to re-enforce my confidence in my ability to achieve much more than I had been lead to believe that I could. My mother actually bet me the $300 I owed her in long distance phone bills (pre-internet, it wasn’t cheap to break up with someone in England while one was in Vancouver) that I would not make it to Montreal!

Parkinson’s changed all that: reduced motivation is a symptom of the disease itself. Reduced dopamine = reduced motivation. And the range of the challenges of my life have become rigidly circumscribed.

The challenge of living with PD, the endurance demanded of me, is far too often limited to getting through the day. I endure pain not to reach the summit of Roger’s Pass, but merely to make lunch.  Performing the tasks of daily life, of independent living, brings no glory, no sense of accomplishment. Particularly as I am not cycling 160 kms/ day while performing those tasks!

Parkinson’s is my personal Gulag. And I am not Solzhenitsyn.

In writing as he did while in the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn also achieved Glory. The extremity of his accomplishments and of the circumstances under which he achieved them renders my life today too insignificant.

And I, a blogger without 2 working hands with which to type: ever determined; I have to find my inner Solzhenitsyn.

_smelling_ smoke (PD and hyposmia)

Woke to a weird forest-fire mustard sky

the hovering sun, a polished copper penny.

In a stillness greater than Sunday mornings

Grey Goose downed ashes blanketing the southern suburbs

meanwhile

This land is burning

orange marks newer fires (cbc.ca)

No, I’m not imagining things: I am losing my sense of smell and I AM smelling smoke.

As with many causes for minor (and some major) PD symptoms, such as the disease itself, THEY do not know the answers. The doctors and researchers have some theories, but…

Losing my sense of smell was not so bad in Senegal, as one could encounter some pretty smelly things in the course of a day. I won’t go into details now as I am eating my lunch: Wild BC Salmon which I can taste if not smell!

MJ Fox Foundation- Smell Loss and Parkinson's Disease 

Saved: Putting my Foot in my Mouth at the Right Place at the Right Time

In 2006 I returned from Sénégal, for non PD health reasons, to my first-half-of-my-life home: Vancouver. I immediately started looking for a job. I’d been a professor of web design and head of the program in Dakar. I did not expect the same here. And I was in a hurry: I had no money and I wanted to sponsor my Senegalese husband to join me in Vancouver.

I only found two interesting job prospects in the first two weeks: the first was in tech support for a software company where I would work mostly in French. It hadn’t been easy acquiring my level of fluency and I didn’t want to lose it. After nearly twenty years of living in la Francophonie I felt comfortable in my francophile skin. It was, however, a regimented corporate environment where supervisors would be monitoring my calls and timing, and no doubt counting, my bathroom breaks. It did come with some advantages: including guaranteed paycheques, vacation pay, and extended health benefits. After years of determining my work priorities and structuring my own time, it was a milieu very foreign to me. I hesitated. (Did I mention work started at 6:30 am out in a suburb south of Vancouver?).

The 2^nd job was way more “me”: as a web content writer for a socially progressive, in-house (literally – the office was in the directors’ home) media consulting firm.

The interview went really well. As I felt comfortable in an African print suit, I knew I could be myself there.

The Director (who had just had a baby!) was very dynamic and encouraging about my candidacy. As my writing for the web had not been exactly the same type of writing as they required, she asked to read my other writings. So I sent some less “creative non-fiction” pieces, including, an art project proposal, and 3 Sounds of where I live, written for a BBC World Service radio competition in 2003, when i lived in Dakar.

Here comes my foot...

3 Sounds of where I live

I live in a quiet place, well quiet for Africa, quiet most of the time - except for three regular distinct sounds. The first (and most frequent) is the sound of the northbound airplanes taking off several hundred meters away at the Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport. Each one taking with it the stowaway hopes of too many young senegalese, their eyes tracing the contours of tiny windows.

If at night a new plane catches me unawares - light off, door open - for that passing moment the bathroom becomes a pulsating, flashing disco...

The second, and less frequent sound at precisely 5 times a day, is the sound of the muezzin calling prayers. Actually, 2 muezzin. Two neighbourhood mosques maintain a polite, if amplified, competition for the attendance of the faithful. They call to mind my "first" - one early frozen pre-dawn in a small mustard coloured hotel room in Jerusalem - before this Intifada, before this Zionist holy war - through a single tiny window high up in the higher than wide wall, the muezzin cast a shivering spell with a single crescent blade sharp star.

The third sound is constant. Water. The crashing of waves several hundred meters away on the pirogue strewn beach of the Lébou fishing village of Tonghor. Or, it is night-long: the old-dishwasher swooshing of our neighbours' dysfunctional air conditioner. But of all of this, it is the (intimate) first-thing-in-the-morning running of the absolution water that consistently wakes me up.

pirogues and sheep - Lébou fishing village of Tonghor. 

***

I knew the word Intifada, but try as I might and in spite of 6 months spent in Israel, I couldn’t find a Hebrew equivalent … so I wrote “Zionist Holy War”.

After much positive feedback from the Jewish director, I was suddenly “not a good fit” for their firm…

Offered the corporate job, I accepted. A year later when my undiagnosed condition forced me to stop working there, they offered extended benefits. The other job had not. I never for a moment thought I’d be gone for good but I knew that some disability income would keep me alive in the meantime…

SAVED:

By Luck, as an apparently envious friend dared call my diagnosis of an incurable, degenerative neurological disorder! I was lucky not having to work BECAUSE I had Parkinson’s and received Long Term Disability Benefits until age 65.

or

By Fate - Putting my Foot in my Mouth at the Right Place at the Right Time…

Sending her the piece with the ill-judged use of the word “Zionist” changed the financial reality of the subsequent 19 years of my life in major way. That must be more than random chance…mustn’t it?

“I Couldn’t Stand All That Happiness”

My mother and her best friend (see: frozen wild-berry Whistler) had a gentleman friend (circa 1950s) who when asked why he never married, would inevitably reply: “I Couldn’t Stand All That Happiness”. Too much happiness? Over the years the ladies used his quip in many other contexts, laughing conspiratorially, never explaining. I surmised that it was because he was homosexual which in the 1950s was a hard identity to own (think Rock Hudson, Liberace, Alan Turing).

My cat loves extremes: sleeping or eating (with occasional wild moments of folly!) Her world view lacks shades of grey: newly shampoo-perfumed hair is equally fragrant to her as is 5 day dirty hair. It is the intensity of the aroma that interests my cat: the extremes.

Though I washed my hair more regularly than that, I too once thrived on extremes: inwardly plunged solo creation equilibrated by unleashed communal participation.

Now, however, there can truly be what I’d call too much happiness. My nervous system can no longer accommodate towering excitement, any more than it can accommodate rabid stress.

In other words: I no longer thrive on extremes!

With Parkinson’s I Can’t Stand All That Happiness!

Just the other day I achieved the ideal balance of objective, creation, and outcome. A friend had asked me for a short texted story (on the fly, as in tout de suite!) to serve as a distraction during a boring meeting. It proved to be so distracting that my friend was only able to finish reading it after the meeting was over…

Upon hearing this, I was Perfectly Happy.

Number 25: Meditate (near Death by Chocolate)

from 
Things that are Good for Me: from Hydrate to Meditate

Meditation is used to achieve a state of relaxation, of profound calm, among other objectives. It is an extremely important part of my daily dealing with PD and its symptoms. There are many different forms of meditation. I find it easiest to lie on my yoga mat, close my eyes, and to breathe deeply from my belly, slowly and steadily (preferably while baking in the hot sun, if not on my Saint Louis balcony, then on my Vancouver living room floor - through the windows the sun feels almost African…). 

Belly breathing (as opposed to the more regular breathing with the diaphragm) stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system thus bringing about a calming state by slowing the heart rate, increasing intestinal and glandular activity, and relaxing the sphincter muscles. It is one of the most accessible forms of meditation. And to help stop the flow of conscious thoughts, you may visualize yourself in an environment you consider to be peaceful.

Peaceful Visualized Environment 1: the Capilano Suspension Bridge

In the first winter of living in Saint Louis, Sénégal, I used to close my eyes and seek a symmetrical view of the Capilano Suspension Bridge seen as if taking that first step… (I was inspired by a photo I’d seen on the side of a bus in Vancouver). I have a very strong “mind’s eye” (the artist in me) and have had the occasional full blown hallucination (no drugs involved...)

1994

Once upon a time on Mont St-Hilaire on a pointed winter walk,

having picnicked on crackers and wine, and kissed on fallen branches,

darkness fell deciding.

With my frozen feet on starlit snowy ground

And my open eyes on drummed dancing burning sand

Africa.

But I didn't know it then.

(One of the poems about my experience of being a visible minority in Sénégal in my exhibition Toubaab! at the Canadian Embassy in Dakar):

Standing there I saw not the dark mountain but a sandy beach with the flames and drumming of Africa behind the sparse vegetation of the Sahel... thus Africa snuck into my life plan ever so surreptitiously.

But somehow I could not make my inner vision of the bridge symmetrical. I struggled to centre the image but I could no longer control my mind's eye to that degree.

It insisted in looking like this: always just off centre…

Failure is not relaxing so I gave up on symetrisizing the bridge…

Peaceful Visualized Environment 2: Immersion in chocolate…

After the bridge, my peaceful visualised environment for calming was to be floating weightless, as in a flotation tank, in chocolate… I imagined myself as at one with the chocolate.

Immersion in chocolate continued to be one of my preferred mind’s eye places of peaceful relaxation until I read recently about a would-be migrant and how:

“From a ramshackle camp in the woods outside Calais, a Syrian refugee made his 18th attempt to stow away in a lorry bound for the UK…he ended up in a tank of melted chocolate - an experience that almost killed him.”

I nearly drowned in chocolate

31 March 2015

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32119449

He made it out of the tank and eventually into England where he found an “under the table” job.

Peaceful Visualized Environment 3: a small Caribbean island beach

So now my preferred mind’s eye place of peace is a small Caribbean island: white sand, blue waves lapping the coral shore – me lying naked in the sun (waiting for my imaginary friend-with-benefits) – a small square of 85% cocoa chocolate melting in my mouth.

Preferably not during hurricane season.

PD and Impulse control (Part 3): The ER and the Blackberry Thieves

Vancouver August 2009

Two days after AK and I had fêted our mutual Leo birthday, I noticed that my mother didn't seem well. 

Against her nearly breathless objections, I called a taxi to take her to her doctor. She’d been suffering from COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) for several years and I was concerned.

I saw the taxi pull up in front of the house. No one except guests use the front door; we didn't even have a key to lock it from outside!

I walked down the stairs and along the path to the sidewalk from where I asked the taxi driver to wait a few minutes.

Meanwhile, my mother was just finishing applying her lipstick, having already changed into a nice dress, matching jacket and appropriate pumps. (Nylons? I don’t remember)

I called her impatiently from the sidewalk, turned to smile at the driver, hoping for more patience.

I turned back just in time to see my mother walking towards me. Front door ajar:  she was walking straight towards me. But the path curves left, goes down 2 stairs, turns right then down 4 stairs, before arriving at the sidewalk. She was headed for a 4 foot drop. I ran.

In his best “don’t make the family panic” voice, her doctor sent us straight to the ER (flagged: deal with this patient immediately).

It took 4 skill-levels of ER personal to get her intubated.

I sat quietly in the corner, not praying, (as I have no one to pray to) but sending as much positive energy as I could.

She would never forgive me if she died there, at the hospital, instead of at her home of 50 years.

She was admitted into to ICU with bi-lateral pneumonia and an uncertain prognosis.

AK arrived and, before going home, we went to Earl’s where I ate a greater-than-half-a-day’s calorie intake Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad.

In the lane from the bus stop to the house, an equally well dressed and lip-sticked neighbour I’d never met was accompanying her 5 or 6 year old blond granddaughter. Bucket in hand, she was picking our blackberries where they protruded through the fence into the lane.

I don’t recall my Self Righteous Speech about Private Property.

But I do recall the look on the little girl’s face as I plunged my hand into her bucket of our blackberries declaring: “I’m collecting taxes on the berries”. 

I then walked straight into the house by the backdoor.

(Personally, and upon reflection, it is possible that my blackberry-taxing might have been provoked by fear and shock at what had just happened to my mother, rather than PD-induced Impulse Control deficiency. 2009 – those were early days: I was still waiting for my official, conclusive diagnosis which would come soon enough in the worst of weeks…)

Parkison’s Disease and Impulse control (or lack thereof)

Commedia dell'arte: Mea Culpa Act 1 Scenes 1 and 2

Impulse control disorders (ICDs) are behavioral disturbances in which a person fails to resist the drive to behave in ways that result in distress or impaired social and occupational functioning. In Parkinson's disease (PD), ICDs most commonly include pathological gambling, excessive spending and hypersexuality. 

http://www.youngparkinsons.org/articles/impulse-control-disorders-in-parkinsons-disease

I’ve never been particularly impulsive. Oh I can be inspired to spontaneity sure. But I have always been more of a goal-oriented, planner type who might come up with an interesting idea then think pros and cons and logistics (as my friend Astarte says of me) before hitting the road. Bring on the next challenge I shout! then analyze it before taking action. 

Nor have I ever been known for having a temper.

Nevertheless…

Lack of Impulse Control Act I Scene I

One day last year in Senegal he had so outraged me that when we met head on at the junction of the balcony, the stairs down, and the pool below, the Pro-Con function reached a conclusion before I even knew we were making a decision.

• -        I could throw myself off the balcony into the pool.
• -        I could push him down the stairs.
• -        I could grab the cocky rose coloured sun glasses off his head and toss them into the pool.

Fortunately the glasses were tossed – though to my annoyance, he was able to fish them out (free of scratches) without even getting wet!

Lack of Impulse Control Act I Scene 2

Then today, waking to a sensitive friend’s text message about another’s Facebook post, I jumped right into the pool feet first, brain way behind. I leapt to a false conclusion and threw my friend down the stairs without even seeing what she’d actually posted for what it actually was. Then I tried to blame it on not yet having had my coffee (I drink decaf); on having a lousy computer screen and needing reading glasses (the latter are true).

I succeeded in hurting my fb-posting friend (and being publically and privately trashed by her friends) and I failed to defend the feelings of my texting friend or to make my point regarding cultural appropriation, adaptation, accommodation in art and life.

(Update)

Let me say that leaving Commedia dell'arte aside, underlying the posting was the issue of how “blackface” and the portrayals of black people in American culture most significantly, give rise to many feelings of repression, ridicule etc in the equating of Black with Evil:

From the Jim Crow Museum - Reddit Blackface Conversation http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/nov13/index.htm

And

Every Time I Turn Around: Rite, Reversal, and the end of blackface minstrelsy

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/comer/

and finally,

BBC Trending ;Southern US strawberry festival sparks a race row

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-32027487

A poster for a Louisiana strawberry festival showing 
two faceless black children has prompted sharply 
split online opinion over whether it is offensive and racist.

24 March 2015

Dr Parkinsons, in the Front Hall, with the Door Key. (a life? Part 2)

I might as well come clean before I go on grazing dangerously close to bottom.

It would be disrespectful to She said: He said (especially as he has no voice here. No access).

After 12 years, my husband and I separated. Simply put (a tremendous exercise in reductionism) It was Dr Parkinsons, in the Front Hall, with the Door Key.

In the early years we surmounted so much: difficult times and being from different worlds (Canada-Africa, race, religion, socio-economic and geopolitical realities, language, and separations due to immigration…). And 7 years in age as some narrow-minded people nudge-nudge-winked me. I brought out the best in him and he brought out the best in me.  

In the past there had been occasional lapses which rent the fabric of our Njakhass (patchwork) but they were always stitched back up.

And then Parkinsons arrived and I was no longer exactly the same me and nothing was the same.

It took a full year from when he broke my heart until he moved out. The last 4 months in Senegal were a long and terrifying period of isolation and vulnerability. Fear, just fear, without a specific threat. Clinical Fear.

And then an old friend reconnected (with "unfinished business"), recognizing me and making me smile. And a new one arrived (with her courage and humour in the face of adversity, be it hers or mine or another's) just in time to save my sanity. There were others there, in Senegal, who were supportive. Even though much was lost in translation, I thank them.

And now we are taking it amicably as best we can.

However this does not preclude mourning what is lost…