A thoughtful series of remarks..

I'm lucky to have a good friend (let's name this friend Sam), who shares (mostly in a very amusing way) stories of the dysfunctional family Sam belongs to.  Sam's experience is that although immediate family members are still alive, they are not loving or respectful. But they still make it clear what Sam's role is in their construct of what 'family' needs to mean and what therefore can be asked or demanded or assumed from Sam as part of the family unit. Apart from my emotional reaction to this situation, it raises all sorts of issues about what 'belonging' means, and the strength (and therefore amount of love and pain) that these ties can engender.

We all want to feel we are part of a greater social whole. Our social world begins with our immediate family (usually) and grows out from there, through friends and school and extended family and work etc etc. Usually. But what about our expectations?  They tend to grow along with what we witness and experience.  So if you come from a loving family and having loving people around you in your greater world, you learn to expect that those people will, in the main, treat you kindly.  Will listen, and care about what you say, and generally interact with you as an equal.  There will be times when this isn't so, but these situations will be resolved without huge emotional stresses or 'deal-breaking' situations.  You are in essence able to be fairly certain of your foundations.

But what happens when your starting point, your immediate family members, have a different way of operating? If their emotional makeup is flawed or skewed or a result of their earlier life experience causing scars?  If somehow their model has been flawed and they're not able to pass on the loving, accepting model because they haven't experienced it?  Or if, say, they are not insightful, reflective people, or emotionally responsible people, or even people who don't much care what impact they have on others, and whose ideas and feelings don't get scrutinised?  We can't all have the good fortune of strong emotional foundations and positive life experience and the inner strength and wisdom to find our way.

My point is that we learn from what we know, and if what we know is something that causes us pain or frustration or anger or something deeply disturbing in some way, what are we to do with it?  Our own emotional evolution is something we can choose to think about and perhaps explore and modify.  If, say, we are filled with guilt and paralysed by this guilt, we can seek ways to examine the guilt and try to find a more emotionally effective way to live with ourselves.  We can make choices about what we choose to carry as emotional baggage, and what we want to make peace with, and even what we want to leave alone because it's part of what makes us feel vulnerable.

When we turn to our family to help us, or accept us, or respect us as equal in emotional status, we are putting our selves in a position of some kind of need.  And if those family members are not able to accept or meet this need, we're in a very vulnerable position indeed.  Being needy and asking for help is admitting that there's something we can't do, can't manage, or can't understand.  Expecting those close to us to treat this with respect and not exploit this vulnerability can be a gamble.  If your experience is that admitting neediness is probably going to lead to a situation where you are ignored, exploited, ridiculed or made to feel you are 'lesser' somehow, what does this teach you?

I think you learn, very quickly, to keep your needs out of the equation.  If 'belonging' is something you need to feel, you have to change your expectations and understand that you won't get the acceptance and respect you feel you deserve.  This is insidious stuff, and in my view can lead to crippling outbreaks of anxiety, feelings of abandonment and low self-esteem.  Because if your family doesn't accept you as you are, where do you turn?  Many people learn that close friends are safer, more reliable and stronger emotional relationships to participate in.  Friends we can choose.  Friends can be that unconditional accepting emotional model we all want to participate in.

Sam is caught in a very unpleasant place - wanting both to cut ties and to feel that Sam can belong  as the person Sam is.  There is much to lose by choosing either position, and it doesn't surprise me at all that Sam can't choose.

In my own explorations of these kind of emotional ties and expectations within the family, I frequently forget that what *I* feel is generally understood; but it may not be the case for all the others.  I am as capable as the next person of thinking it's all about me, and forgetting that the others, as close to them as I feel, might have other priorities and other emotional pulls on their resources.  I make lots of mistakes but I believe that I at least try to start from a loving, accepting point of view.

It hurts a lot when things don't pan out, and somehow I or we or they end up stumbling over false expectations or simply wrong ideas and assumptions.  Like everyone else, I want to belong, and to participate, and to feel that my 'stuff' gets equal time.  When it goes wrong, it's awful.  Because in loving and respecting my family members, and believing as strongly as I do that we all need our space to stuff it up, sometimes I expect too much or assume the wrong thing or simply get overwhelmed by what's going with me and not be able to see past it.

This is perhaps an apology as much as it is an exploration.  Because it's better to learn from a mistake than to just feel bad about it.  For me, it's better to think it through and try to understand than to let it go and find that expectations and assumptions are even more off the mark next time.

Brought to you by a day when I was peaceful; then scared, too full and then too empty of adrenalin; and then very lonely for a while.

No perfume was harmed in the production of this post.

Reflecting on enough..

Hi there neglected bloggie, how are you under all that dust???

We're still here. We 'celebrated' eleven months to the day since M's accident on Tuesday. Eleven months! How wonderful, WONDERFUL, it is not to know the future. I can't tell you how I've managed it, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to know, at the beginning, that this could be the reality.

Times have been very shaky. My M has had physical, emotional and psychological challenges which have stripped him of independence, flesh, ability, dignity and strength. He's been back to ICU twice, with dangerous collapses and arrests. I've had to have the 'how much cardiac resuscitation does the family want?' conversation several times. I've had a long visit home, during which I did nothing but grieve for 18 of my precious 21 days. The last three days I spent in wonder, looking at the exploding garden - the drought has well and truly broken! The roses are magnificent and I so enjoyed taking a huge bunch of them back to the ward. They lasted nearly 9 days and were a wonder to behold in so many ways. ENOUGH.

I have had a trough of sadness lately, to dig through my thoughts and feelings and try to find something to feel optimistic about. But today, as I schlepped through the mall, again, trying to remember why I'd gone there, again, and not just because of christmas, I suddenly thought this: enough. Enough of worry and uncertainty and helplessness and insomnia and broken plans and sad faces. And spending, and thinking about christmas, and what's for dinner and why won't the last noisy pub patrons go HOME so I can get some sleep (if you value your quiet nights, don't live in a pub!).. enough. I can do this. M has no choice; he is suffering very badly from such a very long and fraught hospital stay and he keeps going. Not as sweetly as usual, but he does it. Day after day. And, somehow, so do I. ENOUGH.

I don't have to cook, clean, garden, change the cat box, deal with doorknockers, ring the plumber, put the bins out or do anything much for anyone unless I feel like it. The expectations others have of me are very simple - stay standing and keep writing. Come home when I can. ENOUGH.

A large chunk of my extended family visited us this afternoon, and we all sat in the ward courtyard and sang carols.. with kids wearing blinking Rudolph noses, other patients wheeling around, and the breeze cooling us in the humidity. Spontaneous; simple; ENOUGH.

Tonight my step-daughter and I shopped for some extra food to take into M tomorrow. And what a delight to IGNORE christmas foods and plans and must-haves, and realise that all we wanted was the makings of a fairly simple picnic, largely from the deli and fresh food sections. A quick bottle of bubbles and some plastic champagne glasses. ENOUGH.

We will stay with M til we are sated with unwrappings and the humour of what the hospital will serve for lunch. We will do his washing even though 'it's christmas' (we still need clean jox, right?). We will share our goodies and sing together for whoever is around. We will nap in his room after the sun makes us sleepy, and later the two of us will go to the beach to lie and sigh on the sand until we have had... enough.

And on Sunday, the world will begin to turn again, and all the things we usually do that didn't happen won't matter, and all the new things we did will, and I for one will continue to feel so very lucky in my family and friends. Because this year, if nothing else, I have learned that when it comes to love, there is always ENOUGH. It doesn't run dry, go away or leave you dangling. It doesn't criticise or restrict you. Love in all small and large ways, is how we roll from one day to the next, cradled in the concern and hopes and wishes of loving people.

ENOUGH.

...

except... I DID buy some more perfume. Vivienne Westwood 'Let It Rock'. Indeed!

Oh CRIPES

Maccy has lymphoma. This is a very treatable cancer in cats. We have the option, if he's well enough from the peritonitis, to try a dose of chemo on Friday and see if it shrinks the cancer and thereby helps him feel better. The vets are quite keen to give it a go, they are confident that it's a good move. But when we visited our boy today, he was a bit brighter but tired very quickly and just wanted to be left alone. This is not behaviour we see in him unless something is very wrong.

We had to discuss all the possible options, talking frankly about quality of life and when it's right to decide to stop the suffering. It's the last thing we can do for our pets, take away any suffering and let them go to sleep. We've had to make this choice twice before, with Amy and then a year later with her daughter, Petunia. It was to some extent easier both those times, because both old girls had fatal conditions with no hope of reprieve. They had both clearly come to the end of their physical capacity to eat or socialise, leaving only lying around waiting for death. It was pretty horrible but also quite clear that letting them go to sleep was right, and right now.

Maccy might not be well enough for chemo; the peritonitis may not clear up enough. He's on pretty heavy meds, and after 3 days hasn't gained much ground. Without chemo he'll certainly die, and soon. The roll of the dice is whether a dose of chemo (which is administered with steroids) will immediately shrink the tumour and therefore make him feel a lot better. Reduce the pain, let his digestive system work properly, give him back his appetite. If it does, we are then on a merry-go-round of weekly or twice-weekly visits to the vet for monitoring and further chemo. This means lots more of the much-hated car trips. He's never been a happy traveller, and I'm loathe to inflict more of that on him. But is it fair to let him go without trying? I don't know.

He's been such an important part of my life, and my family's life, for 12 years. He's a very gorgeous boy, a loving purrsonality who has roamed the neighbourhood making friends for years. When we started having to keep him inside, and take him for walks on his lead, we began to find all the other homes he'd (easily) made his own. Friends who live a few blocks away who welcomed him as their own. The woman who had morning coffee with him on her porch. Several families whose young children loved his visits. Grandpa up the road who missed Maccy coming for afternoon naps. Neighbours over the road whose grandkids would come to the gate and call him out, then take him over and feed him catnip and pat him til he went all soft and purry - and came home with the munchies!

And there were the people he developed a yen for, and where we could reliably find him in the evening when we wanted him to come home - various group households around the place where the residents could be seen rushing to let him out when they heard us calling! Our next-door neighbours, both families who've lived there; the first who allowed him to live inside and out as he pleased, often bonding with Toby (both boys snoozing on the bed together); later our new neighbours who looked forward to morning coffee with Maccy on the deck. For a while when we first started walking Maccy on his lead, he always went in to see if Mr Nexdor was there, and had a little drink from their fishpond.

Now he has every staff member at the vet practice waiting on him - hand-feeding, serial cuddling, constant checks to see that he's comfortable, every encouragement to get better and carry on being, as St Michael the head vet put it, 'the purrfect cat'. I don't know ... over the last few years he's had a number of very nasty illnesses, the worst being three weeks of hell when he suffered major bowel inflammation, and cat flu. We were lucky to save him that time. Maybe the poor old puss has just done his dash. He's dispensed uncritical love and furriness all his life, provided deep pleasure and comfort to so many people. He's soaked up my tears, gobbled up my catering, decorated our home and our garden, tolerated that pesky Little Miss Wendy when she first moved in and tried to run him off the premises. He's purred and purred, and lolled around in ungainly poses, and squikked and prrpd and mrowed his way through life, and made a damn fine job of it. We're all totally in thrall to him. Messages of love and sorrow for him have come literally from all over the world.

Light a candle for Maccy. Or eat a tin of tuna, or munch on a chicken bone. Sit in the sun and watch butterflies. Come and rub your head against my leg or sit pointedly in front of the fridge. Go to sleep on M's chair on the special blanky I crocheted. Hold him close and feel him purr. I can feel it now....