Back in February last year, my husband and I found ourselves on a rare date day. The weather was crazy, with strong winds and rain, but we’d made a plan, darn it, and nothing was going to stop us. So we faced the elements, and as we walked along the coastal path — wind puffing out our coats and rain drops hitting our faces, hard and fast — we had this awareness of being alive. Really and truly alive. Our senses had been activated. And (or was it because?) we felt physically connected to the Earth. This was a particularly profound moment for me, in no small part because less than a week before, we had been devastated by the news of my uncle’s death. The grief we were processing sat alongside this gratefulness we had for being alive, in an uncomfortable, but perhaps inevitable, way.
This really set the scene for 2020 for me, because as I reflect back on last year I realise I felt very conscious of death, and the fragility of life. There were many wonderful elements of the year too, but I feel like my uncle’s sudden death early on established one of many tones for 2020. This tone was only compounded throughout the year: with the reality of Covid-19 around us; evenings spent binge-watching The Big C (a fantastic comedy drama centred around the protagonist’s cancer diagnosis); and an old friend dying in the summer. In addition to my experiences, the young people my husband worked with were struggling with some intense mental health issues, and it all felt quite heavy at times.
Over the last few years, it’s as if I’ve suddenly realised my own mortality, and this was only magnified in 2020. It might sound strange, but prior to this awakening, I felt pretty relaxed about health issues, assuming everything ‘would be fine’. In all honesty, I probably swung too far one way; I mean, I had an ovarian cyst for months making my stomach progressively more distended, before getting it diagnosed, for goodness sake! I’m not sure what the turning point was — having children? my mother’s death? my sister undergoing open heart surgery? peers passing away? — but now I fear I’ve swung too far in the other direction.
There are definite advantages to recognising the fragility of life: It is important to accept that death will come to us all. I believe it is vital to break the taboo of talking about death (I discussed this in a previous blog post, Let’s Talk About Death, Baby. And for me and my husband, it kicked us into getting our life insurance sorted, which can’t be a bad thing!
But there are undeniable negative aspects to it too. Whereas before I would mock my dad and sister for their neurotic tendencies (they are self-confessed hypochondriacs so I write that in love!), I’ve become much more like them. I’ve had new moles checked out for fear of melanoma; lost sleep due to anxiety after a needle stick injury; and then worried that said sleepless nights indicate I’m going to develop depression. I can generally rationalise these fears away, but I recognise that for others, this awareness of our own mortality can be crippling.
This all leads to the question, which is the crux of this post and the thought I’ve been grappling with throughout the year: So where do you go from here? It’s all very well, and can be helpful, to be mindful of the fragility of life, but what do you do with that? And how do we allow a sense of our own mortality to become a positive thing, changing our lives for the better and not an inducer of fear?
Well, firstly, I think you need to process it. Whilst it might not be healthy to dwell on the fragility of life, neither is it healthy to ignore it. For me, I process by writing and talking. For my husband that has recently been through song writing. He has written a couple of songs this year which have reflected his students’ experiences; they are haunting but beautiful.
Another element of processing for us has been by normalising death: I have already mentioned The Big C, but a second television series I would recommend is One Mississippi (a semi-autobiographical dark comedy starring Tig Notaro). Both explore death and grief in a poignant way, whilst still making the audience laugh, which I found quite compelling.
But whilst sometimes it can be helpful to hold death and humour simultaneously, at other times it isn’t. A couple of our experiences of death this year have been suicides and these feel totally traumatic on an entirely different level. To process those I have wanted to understand what was going on in the minds of those now-deceased loved ones (if that is even possible), and if nothing else, by growing in my understanding of depression, I hope I have grown in compassion. I am no less heartbroken, but I want to make life easier for others struggling with similar issues. Matt Haig’s book, Reasons to Stay Alive, has been a helpful starting point for me.
So, having processed our own mortality (which in reality, will be an on-going exercise), we have a decision to make. My cousin, Rosie Crocombe, was recently interviewed on a podcast about her experiences of dealing with grief, following her father’s death, (you can find the link to the episode of Its Not That Deep here ), and she summarised it like this:
‘What are my options? I either die or I keep living.’
I think it really is that straight forward: choose life! We have to make the most of being alive! (It sounds like such a cliché, but clichés generally end up as such because they hold so much truth.) I can only conclude that we need to really live, and to be intentional about experiencing things that help us feel alive.
For me that is often being out in nature, feeling connected to something bigger than myself. There are certain things that help me to feel embodied — physically here in my own skin — which I love. Over the last nine months or so I have started sea swimming, and have endeavoured (successfully thus far) to go for a wild swim, with no wetsuit, at least once a month. There is always some apprehensive procrastinating at the edge of the tidal pool, and I won’t deny that in the winter it is painfully cold, but it is oh-so exhilarating! When I swim in the sea I feel embodied, I feel a part of creation, and I feel alive.
Another way I feel alive is by doing something that I find myself getting lost in, as it were. I had always been envious of my husband’s vast array of hobbies, feeling somewhat inadequate and lacking in that department, but then I discovered writing. For the first time I could relate to missing a meal, or being late for something, because ‘I’d lost track of time’; it felt almost revelatory to me! I think there’s something about pushing into something that brings you joy, and feels so natural to you that you can’t understand why other people don’t feel that way about it, that helps you to experience the fullness of life.
An additional element to choosing life is, I believe, living in the present. It’s about not being so preoccupied about what will end us that we don’t enjoy the here and now. I’m not talking about pursuing a completely hedonistic lifestyle with an utter disregard for the future (our health or the health of our planet, for example). But surely there must be a happy balance where our concern for the future can motivate us to act responsibly without us being crippled by it?
I am convinced that something that robs us of life is regret (I actually wrote about it in a previous blog post, Letting go of ‘if onlys’ ). To turn this on its flip-side, if you want to choose life, then don’t let opportunities pass you by. I’m not suggesting you need to go sky-diving or bungee jumping (although if that is important to you, then go for it!); no, I think it’s much simpler than that. In the autumn I did an audio retreat and one of the reflections was around the wisdom and life experiences of older people, with the question posed: “What would you like to ask your grandparents (if you could)?”. How thought-provoking! For me, I’d love to ask my grannie how she was able to be one of the most joyful and wonderful people I knew, despite being widowed at such a young age with two young daughters. Or to my grandma: I know her faith was important to her, but what aspect of it helped her the most with her decades-long struggle with her debilitating rheumatoid arthritis? Neither of my grandmothers are still alive, so much as I’d like to ask them, I can’t, and that leaves me with a pang of sadness. But it also spurs me on to make sure I make the most of the opportunities I do have, with the people I am in relationship with now, so that I don’t have to live with more regrets.
So let us — in those iconic, oft-quoted words — choose life! Let us choose experiences that help us to feel embodied. Let us be present and mindful. Let us get caught up in things that make us feel alive. Let us be compassionate and thankful. Let us make the most of experiences so that we don’t have to be weighed down by regrets. Let us invest in relationships. Let us not take life for granted. Let us really live!
Time for Tea 