Gran

Another post about my gran following on from the last one and more specifically about her death. Her end lives with me as everyone can relate to when they lose someone they love. That last day in the hospital knowing it was the final goodbye and trying to overcome the agoraphobic urges which had kept me from seeing her for months of slow deterioration will forever live in my mind- have to note here that at the time I didn't know what my problems were and was scared because doctors couldn't tell me either. But there is more than that. There are stronger and more negative emotions still alive. There is a bitterness, anger and still after all this time a need bang my head off the wall over the day she was put to rest. It was a farce and far from befitting the great woman that she was.

Firstly I must paint a little picture. My parents moved from Glasgow to a new town in the early seventies. In the late seventies my dad's parents and his younger brother, who stayed with them, moved to the new town too. In the mid eighties my parents moved us all a few hundred yards to a house right across the road from my grandparents and uncle. It should have been good times.

Not long afterwards my granda was diagnosed with a brain tumour and though he fought tooth and nail beyond what the doctor proclaimed would be the end finally the fight was over. Someone took the decision to cremate him in Edinburgh and so we all traipsed through. I remember it well but what I remember most was wandering about the garden of remembrance locating his rose- how ironic. A decade later my uncle died and was cremated there too leaving just my gran in the house. I moved in to keep her company for a few years as she took it really badly. Not only because she was there when it happened but it was harder to see a child pass before you than a husband as you don't expect to outlive your children. Then another decade later it was my gran's turn to pass.

The day of my gran's cremation the cars arrived late and it was an ordeal getting through to the crematorium in time. When we got there a few of us needed the toilet after a long drawn out journey including me so we went and when we returned they were ready to start the service unhappy at having to wait on us. So we carried the coffin in from the car and sat down to the most cringe worthy service from a minister who had never met my gran followed by a hymn that nobody apart from the minister sang- to his credit. Then it was over. As we went outside I noted another hearse parked behind the one we arrived in with people in it. I planned to go to the garden of remembrance to pay my respects but was told I could not as we had to leave straight away. The car behind was the next load of cattle waiting to be herded in.

On the journey back I was fuming and still am. Where is the respect? These people charge enough but my gran's death was treated like an item on a factory conveyor belt. The whole point was to pay our respects and we never got to do that. And it was not the last time either. My wife's gran died and the cremation in Glasgow was almost as bad in that we were lined up as people came out and when we came out there were people waiting for the next service. What sort of remembrance is that for a life?

A red rose

Sometime between the ages of 7 and 9 years old I was in the living room of the family home seated on the sofa. In my lap was a book of drawing paper empty and waiting to be filled. By my side I had an assortment of about 10 different coloured felt tip pens. One was in my hand. Lacking inspiration I had surveyed the room for about 10 minutes before finally deciding on a single red rose in a vase on or near the TV. Thinking back it was possibly fake. I doodled away filling the page with vibrant colour and then finally bringing sharpness to the scene with the black pen. My little masterpiece. I remember it like it was yesterday. Then I pulled out the page and gave it to my gran who had brought both paper and pens as a gift on one of her many frequent visits. In the weeks to follow I would fill all the pages requiring more pens but for the life of me I cannot remember any other than that first drawing.

Both my grandparents and parents thought I was talented. They proclaimed I was very artistic and for years I bought into that. The truth is that I was good at copying. Left in an empty room I was starved. I needed to see with my own eyes as my mind never brought forth anything so vivid.

About 2-3 years ago I started a little pet project for the family. My gran had a lot of photographs which my parents kept after she died. It was my intention to scan them all and put them on DVD for everyone. Furthermore I would create additional playable DVDs setting the photographs to music. For 3 days after my parents dropped off the photographs to me I scanned them individually in what fast became a monotonous task. There were 4 black bin liners filled and even being selective I had a job on my hands. What pushed me on though was the fact that quite a few were fading and one day would be gone for ever were they not imprinted into the digital format.

Also among the photographs were a few things belonging to my gran and among them was a prayer book. Being the nosey sod that I am I opened it up and inside was a folded piece of paper. Without having to open it I could see what it was- a red rose. My gran had kept it all that time. It made me smile to know that she had it with her all her days. I'd imagine as a victim of cancer the prayer book was much looked at in the end and a red rose was always there maybe reminding her of better days. I put it back in the prayer book and there, to my knowledge, it remains.

Strange little girl

My youngest girl's siblings are outgoing and fearless. She is the same, as are most young children. But unlike the other two she is very sensitive- overly so. She is also brighter. In a few weeks times she will be 4 years old and some of the things she says astound us sometimes. There is also the incredible memory she has which maybe masquerades as intelligence. In her own way she is very different from her brother and sister. In fact those two are very alike.
Her memory as I said is quite unbelievable for her a child her age. She retains so much. For nearly two years she has been able to recite the alphabet and count to 20. This alone is not much but the capacity for remembering things is illustrated in other ways. About a year ago my wife took the kids to her mother's house for the weekend and when they came back she had a book which had been bought for her- about 10 pages with about 2 sentences per page. So I sat her on my knee and told her I would read the book to her. To my amazement every page I opened she read out word for word. Not obviously reading but from memory. When I asked my wife how many times the book had been read to her she said 3 or 4 times. She was approaching 3 years old at the time.

I've even found myself asking her for guidance. They watch 'Spongebob Squarepants' and we have 10 episodes which includes two per episodes. So when they want a particular one I have to ask her which one of the twenty it is and she tells me. Her older doesn't know despite watching it always with her. So many ways. She will sit in her own little world and recite 5-10 minute dialogues from 'Horrid Henry'. She will recite songs she has not sung for many months. There are so many examples I could give.

On the downside though she is super sensitive. Drying her hair and brushing her hair has her screaming the house down. Any little thing seems to bother her. When she was younger even washing her hair was damn near impossible at times. That though I put down to my wife's mum who is very much old school.She stayed there for a week and came back with this problem of having her hair washed. However well meaning I am sure when the suds got in her eyes her granny would not have been as sensitive as we are- maybe we are too sensitive. And so it took months of coaxing to finally get her at ease with getting her hair washed. We had to get a cap which stopped the water going into her eyes to begin with and then slowly remove that. The washing now is not a problem but the drying and the brushing still is- which happens a lot as my wife insists the children are bathed every single night. And in lots of other ways she is more sensitive than the other two.

As for intelligence over memory there is still a bit more of that in her. As an example I will give the kids TV program 'Captain Mack'. This irritating offering has some star captain who jets off to Sunshine city in one of his rockets. Every time he goes he takes a different coloured rocket- either yellow, blue or red. And on his journey there he flies over the sea where sometimes a whale jumps out of the water and sometimes not. The girls have turned this part into a game which ends up in one of them crying in defeat and the other sometimes trying to annoy the other to bring more tears. When he is about to launch the girls guess what colour of rocket he will take- mummy and daddy have to join in too. Then we all have to say whether it is going to be "whale" or "no whale". Randomly they would invariably get the colour of the rocket correct but every time it came to the whale she would always get it right much to her sister's annoyance. I had already worked out it worked on a system but had not mentioned it to the girls- sly old dad. So I was intrigued as to how she was getting it right every time so asked her. And it was exactly as I thought: if the rocket was red or blue there was a whale but if it was yellow there was no whale. Not rocket science but this was a year ago when she was two so quite a bit of logic and logic that her sister, twice her age at the time, never saw.

It got me to thinking. I read recently about Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphic Resonance. That is his thinking that there is a collective consciousness that similar species can tap into. In his view that fact that Blue Tits in Scotland found that by pecking through the silver foil on milk bottle tops they could get milk at around the same time as the same birds were doing it in England was down to this collective consciousness of a species. Similarly the claim that sheep in England were escaping from fields over cattle grids by doing a commando style roll at about the same time as sheep in Australia were doing the same thing was down to this morphic resonance. Now I had already worked out the system and then my youngest girl came to the same conclusion. In all cases was she tapping in to the knowledge via morphic resonance or was it just that she arrived at the same conclusion set with the same problem? That we will probably never know.

I would hope his theory is wrong and I'll tell you why. Were that the case then what else could she tap into? My anxiety of course. Is this why she is such a sensitive child? I see my own introspection in her when she sits in her own little world playing games, reciting scripted dialogue and having to be shouted at 4 or 5 times to snap out of it. I see it in her sensitivity to things- though in saying that her sister was howling the other day when she was calling her "Bum face" non stop so maybe sensitivity runs in the family. But she is very different and I hope the good outweighs any problems she may have in future. Certainly for now she is a very happy little girl who wants for nothing materialistic- unlike her sister. She is content in her own company as she is with others. The nursery tell us she is a very sociable little girl. And she has a boyfriend- that will be getting nipped in the bud when I am able to go to nursery!

All in all though she may just be a product of being a middle child who is sometimes overlooked. There may alternatively be no problems at all and she may just be average of mind but an oversensitive father is reading too much in to things. Ultimately though I wouldn't change her in any way. Sometimes she can be a strange little girl but that is not always a bad thing.

Conversations

Oldest Girl (to her mother): We need a helper at school. The teacher said so.
Wife: What type of helper?
Oldest Girl: A mummy or a daddy to help in school.
Wife: Well I can't honey because I work.
Oldest Girl: I know but can who can be my helper?
Me: It has to be someone who doesn't work. *Bites lip in realisation*
Oldest Girl: I know...daddy you don't work.
Me: Mmm...that's right.
Oldest Girl: But you don't leave the house, do you?
Me: Eh. No that's right.
*Long pause as I wait for the inevitable follow up*
Oldest Girl: Why don't you go out the house daddy?
Me: Eh...ah...well...I'm lazy.
Oldest Girl: *Laugh* You're silly daddy.
Me: *Smiles outside, cringes inside*

At some point I am going to have to explain this situation to my oldest daughter who is obviously picking up on it and starting to question it. Even her younger sister said the other day said "You don't go to the shops do you daddy?". It is impossible not to notice and I have no doubt in the oldest's case at least it may come up in conversation at school and make her ponder all the more. At six years old I am not sure she would understand but more than that I am not really sure how to explain it without lying. At some point though I am going to have to for her sake.

Some time ago I came to the conclusion that everything needs to be out in the open. I told my family and my wife told hers. A secret life was not reflecting well on my wife and me neither for that matter. By getting it all out in the open I hoped people would be more understanding and much to my surprise on the whole they were. To my face anyway because there is the occasional slip from my wife where she has obviously been told I'm a waste of space. Revealing all though did not have the long term desired effect I hoped for. The initial understanding was soon forgotten and now its as if I never said a thing. I get the feeling that there are a few people waiting for me to get a grip of myself and then everything will be OK. In this period of openness though I forgot the children. At the time they were too young to understand but as time passes they are becoming more in need of that knowledge to stop them getting confused. The last thing I want is my own kids tip toeing around me.

Summer ramblings

Apologies in advance for the aimless disorder to be found in the following post. It is a collection of thoughts over the past few days sitting out under the sun in the garden with nothing to occupy this little head of mine. Usually a couple of these inner beasts may form the basis for a post in its own right but giving my mind free reign for a few days has had it whizzing with an assortment from the sublime to the absurd too large in number. Now like I have rolled up to the local tip I tilt my head back and dump the useless and abandoned into the heap to make space. There is a lot to get out and as I don't want this post to be too long I will split it up in parts.

Why does an agoraphobic need a mobile phone? At Christmas I received one as a present on request and as I was sitting in the garden looking at it I posed this question to myself. I have never made a call on it and only sent one text to test that it works- in fact my wife has used it more when her own phone's battery is dead. The purpose I discovered was so I could take photos with it. So why not buy a camera then? I guess as a self conscious person I wanted to look less conspicuous and the irony is that as I posed this question I was about to snap the damn thing in two as lately it has become temperamental. As a camera it doesn't work that often which makes it really a phone I don't actually need.

After posing this question I looked along the grass to my left. There sitting on a door step 3 doors along was a guy taking in some sun and reading a book. Here starts the stupid irrational and obsessional thought process. What was he reading? That was the question in my head. If only I had followed it up with asking myself why it would matter but I did not. Instead I just kept asking myself the same question over and over until it got to the point where I was making a plan of attack. I could just ask him. I could try zooming in with the camera on my phone, if it worked, and check out the image later to see if I could glean a title from it. I could walk by innocently and try to snatch a glance. But what would it matter? If I did learn what he was reading it would mean nothing to me.

And that leads me to obsessional purchases. Still my camera has not come. In my head I see a van pulling up and a man getting out with a box for me to sign for. But no, not yet. Why though do I have such impatience for its arrival? When it arrives what am I going to do with it? I'll get it out and look at it. Take a photo of something irrelevant that will never get looked at again and most likely get deleted. Then I'll put it away. But it won't end there. More questions. Did I really need to spend that much on a camera. If I bought one at half the price I could have used the rest for my daughter's impending birthday and more. I have always been like this. I get a thought in my head to buy something, then obsess over it to the point where I have to buy it to get some peace and finally when it is in my hands I realise I didn't need it as bad as I thought with a feeling of deflation.

I can see these things in myself when I reflect but not at the time. Last night the boy started to walk his first steps. My joy was tempered by frustration. Mostly he would take a couple of steps and sit down. Lack of confidence more than inability. And annoyed I'd lift him up again telling him he could do it which of course he doesn't understand. The little soul would then have another go and sit down again. Why the frustration? I look at myself with my anxious problems and all that I have read lately on acceptance yet cannot see he is no different from me trying to walk while lacking the belief that it is possible.

More and more I relate things to my own anxiety problems as if I am searching for an answer that may be found where least expected. I see it in so many things but I suppose if you look hard enough and think long enough you can apply most things to another. I watched a documentary on Tourettes and one sufferer described their tic as like trying to suppress a sneeze. Yes I can see that. That is me trying to accept rather than fight. The satisfied urge is hard to stifle. Another documentary I watched was Armando Ianuuci's hour on Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. Even in there I was starting to draw parallels but one in particular has resonated even till now. John Milton was blind when he dictated his classic work which I did not know and to get inside his head a little Ianucci talked about blindness to a blind man. It was very poignant to hear him say that he awoke every morning to find that he was blind again. He explained this by saying that in blindness there are no faces and no places but there are in dreams so waking in the morning that realisation of blindness returns. I can relate to that. It takes some time in the morning for me to be reminded of that anxiety is holding me back and that returning daily knowledge is delivered in a dark cloud.

It has though been good to get out because this realisation in the morning that I an indeed a person trapped at home with anxiety cannot be lost for long in the little spells I leave the home. So although I am basically just down a staircase and sitting outside a door it is a big break for me because I spend too few moments outside. It is a change of scene and a break from the monotonous routine. Fresh air and sunshine are just some of the benefits but being taken away from the distraction of books and computers to be dropped right into the here and now is very beneficial to the state of mind. Believe it or not for the first half hour or so sitting outside I am restless. Being out of my natural surroundings takes some adjusting and I have constant thoughts about going back upstairs. Eventually though those thoughts recede.

Still I am prone to bouts of staring into the beyond and times where I am aware someone is talking while hearing the sound of their words but listening instead to my own voice. Interaction comes with getting out. Sometimes welcome and sometimes not. Being trapped by a neighbour who wants to spend a couple of hours in a one way conversation about every little irritatingly grating moment of their tedious existence from what they had for breakfast to what they seen someone do out of their window is not welcome. Nor for me are the jovial strangers who walk by and despite being foreign trespassers in my kingdom want to exchange pleasantries- usually about how hot it is or other statements of the obvious. With kids though other kids are attracted and I don't mind them so much as they pretty much do their own thing and bother little. Just yesterday we had a guinea pig running around our garden with the little girl next door and an entourage of others following the hairy little pied piper around. These things bring a diversity to my day and a nostalgic remembrance of summers past in what I knew then as normality.

The mood alters too. Despite still being caught in long periods of introspection I don't feel as down as I do in the house because their are people mulling, music playing, chatter in the background, incidents and accidents to be had. It allows me to smile more and even laugh sometimes which can be so good for the soul. Strangely one of the things that made me laugh most was remembering something I saw about one man trying to kill another man. My macabre sense of humour came to the fore in the garden when I remembered watching 'Have I got news for you'. One of the items discussed was a man trying to commit suicide in China by threatening to jump of a road bridge which led to a large traffic jam. One driver got so disgruntled that he got out his car, broke through the police cordon, climbed the bridge, shook the suicide candidate's hand and then pushed him off. Sorry but that kind of thing makes me laugh. Its not so much the act of violence or the intent to injure someone else but those feelings of rage in a situation we can relate to and have experienced- something I am sure we have all thought about doing in some way to spend out anger.

That is probably enough bizarre musings for one reading so I will wrap up there.