Uprooting the Darkness

DEPRESSION - unhappiness, melancholia, misery, sorrow, sadness, gloom, low spirits, heavy heart, hopelessness, despair, tearfulness, the dumps, the doldrums, the blues, a blue funk

Everybody goes through periods of depression in their lives. What they do about it, or how they cope is where we differ. Some people let it take hold of them and they wail and moan about it but never do anything. Or they get on medication and never really work through the thing that is causing their trouble. Sometimes the hardest part is recognizing it for what it is, and then the recognition hopefully leads to a look inward to find a way to pull it out by its roots.

My dad once said to me, "It's not in my nature to be depressed." This was after his beloved old dogs had died within weeks of each other. When he said it, he was going through cataract surgery and all those endless drops involved with that. It wasn't in his nature, but nonetheless it had taken hold of him. Daddy wasn't given to a lot of self-examination, but clearly he had been thinking about it. The signs were there - sleeplessness, slovenly lifestyle, letting things go until he had no choice but to finally DO them. He stayed with us at our house for a while. He thought he might want to look for a new dog, and so we did. The new dog gave him a lot of pleasure. He had taken an active step toward the solution to his depression, even if he didn't think of it in that way. The new dog soothed him, and he became his old sunny self again.

There have been times in my life when darkness has come over me. In my early 30s I went through about a year of it, saw a psychologist for several months, came to understand a lot about myself, about being an adult, about taking charge of your own happiness. I came out of it. My marriage nearly ended -- maybe it should have right then and not lingered on for another 22 years, but hindsight, as they say, is 100%.

And that's when my next bout of it came, 22 years later, when my marriage finally did end. The wasted years were what deviled me most throughout that time. I thought I had lost so much, my whole life. I felt hopeless, useless, and old. What I didn't know then, but came to understand as time went by, was sheer determination had kept my marriage alive long after it should have been declared dead -- determination and fear of the unknown. When I took a hard look at it, I realized we had been on the brink of separation for at least half of the 34 years we spent together. There comes a time when you have to face defeat.

Then I met my darling. What a revelation he turned out to be, showing me that love doesn't have to be that difficult. We were alike at our core, held the same values, felt the same way about relationships, had the same commitment. What followed were three idyllic years before disaster struck in rapid succession: the death of his dearest friend, the death of my precious old cat, the suicide of his son. All of that in three days time. We were shellshocked. And we were in the process of moving. His work had shifted north. Our financial situation was changing. We needed to offload one of the houses. We knew the house in Texas would sell the quickest, and it did, in two weeks.

The death of a loved one is never easy to take, not even when they have been suffering with illness for a while, as was the case with the dear friend and the cat. Death by suicide leaves an empty, questioning hole in your heart that consumes your spirit. I once said that suicide was the cruelest thing someone could do to those who love them. Nothing has changed my mind about that. I watched my darling suffer, and I suffered with him. The light went out of our life for such a long time.

And then, last February, my dad died. It seemed so sudden but it wasn't really. He had been growing more and more frail, he had been falling a lot, but still, it seemed that one day he was here, watching the Super Bowl with me by his side. The next day, he gave up just as I had managed to get the attention of everyone around us that he was more critical than they believed. We were about to run tests. The nurse had finally agreed with me that he was failing. And then he was gone. Nothing I could do to save him. It hit me like a bus. My daddy, my one and only, my mentor, my North Star. Just gone. Like that.

Grief began once again.

It's not in my nature to be depressed. Nevertheless, there it was. I felt detached. Hopeless. Gloomy. I still had my darling, and my dog, but everyone else I loved was 800 miles away. I couldn't shake it off. It had been descending over me for two years, and Daddy dying closed the curtain. I loved the beauty of the summer mountains, the birds at the feeders, even the bears that occasionally showed their faces, but the thought of the impending winter, oh so long in the mountains, was something I really could not endure again. Neither of us was prepared for another long winter. We made the decision to leave. It has not been easy but it does feel right. In a perfect world we could keep both places, one for summer and one for winter. But we aren't wealthy, far from it, and it's hard for me to shift gears. I'm a homebody at my core. I get attached to a place, and it becomes part of me. An odd thing for a person who has moved as much as I have to say. I feel I have been running back and forth for two years, even longer than that, and I need to settle down, stay home, get quiet with myself. I need to write again. It has always been my solution. It's time to heal.

Learning to Dance in the Rain

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

(Saw that line on a wall hanging. I really want one like it, because the sentiment strikes me.) 

All of us have had tragedy in our life, if you live long enough, you cannot avoid it. At the least, almost everybody has lost a loved one, which is an unavoidable tragic fact of life. Everybody has faced some sort of adversity. We have the choice of letting these things lay us low, or of standing to face these things with determination, optimism, and a dash of humor. 

Most people take themselves way too seriously. I’m guilty of that myself sometimes. I tend to get caught up in my own problems, tensions, matters of the heart, and forget that the troubles I face are troubles that some people would give their arm to have. I don’t face illness, poverty, living in a war torn region, or enslavement. I’m one of the lucky ones.

The greatest tragedy of my life, or anyway, my greatest disappointment, is my relationship with my youngest son, or lack thereof. I can and do dwell on it sometimes, tearfully and with an aching heart. But I also realize that it isn’t something I can change. He has made the choice to live in isolation from his family and from those who love him. I can only hope that one day he will chose to rejoin. I do keep up with him, through other people, as best I can. But I don’t know what goes on in his head and I so much regret our distance. My most sincere hope is that he finds peace, but I worry that he never will. 

My mother was an unhappy person. She suffered all her life with bouts of depression and melancholy. She always felt beleaguered by the world. I think there’s a strain of this kind of personality in my family. I don’t know if Mother ever found peace. I suspect that she did not. She never wanted to face her demons, or to accept responsibility for her own happiness. It must’ve been hard for her -- the life she chose. But she was the type who would never have sought help, and even if she had, she would have argued for the status quo. 

I think so many people have difficulty accepting the fact that life is hard. In the time of cavemen, it was finding food, shelter, a mate, those were the hard things. In reality, those same things drive us now, and sometimes make life seem unfriendly. We hate our jobs, we struggle to make the mortgage, we have tribulations with loved ones. It is so easy to let those necessities of life overwhelm us and sour us, to keep us from seeing the little joys around us.

The sky is lightening outside the windows as I write this. Fog sits heavy on the ground, Trees are starting to turn yellow, a few leaves beginning to fall. Yesterday evening, as we sat out with the pets, we noticed birds are migrating through. Suddenly, white-wing doves are arriving in flocks. A couple of hummingbird stragglers stopped at the feeders, although most have already come and gone. Two cedar waxwings lit on the barn roof. And the moon, as it rose, was just a shade shy of full. 

I don’t remember how city folk unwind, it’s been so long since I lived in a big city. But I do know that there are ways, maybe with friends, sharing a meal, laughter, a good book. I garden. I embroidery. I read. I play with my animals. I cook. I sit in my SO’s embrace -- or maybe just watch the sunset, quietly. It’s the little things that make life worthwhile.

Onward ....

Woe Is the Holidays

I've read about the "holiday effect" on mortality rates. Statistics from a study done in 2004 show that death rates spike during the holidays by as much as 12 percent over other periods of the year. Explanations given are overeating and postponing needed medical care until after the holidays are over. But I also believe melancholia is a reason for the increase in death. I personally have already begun to fight with bouts of a creeping melancholy that often comes over me as this time of year approaches. It's a lifelong problem I've had to deal with, for some reason.

My grandmother suffered terrible depression during the holidays, but she had just cause. Her first child died in infancy at or near Christmas Eve, and it was a black memory she was never able to shake. And in fact, she herself died on Christmas Eve. I find that during the holidays I miss her more than at other times of the year. I long for those long-ago family gatherings, singing carols and eating around her table, my grandfather handing out the presents piled so excitingly high beneath the tree whose limbs were dwarfed by comparison.

I miss my childhood. I miss my grandparents, and my mother. I miss other people who have died or gone missing from my life. Around the holidays I find that I become a sadsack, longing for the ghosts of Christmas past. Or something like that.

My dad has a thing he says about making new memories, and I know it is true. Every day we're making memories, and there will probably come a time when more recent memories cause me melancholy. They already do. Just this morning I laid in bed yearning for the newness of last year's Christmas, the excitement of our first Christmas spent together, here in our house, the relish the SO got from hanging lights outside, designing the display, and so diligently turning them on each night at dark. He was super excited by Christmas and it was fun to watch him, like a child, glorying in the decorated tree in the corner, his first one in 17 years, he said. We hung stockings for the dog and the cat on the mantle. We made a fire almost every night.

The three previous Christmases for me had been pretty miserable, despite my older son's attempts to save them. There was the one spent in Florida, in 80 degree weather, swimming in the swimming pool on Christmas Eve, which somehow didn't feel right. Neither did the absence of almost all the other "traditions." Me and my SO were new and his phone calls caused a yearning I fought hard to overcome. But that Christmas was an improvement over the previous two ruined ones, when my marriage was coming apart, and when divorce was impending.

Before that, well, there had been many big family gatherings, immediate family and extended family: the year it snowed and we built a snowman at midnight, the year we rented a cabin in the mountains of West Virginia, the year my grandson was born and we all lavished gifts on a baby who could just barely sit up, the year he spent Christmas Eve in the hospital with pneumonia, the year Mother was sick with cancer, the year my dear mother-in-law was in the nursing home, the years of the kids growing up, turkey dinners, cookie-baking and candy-making, nights playing Santa Claus till nearly dawn, and before that, me with a child in my belly and great hope for the future.

The holidays are a marker for the passing of the decades, the changes a person's life takes, for all the memories which seem to be felt so much more acutely than at other times. And mine have often been messy, both my life changes and my holiday memories. It's easy to fall into despair over the missed chances, the mistakes made, the great disappointments, and yes, the betrayals. All of those emotions are also in the mix of the holidays.

Maybe the key to getting through is to recognize that the holidays are, after all, just another time of year, another day, a week, a month. It's partly because of when they fall, just as the season is changing, dead leaves on the ground, the world fading to shades of brown and gray. Birds are mostly gone. Flowers have stopped blooming. And it's also because they go on for so long, added to by the in-your-face advertisements and the way Christmas decorations go up in stores before Halloween now. What happened to carolers? Where have the greetings of "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" gone? And people shop all year now, so it's really not a big deal to give and get anymore either. I miss hearing a school choir. Maybe I should find one and go listen. They're bound to still have Christmas concerts somewhere.

I guess it is what you make it. Memories should be a happy thing instead of a longing. Yesterday morning my SO said when I'm down I bring everything around me down, too, because it's such a contrast from my usual laughter and sunny outlook -- his words not mine. He said I don't wear depression well. It shows so obviously on me. I asked him for help, to remind me how important it is to live each day for its own sake, for the gift it is and for the time that will never be recaptured. He said he wants an easy button to push. Love is compromise. So OK -- I'm searching for that easy button to give him.

Thank God for this man, for his patience and soft touch. I owe it to him to find a way through my holiday woe. I will try harder -- beginning today.

Onward ....