Category: Old Age

Featured

Bring me back to life – Part 1

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Ageing, Betrayal, Challenges, adversity, Character, Conscience, courage, Criticism, Death, Disappointment, Empathy, Grief, Hate, Healing, honesty, Human nature, introspection, Judgement', Karma, life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Old Age, Pain, parenthood, pride, Relationships, Sibling rivalry9 Comments

My regular readers must be wondering why I have taken so long to write again. The answer is unbearably painful in its simplicity and permanence: I lost both my parents over four months ago. My mum died on Christmas Day and my father less than 48 hours after. My father was eighty-seven and had various illnesses but was doing OK. He deteriorated rapidly on the last two weeks before his death. I am so grateful his frailest state was short-lived and that he only had to spend one week in a nursing home. I am even more grateful that he did not endure those achingly lonely moments without my mother for very long. In the foggy midst of his Alzheimer’s, we were blessed with endearing moments of lucidity, like the time when three of my four siblings had moved him to the nursing home and the next day, looking out of the window in his forebodingly spare and lifeless room, he said to my husband and I: ‘This is not such a bad place to live, is it?’. Even in his most vulnerable moment, he was father first and foremost, ensuring our pain was lessened by his make-believe reassurance. It was a sobering and humbling moment; one I will never forget. My father led by example until his last breath. He was far from perfect, but he never demanded or expected anything from us he had not practised himself first. He has set the bar really high for us, in life and in death. His unwavering sense of duty, responsibility, and leadership to his family lives now within me and I hope I can be to my kids half the inspirational figure he has been to me.

Entrenched on my memory like a knife to the heart is also that agonising moment when my siblings took him to the nursing home whilst I remained at home with my mum in readiness for her life-threatening surgery the next day to remove a malignant tumour in her liver. My siblings were so incredibly overwhelmed by the unbearable task at hand that in their haste to make my father’s transition from his home to the nursing home, they neglected to allow my mum to say goodbye to my dad. My heart teared further apart when I looked in my mother’s eyes and saw the unforgiving sadness as she realised that she might never see her lifetime companion of over 65 years again. As it turned out, the surgery was in vain; the tumour was inoperable and two days after surgery she developed a perforated intestine which killed her. She was 80 years old. My mum was fit and healthy until three months before her death when she began experiencing excruciating pain on her right-hand side, below her rib cage. Initially, after countless tests, the doctors told her that she had an infection in her gall bladder, but it gradually emerged that that was only the beginning of the end. Three days before her death, we all had hope that she would recover, and she would live on to tell the tale. Three days before her death, her and I laughed together, joked together, hoped together.

It all happened so fast, and it did not help matters that those three of my four siblings turned against me towards the very end like hyenas hunting as a merciless pack. They deeply resented me for living abroad and in their words ‘having abandoned my family’, which was all the more devastating to hear bearing in mind my husband and I took my parents with us on holidays all over the world around 17 times, which none of those three siblings ever did, not even once. Asides that, I am aware that it is primarily during those times when my family and I visited my hometown in Spain that the whole family gathered together for lunch or an outing. As far as I am aware, my parents never got taken  out by those three siblings all that much outside of those times when we were visiting. I will never recover from witnessing and suffering first-hand the monster within that can surface in people when they are undergoing immense pressure or pain. I became the punch bag for all three, specially one of them and the verbal and written punches did not stop coming until I was breathless, almost lifeless on the floor. The pain of losing the love, trust, and belief in my integrity of my three siblings was far greater at the time than the pain of losing both my parents unexpectedly in the space of 48 hours. That gives an idea of the intensity and shock, the hatred I was exposed to by those who should have been the most supportive at such a time, in such tragic circumstances. Even today, almost five months later, I cannot comprehend how love can turn into such hate in such a short space of time. The only explanation my mind entertains is that it was never love to begin with, and that realisation pierces me all the more, even today, probably forever.

I spent 9 days with both my parents prior to my mum’s surgery. I would be with them from 8:30 am til 11:00 pm. I would then go to a nearby hotel to get some rest and fuel up the tank to be at my best for the next day. No point in staying each night with them, I figured, and be exhausted from the beginning of the day ending up having them look after me. It made absolute sense to me and yet that is one of the issues my siblings took up with me, even though every time they had stayed the night, they whined about how that position was unsustainable and how we needed to get extra paid help to look after my parents during the nights. What was not sustainable or acceptable for them to keep doing, soon became their choice of punishment for me for my intermittent absence of 32 years. They looked for any excuse to criticise me, bully me and badmouth me to my mother who was already dying. The viciousness of their insults grew all the more aggressive and unforgivable the day I finally left to go back to the UK. To this day, I am still devastated that three of my siblings with whom I have always had a great relationship; whom I loved unconditionally could throw me to the gallows at the first hurdle, no trial, no innocent til proven guilty; just pure hatred and pain projected onto me as if I was the cause of my parents’ illness and tragic end.

Living in a different country to that I grew up in til the age of twenty, has always been incredibly challenging for me, because I have no family here in the UK other than my husband and kids. I come from a large family in Spain, and so the last 33 years I have missed so many incredibly happy times back home, some sad, not many. The truth is, however, I have a full life in the UK; a life that makes me happy; I have a family, a business, a home. I know my parents wanted me to be happy, fulfilled, and at peace. I know they never resented me for not being there. If anything, I am convinced they have always been so incredibly proud that I was courageous enough to travel at a youthful age and brave enough to give up everything and everyone I knew to move to another country for love. Throughout those 33 years, I have tried to see them as much as I could; I have tried to keep the balance right between raising a family to the best of my ability thousands of miles away; nurturing a marriage which has been very challenging at times and helping make a business successful, but also keeping in touch with all my family back in Spain. It is a very delicate balance but, in my heart, I know with certainty and confidence that my parents would have wished for me to put my own family first, specially since I had four other siblings who lived so close to them. It is a much more complex issue than what I recount here but for the sake of brevity, I will leave it at that. I could write a book on this sorrow episode of my life and who knows, when the time is right, maybe I will.

Featured

Cosmic Justice

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Acceptance, Ageing, Anxiety, Corona Virus, Cosmic Justice, Covid 19, Epiphany, Fear, Freedom, introspection, Karma, life, Menorca, Negativity, Old Age, Pandemics, Providence, self fulfilment, Silver Linings, Spirituality, twitter, Universe, Vision, Youth7 Comments

Here I am on the luminous island of Menorca about to enter into the final straight of my fifty first year, and what a year it has been. Despite the Covid pandemic starting halfway through it and turning all our worlds upside down, shaking all our priorities to the core, and bringing so many of us down to our knees, this past twelve months have been for me one of the best years of my life in so many respects.

Professionally, I have not gained more knowledge or experience, but our business has had its best year yet, which is rather miraculous in itself, bearing in mind there have been months during which businesses we work with were practically closed; work on various building sites slowed right down; huge delays and insufferable uncertainty were the norm rather than the exception, and due to the widespread lock-down measures and fear of contagion and possible death, we all took stock of what was truly important and suddenly empathy and philanthropy took the place of sales figures, competitiveness and profit. Perhaps there is a lesson of cosmic justice and karma in there somewhere. I would like to think so.

Perhaps the lesson to be learnt was for some learnt too late though. My husband is an addict. He is addicted to his work. He gets high on it; cannot live without it and finds his self-worth and identity mainly within it. And yet, as with any drug, there is a lurking, permanent, pounding hooded claw that slowly but surely gets hold of you and will not let go until the very thing we sacrifice so much for quietly leads us to a certain death. Last Christmas we came to our house in Menorca for what we thought would be 10 days. Covid had a very different idea and soon after our arrival, the situation changed and our flight back to UK got cancelled. At that point we decided that seeing as the number of cases in Menorca was miniscule compared to the UK where pandemonium was ensuing, it would be utterly senseless to not ease into what was initially an adverse circumstance and turn it into a blessing. And so, we decided to stay on a few weeks longer. Unfortunately, by the end of January my husband who continued to have his daily fix of insatiably getting new orders and sniffing out potential future ones, suffered a minor stroke that left him completely numb on the right-hand side of his body.

He is now almost fully recovered. He still has some numbness and pins and needles on part of his right-hand side but again, all in all, it was a miraculous miss, for it could have been the end right there and then. I refuse to take away from that experience the pain, the shock and the after shock of such a dramatic episode and instead, I choose to marvel at the abounding providence that somehow saved him from the dark tunnel at the end of which so many claim to be blinded by the light.

On a more personal level, I am truly easing into my older years. I truly am. The nervous energy of my youth that filled me with so much fear and anxiety is turning into acceptance and a laissez-faire attitude. I do not fret so much. I am not consumed by negative thoughts so much. I am learning to accept that I am just another microscopic grain of sand the sun magnanimously shines on one day and the wind heartlessly blows away another. None of it is about me, none of it. Acknowledging that has given me so much spiritual and emotional freedom. I no longer walk with a massive rucksack filled with the whys, how’s and what ifs on my shoulders. If there is a plus to our doomed fate is the fact that each day that goes by and you see the end approaching that much closer, you learn to live with just the essentials and to discard the clutter, the things and people who selfishly fill another rucksack that may drag you down and prevent you from truly living.

Slowly but surely moving forward in the race against time has also thrown a kind of epiphany my way. Whilst the end is certain, we have a say, to a point, in how the journey evolves. Our bodies truly are our temples, and we can, again to a point, control how healthy or how efficiently they work and for how long. Although riddled with body image anxiety for most of my life, I have been extremely lucky to always be thin without any amount of effort. It is just the way I am wired. However, as we all know, being thin does not necessarily mean being healthy. My interactions on twitter have been on the whole a massive source of a confidence boost regarding my appearance, and that alone has motivated me to try and maintain that shape for a few more years yet. When you are young and your body is in its plenitude, we do not need to do much to remain healthy or strong, but once we are on the other side of 40, subtle signs of ageing begin to nudge and wake us up to the fact that although we may have felt invincible at one point, every meteor does eventually fall and burn. That tragic end is what makes the journey across the universe so incredibly meaningful and desperately urgent at the same time. And yet, the only way to draw meaning out of each passing day is to wind ourselves down to a speed that allows us to see it all, hear it all, feel it all, smell it all and taste it all with every fibre of our being. Sadly, not many get to find in their lifetime that elusive magic button that takes them from sixth to first gear or by the time they do, the chance to truly savour the journey has already passed.

I loved running when I was growing up. I was incredibly fast. The boys my age used to get frustrated that I could outrun them, and being so withdrawn because of my body and shyness complexes, that gave me a great advantage and a confidence boost that at least I had something I was better at than most. As the years passed, doing well academically became my number one priority and I put my all into my studies. Sport or any kind of fitness took a very back seat. Suddenly, at 51 all the emotional baggage is beginning to fall off and I feel so much freer and lighter. Freer enough to take up running again, even though I have not done any kind of running for the last 35 years. It is truly lamentable how we put so many limits on ourselves. We get to a point when we stop believing, dreaming, trying. It is incredibly invigorating not so much to be able to run and be in better shape than many women 20 years younger than myself, but to prove to oneself that the sky really is the limit when it comes to overcoming, and that the biggest factor that stops us shining and leaving a blazing trail as we journey through time is simply ourselves.

Here I am, for a lifetime!

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Ageing, Character, EGO, Freedom, Integrity, joy, life, Old Age, ramblings, Youth15 Comments

Nobody tells you this, because getting older is not the kind of subject most people find all that interesting or engaging, but I wish somebody had spoken to me about the pluses of ageing, and trust me, there are a few and they are not to be underestimated.

Yes, it is quite depressing to see one’s body becoming less able, less willing, easing off into the undignified deterioration that silently takes place each day and creeps up on you all of a sudden one fine morning when you look in the mirror. Yes, it is also rather demoralising to lose intellectual ability, concentration skills and that eagerness of your youth to absorb all the knowledge at your reach. Gosh, I remember how in my teens I used to be able to memorise entire books of subjects I was not even that much into, like History of Art. My goal was to get the best grades and apart from the sacrifice of endless hours invested, intellectually my learning was seamless, thriving, limitless. Now, my willingness to learn, my thirst for keeping up with the world is just as eager and sharp, but the in-built tools to do so are somewhat rusty and worn out, saturated from so much use in the past; from firing all cylinders as if my ability to make any kind of impact, to matter would expire by the age of 30.

The pain of feeling the younger generation ‘pushing you aside’ to make way for their own discoveries, trends, ethos, and understanding of how to navigate relationships, the economy, professional pursuits and the meaning of life in general, also rubs salt in the wound of the ageing process. Lord knows, for those of us who have children, the older they become, the more redundant we begin to feel both to them and to the world in general. Their confidence, know-how and freshness is enough to make one forget how much we have achieved in our own life and the fact that like them, we were once young too, full of light, hope, energy, influence and limitless possibilities. Like us too, they will one day, if they are lucky to make it, ponder this very same realisation.

I read something on twitter two days ago which really made me sad. A lady, who said was about to become 65, was pleading with her audience to be liked or retweeted in order to, for once in her life, before either dying or developing Alzheimer’s, become noticed or have any kind of impact on a large scale; to somehow be one amongst the millions of grains of sand which successfully makes an indelible impression on the beach before being washed away by the waves.

It made me very sad, because there is that overwhelmingly dominant and influential opinion around that once you reach a certain age, you are good for nothing, you mean nothing, you add nothing, you offer nothing. We are an intelligent species but we can be so shockingly blind too with the elementary stuff. We are all in this together. We all go through the same cycle of life. It is in our own interest to highly value, nurture and treasure the later years of our life, because just like we all have a beginning, we all have an end. And yet, the moment we begin to age, we are the first ones to throw in the towel, to step aside, cower and hide, giving licence to the rest of the world to ignore and trample on us.

Well, I am not going to silently just step aside and let society, governments or ruthless individuals, men and women, treat me like I am done in this world. You come at me with your youth and your arrogance, and I will serve you a huge dose of perspective and a wake up call, because where I am is where you are also going, so you’ll do well to listen to the pilgrims who have traversed before you that very same road you are now on and are convinced is unique and exclusively paved for you and your own gain and enjoyment.

We can see things that you can’t yet see and have solutions for challenges that you have not yet endured. Our foot, unlike yours, is off the accelerator and we have successfully learnt how to marinade in the spices of all that life has to offer; to relish the traits in others that in our youth we foolishly rejected as irrelevant or unattractive. We have learnt to savour the moment; to discard the prejudices and hang-ups that forced us to live life through someone else’s eyes. If you come at me with your naive understanding and fake manufactured self, telling me I ‘aint no longer got it’, I will tell you that no quality is more alluring, more seductive than being comfortable in your skin and loving yourself, all of yourself; your achy body, crinkly skin and scarred soul. It is only when you accept yourself as you are; when you truly know yourself, that your life acquires the ultimate level of authenticity and freedom which is elusive in our youth. It is only then, in the later part of our lives that we ditch the baggage and learn to soar to the heights we were destined for, and trust me, I would never trade the view and full-on sensory and spiritual presence from up here for the shortsightedness, blind spots and restraining presumptions of my youth.