tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9841860970846509572024-03-21T05:45:47.195+00:00my midlife movea few musings on the changes in my world and my perceptions of the worldTricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-20606195812817296302016-06-19T17:48:00.000+01:002016-06-19T19:06:35.659+01:00Remember When..<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTcD6Ao0uuyif8WKpmoncZUFEKOjJ1Q81rD1A2KeOAehNx5GWhN7asnops5pTUu0AA97UsZD-YfBC6dVD11Goud0jtky7eSvt3ryiXTDXASyMzFHqEUG-RVGBWN3kcRxssDEFnKclZS8HR/s1600/butch+and+emery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTcD6Ao0uuyif8WKpmoncZUFEKOjJ1Q81rD1A2KeOAehNx5GWhN7asnops5pTUu0AA97UsZD-YfBC6dVD11Goud0jtky7eSvt3ryiXTDXASyMzFHqEUG-RVGBWN3kcRxssDEFnKclZS8HR/s320/butch+and+emery.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our neighbours, Blanche and Emery<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today is Father's Day, and two weeks ago, it was Memorial Day, or "Race Day", as we called it in Indianapolis, when I was growing up. I always get a bit nostalgic this time of year. I miss my mom and dad so much. I miss being a part of a family, and knowing where I stood within it. I miss feeling rooted in a familiar world and life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Memorial Day weekend was a special time in our town. I remember fondly all of the activity around it: my dad going to put little flags on veterans' graves for his Legion chapter in the morning; my mother, seated at the kitchen table, radio tuned into the countdown to the start of the Indy 500, newspaper carefully folded with the names of all the cars and drivers and their positions on the track; the smell of new mown grass, windows and doors open, a breeze flowing through the dining room to soften the summer's heat. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is true that life seemed simpler, then. I don't want to be one of those people who go on and on about how much better it was in the 'old days', but today, I feel the need to do just that. My childhood was not an easy one--there was hunger and poverty and chaos fuelled by heavy drinking, among other things, involved--but there were anchors of stability that kept my sanity intact. There were extended relative visits and regular holiday reunions. There were camping trips and vacations with neighbours and friends. There was girl scouts and swimming lessons and Bible School and big gardens and fruit trees and the bookmobile that came around every two weeks, bringing me solace and adventure, all summer long. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">And there were neighbours who loved us and stood by us, like the ones in the photograph, above. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Blanche, (or "Butch" as we called her), and Emery lived next door to us throughout my entire childhood. They still live in the same house, a house once surrounded by corn and soybean fields, that is sandwiched, now, amidst a glut of suburban sprawl. They had a strong faith and they were devoted to our church, but they didn't blast their beliefs or force them upon others. They simply lived by the values to which they subscribed, helping those around them in quiet and unimposing ways. They visited neighbours who were sick and in hospital. They volunteered at the local firehouse (along with my dad), and taught Sunday School. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I remember learning, at the age of five or six, that Blanche made delicious cooked dinners every night, including home-baked desserts, and, from then on, I made it a point to come around to their house, at precisely 6 p.m., when I knew she'd be setting the table for her family. I'm sure it must have been irritating to them, this little waif from next door, begging food, but they never refused me, once. They'd answer my knock politely, and invite me in, an extra place at the table already set. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Once, Blanche found out that I had been teaching her son, who was two years younger, the art of swearing and smoking cigarettes, and I was banned from the house, for a short while, but the banishment didn't last. I depended on them, and on the stability they offered, and something in them must have known it, because, before long, I was invited back into their family fold. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">They indulged me in my all my fundraising efforts and money making schemes, through the years, buying cards from me at Christmas, girl scout cookies and band candy in the winter, and seeds for planting in the spring. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Blanche and Emery were there for every part of our lives, standing with us through all of our many trials and sorrows. They were there for funerals and weddings, and they supported us through incarcerations and various troubles with the police. Our wild family brought much drama to that little street, and they could have turned the entire neighbourhood against us, but they didn't. Instead, they chose to reach out their hands to help us, when they could. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When my father died at the Veteran's Hospital, my mother and I called them, first. When my sister got sick, one of her last wishes was to visit Indianapolis, before she died, and to spend some time with them, so we brought her back to the old neighbourhood, flying her in from Florida. They invited us over for one of Blanche's delicious dinners, and, though Debra couldn't eat it, she got to sit at their table and listen to the exchange of memory between us. When my mother died, a year later, they held a gathering for all of us at their house. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I saw them last in November of 2014, shortly after the sudden death of my husband. Knocking on their door, walking back into that old house, I felt like I was six years old, again, and my whole body breathed a sigh of relief. They helped me weather my childhood. They brought a hint of normalcy to it. I will always treasure the gift of their presence, and the stability they brought to me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sitting here in England, this Father's Day, watching the cold rain pour outside my window, I remember them. I remember how they loved my father and delighted in his humour. I remember how they invited me in to eat with them, when my persistent presence probably drove them nuts. I remember hayrides in their fields in the autumn, ice cold Kool Aid and a freezer full of popsicle treats to stave off the relentless heat, in summer, their carefully tilled gardens, rich with fresh carrots and tomatoes and ripe strawberries to eat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I remember them, my good Samaritan neighbours--their kindness and generosity, their compassion and lack of judgement, and how they reached out their hands, always, to the poor and not so saintly family who lived in the house next door. </span></div>
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Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-90242742924514338682016-05-15T22:05:00.001+01:002016-05-17T20:27:44.124+01:00Releasing The Ties That Bind<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On a recent hike in the moors</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It has been almost two years since my husband fell from my grasp and I was left on my own, again. Two years since I was able to turn my key
in the door and hear his voice calling me. Two years since I could awaken to
the warmth of his body next to mine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Two years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Slowly, incrementally, I have begun to loosen the ties that
bound me so tightly to my husband. I have taken his few remaining clothes from
the wardrobe and folded them neatly into a suitcase. I have removed the photo of
us from my facebook profile. I have stopped wearing my wedding ring. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I once said I would never quit wearing it. But it felt like the right thing to do. It’s not that I am now on the
search for a new partner. I don’t see a partner in my future, ever again. It’s
just that I don’t feel married anymore. The truth is that I am alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This separation from Stan is a necessary step in my journey through grief. I can no longer cling to my relationship with him. He’s gone.
That’s the sad reality of it. And in order to grow I have to figure out who I
am without him by my side. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I sit in the living room that we once shared, but it doesn’t
look the same as it did when we shared it. Gone are the gadgets he loved: the
big screen tv, the music system, the dvd burner and the blu ray player and the
apple tv and all the other things I didn’t know how to use. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I bought a wood burner and pulled up the carpet and had the floors sanded and stripped—all of the things I wanted for us but he
said were too expensive, and not worth the effort. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I can just imagine his reaction to my new regime of juicing
in the mornings. He’d tell me I spend too much money
on food these days. He’d want me to buy cheap instead of organic; he’d tell me
those foods are frivolous, and posh.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I go to bed early and wake up early, too. Sometimes I wake
up in the middle of the night</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria";">—he hated that—and read or write for an hour or
two.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria";"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria";">Most nights after work, I stop at
the gym. He wouldn’t have liked that, either. He would have wanted me to come
home to him.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I am not the person I was when we were together. I have
changed. I wonder if he would approve of or appreciate the woman I have become.
I wonder if, had he lived, he would have been able to make room for all of this. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps I would not have been able to make these changes.
Perhaps, had he lived, I would have acquiesced, and compromised, and lived a
life that was full of love and companionship, but didn’t meet some of my needs.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Maybe that’s what relationships are about. Maybe you let go
of some of the things that matter to you so that you can live with the one you
love. I don’t know. I have never been very good at them. I have spent most of
my life on my own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They say that you continue a relationship with your loved
ones even after they are gone. They say that your relationship with them changes
once the heavy weight of your grief subsides, and you have time and space to
reflect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When Stan first died, I placed him carefully upon a pedestal
where he has, until recently, remained. I could not speak or write about any
aspects of him that did not place him somewhere near Saint or Buddha-hood. He was
wise, brilliant, sensitive, insightful, funny, endearing, and brave. He was a
great father, a loving husband, a kind friend. He healed the sick, fed the
hungry, clothed the naked, befriended the poor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I think Stan would have loved that I saw him this way, but
after awhile he would have gotten bored with the accolades heaped upon him. He
would not have recognised himself in them anymore. He would have wanted us to
remember the real him, with all of his wonderful traits, but with his maddening
traits, too. He would have wanted us to remember all of him—the Stan that was sensitive and wise, but the Stan that could be a bit controlling, and, sometimes, a
bit selfish, too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the early throes of our love, (as women tend to do), I
neglected my own preferences and wrapped myself around his. Had we married as
youngsters, we would have negotiated the things that interested us, and grown,
together, with mutual desires. But we married late in life, and there were
things that were important to me that I had let lapse. I preferred quiet nights and book festivals to
music venues and jams. I wanted to eat brown rice instead of mashed potatoes
for dinner. I needed time, sometimes alone, with my son. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the months before his death, I was beginning to loosen
the ties that bound us so closely together, and it generated some conflict
between us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When I began to assert myself, he found it difficult. He liked having me with
him, and he wanted me at his side. He didn’t want to participate in many of the
things I loved. He saw my assertions as a rejection of him, and it made him
angry and sad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I am sure that, had he lived, we would have found a new way
of living together. I am certain that our love for each other would have helped
us to overcome these conflicts of needs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He was making great changes, too, before he died. I like to
think that we would have continued to nourish each other. I like to think that
we would have made space for each other to flourish. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We just ran out of time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-85769177939731479912016-04-10T19:25:00.000+01:002016-04-14T07:00:21.875+01:00I Have Something to Say About This Big Trouble<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhM9Bmh3MeMjC98ajBrDii7zTVzSVA9MJNcVO42tc7Np25hjFyJGyBS_6Y58WmKulBhv8YxlVAKBXJdsvBYSYCfD560FtFkNplroUh7sERnzEDVpkbwYuRBZJYbUUUGCwFtsQMWLzxpIKz/s1600/little+booboo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhM9Bmh3MeMjC98ajBrDii7zTVzSVA9MJNcVO42tc7Np25hjFyJGyBS_6Y58WmKulBhv8YxlVAKBXJdsvBYSYCfD560FtFkNplroUh7sERnzEDVpkbwYuRBZJYbUUUGCwFtsQMWLzxpIKz/s320/little+booboo.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>me at age 6</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The title of today's blog is the title of a book that was written many years ago. It was a compilation of essays and poems written by children who lived in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco. These children lived with their parents or relatives in squalid rooms and cheap hotels; they were children born into poverty, often victimised by abuse and neglect, children who were invisible to the eyes of the world around them. They wrote their pieces in order to have a voice. They wrote to bring words to the terrors they had witnessed. They wrote to make themselves heard. They saw big trouble, and they wanted others to see it, too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Recently, some people who were close to Stan have made it clear to me that they are not happy about the launch of my book. They have said that the printing of the book, and my promotion of it, has resurrected painful memories for them, and that they would have preferred that I stopped sharing my story when I finished the blog.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This reaction, I must admit, took me by surprise. The last thing I wanted was to cause more suffering. I had to take a moment to reflect upon my intentions in printing the book, in sharing the trauma and treachery of those early days and weeks once again, in a different venue. I wondered if it must seem to them that I was simply exploiting the story of us in order to find more readers for my words. I felt ashamed that I had written and shared so openly about my journey. I wanted to close the door on it in order to protect them from more pain. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But then, I stopped myself. I realised that I wanted nothing more from the printing of this book than to bring alive the memory of my husband. I wanted to illuminate his many qualities for those who had not had access to the blog. I wanted to share the big trouble of my grief and the terrible tragedy of my loss in order to help others who had experienced loss, too. My intentions were good, and kind, and grew out of my love for him, and a desire to help others. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Writers who write from their hearts write words that bring discomfort. Writers write to shed light on the shadowed places that others can't acknowledge or see. Writers write from their own deep wells of pain and joy in order to bring words to the living of this troubled and complicated existence. Writers write to explore the truth, their truth, in the hope that their experience will resonate with the outside world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Sometimes, the outside world doesn't want to hear it, particularly if the story relates to them. Augusten Burroughs, who wrote "Running With Scissors", was sued by some of the people he portrayed in the book. Pat Conroy's mother remarked that she was afraid to talk to him, because her words might end up in some 'damn book of his'. Truman Capote lost many friends in his New York social circle after he wrote about them in his stories. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have always written about the big troubles I have seen and felt and experienced in my life. I have written about the trauma I experienced as a young child, and how it impacted me. I have written about the people around me, too. Most of my work has been unpublished, and sits, unfinished, in a drawer. I have hesitated to share it with the world. I have not wanted to create more pain. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I write from my heart. My words dig deep. Sometimes they are raw and difficult to read. But people have told me that my words have helped them to know my husband and me better. They have said that my writing has helped them to open up to their own grief and loss. They have said that my words have helped them to reflect, and think, and to remember to treasure their loved ones who are still alive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have something to say about this big trouble. I have something to say about the terrible way my husband died, its impact on me, and on the people he loved. I have something to say about how his life and death changed me, how I went from the euphoria of marrying the man I loved to the pit of despair following his instant and tragic death. I have something to say about how the sangha and the dharma have helped me climb out of that pit, and enter into life once again. I have something to say about the man I loved, who he was, how he lived, and how his expansive presence left an imprint on us all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have something to say about this big trouble. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And, as long as I am able, I intend to keep saying it. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm6u36sYpzJQEkpcUtet9NKxtN3eD09sxOX3ytCg_50P9P8fGSzIgfKTcKfeh1u0MR75l5gsLLCvcBOqXqsq-u-0mM2c9oko_tifjeckgPKztHfxIPl4yRZA0014dhMNIoPpdpMmW5GwAK/s1600/Walking+the+Path.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm6u36sYpzJQEkpcUtet9NKxtN3eD09sxOX3ytCg_50P9P8fGSzIgfKTcKfeh1u0MR75l5gsLLCvcBOqXqsq-u-0mM2c9oko_tifjeckgPKztHfxIPl4yRZA0014dhMNIoPpdpMmW5GwAK/s320/Walking+the+Path.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the book is available at lulu.com</td></tr>
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Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-85586191158001902222015-12-14T12:21:00.000+00:002015-12-14T12:21:16.255+00:00Light And Dark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxrt5uh1Tekal8wso4B55jyg6wQ-sLDhmDmwn4yzxHYdYZ6vq4deCOsHLjo7zmi6DN3YZbEeZwRONBwQU27xDubrC8E7vR6qMQnAFHszPy6R7bOX5hReAbPgU2Dp4Mhv39DkSGhi5STfNJ/s1600/IMG_1238.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxrt5uh1Tekal8wso4B55jyg6wQ-sLDhmDmwn4yzxHYdYZ6vq4deCOsHLjo7zmi6DN3YZbEeZwRONBwQU27xDubrC8E7vR6qMQnAFHszPy6R7bOX5hReAbPgU2Dp4Mhv39DkSGhi5STfNJ/s320/IMG_1238.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't know what I was thinking, two months ago, when I wrote my last entry for Widow's Voice. I had grown weary of grief, and I thought that if l could quit writing about it, perhaps, then, I could put it to rest. I thought that I should be able to move on to other, more important things, that setting aside the words of grief would allow me to focus on living instead of on death.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But then the darkness came, and the clouds and the rain. Northern England winters bring clouds that cover the sky from morning to night, and night that comes early, shrouding our world in darkness by 4 p.m. I sit in my living room, warmed by a fire, and watch as the sky turns black. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mind has been clouded, too, in the mist and the darkness of this wet winter. I have not been able to write as I had hoped. I have not been able to put words on the page. I have not been able to shift this sadness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I want to turn loose of this grief, but it will not let me go. It waits for me. It reminds me that I am still here, and he is still gone, and the life that I once had is finished. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the quiet nights, and in the midst of the early morning clouds, these images call to me, peeking out from the dusty corners of my consciousness: my sister's eyes, pale and blue, opened wide, my fingers gently crossing her eyelids to close them, before calling the nurse to inform her of the death; how I covered her feet with a blanket, though she could no longer feel the cold; eleven months later, lying next to my mother, wrapping myself around her frail body, watching her stomach rise and fall in rhythm with her shallow breaths; my husband, how I caressed his forehead and brushed it lightly with my lips, his lips pursed around a plastic tube; how I wished I had spent some moments alone with him before they ushered us out of the hospital room; how they handed me his wallet, and I searched inside it for his wedding ring. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why would anyone want to read words like these? It is almost Christmas, and the world is telling us to be happy and gather 'round tables with candles and smiles and bounty and friends. Why should I inflict these images on unwitting souls who have their own sadnesses to bear? Who needs to see these things? The world doesn't need more sorrow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This is why I have not written. This is why I have not been able to share. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this week, hope looms, a shimmer of light against the darkness. This week, my son comes to visit, and before long, we will have the shortest day of the year, and after that, the clouds may lift, and the sun may shine, and I can move toward living again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-67810446797210560052015-01-16T09:21:00.000+00:002015-01-16T09:21:00.355+00:00Monday's Writer for Widow's Voice<br />
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I am not posting on this blog, these days. I have been invited to be a weekly writer for Widow's Voice, where seven widows share their experience, strength and hope. The women who write for this blog are strong and brave. We have seen deep trauma and weathered great loss. Still, we write. We share. We breathe. We live.<br />
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Here is a link to a post I wrote, a couple of weeks ago.<br />
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http://widowsvoice-sslf.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/layers-of-loss.html<br />
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I encourage you, if you are reading this, to check in to Widow's Voice. It is my reality at the moment. And I need to focus on it, rather than duplicate or scatter my energy by trying to do too many things.<br />
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Thank you. And I will return to this blog, someday.Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-43554307998254353902014-10-06T14:19:00.000+01:002014-10-07T14:06:55.954+01:00Seventeen Weeks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRE-xsyY7xMW38RiYDcKMleBtMKknQLIqN2QOdn7cqj1lMuWYOIgo_6KVKHW5rULjV1Edo5CL4UDYOwEfRCplVi-6RVCyzdx8HaBH-PtokKtyzTIJVEMvby_bkzp7R4kqwGvN5Jo5nNOyM/s1600/IMG_0016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRE-xsyY7xMW38RiYDcKMleBtMKknQLIqN2QOdn7cqj1lMuWYOIgo_6KVKHW5rULjV1Edo5CL4UDYOwEfRCplVi-6RVCyzdx8HaBH-PtokKtyzTIJVEMvby_bkzp7R4kqwGvN5Jo5nNOyM/s1600/IMG_0016.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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Dear Stan,<br />
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It is seventeen weeks today, since you left us. It seems like yesterday that you were here. I am reminded of your sayings and your ways, many times throughout the day, and always they make me smile. You had a unique way of expressing yourself, and such a refreshing perspective on the world. I remember many winter nights, waking up to find you perched on a chair at the window, on ‘snow patrol’. You told me that, when you were little, you used to cry when the snow melted, because you loved it so much. You used to marvel at the fact that each snowflake had a different design. <br />
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This morning, on my march toward the train station, my mind resisting the piercing rain, I could hear you telling me that the leaves had been thirsty, and were so happy to finally get a drink, that they were dancing in it. And that we should thank the rain, like them. I pictured you, wherever you are, doing your little dance move, welcoming the rain. <br />
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I spend less time, these days, reviewing the actual day of your death. It was painful for me to replay it, over and over—wishing I had made more effort to comfort you, that day, to tell you how much I cared, to assure you I would help you through the grief of losing Gavin, wishing I had been able to save you—wishing I had known. Grief experts call this the “if onlys”. It is a common thread for those of us who are grieving, in the aftermath of such great loss. We agonise over lost opportunities. We blame ourselves. It is a torturous place to be. And it feels better, for the moment, to have moved on from that sad state.<br />
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Today, I find myself thinking of the immediate future, with a touch of fear and dread—wondering how I will get through the date of our second anniversary, November 17th, past Christmas, through New Year’s Eve. No arguments, this year, over my wanting to watch all the silly, sentimental holiday movies you despised, no tussle over decorations and whether or not to put up a tree. Even though I could now do it without complaint, I can’t imagine decorating a tree this year. It would feel vulgar, somehow, to participate in all the celebration and excess. <br />
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As the days without you stretch into weeks and months, I search for ways to preserve your memory. I have ordered a bench to be placed at the summit of Monks Road, where your ashes will be scattered. I have looked through your pictures for the right ones to use as Christmas gifts. I have kept your dressing gown hanging on the back of our door. They feel empty and meaningless, these paltry reminders of your presence on this earth. But it is all I have. And it will have to be enough. <br />
<br />Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-76851707344012696242014-09-18T13:03:00.000+01:002014-09-18T13:11:07.472+01:00No Name<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggEI2q3XYjntCQEdwYG-Vk-d4HNG_Ki8kHJU4kmqxrRasILswgT1bO1p3SvOwFtmb2Rq-dJE5v2CzM1ShTweWAi-N2T1UPKc6UJ3wCH6F6rv_aecs4BiNR0W7IcyWPw_M7Sm3_u2OPcCvZ/s1600/P1010365.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggEI2q3XYjntCQEdwYG-Vk-d4HNG_Ki8kHJU4kmqxrRasILswgT1bO1p3SvOwFtmb2Rq-dJE5v2CzM1ShTweWAi-N2T1UPKc6UJ3wCH6F6rv_aecs4BiNR0W7IcyWPw_M7Sm3_u2OPcCvZ/s1600/P1010365.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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I am participating in a "Writing Your Grief" workshop, and, each day, we are given a prompt to reflect upon and write about. This is my response to one of them.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"I am not me. I have no name."</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">I don't know who I am, or who I was, with him. The three and a half years I spent with him seem like a dream, now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Before I met Stan, I was the person I had always been--alone, for the most part. I was not happy, necessarily, but I knew how to negotiate that world, and I was comfortable in it, and sometimes content.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">I interacted with people when I chose, which was not often. I spent my days (when not at work) in solitude, reading and writing and watching telly. I ventured out, into the centre of London, to take in a play or an art exhibit, or to watch a show at the cinema, on my own. I attended meditations and yoga at my Buddhist Centre. I went for walks in my neighbourhood. I rode the buses on the top deck and watched the world unfold around me. I didn't feel desperate for companionship. This quiet, solitary life was the life I knew.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Then I met this wild, passionate man from the north. He threw me into his world--a world of people, relationships, both casual and intimate, a world of pub gatherings and music festivals and long drives and Sunday dinners and popping 'round to people's houses for cups of tea. A world of celebrations at anniversaries and birthdays. A calendar that was almost always full.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">I used to crave my silence and space. I was not comfortable with all that interaction and activity. I used to beg him to let me stay home. But we were partners, and he wanted me at his side.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">We were together three and a half years. And now, he's gone. He brought me into his colourful, vibrant, world, and left me in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Now, I have all the silence and space I could ever want. But I know how to enter into the world of people, too. He taught me how to do it. Today, I can ring someone, and invite them for dinner. I have learned how to pop 'round for a cup of tea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">It was a wonderful three and a half years. And despite the pain of losing him, I would not trade that old world for the one I have now. My world is so much richer, having had him in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">I don't know, yet, who the new me will be. But it will be a fuller, bigger, more interesting me. Once I can find my way through this sorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-9306568509212445372014-07-29T19:42:00.001+01:002014-07-29T23:34:33.469+01:00 Seven Weeks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS77HEwwDW47SQzv7IHqfk8YBB7vysaatDRv0UmzS6X57PeLEAYgpJPEggHRT7B0hYBwSHU9ye4zWNJUJILs-maxZ2BxjCzJY4Xps9ZZtp38rI5mGaOVPFj_C-2MtOb4cYgReQJAJMr61U/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS77HEwwDW47SQzv7IHqfk8YBB7vysaatDRv0UmzS6X57PeLEAYgpJPEggHRT7B0hYBwSHU9ye4zWNJUJILs-maxZ2BxjCzJY4Xps9ZZtp38rI5mGaOVPFj_C-2MtOb4cYgReQJAJMr61U/s1600/photo.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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I brought his ashes home with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are heavy, and dense, settled inside a
large round tube. Sunday, I drove up a scary, winding path to the summit of
Monk’s Road, near Glossop, where, on a clear day, you can see all the way to
Manchester, and where he took me, the first weekend we spent together, to show
me the place he wanted his ashes scattered. It is a beautiful spot, with nutty
brown grasses swaying in the wind, surrounded on all sides by his beloved green
hills, their patchwork fields bathed in shadow and light. One day, we will make
sure his wishes are carried out. I am not yet ready to let him go. </div>
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I have made him a little shrine, in the bedroom, with our
picture above it, and it is a comfort to me, this cardboard barrel of bones and
ash. It is what I have left of the body I loved. In the mornings, I rise, from
his side of the bed, still imprinted with the weight of him, my head having
rested on his pillows, and I pat the tube that holds him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His dressing gown hangs on its hook at the
back of our door, and sometimes I press it to my face, in search of his scent,
but it has faded, now, and I can’t remember it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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I try to keep him close to me, to recall his voice, his
funny ways, how he sat at the computer with his headphones on, music blaring
from them, waving his pen in the air, like a conductor. Once, shortly after he
died, I awakened with a start, and rushed to the door of his office, to look
for him. It was where I could usually find him, in the early morning hours, if
he was not sleeping next to me. He wasn't there. The chair was empty, and the computer
screen black.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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His computer and chair are with his son, now, and his music
system has been dismantled, and placed in a box, for one of his other sons. His
clothes, too, are gone, donated to his favourite charity shop.</div>
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It is difficult, this step, letting go of his things,
passing them on to others, saying goodbye to the constant reminders of his
presence in this house. And perhaps I am moving too quickly to do it. Yet he was
more than his things, and it is important that some of them go to the people who loved him, so that they, too, can find solace in those reminders.</div>
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There are no roadmaps for this thing called grief. It is
a private and solitary path, and we trudge clumsily along it, hoping someday to
find our way through to another side. It will be a long road. It will be
months, perhaps years, before I will be able to awaken in the morning without
the immediate recognition of his absence, to leave work and not weep for him on the train
ride home, knowing he is not there to greet me, to clamber up the stairs to bed
and not panic at the thought of sleeping another night without him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will walk it, reluctantly, because I must. </div>
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I have friends to help me along this road,
spiritual friends from the Sangha he loved, who have embraced me and
warmed me with their welcome. I have friends in Glossop, who regale me with
stories of his antics, who are also suffering from this loss. And I have his
family, too. It does not take away this pain. But it lightens the burden a bit,
to share it. </div>
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The internet is full of grief blogs, and I am sure that my
entries here will not reveal any new insights on this journey. Perhaps, instead, my words can bring comfort to the people who knew him, and perhaps we can use them, as I do, to keep him close to us, for just a little while longer.</div>
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Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-87883965507764001662014-06-16T07:39:00.000+01:002015-04-10T20:34:47.638+01:00On The Seventh Day<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ09g39zkeeodiVcx3t2hNTN4ffc-RCA88l4_XdJy0ExIW8IHVMAA2SNBf3DFD8hatHeqse40wba7Oe7Ri8gH_KUY1TwqEqzWN09mS48o1kzrjCmh-6EAW35oZSQ0PqWH_qfNBMSZ8VnYR/s1600/319024_10151169769764611_1791388173_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ09g39zkeeodiVcx3t2hNTN4ffc-RCA88l4_XdJy0ExIW8IHVMAA2SNBf3DFD8hatHeqse40wba7Oe7Ri8gH_KUY1TwqEqzWN09mS48o1kzrjCmh-6EAW35oZSQ0PqWH_qfNBMSZ8VnYR/s1600/319024_10151169769764611_1791388173_n.jpg" height="266" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My beloved husband is dead. There are no other words to
describe it. Waves of grief <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">followed by moments of
laughter. Layers of memory stained with loss. Feeling him just beyond my reach.
Outpourings of love from all corners of this wild, expansive area he cherished—those
who wear his imprint from years of friendship, or those he touched with a
momentary exchange over a cup of tea. The spirit of him wafting through these
gentle hills.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where do I go, now? And
what do I do with myself? I had these thoughts, even before I lost him. Somehow
I knew that our time together was short, that I would outlive the gift of
his presence, that one day, I would be alone, again. I never dreamt
it would be so soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Perhaps I’ll learn
Italian and find a cottage on a southern beach. Perhaps I’ll pull out my worn, neglected hiking boots, and train to tread the Appalachian Trail. Perhaps I’ll
put my words to use. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But today, I am here,
in this bed we shared, his car parked on the road outside my window. Today, I
sit, with the thwarted plans, the lost years of us, our teasing banter, our warmth, our mutual admiration, our easy ways. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I will miss him, how he danced around the room when he was happy, his mispronounced words, his
love for this world and the people he met, all the tiny pleasures he relished,
his recognition of the beauty contained in this painful and delicate life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I do not have an answer
for this loss. I cannot ascribe to it any meaning—why some of us get to grow
old together with all of our children beside us, get to share our lives with
our siblings, to enjoy our parents into their old age. Why others of us suffer
one loss after another, watch our loved ones topple, one by one, year by year,
like bowling pins. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But I do know this: the
world goes on. In the midst of my deepest sorrow, I awakened this morning. I
watched the sun perch between the sloping hills my husband loved. I crept down
the stairs and made myself a warm drink. I took up this paper and pen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Tennessee Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Tennessee Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite the suffering,
mine and that of others, the world is still here. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Tennessee Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What choice do I have,
but to shake hands with it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-52930756668539334462013-04-05T13:28:00.000+01:002013-04-05T13:28:06.401+01:00The Fetter of Fear<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For several years now, I have struggled with a lack
of sleep. It began after my mother’s surgery, when she slept in a hospital bed
in my living room, and I would get up several times a night to check on her. It
continued after she died, when I would awaken around 3 a.m., most nights, at
the precise time my brother had phoned me from Hospice House, to tell me she
had taken her last breath. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Most
recently, my sleep problem was exacerbated by hormonal changes and numerous hot
flushes that came over me in a rush, like a volcano erupting from the inside
out. As soon as I fell asleep, it seemed, I awakened, again, in a mire of
sweat. I switched the fan on or off, rustled the sheets and covers, fluffed and
punched the pillows, until finally, I would give up, and turn on the light. I’d
read Facebook posts or emails or news articles about the state of American
politics. I worried. I wondered how I was going to function in my stressful
social work job the following day. I thought about my son. I watched the hands
of the clock creep from 3 to 4 to 5 a.m.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes, on particularly difficult nights, I would
recall the story of the Family That Could Not Sleep. Since the 1700s, most
members of this family from Venice have struggled with a condition that hits
them at middle age, and prevents them from sleeping at all, no matter what the
treatment. Their inability to rest leads them through a series of horrifying
stages that includes hallucinations, dementia, and, eventually, death. My
brother once told me that no one ever died from lack of sleep, but he was
wrong. Sleep deprivation can kill. This is where my mind would take me. By morning time, I would be exhausted,
resentful, and overwhelmed. Then I would go to work. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since I left my stressful job, and moved to the
countryside, my sleep problem has lessened, somewhat. I have stopped looking at
Facebook and reading political articles on my phone at night. And now that I
sleep full time with my husband, who is disturbed by light in the room, I no
longer read books or magazines in bed when I wake up. Some nights, I am able to
soothe myself back to sleep with deep breathing and practicing gratitude. Yet nothing
seems to help for long. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But last night, awakening at my customary time, I
came downstairs and picked up a book of Buddhist teachings instead. The
teaching was about fear. As I read, I began to understand that the fears I have
built up around my sleep issues have compounded the problem a hundred-fold. And
for the first time, I felt a sense of spaciousness and calm around it. Perhaps
this sleep problem was not the end of the world, I decided. Perhaps I will not
end up like the Family That Could Not Sleep, slowly deteriorating into
hallucinations and dementia and death. Perhaps I would get through this. I
returned to bed, closed my eyes, and drifted into slumber. I still awakened
again, several times. But in the morning, I rose peacefully, freed from the
usual string of irritation and sadness that runs rampant through my thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Buddha teaches that fear of the unknown causes
us to grasp and cling and resist the present moment. He says it is the basis of
our suffering. We cannot bear to come to grips with the basic fact of
impermanence, he says, the reality that everything changes, and that nothing is
fixed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In an effort
to prove we are in control, we shore up identities for ourselves, comforted or
traumatized by the stories of our childhoods, buffeted by our opinions, soothed
by material possessions and the distractions of technology, intoxicants, and
sex. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Christianity, too, speaks often of fear. The angel
Gabriel tells Mary to “fear not,” and to trust in the life that is about to
unfold inside her. Jesus tells his followers not to “worry about tomorrow, for
tomorrow will take care of itself.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous speaks also of
fear. It tells alcoholics that fear is behind most of our troubles, calling it
a soul sickness in its own right. Most spiritual traditions, in fact, speak to
the malady of fear. It is a thread that permeates every facet of our human
existence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mother was often afraid and, as a young girl, I
remember being irritated by what I felt to be a weakness in her character. She
fretted about money and about my sister and about my dad. She cried often and
paced the floor at night. I promised myself that I would not be like her, that
I would grow up to be bold, and strong. So I let my fear of weakness govern my
life, instead, and it hardened me. In my younger years, I clung desperately to
the myth of self-reliance, preferring to stand on my own. In the end, my mask of
strength crumpled, and I was forced to ask for help. I could not face the enormity of
my sister’s and mother’s illnesses by myself. I had to soften enough to reach
for the hands of others. And when I did, those hands were there to hold me up. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One night, after her surgery, I came out to the
living room to find my mother quivering in her bed. I pulled the covers over
her and made sure she was comfortable, but still, her shaking did not stop.
Finally, I asked her what was wrong. “I had a dream I was already gone,” she
said. I sat with her, and held her hand,
and promised her she was getting better, that the dream was just a dream. I
told her she was gaining strength every day. I soothed her with the certainty
of my words. I told her she wasn’t ready
to die yet. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mother was trying to talk to me about her fear of
death. I wish I had been strong enough, in that moment, to sit with her and her
fear, to let her embrace it, and sort through it, with me at her side. I thought
I was assuaging her fears, but it was me that was afraid. I could not bear the
thought of letting her go. My fear of losing her shut her down, and the moment
passed. And she died two weeks later.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fetter of fear is a chain that binds us in so
many ways. It keeps us tethered to a past that no longer serves us. It keeps us
steeped in our own opinions and separates us from those who see the world in a
different way. It causes us to build up material treasures in an effort to
exert control over our future. It keeps us from sharing the most important and
intimate parts of our lives with others.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps our fears will not kill us. But they will
stop us from realizing and revealing our most fully human selves. And isn’t that a certain kind of death?</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-51336721829764390322013-03-06T18:48:00.001+00:002013-03-06T18:48:52.740+00:00Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><b>"</b>I'm just sittin' here watching the wheels go round and round--I really love to watch them roll. No longer riding on the merry-go-round. I just had to let it go..." John Lennon</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I feel compelled to start this entry with a confession--it has been two years and three months since my last writing on this blog. My last entry, in fact, was in December, 2010, at Christmas time. I had just come from a carol sing-along at the Royal Albert Hall, surrounded by old white ladies wearing reindeer antlers and blinking hats, and I was filled with memories of my sister, who donned festive hats and socks for any occasion, but especially loved the ones at Christmas, who belted out carols from Halloween until New Year's Day, driving us all to madness with her myriad recordings of them, played incessantly, at her house and in the car and wherever she could find a place to play them.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shortly after that blog, I met Stan, a wild and sensitive man, and I was drawn to him, to his kindness, his humour, his spirituality and his depth.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He brought to me a sense of how to treat the world and the people in it with a lighter touch. He taught me an awareness of the sights and sounds and startling details of the natural world. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He lived 200 miles north, in Glossop, a village on the edge of the Peak district, and we have spent the last two years commuting back and forth from there to London each weekend, in order to be together.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On weekends in London, we'd eat at Indian restaurants in my neighbourhood, go to a play at the West End, or a concert on the South Bank of the River Thames. We'd take in a movie at the independent cinema in Brixton, or stroll the culturally rich markets there, sampling the Jamaican curries, visiting the reggae record shops.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On alternate weekends, I would journey north, pushing my way through the turnstiles and crushing crowds of central London on Friday afternoons, scrambling to find a seat on the coach or the train. And as the world outside my window slowly shifted, from strings of skyscrapers and littered streets to rolling green hills, dotted with sheep, to stone walls and gurgling streams, I could feel myself begin to breathe a bit deeper, my heart slow its rhythm, my neck muscles lengthen, my shoulders relax. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I fell in love. I fell in love with Stan, and his maddening, wonderful spirit. And I fell in love with the north, with the century old pubs serving home-cooked, Sunday dinners, with his family and friends, who welcomed me warmly into the fold, with the sloping moors, bursting with the purple of heather in the fall, with the sound of the wind, the smooth shape of yellow stone cottages, the old mills, still standing, some empty and maybe haunted, some rebuilt into offices or flats.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Through the months of our long distance relationship, the weekly separation and the exhausting travel took a toll on us both. But it was harder on me, I think, to return to the swirl and the stink of the bustling streets of south London each fortnight. The work, too, was wearing me down, with its bureaucracy and its unrealistic expectations and deadlines, its relentless pressure under draconian budget cuts. I had spent my whole life in Social Work, and often I had felt I was beating my head against the unyielding walls of government. But there, the walls seemed harder to penetrate. I felt like a hamster in a cage, constantly churning the wheels of the system, accomplishing only a little, helping a limited few.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So in November, we married. We had an intimate ceremony at the Registry office, surrounded by family and friends, followed by an afternoon meal and a bigger reception that evening at his favourite pubs. It was simple and colourful and a happy celebration of the new life we would share. Then I returned, to Croydon, to work for the next two months. And in January, I moved up here, intending to take a little break from the rigours of work, to breathe, and to rest. To begin our life together.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the two months of our new life together, we have sorted some things, adjusted to living in the same space, and deepened our love for and appreciation of one another. And I have found an easy rhythm to my life, awakening in the morning, listening to the silence, sometimes meditating, sometimes doing yoga, writing in my journal, hiking, when weather permits, in the hills just a few steps from our front door. It has been two months, and I am letting go of the craziness of society's merry-go-round. I am conserving my funds (I have just a little), trying to make it stretch, learning not to covet and buy at the drop of a hat, to resist the impulse to fill my days with material goods and desires. I am letting go of the destructive habits and distractions that fueled my participation in that crazy world, the world of striving and endless pursuit and relentless toil. I have applied for some jobs, but I am hoping to give myself, for the first time in my life, the time and space to write. To breathe. To be content to watch the wheels roll. </span></div>
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Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-12103337725335921712010-12-19T10:16:00.002+00:002010-12-19T10:28:08.390+00:00Christmas In the UK, 2010<div align="center"><strong>Christmas Carol Singalong at the Royal Albert Hall</strong></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_P-NaSsPBBKI/TQVJyktvNWI/AAAAAAAAAk8/gzDeEuO90ZA/s1600/PC120012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" n4="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_P-NaSsPBBKI/TQVJyktvNWI/AAAAAAAAAk8/gzDeEuO90ZA/s320/PC120012.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Happy Christmas from the UK, where it is a tradition to give out ‘crackers’-- cardboard tubes wrapped in festive paper that, when pulled, pop out a tissue crown, a useless toy, and a silly joke! Where the Christmas meal includes brussels sprouts, sausages, and this weird, flaming clump called Christmas pudding! Where everyone gathers around the telly on Christmas afternoon to listen to an address from the Queen! Where Boxing Day is celebrated with as much enthusiasm as the day that commemorates the saviour’s birth!<br />
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It is snowy here in England, one of an endless stream of wintry grey days that fold early into dark, black night. We string lights around windows and wear colourful scarves and cling to any spot of sun that brings a bit of brightness to our dreary winter season. We plan long weekends on warm beaches or desert resorts and wait in quiet acceptance for the promise of spring. <br />
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On days like this, I wonder if I did not lose my mind, almost two years ago, when I left family, friends and the comfort of a predictable job to move halfway around the world at the age of 52. On days like this, I am mindful of what I miss about life in the US, but also of the things I love about living on this quirky island in the North Sea. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>What I Miss Most</strong></div><br />
<strong>Space:</strong> London houses roughly 12,500 people per square mile, a sliver of land bulging at the seams with humanity, leaving little room to move and breathe. In the mornings, we cram onto buses and trains, scurry down steps to the subway ‘tube’, bump into each other on skinny sidewalks, trudge home at night to tiny sitting areas too small to be termed ‘living rooms.’ No large, sweeping lanais, grand back yards, or walk-in closets here, at least not where I and most of the working class live. <br />
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I miss wide streets, miles of saw grass dotted with ponds and canals, patches of trees that line highways leading to long stretches of sugary, sandy beach. <br />
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<strong>Infrastructure: </strong>Duo-mat washers that crumple clothes into a wrinkled heap, ageing radiators that sizzle and boil but leave the room with pockets of frozen air, refrigerators the size of the dormitory fridges we had in college, plumbing pipes connected with duct tape to toilets that were not brought indoors until the 70s. <strong>The 1970s</strong>. Crumbling streets that cannot handle the bumper to bumper traffic, repairs that take weeks to schedule, and the laughable ineptitude of the Royal Mail. <br />
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Six weeks of holiday and working days that start at 9 a.m. and end promptly at 5 are great for employees, but an infuriating lack of service is one of the unfortunate consequences of a society that is not so work-driven. Queuing up, (or standing in line), is a daily activity, here, for 30 minutes to an hour, in the shops or on the telephone. Even the subways close down at midnight, leaving people who have attended late concerts ‘scrambling to make the tube.’ And an inch of snow brings the entire country to a grinding halt. Apparently those who manage the inner workings of this country have never heard of a shovel or a snow plow.<br />
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I miss the ease with which things flow in the United States—late night stores and restaurants, providers willing to accommodate working people, clothes you can pull from the dryer and wear without ironing, more than two cashiers in a busy grocery or clothing shop. <br />
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My friend said that England is called the “land of inconvenience.” It is a title that fits. <br />
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<strong>Family, Friends, and Familiarity:</strong> It is the country that birthed ours. It is a country with a shared language, shared history, and shared culture. But it is only now becoming a familiar place. They drive on the wrong side of the road, love baked potatoes with weird fillings stuffed in them, have an odd fondness for Heinz beans, and smoke like chimneys on the streets. They are a distant and formal people, who hide their detachment with polite speech and terms of endearment like ‘darlin’ and ‘love.’ <br />
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I miss the known world of the country from which I came. I miss being able to pick up the phone and call best friends, and drive to see them when I am feeling alone. I miss the daily connection with my son, who is studying hard at University, whose life has blossomed in spite of his mother’s absence. I miss being able to visit cousins and aunts and uncles and siblings and nieces and nephews with a few hours’ drive or a short flight. <br />
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There is something to be said for living a life at ease, surrounded by people who know you best. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>What I Love</strong></div><strong></strong><strong>No Guns:</strong> Crime exists, here, of course. People are robbed, burgled (I myself was robbed in February), sometimes stabbed. But the streets here do not carry the same feeling of paranoia and tension as American city streets. Mass shootings occur rarely and, when they do occur, are met with outrage and shock. Even the police do not have guns, a feature of their role that requires them to rule through collaboration rather than coercion. <br />
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<strong>Progressive, liberal, bleeding heart:</strong> There is a safety net for the poor here that, while insufficient, at least exists. People receive housing. Jobless receive a small allowance. Everyone is entitled to a basic level of care, including health care. Though the Tories are now in charge, and are making massive cuts, there are certain things they do not dare to question: the right of people to have a bed in which to sleep, a roof over their heads, and food to eat--the right of people to seek medical care without it crippling their future. Trade unions are celebrated and not a dirty word. People still protest in the streets. And the only tea baggers here are ones who pull them from their English tea!<br />
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<strong>Diverse:</strong> The other day I was walking down the street when an old Jamaican lady became tickled by the greeting honk of a bus driver speeding by. She spoke to me in a blend of Patois and English that I could not understand. But I delighted in her joy. Every day I share my work space with people from Zimbabwe, the Congo, India, South Africa, the Caribbean, Iran. I work with young men fleeing war and persecution in Eritrea and Afghanistan. I ride the bus home with women in saris and men in kufis and others in dreadlocks that reach the middle of their backs. I have learned about the Hindu festival of Diwali and the Muslim observance of Ramadan and their celebration of Eid. I have shared foods and juices prepared by foster carers who come from all over the world. Each day I learn something new about the people and cultures that surround me here, where we all manage to live together in community.<br />
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<strong>Culture and History:</strong> I have seen live theatre productions with Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum and James Earl Jones. I have seen plays that I read and cherished as a child enacted on the greatest stages in the world. I have been to concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, and seen the original works of Vincent Van Gogh. I am surrounded by the spirits of the greatest writers that ever lived—Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf. I have seen the great works of art at the Louvre. I stood at the site of a 6th century monastery in Ireland. I have experienced a world far beyond an Indiana girl’s wildest dreams.<br />
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<strong>Travel:</strong> My father once boasted that he had been to two foreign countries and all the states. His two foreign countries were Canada, and Hawaii before it was a state. My sister’s last wish was to visit a foreign country, a wish that she did not live to fulfill. I like to think that part of this travel is for them. I have been to the highlands of Scotland in search of the monster at Loch Ness. I walked the freezing streets of Paris with my son, and sat in "Le Deux Magots” that once fed Hemmingway and Oscar Wilde. I stood at Chopin’s and Jim Morrison’s Paris graves. I have been to Dublin and Wales and Denmark and walked the clean, symmetrical streets of Sweden. In January I go to Morocco and will catch a ride to Casablanca on the Marrakesh Express. In February I travel to Istanbul. I have other destinations planned, places I had thought beyond possibility not so long ago. Amsterdam in August. Italy in July. Prague in September. Vienna for Christmas next year. <br />
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I do not know how long I will be here. Immigration laws are becoming more severe. Events and circumstances may eventually call me home. If I have learned anything from the last few years, it is that it is foolish to believe in the sanctity of plans. Our lives can change in a moment, our futures turned upside down. Perhaps I <strong>was</strong> slightly mad when I decided to make this move. But I am so happy that I did.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>Happy Christmas to all from across the pond~</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~ Until we meet again.</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br />
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</div>Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-45270668054143116112010-10-09T10:47:00.001+01:002010-10-10T10:08:10.468+01:00Hair! The Musical<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUQ_ifhLqb1JYuGp2Ep0yuqtfl1dfET-_zUsbG_vABDtugp1MdbS_F9OLhPBKslYBsaVPwTD9e1Ef3B7Ce_2eLlM6ouhMAMiSoCxCV4rQBV1xRkcMJRfdPEbhttV43CCKJDtBch-gEidl/s1600/photo%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ex="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUQ_ifhLqb1JYuGp2Ep0yuqtfl1dfET-_zUsbG_vABDtugp1MdbS_F9OLhPBKslYBsaVPwTD9e1Ef3B7Ce_2eLlM6ouhMAMiSoCxCV4rQBV1xRkcMJRfdPEbhttV43CCKJDtBch-gEidl/s1600/photo%5B1%5D.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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I recently had the privilege of witnessing the phenomenon of Hair! The Musical, playing in London, and I remembered when I first became aware of it, around 1969. I was twelve years old. It was a bold production, surrounded by controversy, with nude bodies on stage at the end, a story of drugs and hippies and the horror of sending young boys to war. I stood around the bonfire in the back yard of our house with my brother and many of his friends, the summer it came to Indianapolis, and listened to Junior, one of the wild ones, regale us with his tales of the performance. I had been deemed too young to attend, and, as with many experiences of the sixties, I was forced to learn of it second hand, from the mouths of those older and wiser than me.<br />
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The current cast members of Hair were not even born when the first production hit the stage, yet they were able in some small measure to capture the scent and the feel of those heady times—the sense of freedom and the naive hope that filled the air, the firm belief that we could actually change the way the world worked, that we could operate with a new paradigm, and from that paradigm build a new society based on love and togetherness and mutual respect for the earth and each other. It was a short lived dream, dampened by hard drugs and Charlie Manson and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, finished off by the violence at the Rolling Stones concert in Altamont Springs. But, for awhile, it was a glorious ride.<br />
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I was only twelve years old at the end of the decade, too young, most would think, to have taken in the flavor of those days. But I was lucky. I was the youngest of four, with older siblings, and my home was, shall we say, a rather open environment, a place that inhabited all the sordid and profane and beautiful elements that belonged to the era. We provided shelter for many houseguests, during those years, some dodging the draft, some hiding from police, some who came to either indulge in or kick their drug addictions. Smoke filled the upstairs bedroom, (the smell of ‘burning rope,’ my mother used to say), drifting down the steps and through the windows into the yard, where bonfires were held, guitar notes picked, folk songs sung in unison. I sat on feather mattresses with people ten years older than me who engaged in deep discussions about communes and rock music and the draft and the war. I grew my hair long and parted it in the middle, like them, made sand candles, learned to macramé. Our coffee table held underground newspapers sold in the street markets of Talbot Village in Indianapolis. I listened to my sister argue with my dad about the Chicago 7 and the Democratic Convention of 1968. Our bedroom, painted white with black curtains, in honor of the “White Room with Black Curtains” song by Cream, held posters blazoned in psychedelic colors and declaring “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” I spent hours with my face in front of the hi-fi, my ears against the speakers, the albums of Jefferson Airplane, the Moody Blues, Janis and Jimi and the Doors, piled all around me. <br />
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As a chubby girl from a family with no money, surrounded by kids dressed in crisp trendy clothes whose parents had boats docked on freshwater lakes in the south, I struggled with a sense of isolation and alienation most of my young life. I received Ds in citizenship at Crestview Elementary for my outbursts of temper and endless streams of tears, and I developed a reputation on the school bus for my ability to beat up all the boys. Let’s just say I had issues. <br />
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But then I discovered “the sixties,” and I drank it in, all of it, like milk laid out for a starving cat. Suddenly I had found a place I belonged. If I couldn’t afford the latest white fringed go-go boots the girls bought from Ayres Department store downtown, I could tie dye old tee shirts and string love beads to wear around my neck. If I couldn’t shake pom poms and put on a cheerleader outfit, I could wrap a leather band around my forehead and sew patches on my bell bottom jeans. <br />
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And “the sixties” gave me another gift: a sense of purpose. No longer did I think only of myself and my own perceived problems and sorrows. I could focus instead on the suffering of others, and try to do something to put an end to it. I could take all the outrage that had been smoldering in my internal cauldron and unleash it on the world. I read all I could about the movements of the day, inhaling the literature of the Black Panthers, the Yippies, (Steal this Book!), the anti war movement, the American Indians. From them I learned that there were other ways to live and be in the world, that there were things more important than shopping and grades and homecoming dances (to which I would never be invited anyway) and proms. From them I found a world outside the tiny, myopic vision of suburban Indianapolis. From them I gained a sense of the new world and my place in it. <br />
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That sense of purpose is with me still, though perhaps the anger and passion have waned a bit, having been tempered with loss and sorrow and joy and reflection and age. Today I live in the most ethnically diverse area of London, where I sit on the top deck of my double decker bus and listen to the languages of the world—Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Dari, Mandarin, Polish, French, Italian, Spanish—being spoken. I tread through government bureaucracy to help young Afghan boys who come from a country at war, who seek shelter and asylum and receive it, here, who are stuffed together behind boxes in trucks lined on ferries and, if they are fortunate enough to escape the watchful eye of the UK Border Patrol, manage to land in a place where they might have a chance to survive and thrive. <br />
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The sign outside the production of Hair! The Musical calls it “A Beacon of Hope in a Fallen World.” In spite of all the silliness and impetuousness and ultimate destructiveness of “the sixties,” they still carry the flavor of hope for me. I am so happy that I had a chance to be a part of those wild and heady years. I could not have survived my youth without the gift of their vision.Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-31108516568803282132010-05-16T19:25:00.002+01:002010-05-16T19:55:39.126+01:00Stuffed<div style="text-align: left;"> <strong>Stuffed</strong></div><br />
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On Wednesday nights, I’ve begun to tune in to a riveting reality show called “Hoarders.” It is set here in England, and profiles the lives of people who hang onto piles of unusable and unnecessary collections, until their piles have spilled into the outside world, devastating their neighbours and their families, and most tragically, themselves. Space is a precious commodity here in the UK, our homes much smaller than those in the states, so their collections fill up the skinny hallways and tiny sitting rooms much faster, thus exacerbating the severity of their plight. <br />
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These people may function fairly well in careers and in friendships outside of their homes, although not all of them do. Some of them have become imprisoned by the stacks of papers and plastic cartons and boxes that permeate their world, and they hide among their piles in shame, embarrassed to allow anyone else into their sphere. Others are able to find clean shirts and trousers, somehow, amongst their piles, and trot off to their workplaces and afternoon pub gatherings with friends, never revealing the enormity of the problem that lurks within their homes, behind closed curtains and locked doors. <br />
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I am fascinated by them for a variety of reasons. My sister was a hoarder, and my mother, and my father, to some extent, as well. Perhaps this compulsion to collect became a part of our genetic history, I have thought, passed down by ancestors who lost so much in their treks from their home countries to the United States, and across the states in wagons, where all that they owned was reduced to a couple of trunks and a few old dusty pictures. Perhaps it is just a facet of human nature gone awry, accentuated by our western focus on material wealth. I don’t know—but it seems to flow through our family’s blood, an inexorable trait, like our stocky builds, our angular faces, our sturdy thighs. <br />
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This peculiarity of the human condition fascinates me, too, because I have struggled against it myself. I moved many times, as a young person, from a tent in a field, to a pickup truck, to hole in the ground (or kiva) in Santa Fe, to a dorm room in the Marin Headlands, to a room that once held pigs in a village in Mexico. Each move, back then, forced me to come to terms with the amount of stuff I held onto, and through it all, I managed to keep my hoarding to an acceptable level—a few boxes of books and pictures, a can full of protest buttons, a container filled with posters and tee shirts.<br />
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Then I became a mother, a wife, a householder. And for the last 25 years of my life my definition of necessary stuff expanded, until it encompassed all things related to my son, my husband’s interests, my spiritual beliefs, and my career, eventually filling a three bedroom home. Books, clothes, Christmas decorations, pictures of my son in all his stages, school mementoes, all his awards, articles I found interesting, literary journals, magazines, boxes of my own writings, in various drafts, with and without critiques, pens, markers, scrapbooking materials, books on social work, religious texts, books about how to write, how to organize your writing, how to publish your writing, how to get over a writing drought—the stuff surrounding me, creeping into every available space. I kept it neat and tidy, stacked and hidden, but still. It was too much stuff. <br />
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From time to time, I would venture into the home where my mother and sister resided, attempting to help them come to terms with the mounds of things they held onto, and several times, when my sister was away, I would plough through it myself, filling dumpsters and second hand stores with the things they had collected, clearing the hallways of debris so that my mother could get through them without falling, cleaning off their beds so they could actually sleep in them. But usually, within months of my efforts, their place would be packed, again, and I would be filled with feelings of helplessness and resentment. Finally, I decided, for the sake of our relationship, to leave them to sort it out on their own, and I would meet them at the door, when I came to visit, taking them to dinner or to church, rather than trying to spend time in their home. <br />
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It hindered their quality of life. They’d lose things and misplace important papers and spend hours searching for documents that were hidden under piles of trash. They couldn’t organize their daily activities, they’d forget to write down dates for appointments, and, if they did write them down, they couldn’t remember where they had left their calendars. They couldn’t have friends come to visit. Once, my mother fell over a vacuum sweeper and broke her shoulder. Another time, she fell out of the small area she had carved out as a sleeping space at the edge of her bed, and broke her nose. <br />
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My social work training and my writer’s nature led me to search for and to analyze the deep seated issues that drove their need to hold onto things that did not matter, and their almost psychotic refusal to part with the most inconsequential collections. (I once came across a bag filled with dryer lint, that my sister had been saving, she said, to use as a stuffing for a pillow one day.) For both of them, the collecting was a response to their many losses, I think, an effort to claim back a part of themselves, to hang onto history, to return to a time that was somehow more meaningful, when they felt more complete. Or, perhaps it was an effort to stave off the emptiness they felt inside, as if their things could protect them, somehow, from feeling alone. <br />
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Then Debra got sick, and it began to dawn on her that her time on this earth was short. Shortly after she was diagnosed, she let me go through the boxes in her bedroom, and she became willing to part with the Oprah magazines that she had saved for five years, her collection of greeting cards, enough to open a Hallmark store, her Child Life book series, that filled an entire bookcase, along with myriads of other collections. It was as if a light switched on in her head, and she saw, suddenly, how little these things meant to her. <br />
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A month later, I returned to visit, quickly realizing that they could no longer manage on their own, and I brought them to live with me. The night we left, my mother scurried around, trying to figure out what to bring with her, but, by then, my sister didn’t care about any of it. She wanted to feel better, she wanted to sleep comfortably, and she wanted to be able to eat. She left all of her stuff behind, not giving it a second glance.<br />
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My sister died at hospice house, in a room that held a few of her favourite belongings, some Christmas decorations, my mother, and me. And, in the end, it was all that she needed. <br />
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It was very hard for my mother to let go of her things, and I tried to surround her with the possessions that mattered most to her. We brought her china cabinets into my living room, and filled them with her depression glass and her Indianapolis Race Car glasses. We put up all of her old pictures and hung her plates on the wall. Still she felt uncomfortable and displaced, in my home, as if, without her things to define her, she no longer belonged in the world. And before long, she became ill herself, dying less than a year after my sister. Perhaps parting with her possessions was just too much for her, along with losing her daughter. Perhaps the loss was too great for her to survive it. <br />
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When they passed, I became obsessed finding a way to change my life. I wanted to experience the world free of the clutter that had turned my mother and my sister into prisoners. And six months after my mom died, I arrived in England, my new home, with two suitcases. I gave away my record albums, shelves full of books, clothes and dishes and pots and pans. I left my furniture for my son, and gave Mom’s china cabinets to two of my nieces. I still have stuff stored back in the states, but I hope to pare it down each time I return, to get down to the bare essentials, to free myself of the material possessions that clog my life and weigh me down. I’ve lived a whole year with just a few things, and for the most part, I haven’t missed the stuff I’ve left behind. <br />
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Recently, I travelled to the site of a monastery outside Dublin that was formed in the 6th century by Saint Kevin. It was a cluster of stone buildings and churches set in a beautiful valley at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains. The story goes that he allowed anyone to come to his monastery, to take refuge there, but they had to leave all their possessions at the archway, and they could enter only with the clothes on their backs. Mother Teresa required the nuns in her order to limit their possessions to only what could fill one paper bag. It is who we are, that matters, she told them, and how we treat each other, not what we own. <br />
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I don’t know that I could emulate the example of Saint Kevin or Mother Teresa. But I know that my life feels simpler, now, that I own less, and that I am able to tread much more lightly through my days, no longer shackled by the treachery of stuff.Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-46954503947822572222010-01-31T17:16:00.001+00:002010-01-31T17:40:31.425+00:00Living with the DeadOn my way home from the shops this afternoon, I wander into the local cemetery, or crematorium, as they call them here. I used to walk through this cemetery, often, after home visits in the neighbourhood, and I have missed it. When I lived in the village in Mexico, the graveyard was the only place I could go to be alone, and I took refuge there, daily, sitting among the plastic flowers and tissue-wreathed crosses with my journal and a pen. Here, in England, the world outside my little flat is noisy and crowded, my solitude penetrated by the sputtering of car engines, the pounding of footsteps against my ceiling, country and western music blaring from the fellow who lives in the flat next door. Sometimes I long for the wide open spaces of the states—big roads, big yards—lots of room to roam without intruding upon another person’s domain. So I have come to sit for a moment, at Croydon Crematorium, where I share space only with the dead. <br />
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I feel peaceful here, seated on a wooden bench, my hands gloved against the cold. Old gravestones, toppled and worn, are interspersed with marbled monuments, their etchings elegant and deep. This cemetery allows people to plant colourful plants and leave flowers at their loved one’s graves—not like my dad’s cemetery, with its symmetrical stones lying flat against the earth, designed for the convenience of riding lawn mowers, who shear the grass in summertime. These graves seem more natural in their uniqueness, like the people who inhabit them once were. Some of them are covered by a layer of coloured rocks, framed by silver incense urns, and I picture weeping relatives at these tombs, their grieving somehow soothed by the pungent aroma of smoke as it rises to the sky. Others show fresh tulips, resting in plastic vases, next to their monuments. Still others display green plants, slightly wilted by the cold, rooted in black dirt plots, bordered in stone. <br />
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There are graves of children who died too young, and graves of ninety year olds who died soon after their partners passed. Across the paved path, in perfect rows, stand the gravestones of young soldiers who died in WWII. The English do not seem comfortable with the word death. Their stones bear anachronisms like ‘fell asleep’ and ‘taken from us.’ Their etchings are wordier than ours, poetic, almost, with long descriptions of how much their people were loved, and proclamations that God must have needed them in heaven, more than they were needed, here. It is strange how we use kind words to soften the ugliness of death. It is like a mask we don to spare those around us from witnessing the full measure of our loss. Perhaps such gentle words serve as a balm for our wounds, as well.<br />
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I’ve found my own ways to soothe my grief. I’ve sought the aid of mediums, here, where they are abundant, and work without the stigma attached to them in the United States. I have attended a spiritualist church, here, too, in hopes the ‘presenter’ would find, among the souls whose loved ones are in the audience, a message from Mom or Debra to me. <br />
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I wanted to have a chat with them, to find out why they had to leave so soon, and to let them know how much they were missed. But the sessions did not accomplish what I had wished. They could not fill the hole in my heart, or make me feel like part of a family again. I still dream of them, at night. So maybe it is only through my dreams that we can meet. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dzMClgn4jIi05w_KX1_WoG-_xwvpQte18z9ctdlqxk0GBQXTJDlUj7k7_wYSk8a3uz7vVU9auvbbDE8SZxeVkzczqSfoP3hscZ2HVbxCKx1A89wv_Zkv0YcicnyrR9zT9C8acjbj8QKC/s1600-h/041.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dzMClgn4jIi05w_KX1_WoG-_xwvpQte18z9ctdlqxk0GBQXTJDlUj7k7_wYSk8a3uz7vVU9auvbbDE8SZxeVkzczqSfoP3hscZ2HVbxCKx1A89wv_Zkv0YcicnyrR9zT9C8acjbj8QKC/s320/041.JPG" /></a></div>In every country I have visited, I have found myself drawn to their cemeteries, where I read the names and dates of those who lived and died and are memorialized, there. In Wales, the dead lay below moss-covered tombstones in old church yards, close to where their loved ones worship and pray. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja3Qbm1gmJeXbeOKturdoH9bqBuaQn4FA_HQR446uTmKOyQcVKPcEpRGyBcegUVz7ZN9BFVLsAKJT8Cs1VHm_VrJoQRH5ROO_1alXHdMnw1dpT0sia-fD5kypBJCBXxreJJLKJ6U5NG5vE/s1600-h/Denmark+and+Sweden+092.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja3Qbm1gmJeXbeOKturdoH9bqBuaQn4FA_HQR446uTmKOyQcVKPcEpRGyBcegUVz7ZN9BFVLsAKJT8Cs1VHm_VrJoQRH5ROO_1alXHdMnw1dpT0sia-fD5kypBJCBXxreJJLKJ6U5NG5vE/s320/Denmark+and+Sweden+092.JPG" /></a></div>Sweden’s grave sites are clean and orderly and sleek, like the country’s quiet streets. I visited the grave site of Jim Morrison, of The Doors, in Paris, the resting place of Chopin and Oscar Wilde and many other famous folks. For years, the relatives of families buried in that cemetery tried to have Jim Morrison’s body removed. They grew weary of the scruffy young folks flocking to his site, where they smoked dope and broke whiskey bottles and had sex atop his tomb. His grave is surrounded, now, by a chain link fence, and patrolled by a private guard, yet people continue to leave their offerings of liquor and pills next to his stone—a twisted tribute to the tools of his untimely death.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0n_yjYqj9LbFqYhex8qWASuH9CAQsHHOmZX3AmvKHhlu4cm4rZL3Plp6JYWjHwTV9b2awRCON55esAco15GzjXZmlQrhI3JiQL4BYNPxtXGmQXXln6P13apvqUczu4oXOYYSrO3YU6SQ/s1600-h/Paris+with+the+kids+010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0n_yjYqj9LbFqYhex8qWASuH9CAQsHHOmZX3AmvKHhlu4cm4rZL3Plp6JYWjHwTV9b2awRCON55esAco15GzjXZmlQrhI3JiQL4BYNPxtXGmQXXln6P13apvqUczu4oXOYYSrO3YU6SQ/s320/Paris+with+the+kids+010.JPG" /></a></div><br />
My mother never asked for much, but she did make explicit her desire to have her remains interred with my dad. I asked her, through the years, if she was certain she wanted to spend eternity with the man who made her life so tumultuous and crazed. But she loved him, with all his wild faults, and it was her wish that she rest at his side. I wasn’t able to spare her from suffering in her last few months of life, but I am happy I could place her where she wanted to be, in death. <br />
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Like many cities in Europe, Paris lacks the space to bury their dead, and the plots are rented as family plots, with one body piled on top of another inside them. People in England, too, tend to cremate their loved ones, adding only a name, instead of a body, to an already established monument. For some reason these monuments are important to us. It is as if the names of those we loved, immortalized in stone, grant some kind of final meaning to their time on earth, an assurance that their impact on us will be remembered for generations to come. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJCsMeDR13xIoJ3T8fjOS7ZTfOhpE0GIgL_gAHa0bV8xanKIG6JxuTGlJWzdQjxqYTj2yIjFsyn6Ug9cS3ygzcR5WkO-gissPtjlchcXWclpfHRzCOjtNLMzdBauJST_CiprqBSwFn0WXS/s1600-h/Paris+with+the+kids+011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJCsMeDR13xIoJ3T8fjOS7ZTfOhpE0GIgL_gAHa0bV8xanKIG6JxuTGlJWzdQjxqYTj2yIjFsyn6Ug9cS3ygzcR5WkO-gissPtjlchcXWclpfHRzCOjtNLMzdBauJST_CiprqBSwFn0WXS/s320/Paris+with+the+kids+011.JPG" /></a></div><br />
My sister, Debra, never wanted to be buried. A diabetic since the age of 14, with few of the customary complications, she often referred to her body as a miracle of science, and she hoped to have it donated for research. But an earlier infectious illness made her ineligible for donation, and shortly before she died, I had to tell her she would be cremated instead. She took the news as she had taken most disappointments in her life—in silence, and without protest. <br />
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On a cool winter evening in Florida, my sister slipped away, and Mom and I watched them lift her body from the hospice bed. Within a week they called me to pick her up—her presence reduced to three boxes of ashes—one for Ben, her son, one for Dennis, her twin, and the other one for my mother and me. A year later, I added my mother’s ashes to my shelf. <br />
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Debra wanted to visit a foreign country, and it was one of her last wishes before she died, but her time was too short, and she was too weak. So I brought her ashes here, to England, where they sit upon my tiny mantelpiece. I still cannot look at pictures of the women I have lost, but the urn is a comfort to me, somehow, and I am glad that I have her with me, here. <br />
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It is almost dark, when the crematorium closes its gates, and I must enter into the stream of noise and life, again. There is quiet among the dead, but a bit of sadness too, a sense of missed opportunities, perhaps, a swell of lingering regrets. I walk the path past toppled stones and marbled monuments, and board the bus that will carry me home, to the world of the living, in my little flat, footsteps on my ceiling and country music blaring, its lilting rhythms a blessing to me.Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-14261987544777002692009-11-01T18:50:00.000+00:002009-11-01T18:50:29.723+00:00Autumn comes to my little street<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjLDBlxIfG5Hjbd6aWlSnA2SPTd5W1eWRJ42_rNkEKd6eREQ0-I3uVtKtcsV-NghgnEG64IBPX86WpCOIxGtGsv7R5n-fVDsfHXfPx_3glxeSClRi0OpYpu94dVXTyjfEk7pWZs0NFqFuh/s1600-h/photo%5B1%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjLDBlxIfG5Hjbd6aWlSnA2SPTd5W1eWRJ42_rNkEKd6eREQ0-I3uVtKtcsV-NghgnEG64IBPX86WpCOIxGtGsv7R5n-fVDsfHXfPx_3glxeSClRi0OpYpu94dVXTyjfEk7pWZs0NFqFuh/s320/photo%5B1%5D.jpg" vr="true" /></a><br />
</div>Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-35533534542341817592009-11-01T18:42:00.000+00:002009-11-01T18:42:59.536+00:00The Queen's EnglishI am a lover of words, and language, and I believe that the language of a people says a great deal about who they are and what is important to them. Since I have been in the UK, I have come to appreciate many of their sayings, and to recognize them as a reflection of their culture. And others are just funny and entertaining!<br />
Here are just a few:<br />
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<b>Are you all right?:</b> When I first came here, I thought my body language or facial expressions must be signalling that there was something wrong with me, because people were constantly asking me if I was all right. But I have come to know that the English use this as a more honest greeting than our American “how are you?” They don’t really want to hear a long tale about what is going on with you, they just want to make sure you are all right. <br />
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<b>Well done:</b> I overhear English parents say this to their children. It is used as we use “good boy,” or “good girl.” I like it because it praises the act of the child instead of tying the act to their essential goodness. It feels less conditional, and more real. <br />
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<b>Unwell: </b>The English use this to describe people who are sick or even mentally ill. It just seems less harsh than ‘sick,’ or ‘ill,’ and implies a temporary condition that is fluid, and subject to change.<br />
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<b>No worries:</b> This is often heard as a phrase instead of ‘no problem,’ or ‘not an issue.’ It feels like a kind of commentary on how they handle things in general—that there are no worries worth causing a problem in relationships, or worth troubling ourselves. <br />
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<b>Leave it to me:</b> This phrase is used when someone agrees to take responsibility for getting something done. Although it is used sometimes by people in the service industry and I don’t often trust that the person is really going to follow through! Sometimes it just feels like a way to get me to stop perseverating about the problem on the phone!<br />
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<b>At the end of the day:</b> I love this phrase because it reflects the idea that, in the scheme of things, whatever it is that seems so big and important really doesn’t matter, much. I hear this used a great deal in my work environment. It helps us to keep things in perspective.<br />
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<b>Cheers!: </b>This greeting is usually used at the end of a conversation, in place of or before saying goodbye. <br />
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<b>Isn’t it, or i'n it:</b> This phrase is used at the end of a sentence or thought, as we would use ‘you know,’ or ‘know what I mean?’<br />
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I am sure there are others, which I will share in the future as I encounter them. For now, here are some other entertaining turns of words and phrases that I have had to learn in order to adapt to the life here!<br />
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Pants: trousers<br />
Sweaters: jumpers<br />
Stove: hob, or cooker<br />
Restroom: toilet, or loo<br />
Umbrella: brolley<br />
Thrift store: charity shop<br />
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Trunk: boot—I went to a ‘boot fair’ recently, expecting rows of boots for sale, and found only people’s junk that they had brought to sell in their ‘boots’—what we would call a flea market or garage sale!<br />
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Fries: chips<br />
Chips: crisps<br />
Cookies: biscuits<br />
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Life continues to entertain and amuse me here, as I settle into my new world across the pond!Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-503187947651676992009-09-06T21:54:00.001+01:002009-09-06T21:57:29.336+01:00The land of the Brattons, Wales<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5g0fBj2rLfMLLD1rAi7vbIA7SJkW8aJKKuy7EHrGAJHEamgsY3KastXm34PTOLHN5eE6PqiWw_WbqH6bMFp17JxDIiLCcnJGSbg8DKJ5lAMux5LKM7YUNaTWp6W2V_O5GdLjQk1ubRkuF/s1600-h/362.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5g0fBj2rLfMLLD1rAi7vbIA7SJkW8aJKKuy7EHrGAJHEamgsY3KastXm34PTOLHN5eE6PqiWw_WbqH6bMFp17JxDIiLCcnJGSbg8DKJ5lAMux5LKM7YUNaTWp6W2V_O5GdLjQk1ubRkuF/s320/362.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378461254174427874" /></a>Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-36413037265216580402009-09-06T19:03:00.004+01:002009-09-06T22:16:01.124+01:00Settling In, Coming HomeI have not written in almost two months. I have been spending time adapting to my work and my new flat and trying to absorb all that it means to work and to live in this country so different from my own. I have also had so many thoughts swirling in my head about my work, and the different approach here, and those thoughts have mixed with the memories of my mother and my sister and my childhood. As I have thought about these issues, they have become more and more complex, and I have resisted writing about them because I don't want to trivialize them or simplify them with words that are trite and easy. <br /><br />With all of our talk about and money spent on family preservation, in the U.S., it is not a concept that we practice well. We remove children of parents who test positive at birth, whether that positive test is for cannibis or cocaine. We bring families into court and force them into treatment when we are barely certain of the extent of their addiction. We separate newborns from their mothers and they are fortunate to get visits one hour a week. We don't provide poor families with housing and then we take their children away when they are homeless. We expect parents who are struggling to find work or keep their minimum wage jobs to attend court hearings in the middle of the day and to come to visits at the convenience of the workers and to attend parenting classes that cost money that they don't have. When the parents begin to falter, or miss a visit, or show up late because they have no transportation, we write their failings into court reports. And if, God forbid, they become overwhelmed and let their despair and feelings of hopelessness cause them to drink or use drugs again, we judge them to be unfit to parent their children, and we move for termination of parental rights. <br /><br />Here,if it is decided that a mother cannot safely parent her infant on her own, we place the mother and baby into a sheltered environment where her parenting can be assessed, and where mentoring is provided. If she does not want to go into a placement with her infant, we arrange daily contact for at least an hour a day. There is a respect, here, for the importance of family. <br /><br />There are those who will say that we go too far, here, in the other direction. Indeed,there have been several scandals in the UK that have included horrific stories of abuse and torture and death. But do we not have those scandalous stories in the U.S.,too? In spite of all of our courts and authoritarian approaches and our placements and our speedy moves toward adoption, do children not die at the hands of their abusers there, as well? <br /><br />I cannot say which approach is right, or which works better. Both have their faults. I can only speak from my own experience. <br /><br />When I first became involved with abused children, I was a young woman working in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, with an inner city drop in day care center, and I came to know many children who lived in the hotels in the neighborhood, whose parents were addicts, and for whom life seemed pretty bleak. I was appalled by the conditions I saw there, and I thought that the answer was to get them away from these parents, to place them into nice homes where perhaps they would have a future. <br /><br />It was the 80s, when I was working there, and there was a psychological theory afloat that posited the idea of "toxic parents," "toxic families," and "toxic shame." It was a time when victims were urged to cease all contact with their families in which abuse or neglect had occurred, to make new families with friends and like minded folks, to turn their backs on their pasts, to liberate themselves from the anchors that their families had become, and I became a part of that movement. <br /><br />I was beginning to understand how some things that had happened in my childhood had wounded, indeed, scarred, me. I was never exposed to intentional cruelty or brutality by my parents. Instead,I was the youngest child of a father who had an alcohol problem, who wasn't a great provider, and a mother who was depressed and overwhelmed with the care of four children, and I knew deprivation and hunger and feelings of abandonment as a result. Other things happened. Life in the Bratton household on 75th street was fairly chaotic when I was growing up! And I was exposed to things I should not have known at such a young age. It affected my image of myself and my relationships with others. I cried alot (still do!), I suffered from depression and addictions of my own, I had a hard time trusting folks, and as a young adult, I moved from state to state, trying to outrun my past. <br /><br />For much of early adulthood, I carried an anger about the things that had happened to me. I used to wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a family that had stability and structure and routine. I tried but never succeeded in cutting off contact with family members. I swore I would never be like them. I moved as far away from them as I could get. <br /><br />But something happened. Circumstances caused me to move home. And as a result of that, I grew. I saw my childhood in a new light. A wise man I know once said that the older (and more sober) he got, the better his childhood had become. He began to understand not only the pain but the blessings he had received, as a part of his family, and he began to view his past with a new pair of glasses. <br /><br />And so it was with me. I learned to appreciate the humor and the joy my father exuded, even when he didn't have two pennies to rub together. I have a vivid memory of my father shaving at the bathroom sink, singing and smiling at himself in the mirror. "Oh, you handsome fellow," he'd say. "Oh, you lucky dog." I must have been about six. I remember looking around at our rusty bathtub, the cracked toilet seat, the coal dust covered walls, and thinking, "is this lucky?" But my dad loved living. He was a happy drinker. He loved people, and they loved him, and he never met a stranger, because he turned them into friends. <br /><br />With the current climate in the US, my behavior in elementary school (I had temper tantrums daily) would have brought me to the attention of child welfare folks. They would have investigated the conditions of my home, and I could easily have been removed from my family. And I don't know if they would have been able to get me back. It's not that they wouldn't have wanted to. But my Dad didn't like government intervention, and he would have rebelled. My mom would have felt powerless to comply with all the stipulations the state would have required. And they may have given up. <br /><br />And so I could easily have grown up in a different family, as someone other than a Bratton. I may have been spared some of the pain of my wild and traumatic childhood. But I would not have known my dad.<br /><br />For much of my life, I had a difficult relationship with my mother. I blamed her for leaving me when I was twelve, when she went on the road with my dad, who was a travelling salesman, and I held her responsible for not protecting me. But, the birth of my own child helped me to see her in a new light. Where I had viewed her before as weak, and submissive, I came to recognize her quiet strength. I came to respect her intelligence, her spiritual understanding, her tolerance, and her particular way of showing love. She helped me parent my son. She taught him his ABCS and took him to get his shots. Had I been separated from my family, I wouldn't have come to know her this way. <br /><br />When Debra died, my mom and I had had a tense moment, after we watched her take her last breath. She followed me into the lounge of the hospice, while we waited for them to come and take Debra's body away, and she apologized to me for not being there when I needed her. My own son was struggling with drugs at the time, and I told her that I saw how hard it must have been to try and handle four kids, two (my brother and I) who were acting out. I told her I understood how helpless she must have felt, and tired, and I told her it was okay. Had I been separated from my family, I would never have had that chance. I would never have healed that place in myself that blamed her, and she would never have heard me say it didn't matter anymore. <br /><br />Had I been separated from my family, had I been raised as someone other than a Bratton, I would have missed the opportunity to help my sister die with dignity, to watch her heal her own old wounds, to see her thank my brother Dennis for all he had done to help her, to watch my brother Allan, with whom she had had a conflicted relationship, carry her from the bed to the toilet and back, to be a witness to the tender exchanges that brought us a moment of grace in the midst of the suffering and sadness.<br /><br />Had I grown up in another family, I would not have been able to lay by my mother's side at hospice house, cradling her in my arms, as she drifted out of consciousness. I would have missed the opportunity to rub lotion on her legs and arms, to care for her most intimate needs, to bathe her and help her to the toilet and to tell her that I didn't mind, that I was glad to do it, to let her lean on me. <br /><br />I have seen many foster and adoptive children, in my years of practice, carry a deep and unmet yearning to know who and where they came from. Some of them have grown up in the most loving and kind adoptive homes. They have been given all the material goods, the educational opportunities, and the nurturance of parents who doted on their every need. Still they have felt fractured, somehow, like they didn't quite belong, like a part of them was missing. And many have gone to find that piece of themselves. It doesn't discount the brave and devoted parenting of their adoptive families. It just means that they need to know their connection to the blood ties that bind us as humans to each other. It is not the only thing that matters. But it matters, nonetheless. <br /><br />Last weekend I travelled to Wales, and I carried with me my father's tales of the four Bratton brothers, who were kicked out of that country for stealing horses, and who set sail out of Donegal, Ireland, in the 17th century, for America. I walked the patchwork hills and viewed the little stone churches and met the Welshmen in their caps, fishing at the river, and I was so thankful to have had those stories, to feel a part of something bigger, to feel connected to the land of my ancestors, to feel like a piece of me had found my way home.Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-39822999540197686472009-07-18T17:26:00.000+01:002009-07-18T17:28:17.463+01:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoXv-YrbayTv0t3eRXAb0-DcpD-NtMclfHIHX6Yt2VpPu9PLNVTPVREuXH_vcra4tge0aHtVdlgQEZ1Cn8IoOeQmA_5KxRP4AmAne1Vww7nIv2NgZ0M8x0xAKrUDgSgtd_k51ljQ2vcIUh/s1600-h/cynthia+and+I+at+bbq.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoXv-YrbayTv0t3eRXAb0-DcpD-NtMclfHIHX6Yt2VpPu9PLNVTPVREuXH_vcra4tge0aHtVdlgQEZ1Cn8IoOeQmA_5KxRP4AmAne1Vww7nIv2NgZ0M8x0xAKrUDgSgtd_k51ljQ2vcIUh/s320/cynthia+and+I+at+bbq.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359837675681433954" /></a>Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-55119577238935628472009-07-18T15:55:00.005+01:002009-07-18T16:41:47.787+01:00RaceI have had several encounters that have inspired my reflection on race and culture and the very different approach I am finding here, in England, yet I have hesitated to share them. I have hesitated because whenever the issue of race is brought to the table in my country, the US, defenses start to surface, barriers are erected, hackles are raised, wagons are drawn into a circle. I then began to parcel out my thoughts into careful, muted, words, afraid they would be misconstrued by some as typical white, generalizing blather, by others as naïve and wide-eyed and bleeding heart. And in the process of doing so, the message got muffled, and the words became bland and meaningless.<br /><br />So I endeavor to tackle this issue with apologies to all who may find my thoughts and words somehow offensive. I am merely speaking from my own perception of what I have come to know in my interactions with racial issues in the US, and what I am learning about the very different way it is approached here, in the city I live, London, in my new country, England—a way that feels refreshing, and liberating, and fills me with a sense of hope about our ability to live together in a spirit of tolerance and harmony.<br /><br />I was invited to live with a woman who offered a room to me in her lovely, large, Victorian home near my work. She is a black woman from St. Lucia, in the Caribbean, who came to London when she was twelve years old. She is a delightful woman of 48, who left her comfortable job with the Croydon Council to pursue her dream of becoming a trained therapist. And although our backgrounds and upbringing are very different, we have much in common. She and I share political leanings that can aptly be described as “leftist,” and I hear her, sometimes, shouting at the TV news, much the way I have been known to do, when she is outraged by some latest remark or development. We have long discussions, sometimes late into the night, about family dynamics and relationships and all of the pain and complexity that comes with being the youngest child. But our most interesting discussions are around race. We talk about how our respective races impact our views of the world, our interactions with others, our capacity for relationships with those outside our race. And I have found myself thinking that conversations like ours, between races, are rare in the United States, and, if they do occur, they are laced with the burden of our difficult history.<br /><br />I related to Cynthia, my roommate, an incident that occurred at my last job, as a Social Worker in Medical Foster Care. We had a developmentally delayed African American girl, who was severely disabled and in a wheelchair, placed with an elderly white couple, and the mother in the family found coping with the little girl’s hair cumbersome and time-consuming. Transracial placements in the US are often impacted by issues of hair care, since white folks tend to lack knowledge of how to work with hair so different from their own. But the woman decided that it would be easier just to shave the little girl’s head, than to try to figure it out. And the Social Worker I was supervising, who had the case, felt that this was an outrageous act. Not only did it further stigmatize a little girl already stigmatized by her disability, it made her look like a boy, and it felt insensitive and racist. But when this issue was brought to the attention of our team, a primarily white team comprised of nurses, it was not perceived as a problem. To them, it felt logical and utilitarian, not neglectful or insensitive. They didn’t understand the racial overtones to this act, and they felt that my Social Worker and I were making an issue out of nothing. <br /><br />Yet when I related this incident to my roommate, she was shocked and appalled that someone would do this, and that professionals would condone it. She spoke of how hair and the maintaining of it is a huge part of a black woman’s identity, and an important part of who they are and how they present to the outside world. And, even if this little girl was delayed, having a bald head, like a sheared sheep, seemed dehumanizing. I recognized, while talking with her that an act like that could never happen here. First, a black child would not be placed in a white home. Transracial placements are rarely done. And, secondly, preservation of identity and culture are central to every assessment and all the work we do here as Social Workers in Child Protection. It’s not on paper merely for the auditing people to check off. It is part of every discussion we have, when we are talking about these children and their families.<br /><br />The other day, one of my colleagues at work had had her car stolen and her house burgled. She is from Rwanda but was raised in Belgium. She had an idea of who had robbed her, but, when I asked her if she had shared her suspicion with the police, she said no, that she didn’t trust the police to protect her, as a black woman, that she was worried they would tell the man of her suspicions, and he might retaliate. At the time, I thought that it would be unusual for a person of color in the US to share something about her experience of racism so openly with a white person she barely knew. She would keep that to herself, or share it with someone from her own community, but she would be careful about making a statement like that to someone who is white. Because we (whites) are so quick to dismiss such statements as prejudicial themselves, to characterize the person who said it as being angry, and defensive, as having a ‘chip on her shoulder.’ We deny that racism is systemic in our society, and we discount and minimize their experiences of it, so these feelings are not shared with us. They are there, but they are below the surface of our interactions, hidden, and untouched. It keeps us from fully understanding one another. It distances us from each other. It keeps us forever apart.<br /><br />And, finally, I encounter the difference in the way we relate to each other everyday, here, when I step onto the double-decker bus that takes me to work. I see a few white faces, but mostly my bus is filled with people of color, and I think, as I sit with them, how a white person in the US would feel threatened when entering this environment. He would stand and hold the rail rather than sit down, she would clutch her purse closer to her side. Yet here, we sit together. There are Sikhs and men in kufis and women in hijabs. There are Indian women with shawls wrapped around their heads and men with dreadlocks down the middle of their backs. There are rhythms of languages from Africa and India and Poland and Romania and Palestine. We feel comfortable with each other. We don’t carry the fear and distrust that surrounds us in the US. Here, (at least in London—I am told it is very different in the countryside), people have learned to live together, to share a bus, a table, a grocery, to begin to make a stab at understanding one another, to look at each other, to talk.Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-85087211570756587592009-06-28T20:17:00.001+01:002009-06-28T20:20:36.742+01:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhERWwhtlt8WDZNy2WmPyQvNy_ScTZNnIB6QkOB_Y_OpM0OZO2AD6cVGiS5XQxm8ztWtzg2xoOrin0NjgQF-zS9rr622pwuHDTocngbOmoQ9v77Do2HvDdiFXDJgfOtDgi6N3xBdvE0eokM/s1600-h/English+Countryside+013.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352460328333948802" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhERWwhtlt8WDZNy2WmPyQvNy_ScTZNnIB6QkOB_Y_OpM0OZO2AD6cVGiS5XQxm8ztWtzg2xoOrin0NjgQF-zS9rr622pwuHDTocngbOmoQ9v77Do2HvDdiFXDJgfOtDgi6N3xBdvE0eokM/s320/English+Countryside+013.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><br />This is an area near my home called Lloyd Park. The English love their flowers!Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-85076917809206202892009-06-28T17:17:00.003+01:002009-06-28T20:14:23.536+01:00Missing MomI have been immersed in the domestic tasks commonly assigned to women, today, tasks I have managed to avoid developing an expertise in most of my life. When I was growing up, I hung out with the uncles playing poker and drinking in the basement, rather than watch the aunts in the kitchen upstairs, toiling over the turkey and stuffing. I climbed trees and tromped through the woods with my fishing pole, rather than learn the art of mending dresses and spiffing up my patent leather shoes. I wore a football helmet for an entire year, while other girls my age were learning how to twirl their hair into spit curls. My junior high outfits consisted of love beads, tie-dye shirts, and overalls, leaving little room for slinky shirts and panty hose. I never really paid attention to feminine things. They just didn't seem to interest me much.<br /><br />But now, at the age of 52, the universe is drawing me into tasks and desires that usually belong to the traditional roles of my gender. Here in England, clothes are hung on the line rather than thrown into a dryer, which necessitates figuring out how to operate an iron, unless I want to look like I retrieved my outfits from the rag-bag. The lack of convienent foods, pre-made sauces, and frozen food sections in the grocery requires me to learn to cook. And the gradual aging of my facial features has caused me to try a bit of eye makeup and blush, at least when I am headed into work. These are things most women learned as little girls, at their mothers' sides. But I did not see the need for them then; and now that I do, my mother cannot teach them to me.<br /><br />My mother was not the most traditionally feminine person, either, but there were a few things she knew well:<br /><br />She knew how to iron a shirt without pressing more wrinkles into the fabric than she was trying to get rid of.<br /><br />She knew how to paint her toenails red without also blotching up her toes.<br /><br />She knew how to apply make up without making herself look like Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane."<br /><br />She wasn't a fabulous cook, but she could make the best potato salad anyone ever tasted, and she understood the use of oils, baking dishes, casseroles, and roasting pans. One of the last things she did for me, while laying in her hospital bed, hooked up to a feeding tube, was talk me through the browning of a piece of meat to make a roast.<br /><br />She could cut vegetables for salad into nice, even pieces, instead of odd, mangled, chunks.<br /><br />She was an expert seamstress. She'd find a matching button for any blouse or pants, and sew it on by hand while you waited. She could resize clothes to match our losing or gaining patterns. She sewed my home ec project to keep me from flunking the class.<br /><br />She could get out any kind of stain--blood, chocolate, grass, it didn't matter--she worked at it until it was gone.<br /><br />Sometimes, it is not the big things we miss, when we lose our mothers, but the little things we took for granted, that come to mean so much.Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-59158591818313355242009-06-20T12:50:00.005+01:002009-09-07T17:18:47.503+01:00Peace in the ValleyIt feels good to have a quiet mind and a peaceful heart, even in the midst of the chaos of my new job, the bursting crowds in the streets, and on the buses, the tension of the unknown, the lack of command I have over my whereabouts, my direction, my environment. It is a different sort of feeling for me, one that I am not altogether used to, but one I am trying to cultivate in my daily life.<br />
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Last Friday, I got lost on my way to a meeting in which I was supposed to speak, and I recognized that this business of not knowing where I am most of the time forces me to come face to face with all the issues that are uncomfortable for me--lack of control, powerlessness, my insistence on self reliance, my resistance to asking for help. One of the locals here suggested that I would probably be able to find my way around better if I simply asked the bus drivers, who are sitting right there, and obviously know where they're going, and which stops would bring me closer to my destination. And that was a novel concept for me, asking someone who might know the answer! Because I don't want to appear lost, or stupid, because I don't want to bother them, because I think I don't deserve a moment of their time, that they must be very busy with other things. Ha! It is so ridiculous, the way we program ourselves. And in Tampa, where I knew where I was and how to get places, I could continue to nurture my insecurities, and protect myself from having to stretch beyond them. But here, I have no choice. I have to reach out, talk to people, bare my vulnerabilities, dare to ask for assistance! And the results are mostly encouraging--better than wandering around with a map that makes no sense to me, and grumbling about how hard it is to figure out this giant and overwhelming city!<br />
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My inability to have command over my environment has helped me to hone in on the sights and sounds and smells around me, and I find myself especially attuned to them--the sweet smell of ripening fruit being sold on the sidewalks, the purple thistle bushes outside the hospital where I work, with bumblebees clustered amongst them, the chirp of a red-breasted robin at 4 (yes, 4!) a.m. when the sun rises, the way the leaves rustle as the wind picks up in the evening, when the clouds begin to form--bits of beauty and texture amidst the dirt and pungent odors and litter of city life. They are small appreciations that make my living here so rich. I'm sure these pockets of beauty were present in Tampa, too, but I was so busy, and focused, and full of constant, streaming thought, that I failed to pay them any mind.<br />
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My work continues to cause me to stretch, as well, to learn to accept the "system" as it is, with all its maddening inefficiency and lack of logic, for my own sanity, if nothing else. Because it would be easy to walk around in a state of outrage and irritation, complaining about the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">bureaucratic</span> bungling, the unnecessary duplication of effort, the hours of time wasted outside and inside meetings, courtrooms, agency waiting rooms. I went to court with a colleague this week and watched the solicitor (their name for lawyers--solicitors are the lower rung, barristers are the higher rung, the ones who wear the wigs!) hand write our pleadings as we spoke them. Handwriting them, in longhand, pages of them! Then she took them to the solicitor in the other room, who was representing the mother, who made corrections and comments that were then rewritten, in longhand, to be read to the magistrates. Three magistrates were seated to listen to the pleadings, and it took them all morning to hear two cases! We arrived at 9:30 a.m. and at 12 noon we had still not had our case heard! And I used to complain about court in the US! It is wild! Antiquated! And somewhat <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">humorous</span>!<br />
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The population I am working with is much more diverse than in the states, but the problems remain largely the same--poverty, hopelessness, despair, generational repetition of long held family patterns--substance abuse, oppression, violence, neglect. But the cultural overlay is very different. <br />
My clients will have much to teach me, in the coming months and years.<br />
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I made the decision to remain in "the hood" as we would call it back home. I had begun looking for a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">flatshare</span> with an American friend, who wanted to live in Wimbledon, where there is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">alot</span> of green space and the streets are clean and the shops are trendy and cute. And most of the people are white or Indian, there, up and coming sorts, well dressed in the latest fashions, headed off to their tennis matches. And there is nothing wrong with that sort of living, I decided, but it's not what I came here for. I came here to be in the mix--to hear the languages of whole worlds being spoken, to smell curry sauces and kebab meat roasting, to sit with women in shawls and men in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">kufis</span> and old English ladies in their comfortable shoes on buses that rumble through the city streets. I love it, all of it, even the crappy little corner markets with their cheap mops and buckets on display, the well-worn storefronts, with their dingy brick walls, the old Arab store owners standing outside, smoking their hand rolled cigarettes. This is the life I came to be a part of. If I wanted clean and sterile suburbs, I could have stayed in Florida!<br />
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So as soon as I made that decision, I found a perfect flat! It is close to work, on a quiet street, of well kept, owner occupied flats, with a big kitchen and an old gas "cooker" as they call them here, and a "water closet" in the back, which is a toilet separated from the rest of the bathroom by a door. It has a cute little garden and flowers that are colorful and blooming. I'll move in around the third week of July.<br />
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My sixth week of life in London--a peaceful, exciting, and glorious journey!Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-984186097084650957.post-42142955660881763712009-06-07T12:03:00.000+01:002009-06-07T12:56:58.775+01:00A Cloudy, Sunny Day<em><span style="font-size:85%;">It is a cloudy, sunny, day, today, in London, and I am learning that this is the way the weather works here. One minute the sun shines brightly, and then clouds form, rain falls, wind gusts. My roomate says the people here are obsessed with the weather, because it changes so frequently, and you must always be prepared for whatever the changes bring. I have learned to dress in layers, at least three of them--tank or tee shirt, long sleeved shirt, sweater or jacket, neck scarf. The women here wear beautiful and colorful scarves to adorn their clothing, and to keep them warm. </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">My search for flats was discouraging and frustrating, ending in my decision to share with another colleague from the states. One bedrooms run about 700-750 pounds, which is close to $1000-$1050, and that is exclusive of heat, electricity, and council tax! I decided that I don't want to be so stubborn and set in my ways that I need to spend half of my salary on housing, leaving little for travel. I am just going to need to learn to live in harmony with another person, to compromise, to share. It is a concept that is a bit threatening to my isolationist self! But it is probably healthier for me in the long run!</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Work continues to be a challenge, as I am assigned more cases, and enter into the meat of the work of child protection in the UK. Their documentation requirements seem excessive and often duplicative, and I have never been a fan of paperwork, needless or otherwise! I prefer to interact with the people I am supposed to be serving, rather than justifying what I have done to someone above me. However, in light of the recent scandals here over abuses and deaths at the hands of perpetrators who were involved with social services, I understand their need to ensure everything is done to a certain standard. There are also many, many, interagency and interdisciplinary staffings, with the police, schools, health care professionals, immigration teams, housing teams, and any and all other professionals who may be interacting with a family. These staffings require an enormous amount of coordination and effort. </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">I attended a training this week on foster, adoption, and post adoption services, and was encouraged to see that they view the family much more holistically than we do in the states. Identity is very important to them, and because of that, transracial, even trans-cultural, adoptions, are rarely done. Once, the trainer said, an Ethiopian child was presented to be adopted by a family from Trinidad, and the judge said to the presenter, "do you have any idea how far Africa is from the Carribean?" There is a recognition of the need for the child to maintain some sense of his or herself as a member of a culture, and the idea is that adoption should enhance, rather than strip them from, their identity. </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Another encouraging aspect of adoption here is that they preserve the connection between birth family and child. They have incorporated into their formal procedures a process where pictures and letters are traded one to two times yearly. In addition, children have immediate access to their birth records once they turn eighteen. There is a recognition of the innate yearning we all have to know who and where we came from, here, a recognition that seems lost in the U.S. I think it is because we live in such a punitive culture in the U.S., where there seems a need to disregard any contribution of the birth family and to punish them for their sin of giving up or losing custody of their children--but we punish the child as well when we do that. It so refreshing to find that a perspective I have fought for years to promote is accepted practice here.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">There are many other things I love about living here, inluding the immersion in the worlds of so many different kinds of people. I love that the mix of culture is not only tolerated, but celebrated, here. I love that I can pick up a newspaper and have ready access to world events. I love the groceries here, with their brown, baked, breads, cheap, organic, fair trade fruits and vegetables, and endless varieties of rice!</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">I have been attending some meetings of a fellowship I belong to, and have found the people to be kind and warm and welcoming, a contrast to the stereotype of the cold and formal English style. Yesterday my roomate brought me some flowers from her garden to cheer me up, when she found me crying after I had found some pictures of Mom and Debra on my computer--pictures I have tended to avoid. People with cars often offer rides, going out of their way to bring me places. It is such a treat, now, to ride in a car! </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">I will be in a new home within the next month, and am looking forward to creating my very own space.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">I am headed to church at Unity, now, two bus rides and forty minutes away. But it will be worth it to worship with a community of like-minded folks. Mom and Debra will be there with me, I'm sure, repeating the affirmations and prayers they came to love and know so well. </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em>Tricia Ellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13133585754425129198noreply@blogger.com0