The derivative of Pain

On suffering

Sir took a shower today. It was... as always is, an experience. But with many many doubts, and much confusion on the way... a shower became the hot water of temperament.

Hot hot water... good for cleansing the soul? No?

One would surmise that the shower is the best form of cleansing, at this time, this place, that is our place... 20...something century. What if there were times that the shower, i.e. the act of cleansing, is a farce? Where would we be now?

Perhaps enough cleansing of words, enough prettyi-fying of our experience.

When a friend is dying, one would say the the act of cleansing is a ritual. Next question: what is the act of cleansing? What is the act of pretty-fying? How and where do we start to see that the end is near, that the sanctifying of the human existence can step in to our word of grief?

Living with grief is the world only known to those that have lived with grief. It is seldom talked about, sometime written about. Grief exists in many many forms. Sir has an amazing friend who is able to vocalise/sanctify/publish the grief of others through his writing, yet seems unable to write about his own. Why such a block, methinks, I do not know.

Sir's wife, a wonderful creative and unknowingly poetic woman, is living with grief as it flows.. with one that is dying. The death is a concept that we understand, in terms of now alive, now dead. But the death of a loved one is not so sanctified in such short terms... where does the death begin? Where does it end? We only have the experience of life... life around us, life encompassing us, life in our loved one as we see it disappear.. and what does that really mean? Life is gone.

Our experience of it however is such a different turn. It is private, and can become public. If we are lucky it is a shared event. Sir's mother spent two nights with her, on the train of passing, from the place of life to the place of peace. Many many times of conversation, for the dying are alone, but do not want to be alone.

Sir's wife is an amazing woman. Creative, loving and kind. With the kindness comes a belief that there are others that are, too, kind. So with the death that is unfolding, Sir has to say that there is no other place that would be better to be, in this time, this space and this knowing.

Our experience of death makes us change... yes perhaps Sir has harped on about this too long. But she thinks not. There is not enough writing about people that are gone. Our memories are one thing, but the truth about the person that was well loved is another entirerly. Perhaps the person was loved in part... perhaps not fully loved but loved none the less. What then?

Sir's experience of suffering is just so. The feeling of the death of another is heavy. It weighs... and this weight has an exactness. It does change, so could be described as a derivative of pain, from one day to another. Sometimes the pain is more, sometimes it is less. The pain constant is what we carry in our hearts, about our loved one, about the positive and negative weights that we have associated with them. Because of course, when our loved one is dead all we have is our constants.

Sir's wife is at the beginning. Sir knows that the beginning of a scale and graph of pain is none that no other can know. It is a lifeline of feeling. It begins, but does not end.

How well we have been loved

The shortest day has passed. With it the weather has stayed cold and wet, finally a true Melbourne Winter! With the grey skies comes the task of cleansing... Sir is packing up the memories and throwing out the junk. And boy, how much is there? Lots and lots and lots. Sometimes too overwhelming to think about, but always with the old saying "How does one eat an Elephant?" in mind.

The heaviness of possessions, the decisions that are made on the basis of worth. Whose worth? What would Sir take from here to remind her of her mother? So much anger in Sir's early twenties about the quality and quantity of love... and now, when the physicality of maternal love is no longer, unearths a treasure.... words and words and words and letters and letters. All saying the same thing. And how well does Sir know now that she was loved? Very very well.

Odd always to look back on the person one once was. Feisty, bouncy, difficult, prickly, razor sharp. Is Sir still that person? Is there ever a lost past? Why do we keep the letters of the dead and shred the letters of our first love? There is regret... yes, at not knowing, not realising, and now too late the picture of who Sir was... in lots of ways just a spoiled brat. Thank goodness Sir knows this now.

But it is never too late. To unfold the memories of the past and absorb that feeling of being encased, accepted and cherished. To have been so loved is a gift, and in its self with the act of cleansing feels light and good.

April 8

I walked across the bridge over Burgundy St

Looked right to the sky

Full Moon hung over the hazy Dandenongs

Down the valley into Heidelburg

I drove home

Into a blazing golden sun

I would have been dazzled

If my eyes weren't wearing grief already

6A

Its a dry echoey ward

We have the best seat

And morphine crystalizes the view

Parts of me in strange places

My heart is with bed 13

Is it a lucky number?

in America, 12 to 14

Somewhere ahead the road for us stops

and we don't walk together any more

Hold my hand tightly now

I want to feel your heart beating

into my palm

08/04/09

364

I can feel it now

again

the paper cutout of your pain

lays down over my body

like a sheet settling over a well made bed

stabs of incomprehension, aches of recognition

your hands made my cup of herbal tea

tonight

your crown prickles at the dark corners

your eyes look at me from the mirror

green, blue, yellow, cloudy

sad

red

I can see your white temples

while I was playing Bach at your viewing

thank god I was only me

my heart reached over my breast bone

and my lips

kissed your cold forehead

warm fingers massaged your praise

I know you miss me

but you know where I am

Sinny

Gritty white cliffs left

a slimy grit mark in my bum cleft

I couldn't wash it off until the next morning

Then I had a clothes crisis

no shorts??

wore dirty weekend ones

kids didn't smell them over the zoo and

weird onion B O of the gorilla bachelor pad

Smell of Coogee and dreams of an

art deco apartment

walking distance from the (now) naked womens' pool

talking to Arbabic Lebanese migrant

teach for austraya

misses his country but

hates sydney and his bogan uncle(s...s...s)

back yard too big

wife too demanding he has

lost his language

and there is too much grass

want to get out of this town

Hard Rubbish

Young man, younger than my heart right now

didn't see me

but I saw him

ice wobbly, nicotine eyes

rifling through the pile

from the big white house

I strode down -

carrying moor loot

Words incomprehensible, then

'yagottanythinelse?'

'nah'

take the bags from the trolly

mum wouldn't mind

Mother and Daughter

There had to be a moment when Sir's recent writings would turn from squishy rambles down memory lane.

Perhaps the ideas that surround grief and mourning are like water crystals in a cold climate.... beautiful while our hearts are frozen and our tears sublime into ice on our eyelashes, lovely while the temperature stays cold enough to make tree branches living light prisms. But soon enough comes the first SNAP of melting ice, soon enough the water's suspension through the atmospheric stratum becomes a linear movement towards the ocean.

Anger has taken many forms in Sir's life. The recent explosion was unearthed by a comment made during a drunken rant by one of Sir's friends at the Wife's birthday party. After having an evening where said Friend was generally unsociable and her partner was terribly embarrassed by her behaviour... Sir walked into the lounge to hear Friend say that Sir had 'walked into a position' at the Salt Mine in such a manner that suggested a level of contempt and resentment that Sir certainly was not expecting.

Perhaps other events have triggered the final response to this comment, but in general, Sir certainly thought of herself as the working class daughter of a migrant. Mother and Father Reeves came to Australia as 10 pound Poms, with daughter Reeves, Sir's mum, confidant and greatest admirer for many years.

The anger that was inspired by this comment bubbled over into rage.... rage at the impossibility of being surrounded by death and being wretchedly sad coupled with the rage that surfaces at one's "friends and relatives''... those ones that have never known the utter horror of grief. The kind of rage that makes Sir want to shake and shake said Friend out of her pious self pity, screaming "Shut up!! Just Shut up and get your head out of your ass!!".... and consider the situation of people around you who have lost far more than you have ever considered that you had.

What happens to the discourse between the classes when the aspirational take on the form of almost middle class? Where does one start to look at one's history and really invest in either working class or middle class? Is there a

difference between how successful people see their class aspirations? Does it change the way that we talk to each other, like Sir and Friend... or is there a moment where the relationship SNAPs and the single string of class recognition and teaching that joins us breaks?

And Sir finds her anger is so random and passionate that it must be based in grief. This idea that we somehow leave behind the people that we have lost feels like such an unfounded lie. One told perhaps to comfort our ever young daughter heart... the part of us that simply will not believe that there will never be another day, another moment, another connection, another hug, another argument. The inability to face the immenseness of the cavity that she has left in our very being... both spiritually and physically.

In the life of Friend, her mother is still a figure of immense power and authority. The kind of strict mother who is alive in our minds when we are in our teens and twenties. Before we have tried to see her as a human being, before our feelings of betrayal when we realise that she is actually only a woman made of skin and bones and muscle like us, before we look into her eyes and see the mirror of ourselves in her smile, her ambitions in our steps... before all this Mother is a huge mythical woman of Goliathical proportions. She can see all and hear all. She has the answers before we ever know the questions. She is harsh and unyielding, strict and un-reproachable.

Friend still see herself as daughter to this mother. Still in the country running away into the back paddock when things get too tough. The logical conclusion here is that Friend is still hopeful that Mother will come and find her, whisper to her that things will be alright. That there will be the change in the old lady's attitude and childhood will be restored.

But in Sir's past experience there is no real 'logical' when it comes to feelings and identities. Sir is cross with herself on some levels because she vowed she would never become involved with a woman as a friend in such a close way after 2007 and the nightmare that it was. Sir said that it was the finish, that there would be no skin creepingly touchy-feely moments. No responses to other people's expectation's, no changing behaviour to make other people feel comfortable... especially not to make other working class women feel unchallenged by Sir's random talents and intellectual aspirations.

So Sir bites the anger and chews on it slowly. Wondering the stuff that really makes up friendship. Knowing the invisible bindings of this particular moment have changed. Feeling the inconceivable emotions that are released as the ice breaks and the river flows toward the ocean again.