Category Archives: Life

Summer 2007

Two years ago, I was wading through a difficult summer of parental illness. This summer, I am doing the same. September will mark the second anniversary of my Dad’s passing. Two years is not a great temporal distance from such an event and I’m still keenly aware of the loss of his presence. Yesterday, someone mentioned a date and I burst into tears. It was the date of my father’s birthday. Such are the irrational reactions of the heart in grief.

Since May, my Mum has been in steady decline. A voice in my head keeps whispering, too soon, not ready for this. But these are things for which there are no options. Events unfurl. All we can do is react, be with, advocate for, be ready to let go. There are no predictions. No fixed date.

Anxiety is in my body. I have started waking at three a.m. in case the phone rings. In the morning, my neck is stiff with tension. I tend to eat badly or not at all. I tend not to want to do much of anything, to just wait for the news. But this serves no purpose. I try to rally my energies to useful activities, like housework and writing, but my heart isn’t in it. I force myself to do yoga and walk to release the tension. And I have promised myself that once a week I will do something relaxing, a massage, or a spa.

I visit regularly, but now she sleeps most hours, eats little, is mentally distracted. Conversation is sparse, me asking questions to which often no answers are forthcoming, or talking about my day, but she nods off after a few sentences. The phone is next to useless, causing confusion, often off the hook. My mother is unwinding, both mentally and physically. I am uncertain who she is becoming. There is little time to find out.

© Catherine Jenkins 2007

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Summer 2006

It’s been a year since my last journal update. Where to start? As was apparent from my last entry, my Dad was failing. And yes, he did die, just after midnight on September 7th, 2005, after a lengthy, but painless, period of decline. There was nothing more that could be done medically and he communicated in many ways that he was ready to go, in fact, almost impatient the last few days.

I moved into the retirement home the last two weeks and am grateful for the support and many kindnesses of the owners, staff and residents. I was with him leading up to and during his passing, the most difficult and important moments of my life to date. And as exhausting and emotional as that was, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I felt I was where I needed to be. I am also grateful to my many friends, acquaintances and clients for their patient understanding, love and support, which in many cases came from unexpected quarters. If my faith in humanity ever needed any bolstering, it certainly got it. And losing my Dad wasn’t as catastrophic as I’d feared it might be (for that I’m grateful too); it made sense and felt somehow correct.

I took two weeks off to recover both from the loss and the physical strain. I don’t remember much about that period, except I spent most of it at home, doing what I needed to do for myself, whatever that happened to be. Nerves rubbed raw by circumstance, there were some harsh moments with siblings and my Mum, which was unfortunate, but not surprising. We were all at very different stages of grief, all handling it our own way, all sure our way of handling it was the correct way. And it was correct for each us, but not for each other. I found myself biting my tongue with family and needing to be alone even more than usual.

And then I went into workaholic mode, one of my methods of coping with extreme emotional stress. Even as I was doing it, I knew it was reactive, a socially acceptable method of avoidance. So I worked sixty to eighty hours a week for several months and by the spring, I knew enough time had passed that I could stop doing that.

In my Dad’s last weeks he was mentally in England a lot, the place he went to university and first worked and first married. It was obviously a quickening for him, a time of profound growth and change. One day last summer he said he “wanted out of this snake pit” a reference, I think, more to the situation than the actual accommodation. When I asked him where he’d rather be, he closed his eyes and said rather dreamily, “On the Thames on a Tuesday afternoon.” He wanted to be in England. So I made that happen as best I could.

I started planning the trip shortly after his death last fall and finally went in June. I travelled lightly, spending a week in London, staying in one of the residences of his old university, wandering around the Bloomsbury district he had wandered. I devoted Tuesday to the Thames, doing the London Eye, a riverboat tour and walking the embankment. On Wednesday, I took the tube to Ealing, found his old residence (no longer part of the university) and the church in which his friend had introduced him to Bach. I then continued to Kew Gardens and walked along the Thames path to Richmond. And there, on a quiet part of the river, surrounded by lush trees and grasses and birds, I scattered the small film canister of his ashes I’d been carrying with me throughout the trip.

And yes, I felt he was so close, even after the tangible remains had been combined with the waters and mud of that old river. I kept asking him for guidance, what I was to do with these ashes. I knew that the busy downtown London Thames on a windy, chilly afternoon wasn’t right. And I let him guide me to the right place, the place he’d intended. And when I reached it, I knew I wasn’t to go into Kew Gardens, but around it on the path. And when I reached the right place, I could feel him telling me that, pushing me to get on with it. And once I had, there was such a profound sense completion, of having done what I’d been asked to do, such a lifting of weight and grief and of things left undone. That’s stayed with me and now I feel I truly am moving forward again.

The trip to England continued with a driving tour through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. I’m proud to say I drove 734.4 miles on English “highways” without serious incident. I have to admit it was a challenging learning curve though. Driving on the left was the easiest part of it; getting used to such narrow roads with stone walls on either side and minimal road signage was much more challenging. But I saw everything I set out to see: Bath, Avebury, Stonehenge, Salisbury, Corfe Castle, Looe, Polpero, St. Michael’s Mount, Boswell, Tintagel, Clovelly, Glastonbury and Wells. I did lots of writing and took lots of photos. And although I never stopped for very long, I came home feeling relaxed, refreshed and regenerated.

Since coming home, I’ve also taken my annual trip to the Shaw Festival in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake. I saw two plays by G.B., Too True to be Good and Arms and the Man, both very timely vehicles with characters enmeshed in war; both typical Shaw plays, witty and intelligent, funny and pointed. Plays that make you think. I also saw Noel Coward’s Design For Living, a brilliant and honest consideration of a three-way relationship. It’s the sign of great writing when seventy years after the fact, it’s still relevant and all three of these plays are. I also saw High Society, which, after my afternoon wine tour, delivered an appropriate level of fun fluff. And I finally had an opportunity to sample some fruit wines (plum and blackberry), something I’ve wanted to try for years; I was not disappointed. So, another lovely trip.

Now that I’m back home for the rest of the summer (with the exception of short trips to the family cottage), I’m writing in earnest again. Well, not in earnest, because it’s a romantic comedy. I’m back working on the novelization of my screenplay Pairs & Artichoke Hearts and enjoying it immensely. An excerpt is posted on the Works in Progress page.

Wishing you a fun, relaxed summer to enjoy the company of those you love.

© Catherine Jenkins, 2006

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March April 05

The last few months I’ve done some interesting research and development, a bit of living my life as the experiment it is. After years of bruxism (grinding my teeth in my sleep) and finally cracking a molar, I decided that perhaps it was time I did something about it. The best my dentist could offer was a mouth guard, but that seemed like a bandage solution to me, not really getting to the root cause of the issue. I’d been seeing an osteopath for a year and when problems in my jaw/neck region continued to plague me, she said, “This isn’t something physical; it’s a physical manifestation of something else.” I did intensive psychotherapy a few years ago and came to terms with a number of psycho-emotional issues and in my osteopath, I’d finally found the right person to fix my body, resolving a number of physical problems. What was left? The subconscious.

I’d had a hypnotherapy session last year, more out of curiosity than anything else. The specific focus of that session was past life regression, again, more out of curiosity than anything else. I came away unsure of what I thought about hypnotherapy or past lives, but it meant I had some first-hand experience of hypnosis, some idea of what it felt like and prior contact with a hypnotherapist I felt I could trust. No way would I let just anyone into my head!

So I called Frances and she assured me that hypnotherapy was a viable solution for my bruxism. In total, we had six sessions. Hypnotherapy works much more rapidly than conventional talk therapy, allowing access to long-buried memories that form the basis of who we are. Working in conjunction with my osteopath, the combined therapy was nothing short of magic. And ultimately, we resolved more than just the bruxism problem. On the way, we also discovered the root of some other physical issues that have been plaguing me with increased regularity for the last few years, as well as some deep-seated emotional issues. With childhood events, remembering and considering them from an adult perspective allows one to acknowledge their root and let it go. The problem simply isn’t a problem anymore.

Potentially trickier territory is the past-life arena. Part of me thinks okay, I’m a writer, I have a vivid imagination, I’m just telling myself stories; but another part of me wants to accept that these are indeed memories from previous lives. While in a hypnotic state, a couple of times I started describing things that made no sense to my conscious mind. My hypnotherapist urged my conscious mind to back off and just allow my unconscious to describe what it was seeing. On one of these occasions, it was an activity that she was familiar with, even though I’d never heard of it and didn’t know what it was. Interesting. And the present-life bruxism seems to be the result of an injury to my jaw some five hundred years ago. Perhaps I am telling myself stories, but then how do I explain the positive physical changes which subsequently occurred? Even if they’re just stories, they’re plainly stories I need to tell myself to heal.

So, do I believe in past lives? In reincarnation? Well, why not? The universe is essentially composed of energy and energy tends to flow and recycle. Doesn’t it make sense that sometimes it manifests physically and other times not, that the essence of who we are flits in and out of bodies, learning, growing, moving on? It’s a story I can tell myself that makes as much sense as any other. And quite frankly, I prefer that to the story that says this is it; a story that always struck me as promoting a certain unhealthy desperation about hanging onto this life at all costs.

And do I believe in hypnotherapy? Undoubtedly. It’s proven to be miraculously beneficial in resolving issues which were preventing me from healing and moving forward. Somehow, seeing myself as a small part of the grand scheme of things helped me see the bigger picture, helped me recognize the pettiness of some things that were annoying me, enabling me to let them go and turn my focus and energy to more meaningful pursuits. Anything that can create that kind of positive change is obviously beneficial. Would I recommend it? Absolutely, as long as you’re comfortable with the practitioner.

Catherine Jenkins 2005

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Sept Oct 2004

May-June Journal //Top Navigational Bar III (By BrotherCake @ cake@brothercake.net) //Permission granted/modified by Dynamicdrive.com to include script in archive //For this and 100’s more DHTML scripts, visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com   Journal

September – October 2004

I need to edit my apartment. I’ve decided that’s the most productive way I can think of it. And it’s not a light copy edit, the clean, easy, do-as-I-go edit of The Obsessions of Yoyo Zaza; it’s the taxing, arduous, slash-and-burn edit of Swimming in the Ocean. Too much material, awkwardly compiled over too long a period. An editing nightmare.

This is the spring cleaning I didn’t do in the spring, the new year’s cleaning I didn’t do in the new year. It’s a combination of too many moves without enough time or energy in between to sort, compounded by eight years of sitting in the same apartment without enough time or energy to sort. I’m not looking forward to this. Can you tell?

The only time I’ve gotten the moving in thing right, was when I went to Ottawa. My first apartment there, I took a solid week to unpack and arrange, to really move in. I discovered that once my abode is properly moved into, I can maintain it with ease. But usually I don’t have the luxury of time to really move in; I certainly didn’t here and so, eight years later, I’m still finding boxes to unpack.

Why now? The primary motivation is that beginning in October, I’ll be conducting a series of creative writing workshops in my living room (see www.solidus.ca/workshops for details). That’s compounded by it being September. For the first time ever, I didn’t have a sudden strong urge to buy school supplies, but there is a sense of returning to some kind of order, some regularity. And it’s still further compounded by observing my octogenarian parents’ own sorting and culling process, watching my Dad wrestle with whether to keep or recycle his notes from a 1953 French class. I don’t want to be doing that at his age, but I know my packrat mentality has a genetic component, so it seems almost inevitable.

It’s not that I necessarily value all the stuff I collect. Some of it I obviously do, but most of it just follows me home or is the result of working on manuscripts (mine and other people’s). There are piles of paper everywhere and it takes time to decide what’s of current value. I can always think of a myriad of other things I’d rather be doing.

I don’t like living in this; entropy just seems to happen around me. I’m ashamed of the mess and don’t want anyone else to see it. If my friends sometimes wonder why they’re so rarely invited around, this is why. For some reason, my friends are all minimalist neat-freaks, fastidious organizers and cleaners. It makes me very self-conscious of my chaotic space. I am, at heart, a minimalist too, but I’ve never yet been able to achieve that state of grace in my surroundings. When I’m working intensely on a manuscript, my desk and chair become like a cockpit I climb into over a horseshoe-shaped pile of books and papers. Debris collects around me without my conscious recognition, dishes pile up in the sink, garbage cans overflow, cat hair dust bunnies openly parade across my floors. At some point I become aware of this, usually after the creative fervour runs its course, and it’s always a sudden perception, a rude awakening, accompanied by a sense of disgust.

Especially when I’m writing, I spend little time in my body; I become a thought with hands and eyes. But it goes beyond that. Generally I spend very little time in the physical and it’s only when I think of how others might perceive this mess that I become conscious of it. “Hell is other people.” It’s a very Sartrian moment. I live alone and that’s part of it too. If I shared space, I’d be chronically conscious of how others perceived it and would do my part to maintain it (unless, of course, I was in the throes of creative passion).

A few years ago, I also realized that beyond the time/energy excuse, the underlying stumbling block is a psychology of long-term poverty. I feel a need to hang onto whatever I have, because I can’t afford to replace it. I’ve tended to hoard stuff as a twisted kind of security blanket. Now for some things, small appliances for instance, that makes sense, but it makes none for the piles of paper and straightforward junk currently littering my abode. In the last few years, I’ve also become acutely aware of the need to make room for things. It’s difficult for positive, constructive change to muscle through the door when there’s a dusty box of papers blocking it. Energy stagnates and collects dust too if it isn’t properly cared for. Room must be made for the new.

As once suggested by my friend Spencer, perhaps I should consider a more William Morris approach: “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

It’s been a difficult year, but I feel like a page is turning. Things are very busy, packed right now. It’s a transitional period. I can see in the next short while things will settle into a new pattern, still busy, but more clearly defined and simpler. I can feel a freshening breeze rising. I need to make space to breathe it in. It’s definitely time to edit my apartment.

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Sept – Oct 2003

Ten Ways Cats Age More Gracefully Than Humans

(In no particular order and in no way claiming to be a definitive list.)

  1. SkyeBeing quadrupedal, rather than bipedal, cats are much less likely to trip, stumble, fall down and not get up again, break something.
  2. While people are often aware that they’re slowing down, physically or mentally or both, cats are not conscious of this. Mice may move faster, but cats definitely don’t slow down – they’re just being their usual cool selves.
  3. Even when cats lose a faculty, such as sight, it has limited impact on their functioning. A blind cat reads as well as it could before going blind and can still find its food dish and the sunny spot without issue.
  4. As with people, elderly cats may sleep more hours than they used to, however cats normally sleep about eighteen hours a day anyway, so who’s going to notice?
  5. Because of their high metabolism, if a cat becomes morbidly ill, it usually dies quickly, rather than suffering the lingering demise humans seem so practiced at.
  6. Unlike people, cats are very in theMoon moment. They don’t fall into reminiscences deluding themselves about the “good old days.”
  7. Cats rarely complain about aching joints, diminishing faculties, lack of appetite, etc., even though they may experience these.
  8. The existence of a cat is a very immediate thing – now they’re here, now they’re gone. There’s no property, money, or material goods for survivors to quibble over and no lawyers need be involved.
  9. Whereas people often become more prickly with age, dropping masks of decorum, cats often become even more cuddly, happy to be warmly on your lap, purring all the while. (Notice I said “often” in both cases, not always.)
  10. Cats never think about going to the gym, diet (other than liking or disliking a given food), heart disease, stroke, cancer, osteoporosis, life insurance, critical care, what’s to be done with the remains etc. and they CERTAINLY NEVER consider plastic surgery, chemical peels or botox injections.

© Catherine Jenkins, 2003

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