Breaking the Silence

I'd sat at my desk for two years, watching as the seasons changed outside my office window, unsure of what I was really doing with my life, when my dad called to say he was having problems reading and was getting tested for epilepsy.

“The words have been jumping around on the page of my case notes”, he said. “I haven't been able to make sense of the sentences.”

I'll never forget the oddness of that phone call, peculiar mostly because of the fact that my dad never rang me, but also for the change in direction my life took following it. He was a busy medical negligence barrister and phoning me at all, let alone in the middle of the day, was a highly unusual occurrence.

I was 25 and working as a copy writer for a famous artist in London at the time. It was a job that looked good from the outside but it left me feeling trapped and uninspired. Writing about other people's creations, supporting other people's careers – it wasn't what I wanted for myself.

My dad had suffered 'an absence' in court and had a lingering metallic taste in his mouth for the last few weeks. He was concerned enough to make a doctor's appointment for the next morning but said it was nothing to worry about – the likelihood was that a minor seizure had taken place; something that could be easily medicated.

Two weeks later the tests showed the reason he was having trouble reading was because of a tumour the size of a tennis ball that had taken hold in his brain. He was 61 years old, a man of science and cricket.

When the steroids used to counteract the wasting of his body brought about by chemotherapy warped his face to bulbous proportions, he didn't let anyone in on how it made him feel. He was intent on beating his cancer, insistent that the oncologists, neurosurgeons and healthcare system knew how to cure him. He made no room for discussion.

My dad being who he was, he couldn't articulate any of his fears, nor much of his love for me. He was born shortly after the Second World War and sent away to boarding school at the age of 7. He was part of that generation of upper-middle class English men who never really knew their mothers, nor knew how to communicate with women. When I was a little girl my mum showed me the tear-stained letters he wrote to his parents, begging them to come and collect him from school. They never did, and so I figured his heart must have learnt very early on how to suppress its love.

In the early days following his diagnosis the two of us hung around at home together while my mum went out to shop. Dad was doing some work in his study one day when I alerted him to the fact that the cat had brought a mouse in and left it on the kitchen floor, its insides hanging out but still clinging on to life. Neither of us had the stomach to deal with it but we agreed it should be put out of its misery. I hung back, out of sight, and watched as he carried it out to the garden and laid it in the flower bed. Unaware that I could hear him, he raised a shovel in the air and uttered the words “I'm sorry little mouse. I'm sorry”, before bringing the shovel down to kill it. I stepped back from the doorway and found somewhere in the house to cry.

Around the same time, and no longer able to keep up the pretence that what I was writing about at work was sustainably interesting or meaningful, I left my job and followed my love of writing into food. I was spurred, in the face of my dad's life-threatening illness, to take charge of my time, to write more for myself and to let my experience lead the way. Looking back, it was a way of getting a little further into my heart's expression without having to rip back the skin of the inexpressible in my life. It didn't require me to get too deep but it asked that I insert an 'I' into my writing: writing that gave voice, at last, to my point of view and made me feel less invisible.

As I made my transition from art journalism to food writing, and my dad made his own transition to part-time work, I remember visiting him for lunch one day in Farringdon. We wandered together through the old food market, sensing how alienated we were by our new and oddly-forged time together as father and daughter, our arms looped together in horrible fraudulence. And rather than opening to each other in those final, cognitive months before the tumour robbed language and reason from this most reasonable man, we played our way through a series of lunchtime get-togethers instead, with neither of us able to talk about what was actually happening. I would try to bring my best care and animation to the subject of work and end up offering sandwich crusts to my mouth, though my stomach remained empty with worry.

When my lunch hour was over I couldn't bear to say goodbye to him, each time feeling the constriction at my throat as my heart swelled and my eyes filled with tears. I'd pull him in tight for a hug but he only pushed me away, his arms a brace against intimacy. He'd walk down the steps to the Tube and I'd return to my desk, swallowed whole by the knowledge that our time was on loan but we didn't know how to spend it.

Not long after, my Renaissance man of a dad – jovial, cool-headed and an intellectual, hugely admired by his peers – started to lose his mind. For some time he had struggled here and there to remember some of his words. Not wanting to embarrass him, we learned to wait while he paused his sentence and cast around his brain, an invisible lance poised in his hand. Mostly, though, I couldn't help but make my suggestion and offer him language as a way to restore the widening sense that he was being humiliated by his own illness and his own, incredible brain.

When he started writing non-sensical letters in wobbly writing to the insurers or the car leasers, demanding a refund or expressing his outrage at something that had never happened, I had the vaguest sense that I knew at last how he was feeling: wronged, cut off and disempowered. He didn't finish any of the letters: he'd date them instead from years before and struggle to complete the addresses on the envelopes, most of which would sit by the front door until my mum, tired and desperate, hid them in the recycling bin.

When, some months later, it was obvious he wasn't going to live, his life was limited to the hospital bed in our dining room, my mum's vibrant oil paintings hanging from the walls. I would cycle two or three times a week to be there. On quieter days I'd pull down the railings on his bed and pillow in against his body, both of us pretending to watch the test match on the TV. No longer able to talk he would wink at me from eye to eye and wiggle his eyebrows in some sweet expression of love. And then when the winks left, his hands would squeeze mine in blips and dashes: a pattern of Morse code pulsing between us.

Some days, when sitting at his bedside was too much to bear, I'd move to his study and write letters to him, reminding myself of our ability to reach into language and have it pull us out from the water, if only we can find the end of the rope. I wrote in the hope that he could hear what I wanted to say and I wrote to my future self as a way of reaching beyond the agony of now. As self-soothing missives they had a way of making me feel less mad.

But it was the silence between us as my dad lay dying, the hush of the house on the morning that he passed, and the struggle that ensued around how to articulate what I was feeling, that brought to the surface the memory of having been partially deaf as a little girl. I hadn't thought about it for years: had buried it, perhaps, as a way of forging ahead against the belief that to be deaf – to be submerged somewhere under water – was to be cut off from the world, unaware of what was going on. As I grew up past 5 and my hearing returned, inexplicably, to normal, I wanted to prove that I was alert and engaged, one step ahead rather than limping one behind. I wanted too to prove that I had a place here and a voice to be heard; that what I had to say mattered just as much as the next person.

The weird thing was that my mum - a painter - had been practically blind when she was young, and she too had struggled to find her way in the world with the elimination of one of her senses. After my dad died she stopped painting for a long time. The door to her studio stayed locked: she wouldn't even get close. The depression that was hanging over my mum, my elder brothers and I was weirdly hard to talk about.

I think it took 2 years but in the end, my mum returned to her studio to paint a new kind of picture: the swathes of her large, colourful canvases were replaced by small, tree-tunnelled pathways, marked out in charcoal. A long time later, when we were sure he wasn't coming back, we cleared the contents of his desk and found a poem he'd written in 1980, 3 years before I was born. In it he gives thought to the possibility of life having turned out any other way; he daydreams of being a bird, a cloud, or even a mouse. And in the end, he surmises that he wouldn't have changed a thing. At last (though too late) – I had a way of knowing something of his inner, creative life; of knowing how he felt.

In that time I too found the confidence to put words to my experience, to trust in the language that sought to write my own stories, my own narrative, from my perspective. No longer deaf, and with the rope of an interior language throwing itself out to save me, I wrote a way out of the silence. I wrote a way home.
 

The healing power of writing.

I’ve been reflecting a lot recently on the power of writing.

Somehow, it’s only just become apparent to me that I’ve always written; until now, I thought it was something everybody did. It turns out they haven’t been doing it—just like I haven’t been running marathons or fixing motorbikes.

Writing’s been a constant through every job I’ve had since graduating from my English Literature BA. It’s taken me through each of my jobs in the art world, into ridiculously exciting territory with my food business, and was a way of making some additional money when I was studying for my master’s. But aside from the press releases, articles, artist interviews, or biographies I’ve tapped out for professional work, by far the most rewarding and therapeutic of my writing time has been the stuff of the pen, the words that have connected ink and paper to the flow of my mind or the ache of my heart.

During my first breakup at age 15, I wrote sheets and sheets of poetry about the first of my heart’s disappointments. I remember the process clearly, mapping out the hurt with heavy metaphor and candid feeling. And aside from finding what I put down at that tender age to be cringeworthy now, I’m glad I kept the folder of pages, each of which I remember filling with ferocious speed, tearing one sheet after another from the pad.

Nearly 15 years later, in the pitch-black pain of my dad’s battle with a brain tumour, I found myself writing through the pen again—writing letters to him (if only he could still read) and attempting to send letters out to my future self as a way of reaching beyond the agony of now. I wrote in the hope that he could hear what I wanted to say, and I wrote when sitting at his bedside was too much to bear.

A few months after his death, and when the long-term boyfriend I was hoping to marry broke my heart by walking, inexplicably, away, the act of putting pen to paper and letting the ink flow through was a step in the direction of expression. Most days were pure, felt chaos: I had lost my past and my future in one fell swoop and the only thing the present held was a pain so intense, so physical, so complex, I wished not to be alive.

Over time—a long, agonising time, during which I somehow found the motivation to write an award-winning blog, open a restaurant, and publish a cook book (isn’t it obvious that some of our best work comes from the tangled hell that lives right at the bottom of our being?)—it was a commitment to meditation, and later, yoga, that helped me to see the perfect clarity and abundance of the present moment.

The paradox seems so obvious: how can getting real and comfortable with the present moment be a tonic for the searing pain of right-now experiences?

Well, it turned out that meditation was the tool that allowed some space between me and my thoughts. And once I edged through that initially small gap, I started to be able to separate pain from stories, pain from past hurts, pain from fear of the future, and so on. Away from the maelstrom of the mind, all that was left was the pain—which, though considerable—was a more liveable, manageable phenomenon.

Of course, the practice wasn’t easy—and it isn’t for anyone, ever.

That’s why we call it practice and it’s how we come to cultivate and to nurture, rather than “succeed” or “improve at it.” The reason we return to sitting is in order to gain awareness of how the mind functions and to pay respect to the complexity of experience that is human life. Sitting, for me, is about making space, seeing with clarity what’s going on, and allowing the dust to settle.

In writing, we can find a way to label what we are feeling, much like we do in sitting meditations. The truth is, I don’t feel that there is a language for that kind of loss, nor that we’ll ever find it. But at least what is turmoil and agony on the inside finds something of a voice through the known field of language and more than anything provides a process by which to let the grief through. Putting pen to paper makes room for a stream of consciousness outside of ourselves, reminding us of our ability to reach into language and have it pull us out from the water, if only we can find the end of the rope. That, at least, is a start in releasing…releasing…releasing.

When I sit to write, I open myself to the same quality of attention that I’m cultivating in sitting practice. The blank page tempts me in the same way as the meditation cushion: in both places I must “make myself empty like a pot,” approach it with beginner’s mind, and be susceptible to doubts, fears, and second voices before letting the flow of awareness and focused attention settle me into a way of being that is at once present and transcendent. In both, I experience how the present moment ushers in the next.

As acts of discovery, both practices help me to trace the contours of my awareness, to take me deep into my truth, and to direct me back out from the vast reaches conjured by my psyche. If nothing else, writing pulls me out to the edge, into the mystery, and makes me feel less mad.

Back then, I also wrote because I knew I’d need to look back and remember how far I’d come; that, unimaginable as it was then and in every successive moment, there would—according to those around me—be a time when I’d look back and find myself in a stronger place.

I’m happy to say that time is now. There’s no more waking myself up in the middle of the night sobbing and reaching out for the pen to scratch some words into the notebook. Rather, my writing’s taken me to a place of stimulating academic enquiry where I can explore the healing connections between death and spirituality, mind-body practices, and yoga and neuroscience.

I count myself lucky, for those words have contributed to my healing. To write now from a point of resolution—one in which I find my spiritual enquiries and the facts of my life entwined, reconciled, and resolved—is about recovery (literally meaning “a return to truth”) and it is about recalling what was, what lingers, and what has been relieved.

Research shows that when we select, edit, and refine language so as to make sense of life events beyond our control, we positively impact our response to the events themselves and actively improve immune function, physical and emotional health, and behavioral changes associated with being able to act on our own behalf.

The sense of agency that comes with crafting a coherent narrative out of seemingly chaotic events that were deemed to be incomprehensible or beyond our control is crucial to the recovery of a lost self. Turning disarray into wholeness removes some of its power to hurt: we have alchemised the pain into art. Not only do we celebrate survival, passage, and courage in carefully selecting language as the representative of experiences that were found to be indescribable, but we replace feelings of hopelessness and victimization with the experience of control and authorship.

In writing, we become an observer to our pain, and so create space between shards of memory and present cognition.

Restoring control and identity through the conscious crafting of language, according to de Louise de Salvo in Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, “…we symbolically resolve the searching and the yearning stages of the mourning process into the ‘finding and having’ stage” when we unearth the right details and phrases.

Not only this, but we are enabled to create public testimony out of private endurance and can use the thought involved in ordering events, conversations, and happenings as leverage out of being drawn back into past horrors. The miracle of art-making is that it allows us to turn the mirror toward the light of our once-charred soul and to unspool the grief that lives there.

The act of linking feelings with troubling events also causes our bodies to display responses associated with yoga and meditation by working to integrate the left and right hemispheres of the brain, lower the heart rate, and relax the body. When we confront the chaos of our memories in this way, we bring unassimilated events into an integrated sense of self and personhood, and when we’re no longer working to actively inhibit the story, we alleviate the stress of holding ourselves back.

Actively inhibiting our stories, in fact, is shown to be damaging to the body’s defense mechanisms and even the biochemical workings of the brain and nervous system, resulting in cumulative stress and an increased risk of illness and stress-related problems. Confrontation of trauma, however, reduces biological stress and helps assimilate the event, becoming something we can understand and ultimately put behind us, making it less psychologically daunting. Becoming the observer of the memories, then, leads to an improvement in health and well-being.

In those post-loss years, I spent a lot of time alone: processing, thinking, reflecting, practicing, changing—building strength again.

And for the most part, however hard I searched, I still couldn’t find a way to express what I’d been through to the people I met, so I continued to write for myself. I am ever glad I returned to the page in the same way that I returned to the meditation cushion and the yoga mat: to see what was there and to let it through

These tools have been positively life-changing—the rope, in fact, with which I could pull myself ashore again. Together, they have helped me to write a way out of the darkness, into the flow of awareness, and to find a way home.

~

Sources:

Pennebaker, James W. Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions. New York & London: The Guilford Press, 1997.
DeSalvo, Louise. Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999.

~

My Old Man

John Grace, or My Old Man

13th June 2016

On what would have been your 68th birthday I cycle home early from graduate school with a plan to fry a steak and open a bottle of red wine in your honour. I lie on my bed, the sweet Los Angeles air easing in through the blinds, and study the only photo I have of you.

It's the early 90s and you and I sit at a wooden table in the morning light of the back yard in the south of France: it's where we had our holiday home. My back is to the camera, my green sweatshirt dappled with shade, my body sweetly small. Underneath the table my bare legs swing in my school shoes. You sit opposite from me in a purple polo shirt and your hair is thick and dark: you look like a man in his 40s.

The table's breakfast items are scant – a glass of orange juice and a gold foil-wrapped pack of butter – but I can tell by the gait of your body that you're spreading that butter on an invisible croissant. The tray with the jams and berries printed on it sits between us. A pot of mum's red geraniums stands on the table and to your side, a wheelbarrow of wooden-handled tools as if you've been up early, picking at the rocks that underpin the back yard. Your face is concentrated; I have no idea what the morning's conversation might have been.

Difficult to think now how many mornings or quiet times we spent together: I don't remember ever spending time alone with you, though we must have. The heft of your brow tells me you're worried: I carry the same expression between my eyes and look more and more like you as I age.

I wander down to the kitchen and throw the steak in a not hot-enough pan. I blanche some vegetables, open the wine to breathe and pull a smudgy plate from the cupboard. I lay a place for myself facing the wall and realise how unremittingly sad the scene I've created looks. I want to make a little altar to your birthday tonight, and I've decided that if I turn my back on the room my housemates might not be able to see me.

The steak is bad; grey throughout and crimped at the edges. I eat it anyway, and slather on a pathetic American horseradish sauce that lacks the crucial buzz to the nose pipes. In my sadness I've messed up the greens as well but I feel comforted by the sight of a meal drawn from home, of food that has a context beyond the overbearing optimism of LA. I look at my plate – the scraggly ends of a loveless steak, the woody branches of some undercooked broccoli – and I smile to myself at the thought of home, and of your favourite meal.

I return my knife and fork to the plate and wonder what we might have talked of over breakfast that morning, if there was a way for us to navigate together; an ease with which to start the day. Or whether, perhaps – as your expression suggests – you were somewhere else entirely, your mind caught on case notes and the pull of London life. In the end it doesn't matter and it's just one of the friendly questions for which I'll never have an answer. Tonight, instead, it has been your birthday and for the first time in years, I feel you there.

I wash the grease from the pan and my plate, noticing how the hot suds bloat and redden my fingers to look like yours. I set everything to dry in the rack, climb the stairs and tape the photo back up above my desk. Your hair is thick and dark; you look like a man in his 40s.

This is the beginning

...Of my blog posts, at least. It's certainly not the starting point for my writings and meanderings about food and yoga, the former of which started here, several years ago. 

I look forward to writing updates on yoga news, research, projects, insights and gatherings as the time rolls on. Thanks for reading!

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© Emma Myrtle