Getting Through What Hurts
Ernest Hemingway said “Write hard and clear about what hurts”. Anyone care to write something about 2020?
A discarded face mask litters the streets of Adelaide.
Nobody’s 2020 vision was this—daily happenings across the planet brought to a halt through a virus. A world where businesses crumble and jobs are lost. Where more and more mental health issues surface and domestic violence increases. At its worst, the helplessness experienced by mothers and fathers prohibited from standing beside the bed of their child as they lie dying in hospital intensive care units. Funerals attended by no more than ten mourners. And the list goes on. Personally, Australia’s disastrous handling of COVID-19 within our Aged Care system has particularly hit home, bringing back memories of how my parents were (not) cared for in their final months. How do we swallow so much gloom and still smile?
Annus horribilis. 2014 began with the funerals of both mum and dad, five weeks apart.
This is my story of the year 2014; perhaps akin to what many others are experiencing in 2020. Loved ones dying unnecessarily, a flailing business, a marriage suffering, and self esteem left wondering. Getting through what hurts, hurts. It was a full twelve months of awfulness and then some, but it did come to an end.
The year began with mum dying on 15 January. Dad’s death followed five weeks to the day. I handled mum’s death well. Peculiarly, it was a beautiful thing to watch her pass from this life. Dementia had eaten her brain, stolen her voice and shrivelled her body. Yet in mum’s final moments her eyes sparkled, her smile returned and she spoke to my dad. A life force came to her before she disappeared entirely, and then there was a peaceful stillness. God knows we all needed it after watching mum endure the effects of this horrible disease, and even more painfully (because it could have been avoided) as we witnessed the less than humane treatment mum received in the nursing home. My family fought to improve conditions but our documented complaints and lengthy meetings with management did not translate to better care for our parents or the other residents. The heartache and anger we experienced knowing what was taking place yet were helpless in making a difference, was unbearable at times.
A few weeks on and my siblings and I were planning dad’s funeral too. Dad’s death rocked me. As I sat beside his hospital bed and he took his last breaths, the pain in my core after having just lost mum was so intense it was all encompassing. An image formed in my mind. It was me, lying in the fetal position, alone on the beach at the front of my marital home, screaming so loud that I could be heard along the coastline. As days went by, the image returned time after time and continued weeks after dad's passing; so vivid I wondered if I needed to act it out for it to go away.
I retreated into my shell for a while. When I re-emerged ‘life as usual’ was waiting for me. My business, my marriage, my friends and family. All which needed attention.
Things were quiet at work. The phone wasn’t ringing. Nor did I have the fortitude to get out ‘there’ to secure contracts. So I stayed home and contemplated what could be, trying to find a solution to the situation in which I found myself. Problem solving is nine tenths of running a business, but no-one tells you that. It seemed like a natural time to wind up trade and shift my entrepreneurial pursuits in a direction that brought joy, and that for me was the art of writing. But while I began to thrive with the onset of change, my marriage did not. I learned a lot in 2014 about the differences between my husband and I as we argued our cases and defended our rights as if standing before Judge Judy. Neither of us conducted ourselves well. That was the beginning of the breakdown in our relationship. Ironically it was also the start of a more complete understanding of each other.
While the marriage survived, the business and my writing did not. After seven arduous but very rewarding years of being a self-employed entrepreneur I returned to being an employee, reporting to a boss and receiving a regular pay cheque. The certainty of income was appreciated but relinquishing control to an employer and foregoing my artistic endeavours mucked with my head. The same head that was still recovering from losing mum and dad. The same head that was digesting marital issues. The same head reeling from low self-esteem.
It took time but the head did clear. Life, though very different from where I was on 1 January 2014, was good despite all the change that had occurred - family dynamics, housing, lifestyle and employment.
The year 2014 forms part of my emblem. I look back on it as the beginning of the end that abutted the beginning of something better. My marriage evolved. Yippee came into our lives. Employment had its ups and downs but eventually it settled very nicely. My writing returned as did my photography. My smile made a come back too.
Ernest Hemingway said “Write hard and clear about what hurts” and that I have, because that’s my way of clearing chakras and realigning myself.
If 2020 is a year you’re finding hard to get through, I sincerely wish you the strength to hold on, and that you may find your own balance between the importance of being light-hearted and the importance of being earnest - or Ernest.