Happy 60th Paul

Celebrating Shashti Poorti, a significant milestone, memorable turning point

Apparently prayers and reaffirming of marriage vows mark this point

Everyone says happy birthday to you

But is it enough for me to just say happy birthday to you?

How can a few words even dent the many emotions

That are surely are expressed in everyday caring motions

I look forward to everyday spent with you

Hoping that it is the same with you

Wishing for you, health and happiness and peace

And I do all I can to help you live a life of ease

Cooking the foods you love

But baking a cake I cannot manage, love

I might be a tad obsessive about small issues

But you soon remind me they are but minor issues

I might annoy you a little by forgetting an odd thing

And giggles at bedtime and loud songs I occasionally sing

The best time with you has always been on holidays

The amazing places, sights and laughter we share on holidays

You used to wear everything blue when we first met

Now you wear clothes of every colour I can get

That hair went red in the sunshine

Now the hair is bleached with age and sunshine

The knees might creak but the walk is still tall

Ready to pick me up every time I fall

Strong believes and values you live up to

Makes you one that I look up to

Just as you stand between me and the world

I also always aim to protect you from this world

I could go on and on but enough for now

Let me leave some words for another poem about thou

Happy Birthday Paul

Need for Respect for the Dead

This last couple of weeks have been a sad time as I heard about deaths of people I know or of relatives of my friends. Most of the time when someone dies people say must not speak ill of the dead and everybody on social media got to blessing the departed soul with words like rest in peace. Social media can be a good place for your acquaintances and not so close family to comment and send condolences. But this week two actors passed away one was from the UK and very well known for her role as Alice in The Vicar of Dibely and the other a Bollywood icon with career spanning a few decades.

My thought process is about how the two were remembered by the media and the public. For the lady from UK there were many messages about what a wonderful actor she was and obituaries in different places by friends and fellow actors. While people are curious when someone young passes away the only comment made by family were ‘natural causes’ which seems to be pretty much respected and no further digging was done into the person’s history.

The furore over the Bollywood icon’s demise could not be any further different than this. The lady in question was at once mourned by many with messages of RIP and genuine sadness from the fans around the world. But this soon turned into a media circus with details of this lady’s personal, medical and mental health history being dragged across the media and speculated on with opinions of all and sundry. The initial cause of cardiac arrest got changed to heart attack and then to drowning in bath tub due to unconsciousness. Do we really need such detail? Does it make a death any less painful and sad? Then there was moralising about why so much cosmetic surgery and all the regimens of keeping slim and pretty from various news and entertainment websites. There is so much salacious gossip also about her life history not just about her acting career (which generally is acceptable to summarise) but also her personal relationships at all levels.

This is not only unnecessary but so very intrusive for the family as well as dare I say the dead. Can we not let a person die in peace? What is gained by dragging out every sordid or otherwise detail of a life that was mostly lived in the public glare? Privacy is at a premium for everyone in this day and age especially for people who have a celebrity status. People can sue if they are unhappy about breaches of their privacy. So does it mean that it is a free for all in breaching privacy as the person is dead? I have read the headlines and that had been enough to get me annoyed that why a person cannot be left alone after death? Does the public have a ‘right’ to tear apart someone’s life and scavenge on the details? Are human beings really so inconsiderate? Or is the media just creating a furore and putting out ‘news’ which they say the public wants? This feels so wrong and wonder if anyone actually gets taken to task for crossing the line? How does one stop this kind of dissection of a dead person’s life for just sensational gossip?

Can too much of a Good Thing be Bad for You?

Can too much of a good thing be bad? This expression can be used in relation to so many things like food or drink or money. But can it be used for attitude or say positivity or inspirational examples in life. We certainly seem to be focusing a lot on being positive, reading quotes that highlight good and positive and indeed inspire us to promote holistic wellbeing. Along with quotes and memes that tell you to be better, be stronger, be smarter, be more thoughtful, be more and more and more of everything. Do not give up, dream bigger and set goals and strive to move onwards and upwards. I, myself, like to see these quotes and put them up in my social media. I choose them very randomly – just what catches my eye and strikes a chord with my mood that day.

However, something always holds me back from putting up too many positive inspirational ones as I feel they are not realistic for some people like me. Let me clarify this point of view. I am chronically ill and have been so from 11 years now. I have connective tissue disease that is autoimmune disease. It is a multi-faceted disease where the body has turned on itself and so there is random inflammation of connective tissues with no pattern or predictability. The disease is insidious and slow to progress and therefore diagnose which took two and half years. While the doctors were doing wait and watch things went downhill. I reached rock bottom when I was unable to even lift my eyelids without excruciating pain.

The way up from that mire of pain, lack of sleep and depression only started when I actually started proper treatment. Oh I had tried all the natural therapies and supplements, acupuncture, gentle exercises, push through the pain and it will all be better therapy, do not lose hope and think positive thoughts to get back into the healthy frame of mind, mind over matter, prayers and so on. I wanted my old life back. I wanted to be able to work and earn as I had since the age of 18. I wanted to go for holidays and complete my PhD. All this also produces stress and has adverse effect on the autoimmune issues.

Once the treatment started I had to get to the stage of acceptance of the reality. Acceptance is a hard won battle and it leads to asking yourself what quality of life is acceptable to you? It is true that some people go into remission but you still have to focus on small goals to reach an acceptable quality of life. I thought this over carefully and even discussed it with my husband and we settled on issues that were important – to be self-caring, able to do the house work, be able to go out to the shops, occasional outings for fun were the goals. The cold weather did not help as for some unknown reason I found it hard to handle the cold I used to enjoy before so warm weather was something I needed. Family issues of illness and deaths added on more stress. A solution we came upon was to move to a warmer place and reduce relationships’ stress by the move. Moving itself is one of the major stressors but for the eventual good outcome I pushed through this upheaval. After the move the next thing was should I work but we decided that not working would be more stress reduction. At the same time my medication was upped and the whole journey to getting stable took another 4 years after diagnosis.

Going back to can too much of a good thing be bad – the acceptance and stability in health was along road and hard fought. I was poodling along nicely helping others and working with them to adapt as this I saw was the way to dealing with long term illness and having self-worth. All of us need to feel valued and wish to contribute to society and I had to find ways of doing so. 

On and off I see write ups about people who have overcome adversity, ill heath, disability and even death bed to achieve goals that would have been almost impossible. While I am happy for people who have done this and would give high praise to survivors of all kinds it suddenly makes you question all the decisions you have taken. Should I have not given up work? Should I have done something different and got into another profession? Am I not a strong person for I appear to have chickened out of the whole upbeat do the best and more to get back to being a ‘productive’ person? Do others perceive me as a quitter? All these ‘good’ ‘positive’ achievement stories have shaken my self-belief that I am doing the best I can. 

Being stable as it is, raises self-doubt about the extent of the illness. I only have to try reducing any of my medications and the symptoms come creeping back telling me remission is not my fate. And still these positive stories make me sad and uncomfortable with myself and yes almost a failure for not being able to be this ‘strong’ person. I guess my cycle to grieving was not over and will never be over as small things can take you back……..to the start… rebuild my self-worth and self-confidence. So YES too much of a good thing – as in positive stories, positive and inspirations quotes and well-meaning advice – is a bad thing for me.