LIFE'S DEFINING MOMENTS

The unpredictability of defining moments means we get no choice and usually no warning when they will happen.  Happy or sad, busy or relaxed, it doesn’t matter one iota how we are feeling at the time they present and there is nothing to do except stand and face them head on.  These are the occasions when we get to find out what stuff we are made of and of what we are capable.

In my life, I’ve had many defining moments, but the very first one was huge and has, both positively and negatively, coloured every day of my life since.

In my blog, My Dad I wrote about my father’s untimely death, ravaged, as his body was, by the secondary complications of Type I diabetes.  The knowledge of his impending demise was kept from him (as was thought best in those days), but Mum had known it was coming for three years. The year before Dad’s death, Mum attempted suicide.  I only knew that’s what it was because I came home to find my father bewildered and sobbing, ‘Why would she do that?’  It is a hard thing to watch your father weep.  After leaving hospital, Mum was sent off to recuperate at a rest home for two months and I took over the household duties.  I did my best but I slipped up sometimes.  One morning I washed Dad’s white bowling socks in with a red tea towel – they turned pink and I had to fess up.  He laughed, and it was good to hear – I imagine he thought that was the least of his troubles.  And, eventually Mum came home and everything seemed to go back to normal.

Dad died in November 1969; I was in the middle of sitting my University Entrance exams and, although I knew he was ill, his death was unexpected and it devastated me.  I couldn’t sleep for fear of nightmares and was prescribed sleeping pills. Collapsing from stress and exhaustion during a French exam, I was packed off to Auckland to stay with my godparents who, at that time, had six kittens (and many cats) that jumped all over me, purred in my ears, slept on my bed, and cheered me up immensely.  My godfather was a chemist and helped me get off the pills.  After two weeks, my equilibrium restored, I bused back to home to Mum and my siblings. 

Mum seemed OK, but at 17, what did I really know about anything?  She was quiet, sad and serious, and I never saw her cry, but she did say things like, ‘if anything happens to me, this is what you must do……hide these things in the bottom of the big oak chest and cover them with fabric…… lie about what jewellery there is because of death duties……and, this is where I have hidden the kids’ Christmas presents’.  There was a long list of instructions which I took serious note of, not for one moment thinking that I would need to implement any of them.  How blithe I was; how selfishly seventeen-ish I behaved; and oh, how wrong I was.

One month and three days after Dad’s death, Mum was gone too.  I have tried to write about her final days, but, these many, many years later it is still too difficult to lay my heart open to the world. Suffice to say that Boxing Day of 1969 became the defining moment of my life; a day when literally in the space of one heartbeat my whole life changed forever; when doctors told me apologetically that Mum had died of a broken heart while they tried absolutely everything possible to save her life and she fought them all the way. Losing both parents so shockingly was unbelievably painful, the trauma beyond measure and the loss irreplaceable. 

Mum and Dad were both only children so there were no aunts or uncles to step in and take us on, and no appointed guardians.  I was still a teenager and had just left school, destined, I thought, for the bright lights of Auckland and training as a kindergarten teacher.  That never happened.  Social Welfare stepped in and said to me, ‘we think you should still go to Auckland, but if you do your siblings will be put into foster care and we can’t guarantee that they’ll all be together.’ I remember so clearly thinking, ‘we have lost everything except each other’.  There really was no choice – I knew that I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave them – and I didn’t.

The thing is that hard though defining moments are there is beauty in them too.  The death of my mother forced me to make a huge life choice.  I managed to get work locally so that I could be around to support my siblings and keep us all together.  It was not easy to be a big sister when I had to be both mother and father as well and I know I made some enormous and foolish mistakes which I truly regret.  My commitment was tested many, many times and it was very scary to step out onto that unknown, bumpy road.  I often asked myself ‘Why me?’ and I didn’t get to fully grieve for nearly twenty years. 

Over time, however, I’ve become resilient and focused; I know that I’m useful in times of crisis; I understand the fragility and transience of this life; I’m especially grateful (even though they were short) for the loving parented years that I was fortunate enough to experience;  I've sought out and found great joy in my family and friends; and I’ve made it my business to live my best life and be the best kind of person that I can be.

Resilience is very different than being numb.  Resilience means you experience, you feel, you fail,  you hurt.  You fall.  But, you keep going. 

Yasmin Mogahed (quote)