Circle
Human Pregnancy is the number one scam in the history of the world. Perpetrated by Nature, that ultimate survivor. Facilitated by society and skilfully marketed by the victims themselves. This produces the perfect vicious circle. Nature ruthlessly triggers the hormones, gets the body clock ticking and even wipes our memory clean after a hellish thirty six hour labour. Society slaps us in the face with it, brainwashes us from almost the day we are born and even blackmails us into it. And we, the ones who fell for it? Oh, we rarely tell it like it really is. We gloss over the ugly grittiness of puke, shit, tantrums and eye rolling, we blink away the tears of hurt, frustration and anger. We make parenthood out to be this one sided, one dimensional thing of beauty and wonder. Ensnaring the innocent, with stories of baby cheeks and gurgles and coos, of first steps and milk teeth, admissions to new age schools and fancy colleges – the whole gaagaa googoo deal repeated ad nauseam until the uninitiated fall for it. Oh yaay, we’re pregnant!! CON-gratulations…suckers.
Children. We swear now that if only we had known the enormity, the thanklessness of it all, the never ending nature of the job, we may have given it more careful thought before we plunged into parenthood. Young clueless adults, barely holding it all together, learning to live with one another and themselves, figuring out cooking and taxes and the monotony of earning enough money to live on and then, a tiny perfect dominator terminates our life as we’ve known it. Amen. No nine months are ever preparation enough for the chilling finality of a living thing in our arms. This is not one we can forget to water and throw away if it dies on us. This is for life, and in the years that follow, there are secret moments of sheer panic, of the temptation to just leave, run away, the grand lucidity that puts an end to all that has gone before – the careless living, the freedom, the permission to pick up and run with the whimsical impulse.
We become parents then, we just don’t know that it is for life and for two different sets of children. We may never survive if we knew this best kept secret in the world. It is truly a worthwhile inheritor of that world class scam.
The aged parents. In one circle of friends, we lovingly refer to them as such. In our middle years, having barely survived our children’s childhood, we are now parents to our child-like parents. The old ones are moving on way too soon. Just as we have begun to appreciate the experiences of a long life, the forced wisdom that comes from having made too many mistakes, the stories and memories that taught us about love and hope, hate and anguish, the story tellers are falling silent, letting us tell our own stories instead. The keepers of experiences and the wise ones are leaving us behind to rely on our own experiences and hard won wisdom. It comes to us all, this transition from child to adult to elder. No one said that it would be easy. And it’s not.
The strong body that protected us and sheltered us grows weak and frail. We learn to tend to our elderly as we once did our babies. These are not the plump and glowing bodies of the young, here there are creases and gullies, concavities and hollows. Dry skin and oozing orifices, sandpapered cheeks and transluscent eyelids. Here is the test – of love and patience and gratitude. To keep this battered and bruised body soothed and clean, powdered and moisturised, it needs a deep breath, and gentled hands. Learning to be still.
The flailing mind. Which rambles through its years, asking for long dead parents and siblings, spouses and children. Which flares in deeply buried rage and cruelly reminds us of our failings and their grievances. We learn to swallow our words, to calm the elderly with agreement and docility as they surge towards that dying light. We ask, we pray for a peaceful end. As much for our own selves as for them. When a mother, flawed and imperfect as she may have been, draws her last breaths in peace, we are eternally grateful to her. She has spared us a death scene. Instead, she has slipped away in her sleep, leaving us with this last wonderful gift – final moments that we can remember with a smile.
The soul in despair. Not every person reaches the end of natural life at peace with themselves and their actions. A parent rails against the fates or God or his own conscience. All we can do is hide our tears, and comfort them. Lie about our own hurts and pain, reassure them that they did their best, remind them of all the wonderful moments they gave us. We would be monsters if we did less. Or punished the dying for their sins. Most of us find the strength, from deep within untapped reserves, to rise above our pettinesses. Some don’t.
This is a process that hauls us all before an unforgiving mirror. It shows us two images. One, who we are in times of crisis, the other, who we will be at the time of our own death. In our parents and elderly friends and family, we see our reflection. Our death masks. Our old ones are as much our future as our children. We see the future of the world in the faces of our babies, but we also see our own personal future in the dying faces of our father or aunt or grandparent.
Death has many aliases. Passing away, departed, final journey. As if this life is only a railway station. And when the whistle blows, the real journey begins. But to me, with no belief in the after and the resurrection, no faith in karmic cycles and nirvana, these are lame excuses for the finality that is death. All death is cruel. Death that comes in old age is often longed for but no less cruel for that. It is a letting go, of body organs and the mind. A surrender of the most basic of human instincts – to breathe, to live on. Death that comes to the young is quite simply carelessly cruel in its timing.
I started writing this piece and it was all lightness and happy frivolity. It has ended sombrely. Between its beginning and end, I lost a dearly beloved woman to death. She was elderly, ill and death, everyone says, came as a relief and an escape. This assurance is a myth. No one knows really. We say these things to comfort ourselves. No one can know the thoughts that race or drift through a dying person’s mind. My aunt died alone and I am ashamed that I have thought of her and missed her more since her death than in the days before.
I remind myself that this piece is called circle. Birth, life, death. Joy, life, sorrow. Endless. The snake that swallows its own tail. In the midst of the hollow grief of death is a quiet joy – her grand niece was born just a few days ago. Life is tenacious, and death is inevitable. The only surprise is the joy that accompanies each birth and the sorrow that trails behind each death. As if each time, humankind is freshly amazed and shocked.
Try as I might, cynic that I am, I can’t quite bring myself to believe my own words, the ones I wrote so blithely just a few hours ago.
That pregnancy scam, perhaps it isn’t quite as ruthless as I made it out to be. Perhaps it is all that stands between hope and despair. Renewal of life is this world’s raison d’etre. And Nature is a master player of its game. I have grown two babies in my body. I have given birth. I have watched and wondered as these two bits of me grew outside of me, with no tangible physical connection. I know my every breath reflects theirs. Every instinct is to protect and defend and love them. I remind them that I will love them forever, no matter what. Certainly there have been many moments when they have hated me. Many times when it has been a struggle to simply like my own children. And yet, my first impulse on returning home from the funeral today was to fold myself into my son’s arms and breathe with him. Reaffirmation.
Life. If it is a scam, it’s the best one ever perpetrated. And I’m not going to be the one, contrary to all my claims, to disabuse anyone. Make love. Make life. Find a baby to give a home. Adopt a puppy. Plant a tree. Birth in any form is still birth. Death will come calling anyway. Journey or full stop, that’s your choice to make.
Right now, though, be present for life. Be present for its vital hope. Be present for the promise it brings of tomorrow.