By Reena Moses
7 August 2021
Have you ever noticed that certain times in our lives are filled with a lot more energy than others? Think calendar, month and time: days around which events occurred and fast forward to one, two, ten years in time and the ghost of these occurrences seem to visit us regularly, never failing in their punctuality and the impact of their visit? Have you also felt the deep urge to take a break, to spend more time in the company of friends, to go on a vacation, to drink more, party more when these uninvited guests come calling? Have you ever wondered, why despite our best efforts and work, these remnants of our past never miss their date with us?
I first became keenly aware of this when in mid-May 2020, I faced a sudden, heightened sense of anxiety. We had completed our lockdown and were slowly coming out of its protective fold; at first I put it down to the fear of Covid infection. Not wanting to think of it seriously I let it pass. As the days moved on I didn’t sleep well, holding fast onto my phone at nights, restlessly tossing and turning, preparing for the worst news. During days, I was constantly checking on my parents and instructing them to not move out. The area of fear was centred around my parents. It did not include my children, spouse, siblings nor myself. It just remained focused on my parents.
It was during this period that I had a dream, a vivid one and a scary one to say the least. The dream went like this: “My parents and I have just attended a festive program in his workplace, an educational institution. After the program completion, we were all moving towards the dining rooms, when my father falls down suddenly. I catch my father and I am sobbing, I am telling him to not die. “Please don’t die, don’t die.” I am constantly telling this to my father, while my mother who is on my right side looks around nonchalantly. With the help of few men, we move my father to a makeshift bed and I watch over him. He gets better and then we hail a cab and leave for our home.”
This dream, had me soaking my pillow wet and crying in my asleep. I needed my husband to comfort me, before I could sleep again. My Jungian Analyst, heard the dream and said nothing at first. She embraced my sobs, stayed present to my grief and gently asked me, about my father and his health, she enquired if my father was physically strong. I then mentioned to her, that he was a cardiac patient, with Chronic kidney issues, hypertension and diabetic for past 7 yrs. I joked that, he could be a guinea pig for all these medical issues. Our session ended on me acknowledging that I was really frightened for my father’s health.
May 2021, I started to dream again of my father’s death. I wondered what is it that these dreams are saying. Following the Jungian theme, that the old senex needed to pass to make way for newer prospects was one thing, but to feel and be prepared for a loss in a real life was another. My frantic checking on my parent’s health, being worried over Covid was the pattern again. I was trying to not feel this apprehension, growing anxiety, pain and fear. My therapy had helped me to tolerate and increase my capacity for these uncomfortable, uneasy feelings. They were a part of me and were trying to communicate something of value to me. It was while I was sitting with these painful, uncertain, uncomfortable space, that a new door opened into why I felt this way.
May 19, 2019 I and my mother rushed my father to the ICU at 6 15 am in the morning. He was in a full blown Cardiac arrest, with his hands tightly clasped around mine, asking me to promise him. Promise him, that I shall take care of my mother and that I will take his body back home for a proper funeral. I remember saying yes, I remember yelling at my mother to not cry through my tears, saying weakly that my father won’t die, yet not believing the words that came out of my mouth. Two hospitals, three procedures and after 21days of living in the hospital, we brought my father back home. A changed man, a weak man, a man on diapers, a ghost of my father, a frightened man and a man on plenty of medications, whose worst period in life had just begun. The days in the hospital are blurred, I only remember the constant prayers and tears, as my father had relapses in the form of Ventricular-tachycardia arrests. The period of uncertainty and anxiety is not remembered much, because it was masked by our working, questioning of doctors, running to pharmacy to CCU unit, walking up and down, never sitting, never quiet, never allowing ourselves to feel.
My body remembers the dates, the days and nights of holding the anxiety and fear. My body remembers the agonised trauma of nearly losing a loved one, remembers holding the collective fear of a family as well as a daughter’s fear of losing her father. My body remembers, how the mind had begun to write eloquent eulogies in order to cope with the loss, my body remembers! My body remembers, that a part of myself still walks the corridors in worry, that I had left behind a ghost. Every year around May midweek, my body pays homage to this event, I am taken back to what I experienced through dreams, through the sudden anxiety and fear, terrible grief and inexplicable terror. Any attempt to bypass it, to avoid doesn’t help, what it needs is respectful remembrance, to pay attention to what we then didn’t see, didn’t want to see.
I have learned that, if I can sit with my grief, pain and fear long enough, they become my allies. They soothe themselves out, they ease my body into being. The feelings then make way for calming assurance that the danger is past, that that event is an occurrence of the past and the past has no place in the present. In the present, I am safe, my father is safe and doing well. There is no space left for pent up feelings of angst, terror or agony of uncertainty. They have found their way out and they are out, leaving room for something else.
It is not easy to sit with one’s uncertainty, fear or agony. I had found that capacity only because of my analyst, my family and few close friends who all have been a part of my journey. The journey while a solitary one is never a journey where we are alone, these people are always with us - in spirit. In life, we have to visit the painful moments in our life, not to relive them, but to make peace and to be at peace with the way the situation unfolded then.
If we don’t do it consciously, the we are always reminded of them unconsciously, like how it played out for me. (I kept having my Ghost visit me in May year after year). Our task is to pay attention to what is being said, what is emerging. Sometimes they are meant to instruct and teach us, so we pay attention to that as well. To honour our life, our growth is one of the chief requirements of life, I believe and we do this by honouring our journey, our pain, our fear and what we lived through! We cannot embrace only a part of our lives, we need to embrace it all, the downs, the dark, the fear , the panic, the anger and the ups, the love, the confidence, the success. Life is not one thing or other, but all of this delicately held in reverence!
Reena is a practicing therapist oriented toward Jungian Psychology, and specializes in working with adolescents and adults. She is based in Bengaluru, India.