dirty laundry

My wonderful cousin Signy called from Canada to check in, see how I was feeling. I’m feeling fine. I was a bit wary, a bit observant of myself, on the alert. But truly, it was just another day, although memories of the events that occurred one year ago today passed through my mind. I wasn’t upset, wasn’t sad. I felt serene, and balanced.

I wondered, now as before, whether my calm feelings about my mother’s death were normal, or if I was just in massive denial. [I’m talking only about my feelings about her dying, not about the subsequent business around her will that dredged up so many devastating feelings and memories of abandonment and dismissal.] As time passed, I came to realize that my feelings were normal and I wasn’t in denial. The truth is that I had said goodbye to my mother so many years before. I’d said goodbye in increments, and grieved the loss of her as a mother, in increments. In contrast to people who are in daily or near-daily contact with their parents, my contact with her was minimal, limited to a few times a year. So I didn’t really miss her because, frankly, there was very little to miss.

There are other people who are in more distress today than I am, people whose lives were more closely bound up with hers. Including my cousin, who has survived cancer, in contrast to my mother, and who gets a bit freaked out by anniversaries like this. And she called me, to find out how I was. Whereas I probably should have been the one calling her. Never mind – I know she forgives me because she’s lovely like that.

It started blowing from the north again today, freezing cold winds down from the Arctic. Not enjoyable in the least. Dragged myself out of the house around noon when my mind was going numb with cabin fever and I was desperate for a breath of fresh air. Hoping for something a bit more agreeable tomorrow. -3°C at the moment but feels like -11, and that’s 27°F and feels like 12°F. The sun came up at 10 am and went down at 5.23 pm.

I feel vaguely guilty. I’d planned to send out a very ceremonious MERRY CHRIMBOS! type of post to all my lovely readers, but instead I’ve hardly gone near the computer for the past four or five days and it’s felt really good. So - a belated happy Christmas, and I hope your Yule was everything you hoped it would be.

Actually, it’s hard to believe that only four days have passed since my last post. It feels much longer, which of course is the thing about Christmas - you lose all track of time, or at least I do. I can never remember which day it is or how many days have passed or where exactly in the universe I am positioned, that sort of thing.

It’s been a great few days, very eventful, filled with joy and love and friendship, and happily a fair bit of LAZY. There’s also been time for reflection, which is good. Earlier today EPI and I were talking about Christmases past, the Christmases of our childhoods, and he was asking me something about how some tradition or other had been in my household. And I had to remind him once again of our differences, which is that EPI had a “household” while growing up, while YT did not. Meaning that EPI had stable childhood and upbringing, a solid family unit, strong traditions at Christmas, etcetera, whereas my Christmases were all very, um, diverse. They were held in various countries, in various households, with various people. I’ve even spent Christmas alone a couple of times. And, if the truth be told, more often than not I was miserable at Christmas [and not on the ones I spent alone - not at all]. The Christmases I spent with my mother and her husband, for instance, in their icy cold suburban house, getting presents that were the cheapest they could possibly get away with, were absolutely soul-crushing. Just as an example.

So I developed a serious aversion to Christmas, and by the time I entered adulthood I basically put all my emotions on ice in December and just plowed through, hoping it would soon be over. But then, surprisingly, a few years ago my Christmases started to get better, and in the past few years they have been wonderful. A lot of that is about having a loving partner to share them with, and being accepted and incorporated into a strong family unit, which has been amazing for me, not to mention enlightening. Also, letting go of expectations has helped a lot. A couple of years ago I woke up to the fact that I’d let go of expectations about how things were supposed to be, and so I stopped being disappointed and disillusioned when things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to.* What freedom! Now I focus on enjoying things as they come and I only seem to have good experiences. I can’t decide whether it was like that in the past too and I just didn’t see it, or whether it’s because I’m generally much happier and so am attracting happier experiences. Not that it matters.

And now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to watch yet another episode of Grey’s Anatomy on DVD and relish the fact that I’m my own boss and I’ve given myself the day off tomorrow.

WE’VE HAD THE MOST PERFECT YULETIDE WEATHER
It started to snow on the 23rd and it’s stayed gloriously, magnificently white. I wish you could see how beautiful the city is with the fresh snow and the Yule decorations everywhere [of course some of you know just what I’m talking about]. Right now -1°C [30F] and the sun came up at 11.23, set at 15.33.

* Incidentally, I don’t want to give the impression that this just happened automatically. There was a lot of work involved. But somehow I didn’t expect that the rewards would be so great.

Last night, before going out to a concert, I said goodbye to AAH more or less for the duration of the weekend. She was going out with her boyfriend, was going to stay over at his place, then going straight to work today, then straight to meeting her friends for dinner. By the time she gets home I’ll be at the National Theatre watching a play, and I expect she’ll stay over at her bf’s again tonight. Then to work again tomorrow … so I’ll probably not see her until tomorrow evening.

It has been the same situation for the last several weekends. Waking up in the morning to find her bedroom door open, and her bed unslept in. EPI and I having breakfast à deux. It’s weird. A natural transition – but still weird.

When AAH was around one years old, her father and I split up after a brief but valiant effort at living together. It was a tough time; I was more than a little lost, living in Germany, and having a baby hadn’t exactly been on the agenda. After we went our separate ways, her father moved back to the US where he was from and effectively disappeared from our lives for the next 11 years. I had no family nearby, hadn’t lived in Iceland since I was a child, and had been away from Canada too long to be able to return [my immigration status expired after six months away]. My mother, by then a Canadian citizen, refused to help me by sponsoring me back to the country that had formed me; I had no work, no support, little money, and a child to take care of.

In the letter that my mother wrote me, she urged me to, “… return to Iceland, the only country to which you have any claim” [where I was to “work on overcoming [my] two deadly sins: pride and arrogance” – but that’s another story]. The prospect of returning to Iceland terrified me; however in the end it’s what I did. There’s not been a single day in which I’ve regretted making that decision, even though it was incredibly tough going at first, for many different reasons. [Actually, that decision wasn’t really mine – in hindsight I see that it was really made for me, one of the many blessings in my life.] Assimilating into Icelandic society as an outsider is incredibly tough, as anyone who’s done so will attest to, and being alone with a child meant that I was socially isolated. The family members I had here were all entrenched in their lives and we were more or less strangers to each other. It was very hard for me to ask for help, so I avoided doing so at all costs, unless I absolutely had to.

Even so, I had the wherewithal to recognize that being with a small child 24/7 and never having a break was harmful both to me and the child, so I negotiated a deal with my father that he and his family would look after AAH for one weekend a month, so I could have a bit of time to myself – to sleep late, if nothing else. Around this time I met EPI, and those weekends in the early stages of our courtship became unbelievably precious. Every single moment was treasured and used to the fullest. On Fridays we’d normally meet up after work, buy something for dinner then go home to cook together, and if we were up to it, go out later for a drink somewhere. Saturdays we’d sleep late, have breakfast, maybe go to the swimming pool, then to a movie – sometimes even two movies in a row in one evening [we like movies]. By Sunday afternoon it would be time to welcome AAH back home.

This morning at breakfast I started reminiscing to EPI about that time. I remember how, back then, it felt to me like things would never change, that life would always be hard. It seems so distant now, and yet time has passed so quickly so it’s almost like yesterday. AAH is practically all grown up, and it’s hard to know where the time went. EPI and I have breakfast by ourselves on weekends and it’s no longer a luxury but a natural development. And life is no longer hard all the time. Only sometimes.

WE’VE WEATHERED OUR TWO-DAY STORM
Although it’s still windy and pretty cold. I’m still afflicted with this icky cold and as you can tell I’m getting all morose and reflective in absence of my endorphin fix. Temps are –3°C at the moment [27F]. Sunrise this morning was at 10.44 and sunset at 3.48 pm. – Incidentally! It’s a Big Day for Niceland today, being the anniversary of the day we were awarded Home Rule from Denmark, back in 1918.

The other night, EPI told me a completely absorbing story about one of his cousins. His mother, EPI’s aunt, was quite young when she had him, so the cousin - we’ll call him J - spent a lot of time with other relatives, particularly his maternal grandparents.

J’s mother eventually went abroad to study and met a man [Icelandic] while there … they fell in love and when they came back to Iceland, they set up house and the new man adopted J formally. From that point on he made J’s life hell. During J’s late childhood and early adolescense he inflicted serious psychological abuse, systematically undermining J’s self-esteem and confidence until he was an emotional wreck and displaying seriously harmful behavior towards himself.

At that point, one of EPI’s other aunts intervened. Clearly a remarkable woman [in more ways than one], she saw what was happening and instead of turning a blind eye or denying what was going on within the family, she put her foot down and announced that J would now come and live with her. Which he did. Almost immediately, he turned himself around, started showing an interest in learning, found a new enthusiasm for life, and eventually went to live in the US, where his cousin - son of the aunt who adopted him - was living.

He hasn’t moved back since. He’s made a good life for himself in the States, is successful, and sometimes comes to Iceland for visits - but he has never wanted to return permanently. He’s become an American citizen and has even changed his name so there’s not a vestige left of his Icelandic identity, except to those who know him well.

EPI thinks this is kind of strange. I absolutely do not. I totally get it.

AND THE WEATHER IS …
It kept threatening to rain this morning, with odd bouts of drizzle that stopped pretty much as soon as they started. In between, the weather was fantastic - sunny with just a slight breeze, and a hint of a chill in the air to remind us that we’re well into September. I went for a run along the sea and it was beautiful - then I went for physio followed by a dip in the hot pot at the Laugardalslaug pool - and it was still beautiful. Right now it’s 9°C [48F] and sunrise was at 6:38 am, sunset at 8:09 pm.

Incidentally - the best thing I heard today was about all the people worldwide who have pledged to make September 11 a day of good deeds. What a wonderful display of good triumphing over evil!

Today, my mother’s ashes were laid in the ground in a cemetery in Kópavogur, having been brought over by relatives from Canada.

Obituaries in the paper, letters read at the service, condolences offered by strangers. And I am struck by how many versions there are of the same person, and how different they are from mine.

So tremendously relieved that it is finished.

When I was twenty years old, I fell in love for the first time. He wasn’t my first boyfriend, or my second, or my third – and while I had previously believed myself in love, I had never truly experienced the depth of feeling, the intense ravishment and rapture of a true meeting of souls – until I met him.

There was only one minor problem: I was struggling with a huge, terrifying, demonic force inside my own self. I’m sure there are a variety of labels for that particular condition – depression, mental instability, negative animus, demonic possession … take your pick. I just know that it was horrifying and it was systematically sucking the life force out of me. It was like a voice, but not a voice. It was like something inside me that whispered incessant messages about my innate worthlessness and how I only deserved to be annihilated. Undone. Erased. The evil described in People of the Lie had somehow wormed its way into me, and was insidiously and relentlessly working to sabotage any chance I had at a healthy and happy life. But I didn’t know that then. I had no labels yet. I was simply struggling to keep my head above the dark water I was in.

Strangely, it was as though that voice had been lying in wait inside me for years and years, but it wasn’t fully roused out of its slumber until I fell in love. As soon as that incredibly powerful light was directed into my soul in a pure and undiluted form – which was a completely new experience for me – the demonic serpent finally reared its ugly head and the battle commenced. The more I struggled to be free, to surrender, to give myself over to this life force, the more intense the darkness and inner sabotage became. It’s hard to explain just how it operated on a day-to-day basis; suffice it to say that it made normal life virtually impossible. If I tried to go out for dinner or a movie, for instance, I became immersed in such a dark and deep depression that I was virtually catatonic. He would speak to me, and I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, I couldn’t think of anything except that I needed to go home, lock the door, and let no one inside. Except – that option was also terrifying, because I was all-too aware that I was then letting the demon win. I was trapped. Imprisoned.

I had already started psychotherapy at that time, and I would go to my psychiatrist’s office and pour it out – what was wrong with me, why couldn’t I live like other people, what had happened to make me this way? I was unrelenting in my search for answers, for the truth that would set me free. I was going through a deconstruction process – unlearning all my old patterns and conditioning, painstakingly sorting through the rubble of my childhood [and in fact not only my childhood but the lives of the generations that had gone before me] to find the truth that would release me.

The simplest things in life eluded me completely – I saw people who went out to the bakery on Saturday mornings, bought bagels and a newspaper, then went home to their loved ones, had breakfast and read the paper together. I pined for that. It wasn’t much. My longings were very modest. But there was this voice inside my head telling me constantly, incessantly, relentlessly that these things were not for me, would never be for me. Love, family, serenity, peace, security sunlight pouring in through the windows on a Saturday while drinking coffee at the kitchen table – those things were for other people, not for me.

The man I was in love with saw my struggle. While nobody else saw what was going on with me, he did. He got it. It was very hard for him, watching me flailing around like that, unable to take his hand, but he totally got it. And he helped me define it in a way that made me feel less alone, as the battle between good and evil – as a struggle that was as old as mankind. That age-old war was not fought out in some remote location – it was right here, inside my own self. God and Lucifer, darkness and light, life and death, were fighting it out in me. It was that simple – and that complex.

And so I began reading the New Testament. I was not brought up with religion: in fact to this day I shrink from organized religion and abhor religious extremism. But to my surprise, I found that identified with The Book. I found a particular affinity with Paul, who seemed to struggle the way I did. My favourite passage, at the time, became this:

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
[Romans 7:19]

That described my condition in a single sentence. I desired nothing more than to surrender to the relationship I had found, but instead of doing that – instead of giving myself over to it, nurturing it, reveling in it … something in me was bent on destroying it. And it wasn’t me, it was something else. Some other force, that destroyed life. Evil is live spelled backwards.

Eventually, what I feared most, happened. The love was obliterated by the darkness. The man I loved wasn’t strong enough in the end, and our relationship was destroyed. It broke my heart – and took me years to get over.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Although the relationship ended, my own deconstruction continued. All the old parts of me needed to die – the old, debilitating, destructive, non-life-giving parts, before a new self could be born. I would learn that it was a process that couldn’t be rushed, and that couldn’t be forced. But eventually it did happen. Out of the rubble – out of the desert – came a new person.

Today is Easter. The day when Christ rose from the dead. My personal belief is that much of what is written in the Bible is allegory – and something that mirrors the human condition. I do believe a man named Jesus from Nazareth lived and that he was a remarkable human being, a pacifist, a truth-seeker, a man with ‘flawless mental sight’, a man who should be an inspiration for anyone. As for whether he actually rose from the dead, I do not know. However I do know that it is possible for human beings to die a certain kind of death, a spiritual and psychological death, during the course of their lifetimes – and be resurrected as new people, into a completely different life, a life that they could never have envisioned for themselves before. I know, because today I have the life I thought I would never, ever have. I’m living proof.

[Back to the weather tomorrow.]

Here in Niceland there’s a current affairs programme called Kastljós that is on after the news each day. It’s had its ups and downs, but with the current crew on board it is almost always excellent.

Not so long ago, they did a series of interviews with grown men who as children were placed in a home for ‘young delinquents’, in Breiðuvík on Iceland’s West Fjords. The ‘delinquent’ part was often questionable – in some cases it was just a matter of things at home being less than ideal: single mother, alcohol abuse, poverty, etc. The place was ghastly – completely out in the middle of nowhere, they were kept there as prisoners, their phone calls were listened to, letters read, they were locked up in a terrifying isolation chamber for minor offenses, and subjected to horrible abuse by the sadistic couple who ran the place, as well as by other staff members and/or older children.

When the first man spoke up, years later, his story seemed too outrageous to be believed. Then another came forth, then another and another, until there were so many of them that they had to be taken seriously. For days and days Kastljós ran interviews with individual men speaking about their devastating experiences. Each time I sat riveted in front of the TV, shocked into silence, amazed at the courage it took for these men to speak up. Not least because it was such an obvious ordeal – many of them broke down in front of the cameras.

Then last Sunday, Kastljós ran an interview with a woman – Linda Drake – who seven years ago wrote a book under a pseudonym about sexual abuse she’d had to endure as a child. It was the first book written in the first person to address the issue in such a forthright manner. The man who abused her was a police officer, and when she went to the station – along with her sister – to press charges, the officer on duty more or less refused to help them. It was a very moving interview, particularly because she has managed to turn her life around and is now unafraid to appear under her own name and speak about her experience. She has shed the shame that she had been made to carry.

Nonetheless, she described the overwhelming fear she felt when the book came out – because her family would know it was her, and people would see her, and know what had happened. She imagined that some sort of catastrophe would happen, the sky would come crashing down, something. But nothing happened. Except that she felt better. And she liked the fact that people could see her – see her – and know what had happened. She was freed from her fears.

In the comments to the last post, Gary wondered whether I was still finding it as difficult to post about the events in my past as I did initially. That made me think a bit, and I realised that I felt a lot like the woman on the programme – this feeling that something catastrophic would happen if I spoke the truth in a public forum [I had been speaking about these things for years, of course, just not publicly], that fire and brimstone would rain upon my head if I actually opened my mouth. But nothing happened. Except that a lot of people sent me messages of love and support, and validated my feelings, and said that they could identify, and that what I wrote had helped them. In short, I gained a lot – and lost nothing.

It’s crazy, this fear of speaking the truth. But logical. When you live for a long time in a dysfunctional system, where a lot of people have a vested interest in everyone conforming to the rules, the messages are incessant: keep your mouth shut and do not rock the boat. They may be overt or covert, and the people in the system sometimes don’t even know they in it, or that they’re perpetuating it, like the fish who don’t know they’re wet. And those who choose not to conform [because they can’t], who love that which Goethe calls the ‘one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans…’, and who decide to follow that truth, are often cast out, become the black sheep of the family, are dismissed. And sadly, they often get trampled underfoot. Because not everyone is tough enough to make it outside of the system. Particularly when they are children.

Anyway. Old news, I’m sure you’ve heard it all before, or some variation thereof. What fascinates me now, though, is the seemingly newfound willingness of the black sheep and the underdogs to bare their souls, to come forward and speak out - en masse. And I am heartened – nay, thrilled – by the fact that these people are not condemned as they would once have been, but are listened to, believed, and even celebrated.

It may be too soon to hail this as the salvation of humankind, but positive change is definitely afoot: since the Breiðuvík revelations the Icelandic government has set up counselling centres for anyone who was placed in any of those horrid, heartless homes run by the state. I’m also sure Linda Drake feels like a winner, secure in the conviction that her story has helped others and may even help deter potential abusers, because if victims become accustomed to speaking up, the perpetrators will be the ones living in fear. Who knows, slowly but surely the crazy backwards dysfunctionality of the systems may be turning around.

AND AS FOR THE WEATHER
… it is also turning around. That horrid wind we had all last week has dissipated and now we have lovely, spring-like weather. Well, except for the snow we woke up to this morning. Pseudo-snow, really. It only stuck on the ground for an hour or two, and then the sun came out and reminded us that spring is just around the corner. Right now it’s 1°C [34F], sunrise was at 7.05 and sunset at 20.03.

Soon after my mother and I moved to Canada, she met a man. He was quite a bit older than she, was a professor at the Royal Military College, spoke with a British accent and was in the process of separating from his wife.

He’d come and spend nights at our place and he was always very nice. At least I thought so, but then again by that time I’d developed a rather distorted sense of judgement. He once brought me a pack of Wrigleys gum as a token of thanks for a meal I’d cobbled together [being of the age where I was learning to cook], and kissed the top of my head. Another time he drove me and my mother out to a shopping centre on the edge of town so I could get my ears pierced. I couldn’t believe his kindness. Having learned not to expect too much, I thought this was the best of all possible worlds.

Unfortunately, it was. That was pretty much the extent of his kindness. The moment my mother and he began living together, a toxic cloud somehow descended over everything and he became incredibly controlling and manipulating. I don’t even know exactly how it happened, I just suddenly found myself horribly self-conscious, second-guessing everything I did, and not wanting to go home. [Happily there was a shopping centre next door where I spent innumerable hours.] My mother’s new boyfriend watched my every move and his fault-finding was incessant: If my shoes were not lined up properly next to the door, if the closet in the hall was left open a touch, if my elbows were on the table, if I took too long in the bathroom, if I flossed my teeth anywhere near the kitchen table, if I messed up the tassels of a rug that had just been vacuumed, and on and on ad infinitum.

A year later he and my mother bought a house in the suburbs. At that his obsession with control reached new heights and his stinginess bloomed in all its dysfunctional glory. If there was a special on at the supermarket – say if Campbell’s tomato soup was reduced by 2 cents a can – he’d go out and buy three cases and stash them down in the basement. Soon the corner of the ‘recreation room’ – which was basically a storage area with bare stone walls and concrete floor – was filled with canned and dried items bought on special. When soap was on special he went out and bought loads of them, then brought them home and proceeded to unwrap and stash them under the sink so they would dry out and last longer. When I made tea with a teabag I had strict instructions to dry the teabag so that it could be used again. And under no circumstances was I to squeeze the dish soap out of the dishwashing sponge – it, too, could be used again. He was also enormously uptight about the telephone and how long phone calls lasted. Why? Because we had a party line. A party line meant that we shared our phone line with someone else, someone we didn’t know. When they were on, we couldn’t use the phone, and vice-versa. This reduced the phone bill by half.

His obsession with control was insane. In addition to the things I’d become accustomed to – lining up the shoes, not upsetting the tassels on the rug, etc. – the list of dos and don’ts grew ever-longer. When I was helping to put the groceries away I was not to leave the refrigerator open for more than a few seconds – instead everything was to be lined up on the counter next to the fridge first, then the fridge was to be opened and everything put inside quickly so as not to waste energy. The world was facing an energy crisis, didn’t I know? The same applied when using the oven – ideally things should saved up and baked at the same time so the oven only needed to be heated once. Eating between meals was not permitted. I had my own bathroom downstairs next to my room, and at the time I had thick hair down to my waist. There were strict instructions [via my mother] to always turn off the water in the shower when I was shampooing my hair and/or applying conditioner. We had to conserve water [energy crisis – didn’t I know?], so if I wanted to have a bath [which was frowned upon], under no circumstances was I to fill the tub – I was to use ten inches of water at the most, and in the winter I was to leave the bathwater in the tub until it cooled down so the heat didn’t go to waste. And because of the aforementioned energy crisis, under no circumstances was I to put the thermostat up past 60°F [15.5°C] during the day. When he and my mother came home from work, he himself ceremoneously turned the heat up to 65°F – and I can remember one Christmas when it was particularly cold that he agreed to turn it up to 70°F [21°C]. Unfortunately for me, however, my room was down in the basement and the basement was submerged and had virtually no insulation, whereas the thermostat was upstairs. This meant that when it was 65° up upstairs, it was around 50° in my room. I can remember going to sleep wearing my Icelandic sweater and socks over my pyjamas with my Icelandic duvet on top. It was that cold.

Looking back, writing it down, it seems absurd and kind of hilarious. But it sure didn’t feel that way at the time. I was literally petrified of that man. Maybe it had something to do with the swords he hung on the walls or the hunting rifles he had under the bed – or maybe it just had something to do with the toxic way he was able to shame and manipulate. I don’t know. I just know that he continued to exert his power and for years afterwards I felt like I had a harsh tyrant constantly watching me. I was particularly vulnerable to doors and windows that were uncovered, had a sense that someone was always looking in. I couldn’t shake it.

As I’ve written about before, the time came when he and my mother decided to move even further away. I have a theory that they needed to isolate themselves even more to be able to continue on in their insanity. To me, the thought of moving with them to an isolated farm in the country was unbearable. I didn’t go. I think it was the lesser of two evils for me – obviously I was still a child and in no way ready to start looking after myself. But man – what an immense relief it was to be away from them, even though I would still feel the effects for years to come.

I didn’t find the courage to oppose him until years later, when I was well into my twenties. I was living in Germany at the time but had returned to Canada for a visit and was at the farm. I was pregnant and it was the first time I’d seen him and my mother in five years. For three days before that I’d been at a cottage where there was no hot water and no shower; I was tired and cranky and desperate for a bath. My mother was on the phone, so I half-mimed, half-asked if I could take one, and she waved me into the bathroom. The moment I turned on the water, that same awful feeling came over me – I knew he was out there, counting the drops. Sure enough, within five minutes he was outside the door, talking to my half-sister in a loud voice about how it was incomprehensible to him why anyone needed so much water for a bath, and going on about how their well would run dry, and blah

I became furious. All the rage from long ago welled up in me and I thought my head would explode. I shouted through the door that I’d pay him for his fucking water if it was such a huge deal – and if so, I was damn well going to fill the tub [having been too afraid to fill it more than halfway, of course]. So I filled the tub and soaked [stewed!] in the bath for about half an hour, then dried off, dressed, went into his room where he was propped up in bed reading a book about the Royal Family, and threw five bucks on the bed. He shouted at me and I shouted back – I was shaking, trembling … it took all I had to stand up to him. The next day he woke up and – incredibly – pretended that nothing had happened. But I’d had enough. I cut my visit short, and left.

It’s amazing how some people can trap you in some kind of weird terror, like they cast a spell that completely drains your strength. Give you the feeling that you are worthless and insipid – and you buy into it. I’ve often asked myself why I gave this man so much power over me, even after he was gone, and why I didn’t stand up for myself when I was younger. But it was probably because I couldn’t. I was a child, dependent on him, with no support from my mother or anyone else, and made to feel grateful that he’d taken me in.

You know, I’m sometimes amazed that I’m not a drug addict, alcoholic, or chronically depressed. I really am.

Oh and it’s raining. Temps around 4°C. Back to the weather tomorrow.

Here in Iceland, when someone dies, certain rituals take place [as I’ve explained before]. One of those is the open casket ceremony, usually held a couple of days before the funeral. This is a small and intimate event, reserved for the immediate family and close friends of the deceased. The mourners gather in a small chapel, the minister says a few words, then invites people to come up, one by one, to say goodbye.

I am very partial to the open casket ceremony. It can be very harsh to see your loved one lying there in the casket [they look so very different when only the shell is left], and yet it allows you to release the most intense grief in a setting that feels enclosed and safe. It takes the edge off. You are then able to take part in the larger funeral ceremony, which is open to anyone, with more composure.

Several years ago, my grandparents, who I was very close to as a child, died within five weeks of each other. My grandfather died first. At the time I was living abroad, a single mother with an 18-month old child, very little money, and no support system. For that reason, I decided not to travel to Iceland for the funeral. Five weeks later, however, when my grandmother died, I knew I had to go. Scraping together the few resources that I had, I made the journey. Hers was the first open casket ceremony I had been to.

Ever since then, whenever I dream about my grandparents [occasionally now, more frequently at first], my grandfather is always alive, while my grandmother is dead. She may be in the dream, but she is either very vague, or I know that she’s really dead. In my dreams I sometimes speak to my grandfather, but never to my grandmother, even though in reality, when they were alive, I was much closer to her. I know that this is because I was there for her open casket ceremony and funeral, and not his. Consequently my subconscious has fully grasped that she is gone, while it is still not sure about him.

Last night, I had a dream about my mother. I was at the house where my grandparents lived and I walked over to the next apartment. There was my mother, alive, more alive than I had seen her in years. She was wearing an apron and cooking, and she was happy. She welcomed me in and continued with her tasks, energetically, like I often remember her. I was confused. The dream was so real, so vibrant, that I really believed that she was still alive. Yet I knew she was dead. I went into the living room and found my aunt and my half-sister sitting on the sofa. Quietly, because I didn’t want my mother to hear, I asked them if she was still alive. But they shook their heads, said ‘No, she’s dead.’ Then my half-sister turned to my aunt and said, ‘She’s got a lot of grief still to go through,’ – meaning me, speaking as though I were not present in the room.

I left, and went back into my grandparents’ flat. There, sitting at a table in the living room, were my grandfather and a woman – he was vibrantly alive, she was vague, like a ghost. I sat down at the table and wept. My grandfather was initially surprised – but then he understood.

When my mother died, her remains were cremated two days after her death. Three days after that, a memorial took place. Nobody thought to contact me to see if I wanted to attend, or to ask if they should hold off for a couple of days so I could get there. As though I wasn’t my mother’s daughter. As though I wasn’t present in the room.

I would have liked to have said goodbye, would have liked to have seen her one last time. It would have made it easier. I would have liked it had my half-sister called me to tell me that our mother had been taken ill. Had she called me from the hospital that last afternoon, I might have been able to say goodbye, even by phone. But she didn’t.

Today, all things considered, I’m relieved I didn’t travel to Canada for the memorial. Had I done so, I would have learned of my dismissal surrounded by people who were steeped in dysfunction. Whereas this way, I was surrounded by people who loved me. And that’s a million times better.

WEATHER
Very miserable today. Extremely windy – cold at first, then turning to sleet and rain, with severe gusts. Roads out in the country were closed off, rescue squads had their work cut out for them. No serious accidents, though, thankfully. By dinnertime it had all blown over and right now it’s calm and 3°C. Sunrise was at 7.30 and sunset at 19.42.