On Being An Orphan

My mother  died very early in the morning on Saturday February 18. Alzheimer's had finished doing its work of destroying her brain. Having been summoned home to Mackay in Queensland  on Wednesday the 15^th by nursing home staff with the instruction that if I wanted to see my mother alive I had best travel quickly, I saw my mother one last time. The half hour I spent alone with my mother was needed. It alone allowed acceptance and closure to happen. I was able to say loving last words.

I have had at least the last three years that my mother was vegetative to accept the reality that Alzheimer's is a linear disease. It develops, it then proceeds to destroy neurons in your brain until there is literally not enough of them for you to live. No one at this point in time is cured from Alzheimer's. No one suddenly rises from their bed and resumes their lives. My mother was always going to die as she did. 

So it was at 1.30 a.m. that I found myself alone with my mothers body. Forgiveness came easy. When I had seen her seven hours earlier I had told her of my forgiveness. Being a parent myself I now know just how tough a job it is, and I am without a violent, mentally unstable spouse. Knowing my own ability to make mistakes when it comes to raising my boys made it easier to forgive my mothers mistakes as a parent.

Forgiveness brought the gift of closure, of release. Whilst what I had seen and kissed on the Friday evening was a shrivelled and obviously dying husk of what my mother had been, I had and still have little doubt that my mother heard me. Given that she died shortly after I left suggests that she had waited for me to arrive.

Forgiveness and acceptance means that I can now transform my mothers death into something positive. When my brother Mark died I wasn’t given the chance to see his body. Thus acceptance of his death and the ability to grieve and channel that grief into something positive has been more problematic for me. My mothers death is easier.

With my mothers death there is now the simple question: How can I honour her properly?

My mother in her own way was every bit as challenging in her opinions as my father was. They shared views on race and both disapproved of my marriages to Asians. Still my mother had the better mouth control. Also I was, and still am, a Mummy’s boy. Easier to forgive someone who at least tried to nurture you. Forgiveness of my mother is the easier, less time, less life consuming option for me. I had seen and done enough hating in this lifetime. 

Whilst it is true that I want no further contact with my birth family, this doesn’t mean that I hate the Bowater of Mackay. To hate them is to give them an importance they do not have or warrant in my life. What it does mean is that having met a number of them over the last five years, I understand that there is nothing in common with these people, there is no need from either side to build a relationship. I have hated them, but now see them as damaged people. Fiona, for example, who at 45 is easily 130 kg, is someone with all the emotional and physical problems that being that size is the result of. Normal, happy people don’t eat themselves into obesity. When I was 140 kg, I was miserable and attempting to eat my way out of the misery. I couldn’t, I exercised and made life changes that cumulated in a divorce and subsequent marriage to Selina, and this brought happiness. Fiona’s obesity is evidence of the emotional and physical dark place that she is in. 

Compassion is my best option. All my siblings are damaged people who are unable or unwilling to heal themselves. Why be angry at the broken? It makes even less sense at being angry at broken people I will never see again.

So it is that I am giving the question of how best to honour my mother’s life a lot of thought.

After days of thought, the best answer I can give to this question is:

I will honour my mother as I have been honouring Mark. I will do my best to ramp up the intensity of my quest for physical and intellectual perfection, but the actions will remain the same. A physically and mentally active Russell is the best version of me. I will continue to make every effort I can to be the parent my children need me to be and the sort of parent I didn’t have. I will make every effort to be the husband Selina needs me to be.

No amount of grief will return my mother to me. No amount of grief will give me the time with my mother and my brother that I would so dearly like to have. Given this there is no point in my grieving for someone who functionally died 5 years ago. What is plastic in my life is how I live it. I can control how I am as a person. Effort in becoming physically perfect will bring me to those I love. Effort in becoming the active Senior I want to be will give me the years I want with them. 

Only when I am in the best possible place will I be the best use I can be to myself and those I love. And living a fit, toned, and healthy life, both physically and emotionally in the best place I can be. No amount of incense and chanting will honour my mother the way that one day of living properly, of living my best will.

A Liteness of Being

I sat up yesterday with a shock. Since the end of November last year I have ramped up my efforts to lose my belly fat and to drop 14 kg permanently. Having read Peter Fitzsimons “The Great Aussie Bloke Slim Down” and taken the message on board, I have removed 99% of processed sugars from my diet and eat little, if any fruit. I have also hit the exercise hard and now row, cycle, climb, lift weights and do yoga & Pilates on a regular basis. The kilo’s have been almost shed (I’m down 6 kg) and a distinctly positive outcome has been the reappearance of muscles I haven’t seen in decades.

I also feel incredibly lite. I have energy in ways I haven’t had in decades. When I was obese I was continuously tired. Now I can cycle for 30 km, climb for 3 hours and then still have the energy to cook dinner and help care for my kids. This morning I woke with the understanding of why I have so much energy and such a deep sense of liteness. The reason is simple: Being obese is identical to being in a workout that never ends. Ten years ago when I was 25 kg heavier I was carrying around the biggest weight I have in my gym. Even earlier than that when I was 140 kg…almost 50% heavier than I am now, and the weight my wife was when we met…every time I moved, I was moving the equivalent of my current weight and that of another person. You don’t have to be a physicist to see that every time I moved, every time I took a crap, walked up stairs, and even got my abundant arse in and out of a chair, my cardiovascular system was working at full throttle.

In losing the weight I have, I have freed up the energy I was previously using just to exist. The strain on my cardiovascular system has gone from being a constant to being a variable. I can raise and lower the amount of energy I use to get through the day. The strain on my joints is down as well.

With the free energy I now have, there is the ability to create a feedback loop: the more I eat properly and exercise and more body fat I lose, the more energy I have to eat properly and to exercise and lose body fat. Success breeds success. The more weight I lose, the more weight I want to lose and because I know that permanent weight loss isn’t a myth, I have the confidence to pursue the number goal that I want to.

 

Seeing in the mirror the results of eating properly and caring for my body by exercising regularly empowers me to choose this as the preferred expression of who I am as a person. Which brings us to a common theme: eating properly, exercising regularly and achieving healthy weights and percentages of body fat is an expression of our love for ourselves and those we hold dear. Love really is capable of changing everything…including the lies you think your bathroom scales are telling you.