JOY

Surviving grief

1. GRIEF:  a multifaceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioural, social, spiritual and philosophical dimensions.

I thought I knew about grief.  I felt it when my grandmother died and definitely when we lost our mother, though my reaction to my father's death left a numbness that has never gone away.  I've felt the pain of loss over the death of family pets and friends and acquaintances, over broken relationships and distance between loved ones, over a close call on my own life  - and I thought I knew all about it .... but I didn't and I don't.

Five months ago a family we have known for a very long time, and who have been both neighbours and work mates, lost a daughter. She was 25 years old and had lived those years with cystic fibrosis.  I witnessed their deep and painful grief through friends, face book messages and on their faces when I saw them.  Their battle with grief continues and like ripples on the pond, has affected everyone who knows them, causing many people to examine their own lives and fully appreciate their family.

We are told that grief is a natural, healthy process that aids healing from emotional wounds but the journey takes us through shock, denial, anger and deep sorrow, and it is not a comfortable ride.

When, less than three weeks ago, our beautiful, friendly, happiest-dog-in-the-world, Rufous, died on the living room floor at 4.30am, in the two minutes of that night we were not in the room with him - we were (and I do not often use this word as it is over used) devastated. We were shattered, shocked, stunned, dazed, traumatised, crushed, overwhelmed, distressed and overcome with the deep sorrow of loss.

We had seen the vet the afternoon before, knowing things were not right - and they had not been right for several months, but, being in a state of hope, we didn't fully realise that. Rufous died a week shy of his 14th birthday. That made him about 98 in people years.  He was more than five years past his use by date after a diagnosis of cancer, he had problems with his pancreas and digestive system, arthritis in the spine and he'd had both knees rebuilt after wearing them out. Regardless of what areas of his little body were shutting down, I feel he died of old age - it was his time, we knew it was coming but would never be ready. I still weep as I write this because I miss him so much.

For three days we hardly ate, we walked around in a daze, crying in anguish.  We thought we were prepared, we had chosen a burial site five years ago and that made the first task a little easier.  But we kept hearing him in every creak of the house and seeing him out of the corner of our eye.  He was in every room, every part of our day.  We suddenly had the first of many, many things - the first mail delivery without Rufous, the first shopping trip without Rufous, the first washing day - the first visitor to not be welcomed by Rufous - our days were full of missing him.

There is no way our loss could be compared to our neighbour's loss, after all they lost their daughter, we only lost a dog. But our pain was the same. Possibly we will adjust sooner .......... whatever sooner is.

But it set me wondering about what we grieve for and I came up with relationship. We have lost a relationship that we enjoyed, treasured and were blessed by.  I feel that relationship with family and friends is the core of emotional life for human beings, especially as relationship is a two way deal.  We have a relationship with God, with animals, with our garden, and the loss is like an amputation as it rips away a precious part of us.

Many people have written about grief with more knowledge and understanding than I have, but I needed to gather my thoughts into words, so I can look at them.

RIP little man Rufous.  

The 14 years we had with you will never end as you live in our hearts forever.  

You were an angel, sent to teach us about life, 

about strength and survival,

about not complaining,

about unconditional love and forgiveness, 

about joyfulness and the miracles that joy can bring,

and we embraced all those lessons.

Thank you.

Rufous B the Happiest Dog in the World,  10.03.2001 - 03.03.2015

... and very OLD sweets.

Recently I commented on facebook that after not tasted smarties for a long, long time I was disappointed to find they did not taste as I remembered. A tiny box of smarties was a treat we were given as children - often by guilt driven parents. The box could barely take two fingers and the number of smarties inside was not many, less than 25. The shell colours were as bright and shiny as new toys and children were tempted to line them up and sort into colours and swap with others to make patterns and let the colours stain their fingers and tongues.

Smarties, referred to in the industry as 'hard tablet sweets' apparently began life, in England, as Rowntree's Chocolate Beans in ... 1882! and were renamed as Smarties in 1937, so kids have been enjoying them for over 130 years!

Back in the days when Rowntree's made Smarties they had a thin candy coating that melted in the mouth allowing the sweet chocolate centre to flow over the tongue. Sweet and creamy. It was possible to eat them one at a time and really enjoy each one and as kids we were convinced that the colours had different flavours. 

Then Nestle took over Rowntree's and, not content to leave yummy enough alone, they changed the recipe in 2009. The motivation may have been to make them healthier - if any  sugar coated chocolate thing can be healthy - but the colours faded to almost pastel and the chocolate changed texture and tasted stale.

The Smarties web site explains there are eight colours, pink, red, orange, yellow, blue, violet, green and brown AND the orange Smartie is flavoured with natural orange oil.  Hmmm, so what are the other seven colours flavoured with?  

The other little treat we had from time to time, in our house, was a two bar Kit Kat, also a creation of Rowntree's. An interesting little story is - the chocolate bar we know today was developed in 1935, after a suggestion by a worker in the York factory, to make a snack that 'a man could take to work in his pack'.

The Kit Kat is composed of a block of two or four fingers that can be snapped apart. Each finger is made with three layers of wafer and cream covered in an outer layer of chocolate.  

Kit Kat has been enjoyed all over the world since 1940 and everyone knows the 1958  advertising line, 'Have a break, have a Kit Kat'.

And as above, Nestle bought Rowntree's in 1988 (but not in the US where it is owned by Hershey). So, what did they do to Kit Kat?  Well, they added a flavour range from orange, caramel to almond flavours, and a choice of dark, milk or white chocolate coating. There are chunky versions, snack pack sizes and Kit Kat easter eggs as well as 'Pop Choc' pieces, square 'Kubes', praline-filled 'Senses' and Kit Kat pieces in yoghurt or iceceam cones.  In Japan a Bake 'N Tasty mini Kit Kats Custard Pudding Flavour was launched in 2014  - you bake that in the oven and the outside caramelizes. O M G

So, apart from ONE SINGLE EASTER EGG per year, and the occasional very small block of Cadburys chocolate or a coconut rough in a show bag, and the occasional half-penny's worth of mixed lollies at the corner shop, the above treats were just about all we had in those good old, healthy days when everyone was a size medium. That might be difficult to understand in the 21st century.

We had cake of course, and they were always homemade, using real butter and actual sugar and locally milled flour and real cream and often homemade jam or lemon curd - all good stuff and you could almost live on Aunty Mab's jam and cream filled sponge with a beaker of homemade fruit cordial or a cuppa, and a few homemade sausage rolls, dipped in sauce cooked up from Uncle Harry's tomatoes - add a stick of celery and you've got all the food groups covered.  No tortes or mud cakes back then.

My life in the outer suburbs, without TV, limited my early experience of sweets. I can actually remember the day when, at the age of 21, I took a short cut through Sydney Central Station on my way to an Art Class, and stopped at a mobile newsagent (it was a tiny cream caravan) to buy a magazine and I bought a Polly Waffle.  I'd never had one before but I liked the name and so I bought it and ate it over two days.  And no, I did not repeat this often, it wasn't until years later, after having babies, that I discovered we need a daily hit of chocolate.

Google tells me the inventor of the Polly Waffle, in the year I was born, was Abel Hoadley of Hoadley's Chocolates in Melbourne.  Polly was a waffle wafer tube, filled with marshmallow (yummy) and coated in compound chocolate (Yuk, I didn't know that).  Compound chocolate is made of cocoa, sweeteners and  cheap vegetable fats that are not cocoa butter. And back then a Polly Waffle had a sugar content of over 50% !!! Wow.

Eventually Hoadleys was acquired by Rowntree's and in 1988 - one guess - by Nestle.  Nestle managed to change the waffle wafer to a more sugary, and probably cheaper, brittle wafer in 2009 and sales dropped off.  I wonder why? It also developed a flat bottom where it had once been round.  Polly Waffle was discontinued at the end of that year.  Poor Polly.

Sadly the Polly Waffle legacy is the use of the name for something similar in looks that might be unwelcome when found floating in a swimming pool. Again, poor Polly.

Cover art work by Barry Rockwell

Life with insects

They say that as you get older you often feel imaginary things crawling on your skin, but it's just

some sort of nerve damage.  I feel something crawling on me every day.  I brush it away, as you do and find there actually is some tiny little beetle or flying thing on the back of my neck or climbing up my legs or arms. I suppose that is normal for the sub-tropics.

The really amazing thing is - they are all so different.  Just while writing this I've flicked off a flying ant and a tiny spider and squashed a long narrow climbing thingy. They all share my living room.

So, how many different types of insects are there?

Just in Australia, the number of insect species is estimated at 300,000.  And, scientists tell us that there are more insects yet to be discovered than we already know about.  In fact, there could be as many as 200,000 insects on the planet PER person.

Lots of creatures eat insects, so they are handy to have.  Entomophagy is the eating of insects by people.  Three thousand ethnic groups around the world include insects in their diet, including cicadas, ants, grubs and worms.  Crunchy!

I like looking at the pretty ones.