Facing my Mortality
In my late teens, some thirty odd years ago, l lived away from home at University. I had an ordinary childhood; no real traumas, the usual family fights. Pretty normal, on the surface. After my first year I travelled in Europe for six weeks. When I came home, to where my parents lived, I discovered they had moved house, more than that, they had separated with a view to divorce.
It took me about a week to track down my Mother and to become embroiled in a fierce family feud, one sister taking my Mothers side, the other taking my Fathers side, both sides wanting my support to produce the weight in numbers. A week of this was more than I could stand; I left and have never seen one of them since.
This may seem to some to be an extraordinary thing to have done, to have continued doing. There were good reasons to me, then, and now. The family dispute brought into the open things that had never been discussed, they had been hidden from my self and my older sister. My Father came from the East End of London, he was a criminal, had served time in prison. I never remembered him from my childhood because he was not there. For many years, I assumed that my early memory had failed me; my earliest memory is from about the age of seven. I came to understand that I was unable to remember him because he played no part in my early life, and somehow that had wiped the rest of the memories from my early childhood.
The shock to me was profound, deep, and like most individuals of my star sign, when I make up my mind, it is set in stone.
Do I think about my parents? Yes, every day. I rarely think of my sisters.
Time moved on, I married, made my wife’s family my own, and lived a full and hectic life. My wife never once questioned my decision, I know she kept contact with my Mother for some time until her own parents’ ill health caused a whirlwind in our lives and they lost touch.
About seven months ago, I had to go into the city on business. Walking down the street, I suddenly was unable to breath, unable to move. I had a mild heart attack about a year previously, that had caused a rethink of our lives and I sold my business and moved to a less stressful lifestyle. My first instinct was that I was having a severe heart attack. In a flash I knew what was really happening, my Mother had died. At that moment, I came face to face with my mortality, I was not dying now, but I was going to.
It may sound absurd to suddenly realise that, of course I knew that we live and we die. I had seen enough death in my life; within a period of three months in 1985, we lost both of my wife’s parents to cancer, the year previously her aunt had died and in the following year an uncle and cousin, the latter whilst using the bathroom in our house.
None of these deaths ever raised the question of my own mortality.
Now I was transfixed to the spot, someone brought me a glass of water, offered to call an ambulance. Someone else brought a chair from a café and I sat on the pavement trying to control the emotional surges ripping through me. There were millions of images and messages in my head, random flashes of my life, other’s lives, doubts, fears, hope and love.
I am still to a very large extent trying to make some sense of it all.
How did this realisation manifest itself? Much of that is the usual stuff about living for the day, not putting off until tomorrow, achieve what you can in the time allotted, stop wasting time, etc.
Beyond that, I confronted my own sexuality.
I have never been a very sexual person, in the sense of having many partners or indeed experiencing many and varied sexual practices. I have always been a very sensual person. Now my head was full of the sex that I would not have because for me that time was past, past because I am simply not the type of person that goes looking for sexual relationships.
Whether that is loyalty or simply fear, I really do not know.
So, I did the rational (?) thing and decided to write a few stories in Lit. to explore this new sexuality – maybe this is just an old man pinning for his lost youth. I’m not entirely convinced that is the whole explanation. In writing about sex, I have come to understand more about how to love another person than I ever would have thought possible. That will sound odd to the strokers. But then I don’t really write strokers material.
Even that got me into hot water, I describe my characters too well, the object of my fantasy sexuality recognised her self. Anyone want to quote me odds on that happening? Wasn’t that remarkable really, my wife told her I was writing erotic stories, she did her own research. Hence the name change.
Rest assured, there is no damage done, just embarrassment, I could do with a red cheeked smiley just at this point.
There you have it. Confronting my mortality brought me face to face with my sexuality, amongst many other things. It also introduced me to writing; I have not written a story since the late 1960’s at school, if nothing else, it has given me a new focus for my remaining span, one that I fully intend to exploit.
As for my Mother, she did die; the day I got the ‘message’ was the day of her funeral. I am not as surprised by this ‘message’ as some of you may be, asking you to understand how this happens to me is asking you to take a leap in trust, suffice to say that from time to time I see things. Only once have I ever documented a ‘message’ and that was to someone on Lit., they confirmed a factual event I could not possibly have known, the following day.
Confused, I am. I’ll try to work it out through the writing.
I would still like to hear more from females particularly about the notion of immortality and bearing children, if you think this is absurd, please say so. It might stop me thinking about it.
NL
In my late teens, some thirty odd years ago, l lived away from home at University. I had an ordinary childhood; no real traumas, the usual family fights. Pretty normal, on the surface. After my first year I travelled in Europe for six weeks. When I came home, to where my parents lived, I discovered they had moved house, more than that, they had separated with a view to divorce.
It took me about a week to track down my Mother and to become embroiled in a fierce family feud, one sister taking my Mothers side, the other taking my Fathers side, both sides wanting my support to produce the weight in numbers. A week of this was more than I could stand; I left and have never seen one of them since.
This may seem to some to be an extraordinary thing to have done, to have continued doing. There were good reasons to me, then, and now. The family dispute brought into the open things that had never been discussed, they had been hidden from my self and my older sister. My Father came from the East End of London, he was a criminal, had served time in prison. I never remembered him from my childhood because he was not there. For many years, I assumed that my early memory had failed me; my earliest memory is from about the age of seven. I came to understand that I was unable to remember him because he played no part in my early life, and somehow that had wiped the rest of the memories from my early childhood.
The shock to me was profound, deep, and like most individuals of my star sign, when I make up my mind, it is set in stone.
Do I think about my parents? Yes, every day. I rarely think of my sisters.
Time moved on, I married, made my wife’s family my own, and lived a full and hectic life. My wife never once questioned my decision, I know she kept contact with my Mother for some time until her own parents’ ill health caused a whirlwind in our lives and they lost touch.
About seven months ago, I had to go into the city on business. Walking down the street, I suddenly was unable to breath, unable to move. I had a mild heart attack about a year previously, that had caused a rethink of our lives and I sold my business and moved to a less stressful lifestyle. My first instinct was that I was having a severe heart attack. In a flash I knew what was really happening, my Mother had died. At that moment, I came face to face with my mortality, I was not dying now, but I was going to.
It may sound absurd to suddenly realise that, of course I knew that we live and we die. I had seen enough death in my life; within a period of three months in 1985, we lost both of my wife’s parents to cancer, the year previously her aunt had died and in the following year an uncle and cousin, the latter whilst using the bathroom in our house.
None of these deaths ever raised the question of my own mortality.
Now I was transfixed to the spot, someone brought me a glass of water, offered to call an ambulance. Someone else brought a chair from a café and I sat on the pavement trying to control the emotional surges ripping through me. There were millions of images and messages in my head, random flashes of my life, other’s lives, doubts, fears, hope and love.
I am still to a very large extent trying to make some sense of it all.
How did this realisation manifest itself? Much of that is the usual stuff about living for the day, not putting off until tomorrow, achieve what you can in the time allotted, stop wasting time, etc.
Beyond that, I confronted my own sexuality.
I have never been a very sexual person, in the sense of having many partners or indeed experiencing many and varied sexual practices. I have always been a very sensual person. Now my head was full of the sex that I would not have because for me that time was past, past because I am simply not the type of person that goes looking for sexual relationships.
Whether that is loyalty or simply fear, I really do not know.
So, I did the rational (?) thing and decided to write a few stories in Lit. to explore this new sexuality – maybe this is just an old man pinning for his lost youth. I’m not entirely convinced that is the whole explanation. In writing about sex, I have come to understand more about how to love another person than I ever would have thought possible. That will sound odd to the strokers. But then I don’t really write strokers material.
Even that got me into hot water, I describe my characters too well, the object of my fantasy sexuality recognised her self. Anyone want to quote me odds on that happening? Wasn’t that remarkable really, my wife told her I was writing erotic stories, she did her own research. Hence the name change.
Rest assured, there is no damage done, just embarrassment, I could do with a red cheeked smiley just at this point.
There you have it. Confronting my mortality brought me face to face with my sexuality, amongst many other things. It also introduced me to writing; I have not written a story since the late 1960’s at school, if nothing else, it has given me a new focus for my remaining span, one that I fully intend to exploit.
As for my Mother, she did die; the day I got the ‘message’ was the day of her funeral. I am not as surprised by this ‘message’ as some of you may be, asking you to understand how this happens to me is asking you to take a leap in trust, suffice to say that from time to time I see things. Only once have I ever documented a ‘message’ and that was to someone on Lit., they confirmed a factual event I could not possibly have known, the following day.
Confused, I am. I’ll try to work it out through the writing.
I would still like to hear more from females particularly about the notion of immortality and bearing children, if you think this is absurd, please say so. It might stop me thinking about it.
NL
