Death Rituals

One of the sad parts of my job is having our patients die. It is inevitable when working in healthcare, but it isn't something I was prepared for when I started the job.

Because I'm not a doctor I never imagined that doing an administrative role as a receptionist would mean that sometimes I would have to come into contact with death, and it's not easy, not easy for anyone, but it also impacts on us non-clinical staff.

In the past week we have had three patients pass away. On hearing of the death of one in particular, it made me cry a little because I had come to know this person for the brief moments (sometimes not so brief if the doctor was running late) while they sat in the waiting room and we would chat and laugh. We talked about family and Christmas plans and how they were coping with a tough health diagnosis, and it became a warm, superficial relationship that somehow didn't feel superficial because we shared so much and I grew to like them and care about them. 

And then they died. 

It dawns on you that you'll never see them again. They're never going to walk through those doors and pass the time of day with you ever again. They knew your name and you knew theirs, and now that is gone.

Processing a death in a medical centre as an administrator felt like such a cold, heartless procedure when I first started in this job.

Upon hearing of the death, you immediately have to attend to it. It stops texts and recalls and notifications going out to the person's phone who has died, which could be distressing to the family. I understand why it has to be done but at first it seemed cold and heartless, ruthless even.

But I've become accustomed to it now, and now I consider it an honour. One of the last administrative tasks that is performed for a life that saw medical events and procedures and physical challenges and a documented relationship with a doctor. 

I've made it into my own little ritual. When I was a child and teenager, I used to keep a book with all the names of people I knew who had died. I don't know why I did it, I just thought it was a nice thing to do, to remember them.

Processing a death at work feels like something similar.

First you have to un-enrol them from the healthcare system and record the date of death. You have to pull their enrolment form with their signature from the files and it often has a photo attached to it, and this brings back memories of your own encounters with that person. I like to think about those times for a bit before I move onto the next stage. I like to think and remember who they were and the times I interacted with them, and I think of their family and the sadness they must be going through as they process a sorrow far deeper than mine.

The final stage is finding all their medical history. Where I work, this means going into the dark storage room and finding the folder that holds the tangible evidence of their birth, life and now death. It is all bundled together and placed in a file.

I write their full name carefully across the top with the date of death, and then I carry it to another place where it is stored for 10 years. This is a legal requirement. Writing their full name feels important. Like a statement saying this person lived. This person had a name, a family, a connection with people and community and they were somebody.

It's such a small job. A small, last ritual. An important one, but such a small one, but I like the privilege of carrying it out - one of the last services I can do for them. 

Listen to the Rhythm of the Rain

It has rained here all week.

Perhaps it is the ancient Scots blood in me, born down from my ancestors that acclimatised to gloomy, dark weather living up in the north of Scotland for all those centuries, that makes me feel comforted in rain. Rain has always felt soothing to me and this week I have been grateful for it calming my soul because this week has been difficult for me on a few fronts.

Justice has always been my driving force, although I didn't come to realise that until late in life. Learning that I love justice and hate injustice is what led me to study sociology and understanding how the world works, how it turns, how sociologists are passionate drivers for change in society. A passion for a just world and a believer that one person can impact the world for better. To break the darkness with light. 

But this week it has been tested because I had unfair and untrue accusations said to me, from both my workplace and an extended family relationship and in the past it would have been in my nature to cower and submit and give in and quietly walk away, letting it go, absorbing that shame and injustice, or as Erin Hanson says in her beautiful poem, that I "gave them what they wanted..... gave them life with endless sun."

Standing up for yourself is not always very easy. It is stressful for me. It still impacts negatively on my health but I have learned better how to deal with it and how to mentally process it.  I have learned how to confront bullies. I have learned what happens when you do. I've learned not to be controlled by others. 

I have learned that it is not always the healthy way to stay silent. 

Sometimes, though, it is necessary to be silent (such as dealing with personality disorders as I mentioned in my last post) and knowing the difference is part of this journey.

I've had to do both this week - confront unfair accusations and also to ignore the raging of a narcissist.  In doing so, working through these challenges, I realise how much I've grown personally and spiritually. Able to stand in the confidence of my belief systems and values and integrity, while partnering with God through life to grow closer to Him and lean on His strength through difficult times, to be sheltered by Him and heard.

So, I've been grateful for the rain this week, that has brought a calmness to my day, a solace of cool, quiet, refreshment, a steady presence and reminder that nothing beautiful would ever grow if it wasn't for the rain. 

Here is Erin Hanson's poem in full. You can find her wonderful work here on Instagram.

This Game of Narcissistic Revenge

Einstein once said:

Weak people revenge.

Strong people forgive.

Intelligent people ignore.

I've been thinking of our royal family this week. Well, in fact, for many weeks since, but especially this week as that terribly self-indulgent documentary is released by Netflix.

If you've ever experienced life with a narcissist and you've been following the royal drama that is Harry and Meghan, you may have started to feel something awfully familiar in the narrative coming out of Montecito, but not been sure what it was. 

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something evil this way comes." A quote by Agatha Christie.

I recognised it.

I didn't see it at the beginning. Like most of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, we saw Meghan as a breath of fresh air in the royal family, an exciting addition, young, modern and with Prince Harry being one of the most popular British princes at the time, there was huge bonhomie and elation to see him finally find someone and be happy. What an amazing asset they could have been. What an incredible platform for change and good they could have had. Britain welcomed her with open arms.

Mark Jones, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

How sad are the words, could have been and could have had. 

I could write entire essays on what my opinion is on this situation, and some wonder why I am interested at all, why does it matter to me? Why do I take up brain space thinking about these people I've never met and who don't live in my country.

It matters because the royal family is tied up with our democracy. The greatest (though flawed) form of democracy that exists in our modern world in my opinion. New Zealand has a legal binding to the UK, from our historic dealings with them, and apart from that, when you grow up learning about the royals and seeing them on everything it feels like, as Harry rightly said in the Netflix documentary, they feel like an extension of our own family. The Royal family are non-political and as Queen Elizabeth kept reiterating, they are there to serve the public. The royal family do an incredible amount of work with charities and awareness around issues impacting society. 

I, for one, will not stand by and be silent in this audacious attack against our democracy and our hard-working royal family by an American production company and two people who feel grieved against their own family.

I wasn't going to watch the Harry and Meghan show on Netflix. I was steely determined to NOT watch it, but in the end, I had no self-control and pressed play the minute it dropped onto our screens. It's like watching a train-wreck in slow motion and I don't watch because I have some kind of pleasure in seeing it happen, I watch because I care about what happens to our royal family and especially to the Prince and Princess of Wales who do not deserve the vitriol or underhanded comments being levelled at them. They are hard workers and appear to be very genuine, caring, kind people trying to do their best in a role that has been thrust upon them and who will one day make a splendid King and Queen. 

I do want to talk about revenge.

Meghan, and it must be said, Harry too, seem to insinuate a lot with barbed remarks. It's quite a cowardly way of getting revenge, especially knowing that the royal family can't fight back. We used to call that cowardly behaviour when I was growing up. Nowadays its called being a bully.

But regardless of all the rhetoric, today I'm not here to discuss the sad downward spiral of Harry and Meghan's character in the eyes of the world, I'm here to talk about narcissism and to raise a question I've been mulling over for a few weeks now.

There has been a lot of talk online and in news articles and social media from royal commentators and authors and in-the-know people about what King Charles III needs to do. Most people are saying, even calling for the King to strip them of their titles, to not 'keep calm and carry on' as has been the tradition of the royal family in the face of criticism, but rather now is the time to speak up, the time to defend themselves.

I've been thinking about this and thinking back to my own experiences with an alleged narcissist, in a public arena, albeit a smaller one than this world stage the royals are on. What would I do? 

If I was in a position to give advice what would my advice be?

Dealing with a narcissist is not something to be undertaken lightly. Responding to a narcissist is like walking across broken glass in bare feet - full of dangers and hidden threats as well as obvious threats. 

At first I thought that for sure the royal family would have to say something in their own defence this time. The amount of lies and fabrications brought against them are staggering (well documented in other places). The audaciousness of Meghan and Harry is staggering. The complete un-self-awareness is staggering.

But the general rule with narcissists is to ignore. The term widely used for this is to 'grey rock'.

What is a grey rock? It is stone. It is dull, it is immovable. It doesn't talk. It doesn't move. 

Should the royal family ignore this time?

Yes. They should. 

The advice is solid to 'grey rock', ignore the narcissist. To give them any response at all is to give them pleasure. To respond is to give fuel. If the royals want this to go away, the best advice is..... ignore. A narcissist cannot stand to be ignored. 

Narcissism is an extreme selfishness but it is also an extreme low self worth. The narcissist believes deep down in their subconscious core that they are worth nothing, so they manufacture, manipulate, strive to prove they are worth something, so if you ignore them, you are showing them that their worst fears about themselves are valid and it does two things....

1. It sets them on a path of revenge at you.

2. It ultimately silences them and they will move on to their next fuel for validation (or next victim).

They may still occassionally fire arrows at you, but those arrows are never as effective as they once could have been.

As it appears in this documentary, Harry and Meghan's obvious hatred and jealousy of the royal family practically oozes out of their pores. You have to know how a narcissist works to see it. Don't be fooled by the jaunty narrative these two would have you believe. It's there in the snide little remarks......

Example:

"Even when Will and Kate came over, and I met her for the first time, they came over for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot. Like, I was a hugger, I've always been a hugger. I didn't realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits. I guess I started to understand really quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside." quote by Meghan Markle in the Netflix documentary, 'Harry and Meghan'.

Not only is this culturally insensitive, it also demonstrates a disrespect for other people's personal boundaries. It also makes out as if the Prince and Princess of Wales are cold, unfriendly people.

It's there in the barbs against members of the royal family. 

Example: the very disrespectful demonstration of her supposed courtesy to the late Queen Elizabeth II.

It's there in 'H'. Narcissists devalue. You are an extension of them. You have no identity. By calling Harry 'H' is devaluing his identity, it reduces him to a letter of the alphabet.

It's there in body language. It's there in the manipulation of the media and its viewers. It's there in the exploitation of the word 'racism'.

Revenge is an inevitable step in a narcissist's cycle. It's the final shot that a narc has to shoot. It's when they know the game is over, they have lost the game, and there is nothing more they can do, so they go for broke. They fire everything they have at their target, the enemy of their power to control; in this case, the Crown; the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales and by extension, the people of Great Britain.

When a narcissist reaches this step, they have metaphorically dug their own grave and are about to fall into it.

So, I say again to anyone listening.

Ignore.

The Secret Adversary

 There's something about Tommy and Tuppence that makes you want to be in their company time and time again. Agatha Christie must have loved them too because she wrote quite a few books with them.

We are introduced to them right at the beginning in Book #2, The Secret Adversary and are given a hint at what the content is going to be like with Agatha's dedication:

"To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure".

The Secret Adversary is a classic adventure mystery story with intrigue, spies, conspiracy theories, abductions, koshings on the head and mysterious notes, all wrapped up into one book. I feel as though it is an indulgent book by Agatha Christie, not so serious as her Hercule Poirot books or Miss Marple books, but one that she has had fun with, while also exploring some more serious themes, such as the sinking of the Lusitania, which in it's day was as cataclysmic as the sinking of the Titanic, except it happened in wartime and was torpedoed by a German submarine, but many innocent lives were lost. 

I read that the passengers were warned before buying tickets for the voyage that sailing during wartime was an extremely dangerous thing to do and there was always the chance they could get hit. The Captain was warned about German submarine activity in the area that day and advised to take evasive action, such as zig-zagging, but the captain chose to ignore the warning. 1,198 people died.

This is the first book of Christie's that used a real-life event to form her plot. She does this a few more times throughout her writing career.

What I love about The Secret Adversary is the introduction to Mr Carter and to Albert who are both recurring characters in the Tommy and Tuppence books. 

The Secret Adversary was published in 1922. This was the original cover;

raw by Ernest Akers, published by The Bodley Head

You can watch the full 1983 adaptation of the movie version (which is very close to the original story) on YouTube for free. I do not recommend the modern version, it is a travesty! 

A Tiny Shift

This summer, I'm working on a book. 

Because of the nature of it, I'm finding I'm being drawn back to old arts centred around home and family. It's more of a challenge now to focus on home, because I work 4 days a week and I'm studying, but there must be something in the air that is making me turn my focus back onto this. 

I find as I get older that I take comfort in old, familiar things and old, familiar faces. It is probably because we as a family have been through so much in the past 10 years and I reach for peace and safety and familiar. It is possible to crave that and yet still have ambitions, as I do with my study and future. A check list, if you like, for the second half of my life. The things I want to do are things that I have chosen for myself and even at my age I still have dreams.

I think I know what precipitated this shift.

At the beginning of the year we visited my home province in Marlborough for a summer holiday. It was one of the loveliest holidays filled with warm, sunny days walking through old familiar streets and haunts in Picton, the seaside town and Blenheim, my hometown, where old friends I've known all my life still live, and a remnant of relatives. Once it was full of my grandparents and cousins and parents and great aunts and uncles, but we grew up and moved away and grandparents passed away, but the area holds so many dear memories for me, still full of atmosphere and fragrance and textures and sounds and somehow this year I felt like I wanted to hold onto that forever.

I'm writing a book about this very special part of New Zealand and my memories of growing up as a Marlborough girl.  A collection of recipes and stories and connection with the people and places of this province. It is a nostalgic project and I'll be invoking the food of the 1970s and 1980s that left indelible an imprint on our collective family history as well as generational food passed down from the matriarchs.

As part of the writing and creative process, I have decided to incorporate weekly videos for my youtube channel. I plan on doing this every Sunday. Food is such an intrinsic part of who we are and is intertwined with the stories of our lives, so while I am more of a writer than I am an orator or camera person, I felt it was important to record the process of creating a book about life and memories and connection. These videos will reflect the person I am - the introvert and lover of quiet in a world that clamours for attention and noise. It's a place for other introverts - to slow life down and enjoy the beauty around us and to remember and reflect on what is important - connection with people and with places.

I would be interested to know what you think and your own thoughts around this subject.