Tag Death

Bitter Sweet Symphony

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

”…Tryna make ends meet, you’re a slave to the money then you die…”

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m on a downer; I’m not, it’s just a coincidence that the things I want to post about at the moment all involve an element of death, which is not a bad thing, as it reminds me to live.

I had never really contemplated my own death until my father passed away in 2013; then I obsessed about it for quite some time. There I was sitting quite happily on my branch in the tree of life when suddenly there was one less person between me and the end; to be fair I was so far along it that it was becoming more of a twig than a branch and had started to bob up and down quite precariously in the breeze. But there’s nothing like the death of someone of a similar age to drum home my own mortality. I had lost friends at university, but I was young then, and whilst the sense of loss was immense, I still felt invincible; those were extraordinary deaths.

Last night my husband told me that an old work colleague of mine had died a couple of weeks ago. I worked with him for seven years; I hadn’t seen him for twenty, yet still the news profoundly affected me. We were more or less the same age and level of qualification; I had previously worked at two law firms before joining the firm where we worked together. He had trained, qualified, and become a partner at that firm, a period spanning 32 years. He had never known any different, had never stepped outside of his comfort zone or worked with new people who may have inspired him or influenced him in different ways. Why not? My husband ventured that maybe he stayed for the money which financed a certain lifestyle and that he was happy with that, with that way of living. That’s true; just because it is a path that I would not have chosen does not make it less valid, and, in this respect, I appreciate that I am lucky in that I have a choice; a lot of people don’t have that luxury.

He would have been earning a fair amount, working incredibly long hours and have been under intense pressure. Was it all worth it? If I had said to him 20 years ago, when we shared the same office in which he would tell me all about his salsa classes, his training for the triathlon he was planning to compete in, or the latest date with his girlfriend, that he had a ticking time bomb inside him which would kill him at the age of 55, would he have made the same choices? Maybe not, but that’s the benefit of hindsight. As Kierkegaard says:

”It is really true what philosophy tells us that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

Reflecting on Resentment II

Kate McCalmont-Woods 3 Comments

I’ve rewritten this post so many times. It has become progressively shorter. Sitting back and reflecting, I can see what is important. The first version was just a rant.

In late 2022, my mother was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. No treatment was offered. At best she had 6 months left. Her GP had messed up. The hospital messed up. My sister and I cared for her full-time. It was the worst, and darkest period of my life.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Six months to live? Well, we could go places and make the most of it, create some new memories. But she was already too weak. Instead, the memories I have of that time seep into my mind when it’s not thinking of something else, usually before I go to sleep; then I can’t go to sleep and I sit up alone in the kitchen turning it all over, reliving it. Nothing makes it feel any better.

My mother died at home in the spring of 2023, three days before her 85th birthday. I cannot say with any honesty that she experienced quality of life in those last months. She was waiting to die, and I was just watching her gradually turn into a skeleton.

I resent that medical professionals have failed my family, not just in respect of my mother, but also my father – I made formal complaints in both instances – lessons will be learnt, apparently – but this has done nothing to ease my resentment.

I resent that because she was old, my mother was effectively written off.

I resent that everything was such a battle and I had to spend so much time chasing and making sure things were done.

I resent that there are old people in hospital who are overlooked, and who don’t have a voice or someone to speak up for them.

I resent that my sister and I were left to deal with everything, both before and after my mother’s death.

I resent that in the last few months of my mother’s life the days were short, and the nights were long.

I resent that those last few precious months were stolen from me.

I resent that the last words my mother spoke to me were when she wasn’t herself.

But, most of all, I resent the resentment that I feel: it’s preventing me from moving on.

If You See It, Just Buy It.

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

This post has been sitting in draft for a while now. I’m not sure why I’ve been delaying in publishing it – maybe a reticence to commit in case something better comes along. Rather like the way I shop: I like to browse in every single shop to see all the available options, and for the most part end up going back to the first shop, several hours later. My husband, on the other hand, sets out with a list and buys the first item which fits the bill – his advice to me is that if I see it, I should just buy it, and save myself the aggravation. So what if I do have a better idea further down the line? That’s part of the process isn’t it? To reflect, adapt and recognise the need for a change of direction.

I’ve been giving further thought to what I would like to explore over the next couple of years. I’m afraid it’s not a laugh a minute, but it’s something that’s been on my mind for a while.

Not to be egocentric about it, but it’s ME! Then again that’s not a surprise as everything I make, even within the constraints of my art class, is subconsciously about me in one way or another: how I see the world; what matters to me; what interests me; about me; my experiences.

I remember sitting in the back of the family car as a child, probably on one of those Sunday afternoon drives in the Black Forest my parents used to like, with my brother on the back seat playing my dad’s favourite Elvis Presley and James Last songs on his double deck cassette player and thinking to myself: Who am I? This is me. Here. Right now. I almost tried to climb inside myself which messed with my head a bit. I must have been about 7 years old.

Who am I, as a person, as an artist? Hopefully by the end of the next two years I might have a better idea.

I’m particularly interested in my identity in the sense of nature and nurture: who is the authentic me – the one that drew its first breath? As Z recently mused on her blog ‘we will never be as unmarked as when we were born’. How has that version of me been influenced by my life experience, in particular, the roles I have had in my life?

This line of thought was prompted by the death of my mother in 2023. As my father had passed away in 2013, she was my lone parent. It struck me that my role as a daughter was coming to an end. Arguably it had gone on hiatus sometime earlier when I started to care for her following her cancer diagnosis, whereupon my role became that of carer. Some roles in life are mutually exclusive and in my case this was more or less true of my roles as daughter and carer – maybe it was a coping mechanism. As a result, I have issues in processing that brief, but cataclysmic, period of my life.

My mother’s death also made me consider my role as a sibling and the subsequent sense of estrangement I feel from my brother and, conversely, the closeness I have with my sister as a result of our shared experience of caring: sometimes only someone who has gone through the same experience can truly understand how it feels.

What effect does the ending of a role have on identity? What if I feel that I have failed in some roles? What if others think that I have failed? What if my roles conflict or were not mine by choice?

In being a mother I reflected on my experiences as a daughter to try and be the best mother I could be, and so the cycle will continue, perhaps. I’ve been a career woman, a homemaker and, still am a wife. At some stage I have lost the sense of the real me, if there is one: some roles allowed others to prosper whilst I took a back seat. Words which particularly resonate with me are from Deborah Levy’s “The Cost of Living” :

“It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create a home that everyone enjoys and that functions well. Above all else, it is an act of immense generosity to be the architect of everyone else’s well-being.”

In my head I’ve been Norman Foster.