What Can I Do?

Aka: “Be Kind To Each Other”

This past week I had to ask for help. It has been a particularly hard week for health. Pain levels have been high and fatigue was through the floorboards. I needed help!

Chronic illnesses meant that I wasn’t coping physically. I was managing to feed myself but that was about it. I managed one shower in seven days, and after that one I need a rest. You’d never think a shower could be so exhausting, until you lived with chronic ill-health.

My mental health was down too. They tend to go hand in hand.

Just my ability to make sense of what was happening around me. I was confused. I needed to hear things twice before I had any hope of knowing what was being said, what it meant and how it affected me. Brain fog was a factor but it was more than that. It felt like my brain was giving up on me. Much like my body.

But this isn’t a “feel-sad-for-me” post. It’s more of a “look-into-my-world-for-a-moment”.

I needed help this past week, but really I had no idea of what help I needed. I just knew that this time I couldn’t just do it myself, as I’m used to, but needed to reach out to someone. Simply to reach out to one other person and say “Help”. Do you know how hard it is to do?

When you live with chronic and debilitating illness, you are often in the situation where things are getting progressively worse. What you could do a year ago is no longer possible. Even what you could do last week can be a monumental challenge to achieve this week.

I needed help this week, and I did actually ask. I summoned up every ounce of bravery and strength and I asked for help. I did it! I did it!

But unless you live with chronic illness, you perhaps won’t understand the achievement. Because we’ve all have to ask for help at some time in our lives, but I’m finding more and more times I need help. That is mostly down to my health. I can’t do it for myself anymore.

There are people in my world who perhaps think the only reason I would ask for help is that I’m too lazy to do it myself. [That says more about you than me.]

Others know me well enough to know that asking for help is anything but easy for me. I always used to be Ms-Super-Independent. I could do it for myself and I would, even if it was a really dumb thing to try to do it myself. Those others know it takes strength, bravery and trust. I have to trust that you will hear me. That you won’t write me off as exaggerating or god-forbid, lazy, and will listen (and respond) to what I need.

I always look at the help-line numbers that the media throw out at us after a particularly sensitive topic like abuse, or suicide, or violence. I know it makes the media companies feel better. The help-line phone numbers they broadcast almost justify the often graphic hurt they have just portrayed or reported on. Social media is often much the same.

The thing is that so many of us would never ring a help-line. Never, ever would we pick up a phone, speak to a total stranger, and hope that just maybe they can help. Yes, there are others who would do this, and would perhaps prefer to ask a stranger but personally I see the numbers on the screen as just a gap until the next post/programme and although sometimes wish I could use them but really know that it is completely beyond me. It’s too hard.

Most times I need to ask, it is beyond me. I am reaching the end of my tether. Whether it is getting a lid off a jar (increasingly difficult) or something more serious and even life-threatening. Sometimes it is just too hard and what I need is someone with enough compassion to say “what can I do?

I was fortunate to have a most loving and compassionate father. He wasn’t perfect by any means but he would listen. He wouldn’t wait for me to ask for help, nor would he jump in with advice (not usually, anyway… I did say he wasn’t perfect). When I finished what I needed to say, he often would say to me,“What can I do?”

Rather than guess what I needed, he opened the way for me to get his help, by taking the ball from me and asking what I needed. What I needed him to help me do with my ball.

I, so often, needed Dad’s help but many times it was too hard for me to ask. There were a million reasons why it was too hard. He knew that but, in his kindness, he opened up the conversation by offering me his help.

This week, I wished my Dad was still alive (this is a wish I have pretty much every week) because there are not many people in my life who seem able to see that maybe I need something but it’s too hard for me to ask.

[There’s also not many that I trust with my vulnerability and helplessness, but perhaps that is a different topic.]

Our world is full of “Call me if you need anything” or “Let me know [if you need anything]”. “Ring me [if you need anything]” or of course, “Text me [if you need anything]”. We (mostly without thinking), expect the other person to initiate their own getting help. We expect them to ask us for help.

But it’s not that easy.

Just sometimes I need you to say, “what can I do?”.

And sometimes I need to do the same.

In New Zealand, where I live, we currently have a Prime Minister (Jacinda Ardern) who often instructs us to “be kind to each other”. It is regularly repeated, especially when she’s throwing us back into lockdown or lowering alert levels, or even telling us of a community-transmitted Covid case (thankfully, that is big news here. For now, it’s not happening often). Imagine. World leaders asking us to be kind. Completely unheard of but so wise.

I think of that when I go down this track of both needing, or maybe offering help. “What can I do?” is being kind. Sitting back and waiting for me to ask. Knowing that it’s going to be beyond hard for me, and that probably I will never ask, so will never get the help I need… is not kind. It’s actually cruel.

It’s not kindness. It’s not compassion. And it’s not what we humans have the capacity to do. Be kind this week. Ask someone, “what can I do?” Give it a go. I know the person will appreciate you doing this.

As for me, I did ask for help this time. It took almost everything I had but I trusted this person and they heard. There was no “what can I do?” in so many words, but the compassion I received went some way to restoring my faith in people to be there. To be there when I needed them to be.   

“Write what disturbs you,
What you fear,
What you have not been willing to speak about.
Be willing to be split open.”

Natalie Goldberg

Thanks for reading!

Cate

Ten Years Later

““Drop, Cover, and Hold!”

This coming Monday, my city of Christchurch, New Zealand will remember that ten years ago, an earthquake would strike and leave us forever changed. We who lived it will never forget where we were and what happened around us. My family will also remember that this is the day we changed.

I know what it’s like to live through a major earthquake… I don’t know what life is anymore. The land has shifted and I’m trying to see where the goal posts are now.

The land had indeed shifted, literally and we learnt all about earthquakes really fast. We had already learnt, from the first quake on 4 Septembein 2010, how earthquakes aren’t just about the magnitude or position on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Instead, what matters most is depth, distance and time. All these will go some way to determining what impact it will have. This one was really shallow, the epicentre was really close and it struck right in the middle of the day. But it was much more that had impact that day, and ten years later, it is good for me, if not still somewhat painful, to stop and remember.

I have written about the events and their effect on my life across this blog and my previous Infinite Sadness… or hope? blog. I don’t intend to repeat myself (too much) and I don’t intend to consider the some 12,000 quakes we went on to endure over the next couple of years. I’m not a geologist, although we all pretended we were. What I am is a person who lived those quakes, who lost, and who carries on.

In the days following the deadly quake ten years ago we came to be taught new advice for dealing with quakes. As I child I had learnt run to the doorway or to run outside. Now I knew that wasn’t necessarily the best idea. Now we were told to “drop, cover and hold“. Drop to the floor, cover your head and hold onto something secure. Perhaps hold on for dear life. What was meant was to hold onto something sturdy like a table or a doorway. But what I learnt as well was to hold onto what is precious, and most importantly who is precious. Those people are what matters.

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”

— Laurell K. Hamilton (Mistral’s Kiss (Merry Gentry, #5))

185 people died on 22 February 2011. My Dad died suddenly six weeks later. I know it was the stress of loss, uncertainty and change that became too hard physically (but also emotionally) for his heart to bear .

The wounds of the quakes were far more than just those who died or were physically injured. Far more than broken buildings or homes. We were people who bore inward wounds, some that we would talk about and but many that we kept to ourselves in something of an effort to keep going day by day. Some of the wounds, we didn’t even realise we carried. That was perhaps especially true for children, but truly for all of us.

My parents walked away from that quake with only the clothes they were wearing. That was all. They lost their home, most of their possessions, friends, and knowledge and a certainty of where their future lay. They moved in with me that night. It changed them both. I’d go so far as to say that we never saw again the people they had been before.

At the time, my mother was beginning to show symptoms of dementia, but she hadn’t been diagnosed and wouldn’t be for several more years. But she changed. I can’t quite put my finger on what changed in her, but she was a different person, perhaps far away in an emotional and mental place somewhat distant from us. Of course, not only had she lost so much as I said  above, but very soon she lost her husband of nearly 53 years. How could all that not change her?

Did it hasten the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease? We will never know. I just put my finger on that date, and say this was the beginning of a dreadful journey, mostly for her, but also for her family as we watched her slowly drift from us. Eventually she would die from the disease in 2019.

Of course, I had a hard time too, even just bearing witness to what my parents faced. I lost possessions, and I lost a friend. I lived for the next five years in a badly damaged house. But most of all? I lost my parents. Not on the day, but in the days to come.

Eventually, I would be an orphan. Funny thing. We don’t think about that before our parents die, but it’s strange to think that now there is no one there watching over me. Cheering meu on, perhaps. Hoping for good to come my way. Not everyone has parents who ever did that, but I was one of the lucky ones. My parents had stood by me for all my years and had loved me even when I didn’t deserve it.

Now, it was as if I had finally become a real grown up. I really had to stand on my own two feet. Of course, for me this happened before Mum passed, in that thought that I became her cheerleader, her hope and her safety, as she fell furthe into dementia. I guess that’s why I look back at the last ten years and think that day, eventually, took my parents from me. Another generation passed.

Of course, it wasn’t just people. Ten years later I still cringe at the sound of helicopters. Living near the CBD where the worst damage was, and on the edge of the red zone (residential land quickly deemed unsafe for housing and so it was permanently evacuated), there were always helicopters protecting the thousands of empty, damaged buildings and homes. I hate the sound of helicopters to this day.

Sirens are another thing that make me cringe. This was later added to when the Mosque Attacks happened here in 2019. Sirens no longer meant there was going somewhere but rather that help was needed. Something was very wrong here.

As for more quakes, even the slightest tremor has me hold my breath to see if it is going to continue, even get worse. Should I “drop, cover and hold“. Should I head to the doorway? Is this going to be another big one? And relief when it stops.

Ten years later, I have lost people, I have lost possessions. My house is finally fixed. But there is a sense of security that is gone. The worst can happen and what matters can be taken away. But with it, is a sense of what is important. Now I know my neighbours, because we looked out for each other. I know who is alone, and who might have no one to check on them if something bad happens. I know for myself whether anyone will check on me and I know that I can survive.

I can dig a hole in the garden if the sewer has failed. I can live on cold baked beans out of a tin. I know where the torch is and I have batteries. I have many bottles of water. I know I can survive without all the things we thought were important. Perhaps the biggest thing is that I know what is important. And that is the people in my life.

That day in a 6th floor apartment I watched the floor go up to the ceiling and back down again (A concrete floor.) and I watched my parents being thrown on the floor. I couldn’t stand up and it took too long for me to find a safe way out of the apartment for us. We needed to get out “Now“. I looked out the window and all I saw looked like a dust storm. I would later know it was from buildings damaged or collapsing.

All these things, I lived through as did all the residents of Christchurch. “Were you here for the quakes?” is perhaps the indicator of  something shared, something lost, but something we lived through. I think there is almost a comradery in the shared nightmare, that wasn’t just a few minutes but a journey of ten years and beyond.

I learnt to whom I mattered, and who mattered to me. I learnt about empathy and compassion for those who were worse off than me. I learnt how far I would go for the people around me. Perhaps in that, I learnt how I would go on to support my mother through her Alzheimer’s. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to do that, without having already have gone through the quakes with her and eventually lost my Dad. She mattered. And that was enough.

I’ve concluded that taking one day at a time is not an option. It’s essential. It’s what I have to do because I simply don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to say “I love you” tomorrow and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to say “I’m sorry“. I don’t know if my precious possessions will be gone, and whether my house will still be standing. Think that’s going too far, and in my opinion (now) you’re fooling yourself. My aim now is to take each day as it comes, because I really don’t know if tomorrow will actually come. Simple words but still hard to do.

And finally advice to the residents of Christchurch at the time, from the man who was the then Mayor of Christchurch:

“Cut people a bit of slack today. There will be grumpy people, we all express our stress in different ways. Some laugh and get silly and that can offend someone else who is feeling really depressed and sad….We’ve got to keep working together, we’ve got to hang in there as a city.”

– Sir Bob Parker

Thanks for reading!

Cate
(All images are copyright to Cate Reddell)