Five years ago today was the last time I spoke to my mother. I was in Malaysia. She didn’t answer the phone.
When she died, I thought life would carry on as usual. My initial concern about losing her was how I would cope suddenly having the one person I spoke to every day (usually multiple times), who I told every detail of what I was doing and where I was, not being there anymore. It turns out, that became an underlying cause to more profound changes in my thinking and behaviour.
This is being written on the fifth anniversary of her death. I’m sitting at the cemetery. I think this might be the day everything is okay to change again, like a release. I need to put this all down to get it out of my head. If anyone I know reads this, it could provide insight in to my vague presence over the past five years.
Exactly six months before Mum died, my uncle passed away outside his unit. By coincidence, Mum and I were driving past and saw police and ambulance. We stopped to see what was happening. A helicopter landed in the middle of the highway. It was quite an event. But he’d gone, they couldn't bring him back. Everyone left. Mum and I stayed and I had to help lift his dead body in to the undertakers vehicle. It was very surreal.
Three days after my uncle passed away, my grandmother passed away. When I found out I went to the nursing home and sat with her in her room. I was surprised no one else was there.
Four months after Mum’s death, Helen, who while not blood related, was like my other grandmother, also passed away. A few months after that, what had become my closest buddy, Little Cunt - my cat - had to be put to sleep because of an inoperable tumour.
I’ve told people: friends and family had died before, but I’d never lost immediate family until this period. It all seemed to be happening at once.
I didn’t know how I was meant to react. The only thing I kept being told was that “everyone deals with grief differently.”
There wasn't a set of instructions. I needed patterns. After Mum’s funeral, I went to the cemetery every day, for a week, then every week for a month, then every month, from then on. The handful of months I haven’t been, is because I have been interstate. I think today I can stop this routine without feeling guilty. If the situation had been reversed, I wonder if my mother would have come to the cemetery every day for the rest of her life to see me.
I also started reading. What happens when you die? One great thing about the Internet is you can just keep reading until you find something that fits your worldview. I read a lot. After all that reading, my way to cope is to believe that when you die, the essence of what was you, that spark of individual energy is released and returns to an underlying energy that is part of everything. In that place there is no past, present, or future. Everything that has and will happen is there. It’s a single point of everything: every moment, everything and everywhere. I should have just looked up “eternity” in the dictionary, maybe it’s the same thing.
Anyway, it lets me believe that, that spirit, that energy that was my mother (and others who have died) weaves through everything in the universe around me, including me. She is always around me. So, there is that coping mechanism. It also makes me think we're all connected, so I think everyone should get over their differences and be nice to each other (including the planet). Too New Age?
The loss of multiple people also made me start questioning everything with “In the end, does it really matter?”. I would hear this question in my head almost every time I was thinking about doing something, or if I was listening to someone else tell me about something they’d just done, or were planning on doing.
This was part of my withdrawing myself from social situations. I had difficulty honestly being happy for anyone if they were telling me about something they’d just done, a holiday they’d been on, a graduation, or especially a new purchase they had made.
If it wasn't for Facebook and the Internet, I don't think I'd be in contact with anyone. I'm suprised I haven't been "unfriended" by a lot more people on Facebook because of the pointless updates I have been posting while I'm running around. Not being able to share pointless nothing with my Mum meant social media became my outlet.
My conclusion was that, the only things that really mattered were chosen family (don’t have to be blood related) and music.
I became disillusioned with the society I was a part of. In a nutshell, I decided I didn’t like the world. Not in a suicidal way. I felt like I had been given a checklist I never asked for. School, job, car, married, house with picket fence, 2.4 children, Ikea, boat, caravan. Everthing seemed to be about money and power. TV wasn't even entertainment anymore, just bad news and [un]reality TV. It's mind-numbing. Stop the ride I want to get off.
What did I actually need to “live”? Screw that checklist and what other people thought. I got rid of almost all the stuff I’d accumulated. As I got rid of more stuff, it became easier to do. It was only when I got down to things with sentimental value that I started to find it difficult.
Some people might believe they need certain things to be happy. I don't think that way now. My mission was to get rid of everything so I had nothing tying me down financially or to a location. Everything I have, should be something I needed, with a purpose, not just for the sake of having.
If I didn’t have it, I didn’t have to store it. If I didn’t need it, I didn’t have to pay for it.
So many things being advertised at me. “In the end what difference does it make?” and “You can’t take it with you when you’re gone.” Were also common thoughts that passed through my mind. Did I need it, or did I just want it? If I didn’t want everything, I could get by on very little money. Day to day life might not always be convenient, but it's proven to be more interesting.
Since I was about 30 I’ve been restless. I loved where I worked, until I didn’t love it anymore. Every day was the same routine, no matter where I was working. It went something like, wake up, maybe have breakfast, go to work, sit at a desk in a room - with or without a window, stop for five minutes to have lunch, go home, sit in front of the TV, go to bed. On a weekend, see some friends, have a drink, spend some money. Rinse and repeat. This isn’t how everyone lives, but it seemed to be the pattern I’d settled in to. I can never seem to find a balance.
I still haven’t been able to find balance, it’s all in. Now I’ve cut back everything. I left a house full of stuff and I got a van. Now I retire to Wendell at night. My living quarters is probably about 12 cubic meters. My old wardrobe filled a trailer and was given to the Salvation Army, now my wardrobe consists of about four t-shirts and two pairs of shorts and fourteen pairs of underwear. After I thought I’d scraped it back to essentials, I find I’m still carrying around things I haven’t touched for months.
I did get freedom and I haven’t looked hard enough at how this has really managed to last so far. It will be two years soon and I haven’t been without food or shelter. I haven’t struggled though anything. I haven’t been on or needed government welfare, haven’t had to borrow money, or sell my body.
I have discovered beaches, waterfalls and forests, silence and nature. Things I didn’t care about before and now really enjoy.
After all the dust had settled and I’d stopped reading about death and decluttered my life. I appreciate that the way my lifestyle has transformed so far, would not have been possible without being sent on this weird mindfuck, kick started by the events of five years ago.
I can travel all around the country. Spending as much or as little time in one place as I like. Instead of the allocated four weeks a year I might use to have a “holiday” – if I was working for someone full-time - to afford the house and things I thought I needed to be happy.
Something I hear from retired people, is that they waited until they retired before they started to get out. They mention that they wished they had done it when their bodies were younger and they had more energy. I feel blessed I've lost the plot and am doing this now. Even though I don’t know how it will pan out for me when I’m at retirement age.
There are a lot of things I think about, the word naïve comes to mind about my personality. I’m okay with that. My beliefs also conflict with what I do. I don't want stuff, but I ended up needing a drone.
I don’t know how long this will last and I don’t know what is happening in the future. I do know that I feel different today.