Grandma

Yesterday I learned that my grandmother had passed away on Sunday night.  She died quietly in her sleep, with no warning at all.  She was still young for that side of the family, a spry and healthy woman who lived independently, still did all her own cooking and baking, and cooked for the family as well.  She joked with me about her “robotic parts”, but she went dancing, out to bingo and had a circle of friends who no doubt miss her dearly.  She still camped, still travelled, still hugged.

It is kind of funny that when I think back to all my memories of her, that it is food that comes to mind the most, especially her Christmas dinner spreads.  The family would all gather at the hotel she and my grandpa owned in the tiny little town of Fairy Glen (yes, it’s a real place) and she would have set up the banquet tables in the bar, all covered with this red and white plastic table cloth she brought out at Christmas.  The tables would be covered with enough food to feed an army – at least one turkey, one ham and one roast.  Two or three kinds of potatoes, a wide slew of veggies and a jellied salad or two.  Add to that some cabbage rolls and perogies, all homemade of course, and four or five different dessert squares.  She’d been working on the meal for two days or more, and it was great.  Granted, we won’t speak of her spaghetti sauce or her chilli – grandma thought that black pepper was an exotic spice. 

She reminded me of the importance of family, and urged me to reconnect with my birth father and all the family on that side, whom I had not seen since I was a toddler and had no memory of.  She was so happy and so proud when I told her that I had contacted my dad and that we were forging a new relationship that she cried on the phone with me.

She was tough, but forgiving.  She spanked me as a child (I am quite certain I deserved it) but hugged me afterwards.  She yelled at my brothers and I when we drove her crazy on one of our many summer stays at her home, but she is the same lady who chased us through the hallways, cackling an evil laugh as she chased us with her false teeth in hand.

She took me berry picking for blueberries and raspberries, gardening in one of her three gardens (one of which would be considered a farm field by Nova Scotia standards), bottle picking and shopping.  She read to me as a child, and let me cry on her lap when I fell down or when I had one of my frequent ear infections… her heating pad (best thing when you have an ear infection) smelled like lemons.

Grandma was fond of telling me over and over again that once upon a time I held a record of some sort for the most grandmothers.  She has a picture from the newspaper, and if memory serves, there are nine or ten ladies in that picture with me, all grandmothers, great-grandmothers or even great-great grandmothers.

She was so happy when she became a great-grandmother, and I will always cherish the memories of her visiting us in Halifax when our oldest son was still in diapers, and again just a couple of years ago.  She doted on my boys when we travelled back to Saskatchewan last summer, though she didn’t chase them with her false teeth – that will always be mine.

She told me she loved me and was proud of me every time we spoke. 

The last words I spoke to her are the same ones I would say again if she could hear me. “I love you grandma, and I miss you.”

"Why do you do it?"

One of my colleagues noticed that I was favoring my left shoulder this morning (I have been for a week now, but who’s counting) and asked if it was “another judo thing”.  I had to honestly answer that yes, it was a direct result of competing in last weekend’s judo tournament.  They laughed and said that they hoped the medal was worth the pain.  It wasn’t, but not the way it sounds.

I get asked that question a fair amount lately.  As an older, very out of shape guy my return to the judo mats after almost 25 years absence has been full of challenges.  Not the least of which is that judo is not easy on the body.  Ask any judoka who has been practicing for any length of time, and they will regale you with stories of the dislocated or broken toes and fingers, cracked ribs, concussions, twisted (or worse) ankles… the list is endless.  It is to be expected – it is a martial art first and foremost, and a sport second.  Any continuous practitioner of a contact sport, whether it is football, soccer, rugby or judo will accumulate injuries over the years.  In my case, add in three decades of too much McDonald's and too little activity and you have a recipe for injury and pain.  So why do we do it?

The short answer is, I have no idea why others do it.  Maybe they are masochists, maybe they have pain tolerances higher than anyone I know. Maybe they are so caught up in the adrenaline that they pass off the pain.  Or maybe they have another reason, just like I do.

Judo is an individual sport, though its practitioners are still part of a larger team - being part of my dojo has given me a new social circle, one united by a common interest – no, a shared passion.  Even those who aren’t actively practicing judo are still caught up in the excitement of their kids or their partners.  And those who do practice not only cheer each other on, they support and train one another.  Any given night on the mats is full of people with more experience helping those with less (often to the frustration of our sensei).  And there are no secrets among us – if I ask any of my fellow students how they pulled off that amazing throw that sent me flying, they are happy to show me how and coach me until I get the basics down.  So that comradery is certainly part of it.

As a sport or martial art, judo is also physically demanding – most martial arts are the same.  You use muscle groups you don’t use in any other circumstances, and you are frequently giving far more effort in the three minutes of a match, or the hour and a half of training, then you ever thought was in you.  Great sensei (like all of the ones at my dojo) can push you even further.  An hour of judo training burns more calories than an hour of running or an hour of using an elliptical.  There are very few workouts as intense, so as a result over the last 15 months of training, I have started to return to a state of physical fitness that I haven’t had in a decade or more.  So that is also a part of it.

The sense of confidence that comes with challenging yourself, of knowing that you can rise to a challenge that seems insurmountable, is unbelievable. When you step on those mats, and on the other side is a black belt with ten times your skill and experience, you learn quickly that you have to put the inevitable doubts behind you, and give your best effort.  When you bow onto the mats for a tournament, with a few hundred people watching you, your sensei screaming instructions to you and your opponent doing everything they can to drive you into the mat with all their technique and power, you have to believe you can do it. You can rise above the anxiety and fear gnawing at your gut, rise above the ache in your shoulder and that you can succeed. That boost in confidence carries over to every other facet of your life, and that is an undeniable benefit.  But it’s still not the real reason I step on the mats.

The largest part, and the one that really makes it matter to me, is the way it makes me feel when I am on the mats.  Focus.  Determination.  Calm.  Those are feelings that are markedly lacking in my day to day life.

I live with chronic depression, a fact which astonishes many people who know me, but not those who live with me.  They have seen me unable to get out of bed for days.  They know that left to my own devices, I would crawl into a hole and pull it closed behind me.  I struggle daily to get to work, to keep up my smile, to fit in and some days, just to breathe.  The love and support of my partner holds me up when nothing else seems to.  Antidepressants help, in fact they are likely the reason I can function at all.  But even these only make a dent in the grey fog that I live in, a fog that follows me everywhere I go.  Except onto the mats.  It is my one place where, for whatever reason, I find a peace that is lacking elsewhere.  The one place where colours are bright and where I can breathe deeply and fully. Judo has given me back my life.  And that is why I do it.  That is why I have learned to love my bruises (judo “kisses”), my mat burns (judo “trophies”) and my broken toes (judo “badges”).

Those of us who are adrift, whether it is due to mental disability or just to the peculiarities of what we all call life often need an anchor to hold on to.  Some of us are extraordinarily lucky and we get to have multiple holds – our loved ones (friends and family alike), our passions, and maybe even our idiotic love of a thing that breaks us down, even while it keeps us together and builds us up, stronger than ever.

O Captain! My Captain!

I have idolized Robin Williams for years.  Since I first saw him as the irrepressible Mork from Ork, I have reveled in his zany antics and loved him from afar.  He was one of the rare comedians who was able to make me laugh despite anything happening in my life.  Even now, knowing that he is gone, I am smiling while I think of his performances.

He was not as recognized for his more serious work, though the Academy did give him an Oscar for his work in Good Will Hunting.  But it was here that the real depth of his acting abilities shone through.  Good Morning Vietnam, What Dreams May Come and The Fisher King are all fantastic movies, where we see a small glimpse into the other side of this zany man. 

Dead Poets Society is one of the most inspiring movies of all time.  His role as John Keating made me want to be a teacher when I saw it, and still makes me wish I had chosen that as my career.  To this day, the wisdom and hope that movie provided remains profound and on target – use your brain to think critically, don’t let life pass you by, find and never let go of your passions, carpe diem.

I have always rather immodestly felt that I was a lot like Robin.  No, I don’t pretend to be nearly as funny or smart as he was, but we seemed to have a lot of similarities.  Hell, even physically – we’re both short, hairy and heavyset guys.  But above that, we’re both recovering addicts - from the same drug of choice even (“Cocaine is god’s way of telling you you are making too much money”).  And we both struggle with depression. 

It’s the last part that is tearing me up right now.  Just like Robin, I have spent a large part of my life hiding my feelings and confusing people by being the joker and the funny guy.  I turned to cocaine and alcohol to self-medicate, and it worked… for a while.  It wasn’t until my son died that I was forced to take a long, hard look at my emotions.  It wasn’t until my behaviour started to affect my relationships with my other children that I sought medical help.  And like millions of people, I learned that my life-long battle just to stay alive was not my imagination – it was severe clinical depression.  And I finally started to look for solutions.

That’s when I learned the truth that no one wants to talk about, there is no solution. Nothing really works with depression, you can’t make it go away – it is a part of you.  A sly, dark little part that sits in the back of your brain with long, dull claws dug in and draping everything you do and think with a fog of pain.  You can smother that little fucker with the best prescription medication that money can buy. You can talk about him with trained professionals, and keep him at bay, feeling better most of the time.  Every day though, he waits.  He’s patient and he’ll live with you for the rest of your life.  He’s an insidious little prick and all he wants is to kill you.  And if you listen to him long enough, he will win.  Just like he did with Robin.

There is a significant stigma attached to clinical depression.  So many of us hide it, and hide it well, because we have heard the old mantras a thousand times:  “You’ll get over it”, “It’s just a bad day”, “Pull up your boots!”, “Put on your big girl panties!” and my all-time favorite “But you don’t seem depressed.”  We do pull up our boots and tie on our big girl panties.  That is how we get out of bed in the morning – though even that isn’t possible some days.  We don’t ever get over it and we certainly can’t just shake it off, any more than an epileptic can ‘get over’ their seizures – it is a chemical imbalance in the brain – a purely physical issue that causes these reactions.  Of course, it is hidden away, that little bastard is clever.  If we could point to the wheelchair or the crutch there would be no question that we were living with something that had tremendous impact on our lives.

If there is one thing positive to come out of Robin’s suicide, I hope it is this – that people will start to recognize that laughter can be just a mask and that emotional pain, the kind that drives our friends and family to such despair that the only way out is the peace of death, is real. 

O Captain! My Captain! Be at peace now.  And thank you for brightening our lives with your laugh and your smile.