If I Were in Charge of the World

Photograph by AngelalalaChan

If I were in charge of the world, newspaper articles would be colour-coded, so you’d know not to read a grey article if you didn’t want to be sad, and to read a blue article instead.

If I were in charge of the world, your ears would have an internal Dictaphone, so you could record all unexpected compliments and kind words, and listen to them again whenever you wanted to.

If I were in charge of the world, there would be a social network for meeting people who loved to do the things you hated doing. So I could fill in your forms while you washed my dishes.

If I were in charge of the world, you would also be a synesthete, so you’d see Monet when Ella Fitzgerald sings Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

If I were in charge of the world, a sigh would be enough to expel any frustration, and all your fears could be swallowed and digested with a gasp.

If I were in charge of the world, there would be no food allergies, so you could eat peanut butter or avocado or cheese or butternut – if you wanted to.

If I were in charge of the world, you would receive a card every day of the year. Some cards would inevitably say ‘Happy birthday!’ or ‘Get well soon!’ or ‘Thank you!’ On the other days (those days that blur into The Everyday), the cards would remind you that you are blessed, or let you know you that you are loved, or tell you not to forget to pay that bill or buy toilet paper.

If I were in charge of the world, there would be a device you could use to feel (and therefore truly understand) another’s pain or joy.

If I were in charge of the world, you would be able to custom-make your car’s exterior, so your car could be fluffy or polka-dotted or covered in leaves.

If I were in charge of the world, there would be a photocopier for perfect days, so you could fold them up and pull them out of your pocket whenever you’d like.

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I owe this post to @joannapaterson who posted her version of the world if she were to take charge, and encouraged others to write their own.

Tea, My Valentine?

Photograph by Lummmy

Plenty of people express their love for tea every day. ‘I need a cup of tea.’ We mutter this sentence so often, it should soon be classed as an a term in itself:

I-need-a-cup-of-tea ~ adj. looking for a solution or needing to calm down.

We each have very personal preferences when it comes to tea. Some like it black. Some like it sickly sweet. Some like it sloopy (a bottle of milk and the entire sugar bowl). Some like it perfect (a dash of milk and half a teaspoon of sugar).

But how ever you take your tea, there’s no denying what that cup does for you. It makes you happy. It lowers stress levels. It satisfies your longing. Essenteally (couldn’t help myself), your relationship with tea is one to be cherished.

So, since Valentine’s Day is nearly here, I offer you three ways to express your love for tea:

1. Make it prettea. Drinking tea out of a beauteaful teacup makes your tea taste even better. If you’re lucky enough to have decent china, you should be using it. And not just when you have Important People over. If, like me, you’re still waiting to be able to put a dozen lovely tea sets on your wedding registry, pick the most delightful mug you can find. Your tea deserves to be dressed up a little.
2. Whether you like your tea loose, or you’ve got it in the bag, be snootea and get qualitea. I’ll save the full rant for another post, but I will say that Five Roses is the teenager of teas. Love may be blind, but it’s never tasteless (well ... maybe sometimes).  Anyway, get yourself some decent tea that’s worthy of your love. I recommend Dilmah. 
3. Finally, find a real, live person to be your Valenteane and send him/her a senteamental tea-card.

After all, isn’t that what Valentine’s Day is all about?

On Grief

I know three families who tragically lost someone they love last week. The first was a suicide. The second was a murder. The third was a body that gently lay down its arms in the oncology ward.

It was a week for sadness. A sadness quadrupled.

It’s startling how the death of someone not-as-important to you can trigger grief for someone who was-that-important to you. I lost my father to brain cancer just over a year ago. I think death becomes sadder when you’ve experienced a similar loss first-hand. When you’ve mourned someone deeply, you really do wish your friends never have to experience the same sorrow.

Everyone knows that death is a gloomy matter. You’re taught from an early age to put on a big smile when you open a present, even if it’s not the one you wanted, and be sad when your friend tells you she had to flush her favourite fish. But there’s no tutorial that prepares you for the heartache you feel when a person, your Person, dies.

To me, grief is the distress caused by having to process a very unreal reality. Cruelly, the first order of business is always the concluding of the deceased’s affairs. The termination of a person’s signified existence to match the end of his physical existence.

Anyone who’s lost anyone knows that the affairs of a life aren’t buried with the body it belonged to. Wrapping up a life that’s already been cosmically ‘wrapped up’ is more than serving sandwiches at a funeral. The juxtaposition of death’s finality against the marks of a life being lived (jeans and holey socks in the cupboard, business cards, that name in your contact list, an active Facebook account) only serves to underline the intense deadness of the Person you loved. The Person you love.

What follows are the would-have-beens. When I was growing up, I remember my father commenting each year that his father would have turned 91 that day. 92. 93. 94 – if he been alive. I found it a silly practice at the time. He would-never-be 91, 92, 93 or 94, and there seemed little sense in acknowledging the aging of someone who was not aging.

Now that my own father has died, I find myself considering the would-have-beens. If he was alive, he would-have-been able to walk me down the aisle this year. He would-have-been around to meet my fiancé. He would-have-been 72 this year.

The would-have-beens seem to be a natural response to death and grief. They’re our way of adjusting our view of the world – an oscillation between unattainable opportunities and the life you continue to build each day.

Lemony Snicket expresses this so perfectly in Horseradish – Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid: ‘It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one ... It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.’

I’m not sure if anyone’s ever done with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s final stage of grief – acceptance. It would mean henceforth being OK with not having your Person around. Instead, there are days when the world is clear, and times when you find yourself stumbling in the dark at the top of the stairs, unsure why things aren’t the way you wish them to be. The phantom stairs we trip over are uncomfortable, painful even, but they are also Ways of Remembering. They are the result of memories being pulled into the present – that continual swing between remembrance and moving forward.

Last week’s sadness was for three friends, who will need to amend their realities, and for myself, because I’m not sure death ever really seems real. I do like to think, though, that the reason we miss our step on some days is because that step was once there. And even though time has lapsed and I’ve got a better footing now, I’m strangely grateful for the reminder that my dad was once alive, and we did-have some pretty good times.