“Dreams are often the regrets of tomorrow, and all that we hope for may not always be ours to have.”

When my loved one died I was left with many regrets. Regrets about all those things I wish I had done or said. Regrets about the things we didn’t do or didn’t have the chance to do. But mainly my biggest regret was about how he didn’t get the chance to exhibit his work in this part of the world. How he painted and worked nonstop to perfect his art so that he would be ready to show it to the rest of the world.

He had dreams as a person, and as an artist. But life for him was shorter than he hoped, than we hoped. To quote Henry David Thoreau:

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” 

After he passed away there was an article about him in Armenian newspapers in different parts of the world. Friends and acquaintances called me at the time. But what made me sad was the fact that some said, “We didn’t know he was this great.” See he had always given exhibitions in Lebanon before, and even when we were living in Dubai, his paintings were always displayed in different exhibition halls in Beirut. While living in Montreal two years ago he was invited to exhibit his paintings in New York. His first reaction was to wait after he became a citizen since it would have been easier to cross the border as a Canadian citizen than as a landed immigrant.

He was this meticulously perfect gentleman. He thought of everything. Everything had to be in perfect order for him, everything concerning documents and legal papers. And that’s why he waited until after he became a Canadian citizen. But by then life, destiny, fate, God, or whatever name people give it, had played its dirty trick on him. And instead of concentrating on his art he focused on his illness and fought it with such vigor, always believing and thinking that once it was over he would have all the time in the world to dedicate to his art.

And now that I keep going back over the things he had said to me, about his biggest dream left unfulfilled, about his wish that was not granted, I can’t help but be paralyzed with fear. How can I among the many tasks and responsibilities that were imposed on me by his untimely death make his legacy as an artist come true? I know I cannot wait any longer, I must not wait anymore. To quote Henry David Thoreau:

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” 

ChK

“There is no port in this storm, and the one person who could bring you connection is the one person who is gone forever.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Ever since then I feel so vulnerable. I feel lost forever. It’s as if there is a wall now standing between me and the rest of the world. A wall that I don’t think I can, or even have the courage to, cross over.

In the three plus years of treatments that my husband was undergoing, even though I was dreading this outcome I could never have imagined anything this bad. And now it feels like I am inconsolable and heart broken beyond repair. The pain of losing him is so strong it feels like there is a new me that is forever changed, crushed, shattered, and irreparable. I will never be the same again or see the world as I once did.

I don’t think this feeling of emptiness is temporary as I think I will never be able to return to that old person, the old me. There is an impenetrable silence that resonates within me. The world and everything around me seems strange, and unwelcome. It feels like I am nothing but a bundle of sadness. But the scariest of all these new feelings is how vulnerable I feel when I am out in the world. Something I never felt when he was around.

And so far, no matter how hard I have tried to continue to live and belong I still feel lost and sad and angry that something like this can happen and has happened. And on most days I feel that there is no way out, no matter what anybody else wants for me. The only place that I feel safe is home alone with my books.

I find solace in my isolation. Because in the words of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

“But your isolation is not related to your surroundings or the people in your world.”

I know that I will never see the world as it once was to me. I know that I have not only lost my dearest and most precious companion and lover and friend, but I have also lost with him the notion of what should life be. I have lost his and my world, our world. And right now all I want to do to manage my grief and pain is be alone. To quote Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“But whatever one does to survive and manage the grief, being alone often feels safer than being vulnerable with people who may not understand.”

ChK

Albert Einstein wrote:
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

What if the problem we face is not something we created but rather was forced on us? We all have problems at some point in our lifetime. The simple act of making a living in itself creates problems for many of us. How do we make a living in today’s economy? How do we make a place for ourselves in today’s society?

When I was growing up in Lebanon, during the civil war days my worries were the same as any other kid or teenager my age elsewhere around the world. I went to school, went out with my friends. I did community work, went to university, met my future husband there, fell in love, got married, left the country and then after more than two decades left again, this time with my kids. It was not until recently when we faced problems in this new city, in this new country which we call home, that I realized how hard it must have been for my parents to do what they did in those days. How hard it must have been for them to continue making a living under awful conditions imposed on them by the civil war and to hide all their hardship from us. For me and my siblings everything seemed normal and life continued as usual.

Winston Churchill wrote:
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

My parents and generations of parents at the time picked themselves up and continued as if nothing ever happened. The entire community was affected at the time and war became part of every household in the country.

Thinking back I realize that everyone more or less faced the same problems then. They were in it together. But when I live in a normal society how do I make a place for myself? What do I do? How do I handle situations so that I won’t fail? In the words of Winston Churchill:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” 

But where do I get courage from? How can I face the future alone? I ask myself a million questions without getting any answer. I ask:

“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” Winston Churchill

Victory! In my case over myself. I have to find a way to conquer my weaknesses and my failures and get up on my feet and start trying again. Victory over my self doubts. Victory over my depressing thoughts. Because in the words of Winston Churchill:

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

ChK 

After the usual “How was your day” and all he said, “Mom I did good in school you know. And I am doing good at work also. I am productive and that keeps me alright I guess.” I told him he was doing excellent and how proud I was of him. Then to my surprise he said, “It was a tough year. Who would have thought that dad would get sick shortly after we came here. We came to Canada to have a better life. Now look at us. He is gone and we are still here trying to make it.”
And I said, “Now you have to work hard and do better to make him proud.”

Who would have thought he would become sick so soon after we moved? I know how hard it is for my kids, for my son and daughter to go on in this new place without their father. Leaving their world, the life they had in Dubai, their friends and all behind as teenagers was hard enough for them, and then to lose their father? I try to be strong for them but sometimes pain just gets me and I feel paralyzed.

Sunday was mother’s day. I got this beautiful and touching text from a dear friend wishing me happy mother’s day and asking me to enjoy the day as if he was here with me. And for the first time in thirty years my mother was physically with me on that day, except now he was not. And I thought of all the mother’s days past and present. Of all those people missing their mothers and their loved ones. To quote Alexander Dumas:
 
“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living. 
“Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.’” 

Wait- stay, remain, hang around, linger, stop, kill time.

Hope- expect, trust, anticipate, wish, look forward to.

No matter how big our loss and tragedy, no matter how deep our pain we still hope for the better. We still think and wish that someday soon something good will happen to us. As Alfred Tennyson wrote:

“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, 
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…” Alfred Tennyson

But then no matter how broken I am, no matter how shattered I am spiritually, no matter how deep I have sunk in my sorrow there are moments as I watch my kids grow where:

“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.” Lemony Snicket

ChK

“Did you ever walk through a room that’s packed with people, and feel so lonely you can hardly take the next step?”

Any other day, I would have been so uncomfortable walking through such a crowd. But on that particular afternoon despite the people I could hardly feel anything. Is it because:

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn’t be filled?” Jodi Picoult

Lately I don’t know who I am anymore. I try hard to find meaning in the things I do. I do my best to meet with old friends and make new ones and try to be among people so I won’t feel that lonely. But at the end of the day I go to bed regretting my actions. My heart feels so empty that I can hardly recognize myself. Arthur Miller wrote:

“If I have to be alone I want to be by myself.” 

But I don’t know who I am anymore. Did I lose myself with him? Then why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? When all I want to be or do is continue the way I was. Why am I trying to fill my life with things I don’t like to do? Why am I lost? Even though from the outside I may look the same, sort of intact, I am never quite the same as before. I have tried to put myself together. God knows I have. But all I can do:

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”  Arthur Miller

I go back to that day, to the time when it happened. I try to find the meaning in what happened. Why it happened. I spend sleepless nights regretting the things I didn’t do, we didn’t do together. I spend my days thinking about life and death and love and all. Only to realize that:

“Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.” Arthur Miller

ChK

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”

Everything is still the same from the outside except he is gone forever. We each play the role assigned for us in our family, in our society, in this world. But there is this emptiness in our lives that will never be filled no matter what. Because:

“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.” C.G. Jung

Yesterday on my way to an appointment I drove by Omer De Serres, where my late husband shopped for his art supplies. And I remembered how just a few days before his death he bought new canvases and some oil paint. It was the first time I was passing this way after a long time. With tears in my eyes I realized that this year was a year of firsts. First birthdays, first Christmas, first Valentine’s, first Easter, first anniversary. First of everything. And in this year of firsts:

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course.” C.G .Jung

Sometimes when the day is over and the kids are back from their different schedules we sit and talk. And the talk usually centers around their late father, how proud he would be of their achievements no matter how insignificant these were to the rest of the world. How he used to encourage them, us, and how when it came to his own paintings and his art, he used to joke and tell us, “One day after I am gone my paintings will be so valuable.” And the kids would reply and say, “Why not now, when you are alive? Why talk about going? You’re not going anywhere.”

At the end of the day when I retire to bed desperately wanting to hear his voice, but knowing very well that his presence was so real and his absence so finite, I feel so lost. I think of his paintings and of how he valued art in all its forms and shapes and my heart fills with a new kind of hope. And I know that as long as I continue in his footsteps and turn to my books and writing (the only form of art that I can do well) my life would be worth living. In the words of C.G. Jung:

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.”

ChK 

Ever since my husband was diagnosed with cancer I was filled with fear and anxiety. The fear of losing him was so strong that it paralyzed me on most days. I wanted to believe the doctors when they said they’d cure him. I believed him when he said, “I’ll fight this.” I spent days on the internet investigating the disease, the outcome. I spent days and sleepless nights reading people’s accounts of their illness and the end result. I couldn’t function properly. I was constantly worried.

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” Corrie ten Boom

Now that he is gone, I wish I had been able to live each day as it came instead of worrying about our tomorrow. I was so caught up in my anxiety that even my husband used to tell me, “Your eyes are scaring me. You have this look on your face. What are you thinking about?” And of course I couldn’t tell him about my fear. I couldn’t tell him about my anxiety.

Anxiety: Nervousness, concern, worry, unease, angst, fear, fretfulness.

Every time I accompanied him to his doctor’s appointments, I couldn’t help but tremble at the thought of what the doctor might say. Even on days that he was free of the disease I would sit next to him and look at his face and wait for the doctor’s verdict. I would dread the day when I would have:

“To hear the phrase “our only hope” always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn’t work, there is nothing left.” Lemony Snicket

There is nothing left but suffering. After his last visit to his oncologist my late husband said, “My doctor is so positive.” I don’t know if he believed him or not, I don’t know how he felt that day as we walked to the car. All I know is that I was so anxious and frightened that I could hardly breathe. The suspense was killing me. To quote Charles Dickens:

“The suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance; the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the images they conjure up before it; the desperate anxiety to be doing something to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad remembrance of our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what reflections of endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay them!” 

ChK

Last Saturday afternoon I accompanied my daughter to a book sale in Montreal. The sale was organized by the Friends of the Library. The place was not very far from our home and easy to locate. Inside the arena where the sale was taking place there was already a significant crowd by the time we reached. And rows and rows of books, in both French and English. My French unfortunately being poor, I walked over to the English section. Books were arranged on tables sideways, so it made it easy to read the title and the author’s name. They had books from the old masters as well as the latest bestsellers. Hence I indulged myself in the process of choosing what I thought were good books for me to read. I put the books written by authors I liked into empty cardboard boxes placed underneath the tables. Books written by authors whose names I hadn’t even heard of I had to check first to see if their story was to my liking.

After only a short time I noticed that people were, like me, scanning the jackets and only afterwards either returning the book back to the table or placing it in their boxes. It dawned on me there and then that people only chose what books to read based on the stories.

Yesterday I set out on the same trip again. And once more I went with my daughter to the sale. The book sale was held at the exact same location as last year, but unlike last year the trip was a sad one to undertake. Since we went there without my husband. Throughout the drive I remembered all the things we had done and all the things we had said on our way in the car. And yesterday when I parked the car in front of the arena my daughter said, “This is exactly where dad parked the car last year mom.”

As I entered the place a terrible sense of loss overcame me. See, my husband was passionate about books in the same way I am. He never missed a book sale. And no matter where we were, whether in Lebanon, Dubai, Rome, Venice, Paris, Hong Kong, Australia, New York, Memphis, Los Angeles, or Montreal, we never missed going to bookstores and book sales. And at book sales, we each took a basket and filled it with whatever books we liked. My kids used to joke and say, “How come dad always ends up with the best books in his basket?”

And on days like yesterday I miss him more than ever. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross wrote:

“Death is but a transition from this life to another existence where there is no more pain or anguish.”

That knowledge helps me. To know that he is no longer in pain and is not suffering. Yesterday while browsing through the books I felt him beside me. I heard his voice in my ears. It was as if he was pointing out to me the books that he knew I would love to have and read, since yesterday was the only time that I put the books in my basket without reading the jackets to find out more about the stories. And when we came home and my daughter went through them, she said, “Mom, you got some nice books here.”

I said, “I know,” and I smiled. The same way I know that the only thing that really lasts forever is love. I will miss so much the love I had, the life I had with him. I will always love him and forever miss him. But I also believe that he is with me, laughing with me and smiling at me as I hear him say, “It’s okay, I’m here.”

ChK

World. Cruel. Mad. Death. So terrifyingly finite. Not fair. A silence so loud that it’s driving me crazy. Pure Madness.

Words that I put down in my notebook. Did I write them in a moment of madness? Or:

“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?” Elie Wiesel

Two nights ago my mom arrived from Beirut to stay with me for a while. I hadn’t seen her since November of 2011 after my dad passed away. And now she has come to be with me after my husband passed away. Our roles have sort of been reversed. As I look at my words, my mom’s fragile figure here to comfort me, I cannot but quote Elie Wiesel:

“Life belongs to man, but the meaning of life is beyond him.” 

What is the meaning of all of this? Of all the suffering that people go through. Of all the pain inflicted on us by circumstances that are out of our control, when all we expect throughout our life is to live and make our dreams come true. We study, we work, we love, we dream and above all we try to be in control of at least our own lives. And when tragedy comes knocking at our door, we are hit so hard. It’s as if to remind us that none of us is in control. That there is a greater power- fate, destiny, God, whatever name we call it- that we cannot just ignore. And that these tragedies are lessons we should learn from. As I sit and listen to my mom’s stories I remember Elie Wiesel’s words:

“I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”

Hope. I add the word to my list of words. Something my mother and her stories give me. Hope, courage and love. I have to learn to have courage again, the courage to live and face life as it comes. At a time when I thought I had lost all interest in life, I have to learn to live day by day and take one step at a time.

Elie Wiesel writes:

“There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.” 

ChK

Now we have lived in Dubai for almost a quarter of a century. We went there in the mid 1980s, escaping the Lebanese civil war. First it was only for one year. But then when the war continued we never went back. Living in Dubai was so much fun. But it always felt like we were on a long holiday. It felt like we were in the transit lounge of an airport, always waiting for our next plane out of there. So eventually when the time came for us to leave we decided to leave the Middle East and settle somewhere away from trouble. Somewhere we and my kids could finally call home.

In my previous post I mentioned the hardship that my grandparents (and later my parents) went through when they lost everything and left their homes and started a new life as refugees in Lebanon, where they didn’t even speak the language. They arrived in this new land with nothing but the clothes they wore. And out of this nothing they were able to stand on their feet and build a new home, raise a good family.

Thomas H. Cook writes:
“The course of every life followed a strange and unknowable direction. We might work to probe the mystery, but it would always elude us. For we were lost, like sheep in a deep valley, wandering in the darkness, without guidance or direction, driven here and there by mere circumstance, undone by pure chance. The darkness was impenetrable, and so we groped and stumbled, fell into traps and snares. We had been brought here to suffer, to be broken into submission, wounded again and again, so that we might find within those wounds the force and grace of love.”

Life was not so simple and sweet for either of my parents. They had it real hard. They had both started working early on in life, perhaps when they were twelve or thirteen. And since then they have never stopped. From them I learned the greatest lessons of life. I learned to look around at the less fortunate and count my blessings. I learned to work hard, as I learned that in order to succeed I had to have patience and perseverance. And due to the sacrifices they made we (my two brothers and I) were able to have a happy childhood even when theirs was taken away from them.

Despite all my parents had been through, they still believed the world to be made of good and coming from such a family I grew up with no fear of life. And then it was our (my husband and I) turn to make that sacrifice. And oh what a sacrifice it turned out to be. At last when we had a place to call home my husband was taken from us. There have been times lately when I have been submerged deep in sorrow and a fear of life and the future has taken hold of me. A life without my significant other beside me. And on such days, on days that I feel let down, I long to hear their voices, the voices of the people dearest to me but long gone.

“Why is it always the ones who love life, Cal? Your mother. Now William. Why is it always the ones who love life that are taken? The ones who want so much from it, give so much to it?”
“They aren’t taken any more than others. Dad it just seems that way.”
He nodded slowly. “Seems that way, yes. Because they’re the ones we miss.” Thomas H. Cook

ChK