The Alpha and Omega

Very few people have ever addressed me by my full name, either abbreviating it to Carol or changing it to Caroline. Annoyingly, when we were children, my brother called me Lyn Ann. While I detested the latter, the other names never troubled me. What difference does it make?

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These days I see very few people and Grant uses my actual name, Carolyn.

For the first time in a very long while, someone recently referred to me as Carol and maybe because it hasn’t happened for so long, it jogged a memory.

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Very many years ago I knew a man who called me Carol. I liked him a lot and he was good to me. I think he regarded me as a second daughter. If it was more than that, he certainly never acted on it, but I had learned to be very wary of men.

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My friend was diagnosed with cancer that eventually took his life. In those days I had no idea how to conduct myself around someone mortally ill, largely because death was so frightening. I wanted to send my friend a card or telephone him, but I was afraid I would upset him by saying the wrong thing.

Additionally, I heard that he’d been asking for Carol, who was actually someone else. Apparently he didn’t think as much of me as I’d believed, or so I told myself, totally forgetting that he had always called me by that name.

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Perhaps it was my way of excusing myself from getting in touch. I realised all of this when it was too late and I’ve felt awful about it ever since.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go back and fix our faux-pas? But the best we can do is acknowledge them and perhaps in speaking about our errors in judgment, we can help others to avoid making the same, though I suspect we mainly only learn from our own mistakes and too often, not even from them.

Maybe it was why, years later when I had an another friend dying of AIDS, I forced myself to find the courage to visit him. Being appalled by the stigma that was attached to the disease made offering support all the more important. It was dreadful to see my friend in such a terrible state but the visit wasn’t about how I would feel, it was about demonstrating friendship.

It is important for people who are terminally ill to know that someone cares.

That day, I didn’t fret over what to say, or grasp for things to talk about. I listened and let my friend lead the conversation.

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Since that time, my whole attitude toward the end of life began to change. I think it has to in any case as you grow old. Never having had children, I wouldn’t know how to raise one, but I believe my fear of death and everything related to it came from my parent’s attitude. I clearly remember my mother saying death was horrible. Living in London through WW2, I’m surprised she had not become immune to it, but who can say how I would have reacted?

Death is simply a part of the cycle and to call something natural horrible seems wrong.

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Another friend ended her life through assisted suicide. She had often spoken about it and I understood how she felt. I would not have tried to talk her out of it, yet when it happened I was unaccountably sad.

Perhaps it was just that I never got to say goodbye. For her it was a release from life that had become unbearable and for that I had to be glad.

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This is absolutely not something I expected to write. Isn’t it strange how thoughts are triggered by the mention of a single word or name?

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But to end on a more cheerful note, here is a short piece of music, a simple tune that I find very uplifting:

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Music tends to paint pictures in my mind. I see this piece played in a high, moonlit valley surrounded by tall mountains, the tune carried on cool, clear night air into the upper reaches, like a prayer or a salutation.

What did the composer have in mind, I wonder?