Catharsis

Early December 2008. I am at the Crown Plaza Wuzhou in Beijing. This massive hotel overlooks the Birds’ Nest stadium where the Summer Olympics took place just a couple of months earlier. As the director of a global engineering company I have been in the Forbidden City for a week now to try to close a deal with the Chinese government. The lack of progress has stressed me out to no end.

It is 5:20 a.m., I wake up with a severe hangover after last night’s negotiations. It is still dark outside, befitting the black mood which instantly settles over me like a cruel contraption. 

I realize the phone has woken me up, I believe it has been ringing for a while but I am not sure. The noise is thunderous. My heart palpitates, the muscles in my chest contract and I cannot breathe. A familiar anxiety takes hold, worsened by the feeling of being very far from home.

I pick up the phone and try to speak but nothing comes out. My throat is very dry. I hear my sister call out my name in an alarming voice. She sounds very nearby, for a moment I think she is here in China rather than at home in Belgium. My aorta pulsates down to my stomach. I have a metallic taste in my mouth as if I have been drinking mercury or lead last night. Maybe I have.

She tells me mother is dead. 

I lose it, I go to pieces. The voice of my sister trails off. Like in a nuclear meltdown, my stress chemicals reach boiling point. I have the very real sensation of accelerating without brakes down a slope leading into a solid and unforgiving wall. Raw panic rolls in and deepens for minutes which seem like hours. 

Until suddenly I reach escape velocity and my mind shuts down. My consciousness shifts to a lower stratum, deeper instinct takes over to preserve the self. No fight or flight, but freeze. Like an animal that will stand still so that its predator will not see them, I go into a state of stupor in order not to lose my mind. I become a detached observer, I do no longer participate. Closed for business. 

Lying still on the bed, breathing shallow, I see myself at the age of five, walking hand in hand with my mother in the freezing cold of a winter wonderland. Our feet make crispy noises on the snow. Everything around us is silent, honoring this moment. I feel enveloped in my mother’s mystery and secure in her blessing. A precocious child, I am eager to learn, and my mother readily answers all my questions. My world is centered on her, I conform to her. There is no visible cause for concern, yet I am terrified of losing her. Separation anxiety has me overwhelmed and, in fact, so has existential fear. They say that by the age of five, you very much understand the human condition. 

Well, I did. 

I emerged from the age of innocence with a hard and fast grasp of the concept of death. The terror of the realization that I was mortal literally took my breath away. First I could not believe it. Deep at heart, I did not feel at all that I would die. I had just learned about the world, full of symbolic meaning, and my place in it. I was a unique creature with cosmic significance. I had a contribution to make. I was good at being me and getting better every day. Surely it would be a cruel joke for me to have to die. This tragic destiny would befall lesser souls, but surely not me?

My mother had me at forty-two, an unplanned pregnancy after a very dark episode when my parents lost a son with the same name. Even today I still cannot believe that simple fact. My parents gave me the same name. No pressure.

As a replacement child - planned or not - I carried the burden of my parent’s unresolved sorrow. I had difficulty finding my real self, as my primary function presented itself to be the container for the soul of my dead brother.

Very early on, it was imprinted on me that I was an unexpected gift of life, their last-born, precious and treasured. The underlying sense being that I was the improbable miracle offspring. Whether they were ever spoken out loud or not, I remember the words “What are the odds of conceiving at that age and having a healthy and gifted baby son? We need to protect this one with our life.” 

I later realized that this maternal over shielding prevented me from accessing my own powers, of finding my center. I started in life by walking on air, not on solid ground. A charmed beginning for sure because I escaped from the dangers of my mother’s midlife pregnancy. It seemed to me I had used up all my luck just getting born, and going forward, the odds were severely against me. Whatever happened next, I should not get separated from my mother.

The very same mother that is dead now.

I am a grown man in a Beijing hotel room but I feel like I am that five-year-old boy again, walking at the hand of his mother, holding on to her for dear life. For dear life…, the irony of that is not lost on me.

The fact that she is gone hurts like nothing has hurt before. I am now forced to think the unthinkable, to speak the unspeakable. That what I have feared my whole life has now happened. This means that I too can and will die, the end of a myth that only I believed in still.

I am alone while the sun comes up over another day in Beijing. I weep. I will also weep on the flight back home tomorrow. And I will bury my mother. And I will talk to my father and my siblings, really talk, and I will feel better. Because we are alive. 

I can still love my mother even now she’s gone. That I was given the same name as my dead brother I now consider a gift of devotion, highly unsettling as it has been on my journey to this day.

I feel like a lifelong spell has been lifted. I am still here even though my mother is not. Through all the pain, I feel restoration and new possibilities. The purgation of childish emotions has cleansed the path forward.

I am my own man now.

Author's Note

A new version v3 has been uploaded based upon your feedback, many thanks to all of you.

Reviews

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

As I read "Catharsis," I felt a numb attachment to your experience. Our parents leave their thumbprints on our very soul; and whether they are here or not, they impact our lives and who we are forever. I have no parents. I have no grandparents. Relatives on either side are completely unknown to me. Death has brushed his wings against those who should have loved me the most. Sadly, they were lost souls who, being shattered themselves, could do nothing other than shatter me as well. I am fragments of them all. My soul has been cut by their sharp edges, but I am strengthened steel - forged in the fires of loss and heartache.

That you had such an affinity for your mother at an early age, fearing her loss, tells me that you not only walked hand-in-hand with her. You walked heart-to-heart. It's only natural that her journey away from you would impact you so deeply. It also strengthened you, allowing you to realize that you could stand on your own. It's a beautiful reflection of your relationship with your mother, a reflection that so many would love to have with their own mothers, myself included.

I learned to stand and survive on my own at a very early age, far too soon for anyone to endure. Yet, we are stronger than we even know; and it's moments like this that cause our spirits to rise to the occasion.

Your parents must have loved each of their children deeply. To have lost one son and then have another to whom they bestowed the same name is deeply unsettling. On the one hand, it seems an incredible burden to the child. On the other, it seems a gift of sheer devotion. They never let go.

My own mother had a best friend who died while trying to give herself an abortion with a coat hanger. I always found it unthinkable that I was named after someone like that. It always seemed like a curse or a jinx upon my life. While I wouldn't choose to do the same, if I try to look at it from the other side, I see it as a way to keep that person's memory alive. While my mother may have had many beautiful memories of her friend, my only knowledge of her was death at her own hands while trying to end the life of another. What it means to me must have meant something completely different to her.

Your story is believable, whether real or not, so I can only speak of it as if it were. When I write, I always want the reader to feel what I'm feeling at the time that I write. If fiction, you did a splendid job of evoking emotions as if it were real. The agony of loss, the pain of separation, and the numbness of the moment are all very tangible to the reader. The flood of memory in that moment is sensate. I feel your pain.

In the end, "Catharsis" speaks of your journey and your strength and your growth towards a future bereft of fear. I have very personal reasons to relate to this story. Nonetheless, I think everyone can.

Thank you for sharing.

Here are a few corrections that need to be made ...

" ... Forbidden City for a week now to try (to) close a deal with the ..."

" ... the muscles in my chest contract and I cannot breath(e)."

"Raw panic rolls in and deepens for minutes which seem (like) hours, ..."

" ...I do (remove) no longer participate."

" ... shielding prevented me of (replace with the word 'from') accessing my own powers, of finding my center.."

There are also a number of punctuation errors that need to be corrected throughout.

[Philip Muls]

Thank you Linda for your detailed and professional feedback. You made me understand that I am privileged that indeed I walked heart-to-heart with my mother. And getting the same name is a burden yet indeed also a gift of devotion. I am sorry for your own situation.

[Autumn Lyric]

Thank you for the invitation to read your work. For a first draft, it has all the finishing touches of a good story'. Nothing can floor you to devastation faster than getting that call that someone you cherish has escaped this troubled world. I found your flashback to a happier occasion spent with your mother when you were dependent upon her care the most, as surreal and it happens that way, doesn't it? As I see it, you expressed these sentiments and the out of control feelings very well. Coming out of the shock, you still realize that you need your mother even when your own adult life seems to be spinning out of control. The ending speaks volumes: I am my own man now. (a man needing and always loving his mother). Thank you for sharing, Philip...

[Philip Muls]

Thank you for this meaningful review, I appreciate it.

[daninstockholm]

It's a beautiful work, Phillip. This is a first draft?? seems quite well finished to me. Polished prose and an open honest style make this a joy to read regardless of the subject matter, death and loss. The positive ending leaves an impression of relief at the end of a very long strand of pressure and self-inflicted stress as well as the eventual, hopefully, ability to grow from loss, Very well told indeed!

[Philip Muls]

Thanks Dan. Indeed a first draft but to be honest I worked on it a full day. As you say, the subject matter is heavy. Grow from loss is they key message, you got it. Thanks !