Depression and Grieff

Depression and Grief

After a loss, a person may experience waves of depression. Such disturbing feelings are normal, yet saying so does not minimize their importance. We may experience sadness, apathy, loss of interest in work, hobbies, family or friends, a sense of hopelessness, feelings of meaninglessness, lack of concentration and a host of other related symptoms. 

We may feel we are in a downward spiral. We feel depressed because well-intentioned people give the impression that we're not doing too well, exhorting us to "be strong", "snap out of it", or "to pull yourself together."

We can't give all the answers to depression, which is a complicated topic. You probable will feel depressed after your loss because your emotional energy is being diverted to the grieving process. For a time, that energy is focused on helping you find the resources to accept the loss and move on to a new life. 

In moments of depression you may feel that your life is over.

You may wonder if you have the strength or the resolve to carry on without the person you have lost. Some may even entertain thoughts of ending it all, either to be reunited with their loved one in death, or because they feel they simply cannot endure the pain of loss.

Such thoughts need careful attention. People who think about ending it all do not really want to die - they just aren't sure they want to live now that their life has changed. Change is never easy.

Part of the grieving process is deciding how we can find the resources for that necessary transition. Sometimes we need help to get us through this period of depression. And seeking the support of a qualified professional counsellor is not a sign of weakness or failure, but an indication of your determination to work through the feelings of grief. Such help will enable you to concentrate your energy on the tasks of mourning. 

Grief attacks: After a little while, we may think we are coping very well with our loss and have the situation well under control. Suddenly , almost out of nowhere, comes an overwhelming sense of grief. Such "grief attacks" can be triggered by almost anything.

Perhaps you hear a favourite song on the radio that reminds you of the person. Maybe, while rummaging through a drawer or a closet, you find an old better or a special photograph. Unexpectedly, you are overcome by a sense of missing the person and the reality of their absence.

Do not be alarmed or regard such moments as setbacks. This is the way grief works itself out. Grief does not act like a sore throat: at first painful, then less painful, and finally no more pain. Grief comes and goes.

We go through a little grief and then it eases off. When we are ready, we deal with a little more. People will often experience more grief attacks than long, uninterrupted periods of grief or depression.

While grief is a universal experience, it is at the same time unique and personal.

Reality hitting home a little more, often in the form of a grief attack, is not a sign of weakness, but signifies increasing strength.

We can cope with a little more of the pain and cut one more strand of the cord.

 Your bad day is a good sign,, because it indicates you are dealing with reality.

How you experience grief will be different from anyone else.

White City

White City

By Lewis Shiner

They enter the Electricity Building together and stand in the center, underneath the great dome. This is the site of the Westinghouse exhibit, a huge curtained archway resting upon a metal platform. Beyond the arch are two huge Tesla coils, the largest ever built. At the peak of the arch is a tablet inscribed with the words: WESTINGHOUSE EELCTRIC & MANUFACTURING CO./TESLA POLYPHASE SYSTEM.

Tesla’s mood is triumphant. Edison, his chief rival, has been proven wrong. Alternating current will be the choice of the future. The Westinghouse Company has this week been awarded the contract to build the first two generators at Niagara Falls. Tesla cannot forgive Edison’s hiring of Menlo Park street urchins to kidnap pets, which he then electrocuted with alternating current – “Westinghoused” them, as he called it. But Edison’s petty, lunatic attempts to discredit the polyphase system have failed, and he stands revealed as an old, bitter, and unimaginative man.

Edison has lost, and history will soon forget him.

George Westinghouse himself, Tesla’s patron, is here tonight. So ar J.P. Morgan, Anne’s father, and William K. Vanderbilt and Mayor Harrison. Here also are Tesla’s friends Robert and Katherine Johnson, and Samuel Clemens, who insists everyone call him by his pen name.

It is nearly midnight.

White City. Photo by Elena

Tesla steps lightly onto the platform. He snaps his fingers and gas-filled tubes burst into pure white light. Tesla has fashioned them to spell out the names of several of the celebrities present, as well as the names of his favorite Serbian poets. He holds up his hands to the awed and expectant crowd. “Gentlemen and Ladies. I have no wish to bore you with speeches. I have asked you here to witness a demonstration of the power of electricity.”

He continues to talk, his voice rising to a high pitch in his excitement. He produces several wireless lamps and places them around the stage. He points out that their illumination in undiminished, despite their distance from the broadcast power source. “Note how the gas at low pressure exhibits extremely high conductivity. This gas is little different from that in the upper reaches of our atmosphere.”

He concludes with a few fireballs and pinwheels of light. As the applause gradually subsides he holds up his hands once again. “These are little more than parlor tricks. Tonight I wish to say thank you, in a dramatic and visible way, to all of you who have supported me through you patronage, through your kindness, through your friendship. This my gift to you, and to all of mankind.”

He opens a panel in the front of the arch. A massive knife switch is revealed. Tesla makes a short bow and then throws the switch.

The air crackles with ozone. Electricity roars through Tesla’s body. His hair stands on end and flames dance at the tips of his fingers. Electricity is his God, his best friend, his only lover. It is clean, pure, absolute. It arcs through him and invisible into the sky. Tesla alone can see it. To him it is blinding white, the color he sees when inspiration, fear or elation strikes him.

The coils draw colossal amounts of power. All across the great hall, all over the White City, lights flicker and dim. Anne Morgan cries out in shock and fear.

Through the vaulted windows overhead the sky itself begins to glow.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)

Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates

Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates

By Pat Murphy

My creatures engage in a long, slow courtship. I am getting sicker. Sometime, my mother comes to ask me questions that I will not answer. Sometimes, men sit by my bed – but they are less real than my mother. These are men I cared about – men I thought I might love, though I never got beyond the thought. Through their translucent bodies, I can see the laboratory walls. They never were real, I think now.

Sometimes, in my delirium, I remember things. A dance back at college; I was slow-dancing, with someone’s body pressed close to mine. The room was hot and stuffy and we went outside for some air. I remember he kissed me, while one hand stroked my breast and the other fumbled with the buttons of my blouse. I kept wondering if this was love – this fumbling in the shadow.

In my delirium, things change. I remember dancing in a circle with someone’s hands clasping mine. My feet ache, and I try to stop, but my partner pulls me along, refusing to release me. My feet move instinctively in time with my partner’s, though there is no music to help us keep the beat. The air smells of dampness and mold; I have lived my life underground and I am accustomed to these smells.

Is this love?

I spend my days lying by the window, watching through the dirty glass. From the mouth of the alley, he calls to her. I did not give him a voice, but he calls in his own way, rubbing his two front legs together so that metal rasps against metal, creaking like a cricket the size of a Buick.

Love among the invertebrates. Photograph: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

She strolls past the alley mouth, ignoring him as he charges toward her, rattling his teeth. He backs away, as if inviting her to follow. She walks by. But then, a moment later, she strolls past again and the scene repeats itself. I understand that she is not really oblivious to his attention. She is simply taking her time, considering her situation. The male intensifies his efforts, tossing his head as he backs away, doing his best to call attention to the fine home he has created.

I listen to them at night. I cannot see them – the electricity failed two days ago and the streetlights are out. So I listen in the darkness, imagining. Metal legs rub together to make a high creaking noise. The sail on the male’s back rattles as he unfolds it, the folds it, then unfolds it again, in what must be a sexual display. I hear a spiked tail rasping over a spiny back in a kind of caress. Teeth chatter against metal – love bites, perhaps. (The lion accepts as affection). Claws scrape against metal hide, clatter over metal scales. This, I think, is love. My creatures understand love.

I imagine a cock made of copper tubing and pipe fittings sliding into a canal lined with sheet metal from a soda can. I hear metal sliding over metal. And then my imaginations fails. My construction made no provision for the stuff of reproduction: the sperm, the egg. Science failed me there. That part is up to the creatures themselves.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)

The Hemingway Hoax

The Hemingway Hoax

By Joe Haldeman

“So what is the big event?”

“It’s impossible for you to know. It’s not important, anyhow.” Actually, it would take a rather cosmic viewpoint to consider the event unimportant: the end of the world.

Or at least the end of life on Earth. Right now, there were two earnest young politicians, in the United States and Russia, who on 11 August 2006 would be President and Premier of their countries. On that day, one would insult the other beyond forgiveness, and a button would be pushed, and then another button, and by the time the sun set on Moscow, or rose on Washington, there would be nothing left alive on the Planet at all – from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the atmosphere; not a cockroach, not a paramecium, not a virus, and all because there are some things a man just doesn’t have to take, not if he’s a real man.

Hemingway wasn’t the only writer who felt that way, but he was the one with the most influence on this generation. The apparition who wanted John dead or at least not typing didn’t know exactly what effect his pastiche was going to have on Hemingway’s influence, but it was going to be decisive and ultimately negative. It would prevent or at least delay the end of the world in a whole bundle of universes, which would put a zillion adjacent realities out of kilter, and there would be hell to pay all up and down the Omniverse. Many more people that six billion would die – and it’s even possible that all of Reality would unravel, and collapse back to the primordial Hiccup from whence I came.

Hoax. Photo by Elena

“If it’s not important, then why are you so hell-bent on keeping me from preventing it? I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t believe me, then!” At an imperious gesture, all the capsules rolled back into the corner and reassembled into a piano, with a huge crashing chord. None of the barflies heard it. “I should think you’d cooperate with me just to prevent the unpleasantness of dying over and over.”

John had the expression of a poker player whose opponent has inadvertently exposed his hole card. “You get used to it,” he said. “And it occurs to me that sooner or later I’ll wind up in a universe that I really like. This one doesn’t have a hell of a lot to recommend it.” His foot tapped twice and then twice again.

“No,” the Hemingway said. “It will get worse each time.”

“You can’t know that. This has never happened before.”

“True so far, isn’t it?”

John considered it for a moment. “Some ways. Some ways not.”

The Hemingway shrugged and stood up. “Well. Think about my offer.” The cane appeared. “Happy cancer.” It tapped him on the chest and disappeared.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)

Pastigris

Pastigris

They set off again towards the end of the summer, after having reconfirmed Mazaeus as Satrap of Babylon and leaving a Macedonian garrison to safeguard the defence and the safety of the province. They proceeded up the Pasitigris, a tributary of the Tigris which flowed down through the Elam mountains. The landscape was beautiful – rich in green pastures with many flocks of sheep and herds of cows grazing, and in that area there grew all types of fruit tresses, including the wonderful persica with its velvet skin and its incredibly juicy and tasty flesh. There was also plenty of sun-dried fruit such as figs and prunes.

It took the army six days’ march to come within sight of Susa, and Alexander recalled the enthusiastic description of the Persian guests who had been visiting Pella many years before. The city stood on a flat area, with the Elam mountain chain as a backdrop, the high peaks already covered with snow, their slopes green with firs and cedars. It was huge, surrounded by walls and towers decorated in shining tiles and with its battlements all decorated in silver and gold – plated studs.

Pastigris. Photo by Elena

… The city of Susa – immense and almost three thousand years old – had four hills at its four corners and on one of them stood the royal palace which at that very moment was fully illuminated by the rays of the setting sun. The entrance was a majestic temple-style pronaos, consisting of large stone columns with capitals in the form of winged bulls supporting the ceiling. Then came an atrium paved with marble of all colours an partly covered by magnificent carpets. There where also other columns supporting the ceiling, these in cedar wood painted red an yellow. Through a corridor and across another atrium, Alexander was led into the apadana, the great audience chamber, while the dignitaries, the eunuchs and the chamberlains all retreated to the sides of the great hall, lowering their heads until they were almost touching the floor.