A Flicker in the Dark
By Alecs Kakon
To recognize the poetry of our lives is to endow each moment with meaning. Just as the age-old adage claims that everything happens for a reason, it is with this framework that we look at life and build the narrative. We read that each experience was written purposefully, each symbol replete with significance and each theme uncovers something deeper. Punctuated by disorienting falls, we watch as our hero rises; each painful blow a testament to her strength of character. With an introspective look at my own life, I can see where the story begins, how I would organize my chapters, what the overarching themes are, and who the main characters would be. By fleshing out the most impactful moments of my life, I attenuate the pain and uncover the joy and vindication it paved way for. Because with each retrospective articulation, a deeper understanding can be drawn. As I write my story, I constellate my identity. Certain memories come speeding to mind, shaping my personhood; like photographs of immutable time, they’ve been telling my story all along. Sitting down with Cathy, we talked about the cycles of life, the source of her inner strength, and the importance of perspective.
Cathy grew up most of her life the daughter of a single mother. When she was two years old, her parents split. Then at four, her mother remarried, but six years later, her step-father went on a “business trip,” and never came back. It was the early 70s and her mother had to make her way into the workforce so as to provide for her 3 children. “My mom all of a sudden had to become a career woman,” Cathy explained. “My brothers and I became total latchkey kids. My mom would always prep meals and take care of us, but we had to do our part. We had chores and responsibilities and did more than just pitch in. People would say that we came from a broken home, because back then, that’s how you referred to kids from divorced families, but my home was never broken. We had a lot of fun and my mom was a rock star. She was my mother and my father, and we were all very happy.” Watching her mother have to go out and develop a new side of herself was a foreshadow to Cathy’s impending future.
When Cathy was 23, she married – about 15 years later, and three sons in, she was divorced. “Our marriage was very nice for many years, but my ex was very sick. He was mentally ill and toward the end, I couldn’t take care of him anymore.” The last three years of her marriage were coloured by deception and theft, escalating to a point where she could no longer carry on. Cathy stood by him through mental hospitals and electroshock therapy, but when she eventually learned that he had been taking money from friends and family, she knew that she couldn’t do it anymore. “If I stood by him, I would lose my friends and family, all the people who were important to me, and it came to a point where they were all more important to me than he was. I couldn’t lose them,” Cathy explains. In a wave of repetition, Cathy left the luxury of lunches and day-time tennis, for a full-time job. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was forced to go out and develop a part of me I had no idea existed. I didn’t know I could do half of what I’m capable of and that is a gift I’m grateful for.” But, before the light cast its light, there was the darkness.
One evening, Cathy went to drop off her children at her ex’s house. “There was an incident,” Cathy describes. “I went to drop off the kids and words were had. He hit me, he threw me up against the car, he ripped my coat. It was a big scene and my kids saw it all. I went straight to the police. I was shaking, I remember I threw up, and then I went back to his house with the police, who then threw him in jail for the night.” With the herculean strength of her inner mama bear, Cathy thrust aside her trauma and pain and shifted focus on protecting her children. “He hurt me, but that didn’t matter. He hurt me in front of my children and that was horrible.” Sitting in sadness and anger was not an option: “You get one day to cry, then you get up and move on,” her mother had explained to her. Three children in tow, Cathy absorbed that lesson entirely. Although she was able to rebuild and put it all behind her quite successfully, the visual memories of the time have been irrevocably imprinted. Like snapshots that capture the past, traumatic experiences transform into images, sensations, smells and triggers. More vivid than the mirage of memory, the visual or phantom image floats through our minds as it seers into our memories. “I can still see the tunnel I used to picture. It was a very scary, dark tunnel with just the faintest flicker at the end. I didn’t think I could reach it. But it eventually got brighter. I can remember that visual, it stands out to me as something I go back to. It reminds me that I got through a very dark time. It gives me strength.”
Speaking in aphorismic manner, Cathy peppers her past with a spirited “from bad, comes something good, you just have to be patient and willing to recognize it. For example, had that horrible evening never occurred, then I wouldn’t have gotten full decision-making rights for my boys. That’s something I am forever grateful for.” The truth is, although that is a matter of half-glass full perspective, Cathy has lived through enough hardship to know that no matter how bad things get, she can rely on her inner strength to carry her through. Organizing her life in logical sequence, the themes of Cathy’s life emerge, but despite the obvious motifs that umbrella her story, what has undeniably manifested is a force to be reckoned with. “I was once told that I am a woman of substance, and you know, you can complement a woman on her beauty or her humour, but to be told that I am a woman of substance, well that means that I am surrounded by people who bring it out in me and can truly see me for who I am.”
All photos by Jenni Fellegi
