Staring At The Sun - An Artistic Impression of Death Anxiety

STARING AT THE SUN ROSA NIRAN AN ARTISTIC IMPRESSION OF DEATH ANXIETY At the seminar “Identifying and Managing Psychological and Psychiatric Disorder in Cancer Patients”

STARING AT THE SUN An Artistic Impression of Death Anxiety

At the Seminar “Identifying and Managing Psychological and Psychiatric Disorder in Cancer Patients” Paintings and text by Rosa Niran

INTRODUCTION One of the components of the word cancer is the underlying thought that this disease could kill. It is this factor that sets the disease apart from other diseases. In the near-term or the long-term the disease contains a death sentence. Patients are termed cancer survivors but this is only a temporary state. For me the thought was always “How long do I have?” I suppose everyone can ask this question but the urgency of the question is exacerbated by the knowledge that in my case the disease is only in a holding pattern and sooner or later I will be on the final stretch.

The strange thing is that during the treatment there are tiny deaths. Moments when the treatment and its side effects are so severe that I was sure I would die. I know the French expression petit morte – small deaths. This is a French literary expression for “orgasm”. I suppose this is a fair description of the painful moments, where things become uncontrollable and lead to the inevitable crisis.

Orgasms are highly desirable states. Cancer crises are far from pleasing.

These crises did not prepare me at all for what actually happened when I suddenly found I was facing my own death right up close. Nothing in life prepared me for the experience. I am not a person who is afraid of anything. I have always prided myself on being fearless in all situations. I always thought: “If I survived the Displaced Persons Camps in Italy I can survive anything”. Death, on the other hand, was just the opposite of my life of learning survival skills.

I am setting down my journey though my death anxiety as honestly as I can in order to understand the journey for myself and anyone who cares to read this document. It is hard to put into words; the death of the feelings and the strangeness of the journey.

It is my hope to make this journey less strange for others as they might have to face it themselves.

Fig 1 For months have felt it was my responsibility to try to clean up all the emotional mess around having a drug addicted son and daughter-in-law and the legal and financial battles as a consequence. These toilet rolls represent that cleaning process. Police, family-court, counselling, Social Services and restraining orders, all piling up and needing cleaning up to preserve the safety of my grand-children.

Fig 2 Now that I have stopped focusing on all these external pressures I am ready to ask myself “ How do I feel?�

I realize I just want to curl up and hide in a corner.

Fig 3 If I look inside myself I feel this all-consuming fear. I just want to turn away from that feeling, away from that inner mess and curl up in a ball where it is safe. I talk to my psychiatrist and she gives the fear a name: DEATH ANXIETY I am so pleased. She has given that terrible feeling a name.

Once it is named, I can dimension it, examine it and feel my way through it.

Fig 4 I lock myself away at the beach for a few days to think all this feeling of fear through. Can I get to the bottom of all this emotion? Where in my body does that anxiety and fear sit? It is in my jaw, in my mouth, and in my gut. I am holding it in, keeping it down.

Fig 5 How am I responding to the fear?

I keep holding my hands over my mouth so you can’t see me bite my lips over my scream.

Fig 6 If I put my hands over my mouth, the scream still escapes.

It is written all over my body.

Fig 7 Where is that scream?

It is so large that it is everywhere. It is even in my fingertips. I open up my hand and the scream escapes into the air.

Fig 8 “Look at the scream� I tell myself. Can I do it? I open up wide and I let the scream out. I picture myself as I move past the scream and see into the dark behind it. I need to stare into that dark place.

Fig 9 I stare into the dark space. It is dank and hot and wet like descending into my gut. I go down, down and I hit a dead end. This is not the way. I cannot see anything. I feel hot and wet. I am all sweaty. I will try another path.

The night after the painting I have this clear dream.

DREAM 1 I look into the dark hole and I fall into it.

When I get to the bottom there are these old toilet-blocks made out of corrugated iron and fibro cement sheets. The floor and walls are filthy and they have taken the toilet pans away. I have wet myself during the fall. I try to take my panties off but they get twisted around my knees and my knees are tied together.

I leave there and struggle to walk into a big office. My old boss is there and everyone is ignoring me. I am an outsider.

He is handing out a beautiful book, leather bound and tooled. It is “Dante’s Inferno, Descent into Hell” I call out. I want to borrow it but he won’t lend it to me.

He gives it to another person, Roger (my business partner who died of bowel cancer recently). Roger says he will show it to me. But he does not. How will I know what hell is like if he does not tell me?

I think after the dream I really don’t know what Hell or death are like. How will I know? Who will now guide me now? There is only me and my dead friend does not help me.

Fig 10 I decide I am going to take another path into the darkness.

I start with the pain in my clenched mouth. The pain extends into my throat and right down my chest to my gut.

I tell myself “Go with the pain, follow it.�

Fig 11 I try to forget the external part of me. I start to see things differently now that I have stripped away everything around me. I take away all the external self-control and jolliness of my public persona. I throw away all my coping mechanisms

Fig 12 What I really see is DEATH. It is an integral part of my every day life. I cannot separate myself from the way I see my life. It gives my life form. It is the blood.

Fig 13 It is all Death and Shit.

Fig 14 I try to paint myself again but it still comes out nearly the same. Now it is just Death and me, surrounded by shit everywhere. I cannot separate from it. It seeps into every part of my body. I cannot separate from it in any way. It gives me real pain. There is shit everywhere.

The night after the painting I have this clear dream.

DREAM 2 Mike has a pavilion in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, and I go to visit him. We close the sliding glass doors because they have this crazy security system at night. They release tigers and lions into the courtyard to eat intruders.

I cannot shut the last door and I ask Mike to come over and help me slide it shut As we are both finally closing it, a lion comes roaring at the window. We both try to hold the door closed. We can see its huge mouth open and the see the roar. I am terrified but I look into the open mouth while it roars. I wake up really shaken and frightened.

I think that open mouth and the roar is the scream that has shaken me all the time, no matter where I am, here or in Istanbul. It is the scream I carry around with me, no matter how pleasant or frightening the external distractions may be. The inside scream is louder than everything else.

Fig 16 After the dream I go outside and I start to scream and scream. I cannot stop myself.

Fig 17 I sit on the edge of the bed and it’s like I am staring into an abyss. I start to laugh at everything.

Death is this abyss and as I stare into the abyss, I realize there is nothing down there. There is nothing after this moment. This life is all we have. I feel very calm about this.

The next evening I have this very clear dream.

(me) but CAB runs home to his family farm.

DREAM 3

CAB (me) runs into this very dark shed. There is terribly scary music and a shaft of light across the shed as the door opens. In the dark there is an old, a scary uncle who welcomes me into the barn.

This is a complex dream. I am two people in the dream, the male and the female character. The dream looks like an American film with color and music.

It opens up and I am some sort of character like Sarah Jessica Parker (SJP). I am all clothes and teeth. I meet this other character Cute American Boy (CAB) who is also me. I invite him to come to my place because he is a poor boy studying classical music.

We go to my place and swim. My brother and sister arrive. My brothers invite him to play cricket with them. CAB decides not to play. He (me) goes instead to a music competition with his viola.

A strange woman comes to re-possess the viola but I (SJP) save the viola by paying for the debt with a credit card. CAB (me) is mad at SJP for rescuing him and uses his anger to play magnificently. There is thunderous applause!! SJP (me) runs to embrace CAB

The old scary uncle says, “I heard the news about the competition. Now you are ready,” CAB (me) says “I can be a musician.”

I WILL BE ME! I wake up and I realize that is the point. All the different parts of me become one and I am now free to be ME. Everything else is a distraction, and trying to draw me away from my real self.

This is the synthesis of all the separate parts of me. It is all the male and female parts fusing until I just become myself only. I am happy. I know how to live the rest of my life. No matter how little time I have left, I can live it to the fullest. It is not shaded by old fears. I am ready for whatever life presents because it is just me as I am.

STARING AT THE SUN ROSA NIRAN AN ARTISTIC IMPRESSION OF DEATH ANXIETY At the seminar “Identifying and Managing Psychological and Psychiatric Disorder in Cancer Patients”