Perception is reality

As the anniversary of my father's death approaches, seemingly from that day in 1981, I am brought to reflect on the fact that both my parents are now dead and that mum's death almost a year ago pushed me through a door that had been open to me for a long time.

My life comes to me through my perceptions from data gathered by my senses and interpreted in my brain. My brain uses many pieces of information to come to its conclusions and these form what I know to be my reality.

Copyright: Erik Johansson - www.erikjohanssonphoto.com

Okay. So far so good. My life is real, isn't it? I can touch, see, hear, taste and smell my world and believe that it exists for me. My brain tells me it does. 

Well, it tells me its version of it that does.

During my exploration of the fact that I had quiet a flat emotional reaction to mum's death, the psychologist I had decided to see, cracked open with me my perception of my relationship with my mum. 

I used to ring her on her wedding anniversary and congratulate her. I did this almost without fail, certainly after dad died and many times when they were both still in this world together. I loved doing that and the more I did it, the more I looked forward to mum's reply, which was always the same: 

Thank you, Ernie (or sometimes she would call me by my Dutch diminutive - Er). You're the only one who ever does that."

Now, every time I heard that, my heart swelled with pride that I had been such a good son to her in that moment, that I had celebrated with her that wedding day in November, 1950.

Fast forward to 2023. Me struggling with my relatively unemotional relationship with her over many years. We connected strongly intellectually but I yearned for her to envelop me, to make me feel safe, to connect with my heart. She couldn't do this - I couldn't do that - because my birth came at a time when she was homesick, morning sick, depressed and anxious. And it took over twenty-four hours with dad not allowed in and nurses seeing this screaming banshee as one of those "new Australians" who thought it was okay to scream the house down during birth.

She couldn't focus on me at all. I was in the pram, but she could never bring herself to draw me to her heart. What a terrible time she must have had.

So calling her on that annual date made me feel like I had a connection. I was the good, eldest son, who was probably a wedding night baby. I was proud of myself. And mum would say Thank you to me over the phone. This was my perception, my constructed reality.

But there was another reality. My mother's. My psychologist gently brought me to stand in another location to examine that event, to stand behind my mother, to respond as my mother, to feel what she might have actually been feeling in that moment and I got a shock. 

My counsellor suggested I reply to my eldest-son-self as my mother might have been feeling and I felt my throat tighten, my breathing stop. I forced it out of my heart, now cracking open.

I feel so sad that you're the only one who remembers.

As I said the words, I realised that I could have been the one to build a stronger emotional connection with her in that moment. I could have said (if I had been present enough to her and not to my own pride at being the "good son"):

Oh, mum. You must feel so sad that nobody else remembers, that nobody recognises your deep love for your John.

What a moment that would have been! I feel sad to know that I'll never get the opportunity to do that for her and to open my heart more widely to a deeper emotional connection to her that I've always yearned for, ever since ...

However, perception is everything. In some strange and universal way, I feel closer to her now and believe that she has allowed me to learn something vital to my own life. Her death has become a challenge of sorts.

Be in the moment and true to myself. Feel the connection and speak to it. Don't be afraid to become vulnerable - in the opening up, understanding grows, and in the letting go, my heart arrives.

Reality walks with me every moment.