The future

Everyone is asking me about my future. It seems a strange question given that for all intents and purposes, I have no control over much of it.

I bumped into my second supervisor the other day. He’s not hands on in the supervision of my thesis, so I was a bit taken aback when he said ever so casually, 

‘Chris* and I had a meeting about your future last week’.
‘Ha. Not something you’d think I’d need to be at?!’, I joked back.

He went on to explain that they’ve sat down to discuss what I should do next. NEXT.  As in, AFTER THE PhD -- the prospect of this seems unfathomable.

Neither of them has asked me what I would like to do (which is possibly a good thing). I can tell you, dear readers, that neither of them would think that my wistful plan of jumping on a plane the minute I submit and seeing where life takes me is a great idea. I have made passing remarks along these lines to Supervisor One, but he ignores me (just like he ignored me when I told him categorically that I did not ever want to pursue postgraduate research).  

Supervisor One is pretty invested in me. Not because he needs successful PhD students to improve his CV, but because he cares about me. He has pretty clear plans for what I should do with my life and these plans extend to who I should date, when I should have children, how I should parent them, and of course, the next step of my career. While I knew that he wanted me to continue research, I didn’t realise just how much he wanted this until I mentioned a while ago that I was planning on opening a yoga studio. He was FURIOUS with me. As in, so furious that he threw down his papers and decried, 

‘WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT OF ALL OF THIS THEN?’ 

I had no intention of a yoga studio being my main thing – more a side hobby. But I am not sure what will be my main thing next and for the most part, I am okay with that.

It seems a little futile to be planning the future when there’s the not-so-minor task of finishing the PhD and finishing the project I am currently working on at work. Nonetheless, discussion about the future keeps coming to the fore.

On Monday, our Dean of Research asked when I was going to submit. It’s such a strange question – does anyone ever have a definitive answer to it? I vaguely answered that it will be sometime this year. She then realised the futility of her question in the context of my life, 

‘Well, you are going to have other things going on’.
Timidly, I said, ‘Yes, Mum’s going to die’

She looked down and placed her head in her hands.

She knows this is my reality, and that’s what she was referring to by ‘other things’. But terminal illness is one of those ‘things’ that need to be spoken about in metaphor. It is as though there’s some sub-conscious process that tells us that using softer language may take away the sharp edge—it doesn’t.

There was someone waiting at her door.

I told her that maybe the thesis will be a distraction from the grief. I told her that my brother died when I was writing my Honours thesis and the sleeplessness saw me write through the night. I was trying to soften the heavy sense in the room. She dropped her head again.

‘Life is what it is’, I reminded her.
‘You’re a very brave young woman, Kat’.

'I don't have any choice'.

In many ways, this is a year of endings for me. Professionally, things are all finishing at the same time – my job wraps up in the middle of the year, and at some point I’ll submit the thesis. Personally, I am going to lose my Mum and doubtlessly then spend much time wandering about trying to reconfigure my identity: I’m not a sister anymore, and soon I won’t be a daughter. I can’t imagine many people have, at any point in their life, a time when they have absolutely no commitments. 

On the one hand, it’s a grim prospect – who are you if you lose all of your roles – student, employee, daughter, carer – within a short period of time? But on the other hand (and this is the only way I can look at it given the absence of choice about it all), opportunities abound. It’s as though one life is leaving to make way for the next – whatever that may be.

It is so sad that I am going to lose my mum, but I realise that it’s much more bearable when you’re 28 as opposed to when you are eight. I wish things were different, but they’re not. Losing your mum - at any age - bears a deep sense of sorrow and creates an eternal absence within you. But I have 28 years of memories and love and guidance.

A colleague was so sad that my mum will never see me get married or have children. And while I understand that there's times or days in your life where you desperately, desperately, miss them, I said to my colleague that no matter when you lose a parent, there will always be things that you wish they were there for. There will always be days that you want to go home to see them but home is gone because they are too. 

But despite how it seems in the early weeks of mourning, the world keeps on going. Despite feeling that your life has simply stopped and the world changed forever – there’s still millions of people on their way to work for what seems to them, just another day. And one day you have just another day. And you realise that you’re getting by better. You will have learned to reconcile the longing and the missing with the joys of everyday life. The future will be here and you will be living it. But this process takes its own course – trying to solve grief is like trying to provide clear plans for the future: an impossible task.

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*Chris is the Tyrant. (More formally referred to as Supervisor One.)