Dead oak trees

She walks slowly through the streets of her neighborhood, stepping on dry leaves that cover the yards with no respect for the brown grass underneath.

Trees raising their desperate naked limbs to sky, crying for old oak trees that were put down, their remains blocking the sidewalk.

The oak trees were dead, was she told. What do they know about the ones that are still standing after death? No one can tell of the pain of the oak tree to keep itself standing way past its time, when there was no reason to remain. She knows about that.

The oak trees put down. They say that as if trees were like terminally will pets, that are put down "to be freed from their misery". Why do we humans want to give this type of lethal freedom to animals and trees?

Why can't we free ourselves from misery? What kind of freedom is that that we distribute effusively to some, to the silenced, to the defenseless,  the ones that insist in stand even after death?

She embraces the large chunk of trunk still exuding the memory of the saw.  She tries to measure how has to be one's misery so they have to remove the being from one's misery? Why remove the being from the misery, if the misery is what remains?

Her friend was in misery. Unbearable pain, no hope, no dreams, being haunted by his past. Had he suffered from a headache, any doctor would do everything to "remove him of his misery" with medications, treatment, follow-ups. We learned to measure pain in a scale from 1 to 10. from the :-) to :-( and we can price the pills that take this pain away. Physical pain is smashed into pieces on the side of the road blocking her walk.

Actual misery cannot be measured. She calls the police for help. She describes the depth of her friend's misery. She gives them his name, address, phone number. She tells them how she find out that he was still alive, but all they want to know is his race. Maybe that's the way to measure human misery, by gradients of skin color. She pauses wandering which shade will warranty him to be freed from his misery.

Which family members do you wish you kept better in touch with?

She read the line of the behavior exercise: "Which family members do you wish you kept better in touch with?"

Lowering her eyes, she couldn't see the paper in front of her. They were staring at her past, at the very moment when she let her brain take the best of her heart.

Her son, her son... She wish she had kept him close by. If only she had return at the last day she saw him to give him one more hug. As if her tears touching his shoulder and face would have a magic touch to make his soul fly away from misery and follow her to a future of dreams that were never fulfilled. Dreams that now had no use. Not for her, not to anyone. 

Now it's my turn to die

When one suffers from chronic depression, as the years go by, it comes contagious. Depression spreads to the ones around you, specially the ones that love you. Those are the most vulnerable.

The longer you struggle with depression, the more comfortable you feel with it, like the foot binding bandages that Chinese women used to prevent their feet from growing. As life grows inside of you, the cast of depression tightens around your soul and your spirit is forever deformed. You are afraid of removing the bandages, because you can smell the  gangrenous soul inside of it. It will be painful and probably unrecoverable.

That was how she felt in her family. All of them growing apart from each other and away from the world, the sect of misery that feeds from the darkness of depression.

You can't wear contact lenses at the Gobi desert

The answer to life, death and everything...

She asked a philosopher to help her daughter.
She - The problem with my daughter is that she thinks that, because earth is just a spec of dust in the universe, life has no sense whatsoever. She can't see any point in being alive after finishing high school.  Considering that she is only 13 with this type of questions,  I think it will be hard to find a child/teen therapist prepared to handle that.
Philosopher - Why? It's not exactly an original doubt?

She - I know, I know, but no answer that I showed to her seems to make her budge from her dooming thoughts.

 Philosopher - Still... It seems that every teenager, specailly females, go through this phase. Don't you agree?

She - I told her that the Universe is a combination of infinitesimal parts and that each particle has its role in the whole scheme of things. I told har about the butterfly effect and that no matter how minuscule her impact in on the Unverse, that her impact on the ones that love her and the ones she loves is always huge.

Philosopher - Universe has nothing to do with it. The Universe itself has no meaning in existing and still it continues to exist despite the lack of meaning.

She - I've already lost a son to suicide. If I have to accept losing anther child to suicide I rather die sooner than later. 

Philosopher - I don't think that she necessarily looking for the meaning of life and I'm not sure if she will get to an extreme situation. Every one has this type of doubts during adolescence and almost all of them survive. And invariably, most of them don't pay attention to their mothers.

She - My daughter has this fixed idea of dying since she was 6. The death of her brother only deepened her depression.

Philosopher - Did she tried therapy already?

She - We tried that. She was doing well in the small village, but we had to cut it short when her brother died. After that we had tried 3 other therapists here and she didn't like any of them.

Philosopher - As I said, it looks like a trivial problem for any experienced therapist. It's worth a shot.

She - It has to do with control and power. Suddenly, if you forfeit living, happiness, you exercise a lot of control over people around you that are afraid of dying or of sadness. It makes you feel above the crowd.
Philosopher - This exactly why these people never kill themselves, they only threaten to do so. To keep this power.

She - Not really. Statiscs show that about 20% of them die by suicide. But when your child is among this 20% it ceases being an statistic and becomes your cruel reality.

Philosopher - I think we are talking about different things. Your son was very distinct than these people. There are mentally ill people and there are the attention seekers.

She - My son had a mental illness and so does my daughter.

Philosopher - One more reason to seek professional help. Anyway, this 'philosophical crisis' is not something that we can reason with. She is trying to "feel" something. Reasons are known to everyone for a long time...
She - Are sure about it? I'm not aware of any reason, that's why I'm asking you.

Philosopher - Do you really believe that any philosopher has ever answered the fundamental questions?
She - No, but I'm not knowledgeable about Philosophy...
Philosopher - Each one has his own reasons to keep oneself alive. I don't think there is such a thing as an universal, irrefutable answer. There is not much to learn if you are looking for a consensus. Philosophy is for the ones the like questions, not answers.

She - I just hope that all that 15 years from now the memories of these years just bring me a smile realizing how complex was her strategy to avoid chores and homework.

Philosopher - For some the meaning of life is to continuing asking questions and seeking answers. I don't think you will have to wait 15 years for things to change. And her attitude probably is not all about avoiding chores...

She - I agree, but 90% of the conflicts start around it. By the way, I told that to her already, that for me, seeking the answers is what gives me meaning. It didn''t work.

Philosopher - She is not seeking any meaning. She has already. It's more the power game, but this is psicoanalysis material, not Philosophy.

She - I know... Thanks for listening to me.

Philosopher - Thank you for calling me.

Life is just death's waiting room.

She finally understood.
The pain of the loss was the proof that she once had him.
There was always going to be loss and always going to be pain.
It can come sooner or later.
Experienced on spikes, in installments, over a long period, all at once...
Integrating pain, no matter the distribution along the time,
is always going to give you the same unbearable amount
If she was given to option to never had had him to avoid the pain of losing him so abruptly,
or having him for the short amount of time she had,
she would have no other choice then take him for how long she could,
no matter the pain.