The Day Poohgranma Left

I didn’t want to be the one who told you but she has left me behind to pass on the news of her leaving.  She struggled for so many years from Depression and Anxiety disorders that left her a prisoner in her own home, in her own mind.  She fought it, God knows she tried, every therapy, every medication with their excruciating side effects, she tried them all. 

For a time she was able to push back the pain and humiliation of what she’d become.  At almost sixty years of age her health and body were more like that of an eighty year old.  Chronic pain kept her from doing much and the less she did the less she was able to do.  Muscles atrophied, weight kept piling on, only adding to the strain on her heart.  She was reduced to a shadow of her former self and it was this shadow that you came to know through her writing. 

She loved coming here to HubPages, reading the offerings of her favorite authors and she loved writing and the encouragement she received from all of you.  It meant so much to her.  She was connected to a world outside of her reclusive, self imposed, existence. She was able to relive happy moments of her life and share them, her way of saying it has been a life with good times too, don’t look at what I am now and feel pity, I have loved and been loved, I was once full of energy and life.

But, as happens with people who live on the edge of this cruel disease, Depression, she finally succumbed to its call and chose to end what had become too painful of an existence.  She had some days of clarity, remembering when she could function so well.  The daily tasks of living were no problem.  She had a temporary lift and looked around her, seeing the daunting pile of neglected work. It was too much.  She was overwhelmed and as with most of these cases, she could not see an end, a time it would get better. Once she fell into that deep black abyss again, there was no more strength to fight, no more will to go on the way things were.

The name Poohgranma came when her first grandchild was born and her parent’s nicknamed her Pooh. Pooh granma distinguished her from her other grandmother, who loves to play the slots and attends bingo, thus her nickname Bingo Grandma. At the time she was a mere 43 and the name hardly fit. She was slender, full of excitement and a love of life and all the promises it held. She beat back the challenges, not with ease, but she triumphed over and over again. However, the next eighteen years would hold so many challenges coming one on top of the other, too quickly, beating down her reserves of strength. She started using the name Poohgranma as her online name wherever she went. She disliked it when people changed their user names as if to disguise who they were so the name stuck and for many years that is who she was, who she became.  She has become obsolete.

The Phoenix is a mythical bird that ignites into a fireball at death, and then a fully-grown new Phoenix rises from the ashes.

Ole Pooh is gone now and I am left in her place. I will link to her stories as I add mine. You can call me Phoenix.