So I went to the cemetery. I was there for more than two hours. I went into the mausoleum. And it didn't really freak me out too much.

Or so I thought.

I did wake up about 3 in the morning, thoughts racing, heart beating quickly, breathing rapidly, thinking about that damn cemetery.

But it was nowhere near as bad as last year.

I was able to fall asleep again pretty quickly, and while I didn't get ask much sleep as I would have liked last night, I think I'll be able to do this.

I've asked to be the principle tour guide's backup, so I probably won't have to do the tour much more than once or twice more this summer, but it's reassuring that I can actually hold it together long enough to do it.

Even if I do have to drug myself to sleep afterwards.

So, I've gone back and looked, but I didn't blog about it.

A year ago today, I was having a bitch of a time. It was ridiculously hot outside, I wasn't sleeping properly, I was trying to balance three jobs... It was roughly a year ago (I don't have the date marked in my calendar or anything, but I know it was around the middle of July) that I got as close as I had ever been to a nervous breakdown.

I finished a cemetery tour, walked home, had a bath, went to bed... I couldn't sleep. For the umpteenth night in a row. My mind was racing, and my stress manifested itself in an intense paranoia of the mausoleum at the cemetery - it was like a malignant presence had followed me home and wouldn't let me rest. At about 2 a.m., I wrote an email to my boss and quit the cemetery tour contract. At about 4 a.m., still not able to sleep, I called in sick to work for the day. At about 8 a.m., I called my mother at work and arranged to meet her for lunch. I ended up sitting at a picnic table near Winston Churchill square munching on Taste of Edmonton Food, across from my mother, and bawling my eyes out. I made arrangements to sleep in their basement as much as possible for the next few weeks. The day after, I went and saw my doctor, who prescribed sleep aids to be taken on a short-term basis (there were 15 pills in the bottle, now, a year later, I've still got 9 left...). I slowly got better. With sleep and only trying to balance two jobs, I felt relaxed again.

My cemetery tour boss was quite understanding. I've been blessed with supervisors that are wonderful and empathetic. My supervisor at the U was the same.

Nevertheless, another summer is looming, and I have signed myself up to work cemetery tours again. I would like to say that I'm not terrified. I would like to say that I'm confident I can do this and that it won't negatively affect me. After all, I'm getting good sleep this summer (yay air conditioner!), I'm not trying to balance three jobs, I have a social life, I know that I have friends and family that are there to support me.

But that's one of the catches of having a mental illness, I suppose. Whenever I feel achy or tired, I wonder if I'm falling back into depression. Whenever I think of the cemetery and the mausoleum, my confidence takes a nosedive and I wonder if I'm really up for it. So far I'm only scheduled to be there one night, and with someone else, so we'll see how it goes. I'm trying to convince myself that I will kick this things ass and get past it. After all, the way to tackle a phobia is to face it and deal with it, right?

Either way, good vibes would be extremely welcome for me from about 7 - 8:30 on Wednesday night. And if you're interested, there's a super-awesome tour of Edmonton Cemetery (117 Street and 107 Ave) this Wednesday at 7 p.m. for only $5.

I feel like a bit of an idiot. Today I attended a funeral. I didn't know this woman particularly well. I don't know her family. I don't know most of her friends, and only barely know the rest on a professional level. I didn't interact with her at all outside the university, with the exception of a couple of emails after I went away to England. And yet her death and the fact that I won't ever see her again are affecting me a lot, and I don't entirely understand why.

She was an absolute whirlwind. As somone pointed out today, she was like a force of nature - sometimes a tornado, sometimes a rainbow. To continue quoting from the eulogies, she knew what she wanted, when she wanted it, and as long as she got it at precisely the right moment, she was pretty easy to please. And lord only knows, she's probably up there attempting to micromanage the way Saint Peter runs the gates of heaven. She drove a lot of people nuts at various times. What matters most, though, I think, is that she showed me kindness during a period in my life when I really needed it. And it is that that I will always remember. And from what I heard today, I was not the only one.

What gets me, is that it was yet another person that I know who's died of cancer. It's snatching up the best and brightest, and ripping them away from us.

Dietlind Bechthold was an amazing woman. Especially in the last fourteen months of her life, as you can see chronicled on the short website she and her loved ones mainted.

I will always remember how I finally learned her name. After continued banter about some paper or other I was handing in after a long semester of handing in paper after paper, I finally said something along the lines of "You know my name now, so what's yours?", and it started from there. She'd photocopy papers for me - but only in return for my postering half of the Tory Building... I can still bring to mind our chats about her German courses, the paper she had in storage for me from a prof that I didn't want back, the discussion with another faculty member about the colour of a third faculty member's robes (he claimed 'Crimson', we all thought pink...). She was about the only person behind that counter that didn't scare me half to death - and the only one that ever bothered to learn my name, even after 5 years of handing in papers and picking things up and asking questions.


I wish I had faith. At least then I'd believe that she wasn't gone for good and that maybe we'd get to trade witty insults again some day.


Much love to you, Dietlind.

So today Saddam Hussein's cronies were hung.

No, I'm not about to talk politics. Don't worry. If, however, you have a weak stomach, stop reading now.

One of the guys was apparently decapitated by the noose. The floor dropped out from under him, his body drops, there's a moment of tension, then suddenly, pop!, the noose swings free as the weight of 90% of his body is released as his head snaps off.

I made it my business over the last year to study executions. I read about people being burnt. I read about executions in England from 1500-1850. I read about all sorts of hangings.

People do NOT simply have their heads pop off when they're being hung.

Depending on how merciful an executioner is wanting to be, an individual can be strangled to death with a short, slow drop. This takes a long time. The individual is fully aware they're choking to death. More merciful is a longer drop. The individual's neck breaks. They're dead next to instantly. Either way, hanging is NOT a pretty death.

**Edit - 9:43 p.m.**Having said that, people were thrown off castle walls and weren't decapitated. The BBC has kindly informed me that a drop longer than 10 feet can result in decapitation, but I'd like to see an instance in which this has actually happened. I sure haven't heard of any. I haven't seen the video. I refuse to watch it. I don't know if there was more than a 10-foot drop. And if the drop was more than 10 feet, why didn't other peoples' heads pop off, eh?**

It's possible that the neck was broken in such a way that a bone punctured the skin, muscle, etc, allowing the pull of the noose to literally rip someone's head off. But highly fucking unlikely. They might have used fishing wire to hang the guy. Again, highly fucking unlikely.

Something is rotten in the state of Iraq execution-land. And I couldn't care less about the politics of it all... I don't care what implications the mutilation of the body has. I don't care who managed to rip off the man's head and why... Nope, I just want to figure out the physics, 'cuz it just don't seem right...