GRANDMA
My grandmother saved my life when I was a child. My parents were alcoholic and there was violence. The front room was forbidden territory, for Big People only, where voices started out happy and excited, and escalated to shouts and bumps and crashes in the night.
I remember when I was about four, standing outside my grandparents’ back door as dusk was falling, looking in at them sitting in the comfort and warmth and light within. I couldn’t open the door into that warmth and safety – it had to be opened to me, and I had to be invited in, out of the falling dark. I lioved in a different world, one I already knew had to be kept hidden, and I didn’t belong there either.
My Grandma’s house was so silent you could hear the metal clock ticking and tocking on the kitchen windowsill. A little yellow cottage on Christleton Avenue, surrounded by flowers and blooming bushes, it had a picket fence with a white trellis covered with pink roses arched over the gate. I would stand and swing back and forth on that gate, gazing out at a world stupefied with summertime heat. Bees scarcely had the energy to buzz; the only excitement was the tinkle of the ice cream truck coming down the street, followed by chattering children clutching shiny dimes.
I woke to the slap of the hose hitting the side of the house in the mornings, as Grandma wet everything down against the coming heat, then pulled the awnings down like sleepy eyelids over the front windows.
We could smell the freshness of the lake two blocks away, the scent of bulrushes and tall grasses in the fields behind Grandma’s house. Everywhere in Kelowna where there are condominiums today, there were orchards in those days. Almost every yard sprouted a profusion of flowers; the air was scented with lilac, sweet pea, snapdragon, peonies and pinks. It was a small town then, postcard pretty, sleepy and provincial in its ways. It was another era, the 50’s, and though my life with my parents felt like one long bad dream, life itself held an innocence and goodness as fresh as the special way the air smelled before the summer thunderstorms Grandma and I listened to in her back porch. The sky turned dark and the reverberations shook our little cottage, sounding as if the heavens were splitting in two. And then the sizzle of rain came, the fresh scent wafting through the screened-in porch where we sat for so many hours of my childhood.
My Grandma looked after me when I was a child, and when I got older I spent summers with her, and this is how she saved my life, by showing me existence could be other than it was in my house. She is the one who baked me cookies, told me stories, pointed out fairy folk dancing in the blue flames of her small gas fireplace. She took me to church and gave me standards to live by. Grandma developed conscience in me; I was more afraid of her than of God. She never raised her voice to me, but her quiet words of caution and her sorrowful disappointment when I behaved badly felt like hot lava pouring over my head.
“I have magic glasses,” she would tell me, “and I can see you even when you’re far away.” So I knew when I went back to Vancouver to my parents, she was still watching over me, which scared and reassured me at the same time.
When all her adult children were visiting in the front parlour, she would retreat to the back porch and I would join her there. I knew what was wrong. The tinkle of ice in tall tumblers of amber liquid was a sound we both hated.
My grandparents lived simply. My grandfather made a modest living selling herbal remedies in his little shop, Health Products, on Ellis Street. The shop had an exotic smell, from the shelf upon shelf of round cardboard tubs of herbs three decades before we began hearing about them in the media. Sometimes I was given the job of counting out the pills, filling the bottles and sticking the labels on.
My Grandpa was thin, silent and gruff, but he had a twinkle in his eyes and a soft heart for children. In years when men didn’t cry, as he got older, he would often be silently overcome with emotion; small things touched him deeply. “It’s the French in him,” the women of the family whispered to each other. The aunts and uncles adored Grandpa, and were in agreement that “Mother runs him ragged.” They thought it unfair that he had to go into the pantry to snort back “a little nip”. He did it out of deference to Grandma, but they thought he should be able to sit in his own parlour and braveky down glasses of amber like they did. They encouraged him to, when they visited. But when company was not present, he’d retreat into the pantry for little sips she pretended not to notice. It was their arrangement. I remember wandering into the pantry and finding him there, bottle in hand, looking like a thief startled at his work. We both pretended the bottle was invisible.
An often-told tale was how Grandma gave away Grandpa’s best suit to a hobo during the Depression. They said the house must have had a mark on it, so many hobos came knocking. Grandma could never turn away anyone who was hungry, even though feeding her own five children in those years was a challenge. One man needed clothing and Grandma figured Grandpa didn’t need the suit, since he didn’t wear it very often. Turns out, it was his best suit, the only other suit he owned being the one he wore every day. Another time Grandma found a roll of bills in the dresser drawer and merrily spent it, thinking it was extra money. It was the rent money.
In her seventies, my mother would tell us about the time she trudged home in the cold of a Prairie winter, after a long day on her feet as a hairdresser, looking forward to the pork chop she knew was waiting for her at home. She remembered with some outrage coming in the door to find a hobo sitting at the table sopping up the last bite dripping with gravy of her pork chop.
Grandpa got his family through the Depression by doing accounting for folks in exchange for whatever they could give him: a sack of coal, a bag of flour, potatoes, trudging from house to house and business to business for the bits and pieces that would keep his family fed. Grandma washed the family laundry – dresses and pinafores and sheets for five children – by hand in the bathtub for years. Sje walked miles to the railroad tracks to buy bruised bananas to make dessert for her children. My mom often said her best Christmas was the year each child received one orange and a small toy car hand made by Grandpa, and how they played with the cars all Christmas Day.
Through my childhood, when I was in Vancouver with my parents, he would often enclose a small envelope in letters to my mother. In it would be a shiny dime for me. In those days, a dime would buy a popsicle, some penny candy and some Dubble Bubble, with a penny or two left over.
I lived with my grandparents during the final months of high school, and I remember Grandpa, who wore a suit and tie every day of his adult life, skinny and vulnerable in his longjohns, stealthily padding from the bathroom to his bedroom in the morning. He was so much the head of the house, so respected, that it felt strange to see him frail and powerless in his underwear. Our eyes would meet; he’d smile and shake his head, with his customary twinkle, and we would both studiously ignore his state of undress.
Grandpa obligingly went along most of the time with Grandma’s plans. Her children jokingly called her The Brigadier. She was generous in offering his assistance to her widowed or single women friends, if they needed to be driven or picked up somewhere. He silently chauffeured everyone on endless drives in the country on long dusty Sunday afternoons.
His one small rebellion was at mealtime. He never sat down at the table without “playing checkers” with the salt and pepper shakers and the condiments. He always moved them a few inches to the left orright. They were never just right where they were. If he was feeling extra put-upon, he would thump them down more loudly. Thump! Thump! Thump! And the salt and pepper would go three inches to the left and the sugar bowl two inches forward. Sometimes the women would try to set everything just exactly perfect, to see what he would do. And then fall into fits of giggles when he sat down, surveyed them, and moved one item one inch, just on general principles.
My Grandma was Irish and proud of it. Her favouite song was Galway Bay which she played over and over. When she got older and began to think of death, another favourite was Beyond the Reef. She told me many stories, of relatives who had had supernatural things happen to them, of ghosts and fairies, and a perfect little girl called Vivian, who had impeccable manners and was set as a model of deportment for we grandchildren. “Vivian would never do that!” she would say, with smug conviction. We all hated Vivian!
Grandma would have tea parties in the afternoons, with trays of dainties, and fancy flowered cups and saucers. Ladies wore housedresses and aprons to do their housework then. For tea parties, they took off their aprons, and donned nicer dresses, and often wore impeccably white gloves to the wrist. And hats! Going to Church on Sunday was an occasion for finery, and on Easter Sunday everyone sported new spring dresses and hats and shiny black patent shoes.
Grandma tried to teach me manners. I remember her amusement when, at one afternoon tea, I got mixed up and responded to a question I hadn’t heard with a bemused, “Huh, Miss Hicks?” How she teased me on the way home! “HAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH, Miss Hicks?” she chortled, fairly chomping with amusement. (She and her friends called each other “Mrs. Marr” and “Mrs. Goodfriend” even after fifteen years of friendship. And when speaking of her spouse to her friends, she always referred to him as “Mr. Marr.”)
Grandma had a wild and zany sense of humour all of her descendants have inherited. She loved to play practical jokes, especially on her poor cat, a big fluffy Persian called Big Boy, who had a distinctive kink at the end of his tail. He got the kink from getting his tail caught in the screen door, with some assistance from my Grandma. When he wanted to go out, he was a torturous mass of conflicted desire. Grandma would stand, arms akimbo, holding the door open invitingly. Big Boy would assess the situation: the open door, the inviting scent of the outdoors, the needs of his bladder. Finally, no options left, he’d streak for the open door. Grandma, timing honed to perfection, would let it slam in time to connect with his tail. An enraged howl, my Grandma’s cackle, then Grandma serenely returned to her housework, while the cat sulked under the house. Grandma kept him supremely confused because, most times, she would let him out without incident. But each time, looking through the door, you could see him calculating: would this be the time the door let fly? Eventually Big Boy would come back inside, till bladder needs put him in the same predicament again.
Grandma cleaned the house in the mornings. Sometimes while she was busy in the kitchen, I would be allowed to listen to radio programs, while I rocked back and forth in the rocking chair. This was very special, especially my favourite show, “Maggie Muggins”, which always ended with the line, “And we don’t know what will happen tomorrow!” which about summed up the story of my life (and the cat’s!)
In the long, silent afternoons, everything tidy, wash on the line and the sweet peas watered, Grandma rested, to the peaceful and comforting ticking of the clock. I remember her climbing into the bunk beside me, when I was little, settling me for my nap, her soft womanly grandmother’s body providing me a safety and comfort I never knew anywhere else. It was with my grandparents that I went for drives, had regular meals, went visiting, saw life as normal people lived it. Home was a battleground, strewn with corpses that got up the next morning to fight again, where I retreated into silence and watched, with frightened eyes.
I got to pay Grandma back for those early years when she was old and in a nursing home. I saw with her through many hours and paid her back with time and love for the time and love she so generously gave to me when I was small.
Her life as she had known it ended when my Grandpa died, but she lived fifteen more years without him. Her spirit utterly rejected the nursing home. “There are so many old people in here!” she, in her eighties, declared. She was unable to adjust to where life had landed her. Grandma felt trapped for too long in a life she no longer wanted.
She would walk down Ethel Street to my little cottage full of children, and sit out under the grape arbor and chat with me while I weeded the garden. Then I would walk her home, her cane tap tap tapping, tears rolling down her cheeks, back to her room at the Lloyd Jones.
“I’m still here,” she’d say disgustedly, when I popped my head through the door, the next day or the next. “Just too damned healthy!”
But sometimes she would talk about the Old Days, the stories of her time, when life was vital and whole around her. One day she music on the record player, and started dancing lightly, a few steps, smiling, and I saw straight inside her, to the light, bright shining self inside the body that was failing; the self that she had been as a young girl so full of dreams was still there inside her.
Once she told me, “I wanted to raise you, especially after your father died, but your mom wouldn’t allow it. She thought people would think she was a bad mother if she let you go. But I wish I could have – you never had a chance.”
When she was moved to the extended care unit and could no longer leave her chair, she retreated increasingly into silent rekection of her outer world. Her friend was the talking clock she held in her hands and tapped every few minutes, to hear the mechanical voice tell her the time. On the hour, it crowed, a fact that at first we didn’t understand, so we were confused when she kept insisting “There’s a rooster in here.” This rooster was her constant companion, her final friend. Often in those last years, we would simply sit, after our initial conversation. I bicycled across town after work, before going home to the kids. I was tired, exhausted. But I could never set aside the thought, the many times I would have rather gone straight home, of her sitting in her chair, lonely and forlorn, her only bearable moments those when family members were present. I would wearily hop on my bike and pedal across town, our eyes would meet, we’d smile and then just sit, being together as the colours of the day faded away. One night we watched through the window as the sky turned purple and the sun went down behind the hills. Perhaps it is the last sunset she ever saw.
She didn’t want anything but to be gone from her body in those last years, but sometimes I would talk her into coming outside under the trees with me. I’d wheel her to where green branches arched overhead and we’d sit and listen, to the wind rustling through the branches, the birds chirping overhead.
It was under those trees that I told her I was moving away to the west coast, the move that had been my dream for twenty years. It was hard to tell her that her most frequent visitor and supporter was going away. I was full of inner tears, but also knew that I must go. I knew if I did not leave now, perhaps I never would. With characteristic generosity, Grandma gave me her blessing. “It’s your dream, and you have had a hard time. You deserve some happiness.”
We sat in silence some more. I watched her turning her ring around and around on her finger. Her engagement ring and wedding band were welded together, symbolizing the love she and my Grandpa had shared for the sixty odd years they were together. She was deep in thought, turning and turning the ring. The air grew electric and still.
Suddenly she pulled it off and handed it to me. I demurred, shook my head, but “No,” Grandma said, “I want to be sure that you have this. It has never been off my finger, but I want to be sure that it goes to you.”
I knew when I left that I would carry her with me, that she was so much a part of me that I could never really lose her. I went back for a visit later and found her much changed, not as aware of who I was or that I was there. She had retreated as far inside herself as possible, was more in the next world than this one. But when I spoke of the ocean and the eagles and the beauty of where I lived, she smiled.
I went back to help her make the transition from this world to the next, and spent a week at her bedside, listening to her laboured breathing, wetting her lips with moist Q-tops, when she lifted her hand and pointed at the glass of water with her long boney finger. In a moment when she was still aware, I leaned close beside her ear and told her “thanks for all the love” and watched a single tear slide down her cheek. I knew she wanted nothing more than to be released from her body and that hospital bed, to be with my grandfather, and her oldest son once more, so I supported her with love in her dying, as she had supported me with love in times when living had seemed too hard for me.
My mother broke down at the end of the funeral, when the strains of Galway Bay wafted through the church. And on the bus, heading home through the pass toward the beaches and wilderness I love, I was looking out the window, remembering that the real parting had been when I moved away, but how I knew then that I would carry Grandma with me inside my heart forever. She was a part of me like the air and the sky and the trees and the wind, and so we would never really be apart. Suddenly the strains of Galway Bay tinkled through my mind. I was not thinking of the music; it was playing, in my mind. Instantly, I thought “Hi, Grandma, I love you,” and the music drifted out the other side and away. And I knew that it was Grandma, passing through.
******* ********* ********
THE CASORSOS
The Casorsos were a story-book
family to me, when I was a child. They
lived in a big old farmhouse like the Waltons’, a rambling two-storey place
with wrap-around covered porches, out in the Mission. They had a pig farm, and
orchards; for generations, they had lived off the land. Their lives seemed
clean and simple and domestic with a capital D.
In those years my parents, my
small sister and I lived in four squalid rooms, with a root cellar, an icebox,
and a woodstove. We had a storm door through which my father once threw my
mother on a Sunday afternoon, the crashing of glass breaking the sleepy silence
and bringing alarmed and nervous neighbours outside their front doors.
So the Casorsos’ large Italian,
multi-generational family seemed like a dream family to me. I remember driving
into their driveway on Sunday afternoons with my grandparents, to dogs barking,
children darting in and out, busyness all around. A man or two could always be
seen somewhere out back, gumbooting across the muddy field, buckets in hand.
In the dark downstairs rooms
lived smiling, toothless, old Grandpa Louis. He looked the same every time I
saw him through decades of visits: the same whiskers, wrinkled face, overalls,
battered hat, and gap-toothed smile. He seemed either never to have aged, or to
have always been old. He always had a pot of soup simmering on the stove for
the multitudes of laughing grandchildren streaming up and down the stairs.
His son Augie (for August) and
daughter-in-law Muriel and their children lived on the upper floor. In the
years when I was going to school with them, there were five daughters. The
entire church congregation knew they longed for a son. Muriel’s pregnancies
were dangerous and difficult, and she was told each pregnancy might be her last.
I remember anxious nuns leading us in prayer during her confinements. The
Casorsos were strict Catholics, placing their trust in God. Somehow Muriel
always pulled through. When the sixth child was finally a boy, we heard they
placed him on the altar and dedicated his life to God. The seventh and last
child was a boy too.
So the upstairs was a hive of
activity. Muriel was always ironing or sewing or cooking and while we visited,
she never stopped. The children were well cared for, always clean and
bright-eyed and smiling. All had brown glowing eyes and open trusting faces. They
all sported simple, straight, bowl-shaped haircuts, and the older girls were
each responsible for tending one of the smaller ones, for getting them washed,
dressed and their hair brushed every morning, and bathed and bedded every
night.
My Grandma told me Muriel put
a Christmas tree in each of the bedrooms every year, as well as decorating a
main tree for the family to share in the living room. Muriel told Grandma that
she never knew how long she would live, and so she wanted to make happy
memories for the children while she was alive.
Their family life, the
goodness and honesty and discipline was something I hungered for. I longed for
domesticity, for family, for clean clothes and rules and mealtimes, so their
life was like a fairy tale to me, and just as unattainable.
Margie, the oldest girl, was
in my class. She was innocent and modest, so good that there was some
expectation that she might become a nun. Lost in my adolescent agonies, I
admired her shining example, while I knew I could never manage it. She had led
a sheltered and protected life. Nothing could get near enough to harm her, and
she faced the world with wide eyes,
expecting only goodness.
Then she went away to college
where she met a young man, Bill, who had “problems” and we heard he was making
Margie sad. In her inexperience and innocence, she did not know how to escape.
He was wildly jealous and possessive, threw scenes, threatened her.
As the years went by, the
stories got worse. They were engaged, to her parents’ dismay, then married. And
once married, given her faith and her parents’ example, there was no turning
back. We heard Margie had had a miscarriage. Then, that she had decided to have
no children, for she would not bring a child into an unhappy home.
Her parents provided a cottage
on their property so Margie and her husband could live nearby and they could
watch out for her. But as for what went on behind closed doors, that was Margie’s
business, and they left that up to her. She was a teacher now, at the Catholic
school, and she gave to her students all the love and care she would have given
to her own children. She attended Mass regularly and lived her life of quiet
self-sacrifice and duty uncomplainingly. As was the teaching about personal
happiness and suffering in those days, our reward was not to be expected in
this life, but the next.
It seemed we both met much the
same fate, Margie through being protected too much, unprepared for life being
less than wonderful, and me from not
being protected enough, with no experience it could be wonderful at all.
The other daughters grew up
too, tall and beautiful. One became a gym instructor, another a dancer. The
older son, whom they had hoped would become a priest, gave his parents some
worry during his teens. The mother did not die and, in fact, outlived her husband.
The generations still gather
at the big rambling old house that is the heart of their family. And the pigs
and apples still provide the family’s livelihood. Everyone’s eyes are wiser
now. Real life happened to the storybook daughters, as it did to us all. But
their laughter still rings out, the sisters still call from room to room, while
they help prepare holiday feasts, and tend the next generation of brown-eyed
children.
That house and family lives on
somewhere in my memory. I picture the little girls lined up in the pew at Sunday
mass, from the tallest to the smallest, in their ruffled pinafores and
petticoats, white gloves and black patent shoes, looking out from under the
brims of their sunbonnets with their grave, shy smiles and upturned round and
innocent brown eyes.
The orchards still bloom every
spring, and I imagine that sometimes, of an early morning or a soft summer
sunset, the ghost of childish laughter echoes hauntingly through branches that,
even now, remember those vital years when a herd of brown-eyed children in
overalls lived off their bounty.
*******************
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES
My mother always said my
father was the only man she ever loved, and it was true. She said I remembered
only the bad times, and it is true that, looking back, all I remember is lying
in bed shaking with fear, listening to the blows and crashes coming from the
living room. I worried one would kill the other and I’d wake up in the morning
left with the wrong one.
But as my mother lay dying, in
memory she returned to her happiest years, the years with my dad when they were
young, and she was able to say, as few of us can, “I had it all.”
I was glad that, looking back,
she could remember her life with happiness, that different memories lived in
her than lived in me. There must have been a whole other life hidden from my
childish eyes that I was unaware of. Perhaps the best years were before I grew
old enough to become aware of a steady deterioration through the years after I
was four, years in which our small nuclear family, and then our larger extended
family, steadily disintegrated and scattered to the four winds, flung by
separation, by rifts caused by alcohol and differing beliefs and then, finally
and irrefutably, by death.
My Grandma always gave my
father full credit for his charm. “When he was sober, he was the most charming
man on the face of the earth,” she would say. I remember times when, face
alight, at that critical moment when he had imbibed enough to be happy, just
before he fell over the lip of the cup to anger, then rage, then violence, when
he could hold a crowded room in thrall, telling stories with full awareness
that he had the gift of humour, of storytelling. He had wit and humour and
intelligence and, most of all, he had music.
But “Brick’s parents told me
they rued the day they bought him his saxophone,” Grandma would reminisce. My
father had studied classical violin since early childhood. I didn’t know till
later in life where my love of the violin came from. I never heard classical
music in my home as a child, discovering it with a passion at twenty-seven.
“From the day he got his
saxophone, he was lost to them,” Grandma recalled. But he had found his passion: horns and jazz, the big
bands and the stage. He turned to the popular “swing” music of the era; he
began playing big band gigs around Saskatoon. Now I often play those tunes, the
music that filled our house when I was a child: I’ll Get By, Stardust, Smoke
Gets In Your Eyes, Skylark, and that era is returned to me entire: a time
equated in my mind with the home movies taken in those years, that roll once
more before my eyes: my aunts and uncles, my mom and dad, in their glory years,
all beautiful, all romantic figures from a bygone time, like the cinematic
stars of that generation: my mom with her long rolled pageboy hairdo and tight
skirts, soldiers in uniform, young war brides with tight curls and distant
gazes, glasses of liquor ever-present in their hands, cigarettes dangling at
angles on their crossed knees, smiling out at the world through a smoky haze,
feeling terribly sophisticated, the world their oyster.
Such nostalgia hits when I see
these films, or photographs from that time now gone. Not, certainly, for the
life I lived then, for it was scary and lonely and sad, lived on the fringes of
the adults’ preoccupation with their own existence. But for the innocence of
that era: the romance that Hollywood held out as being available to us all,
through the love songs and movies and stars of the time. My aunts and uncles
seemed utterly glamorous to me, like movie stars themselves. Looking back from
the vantage point of forty or fifty years, knowing how their love stories
played out, (or didn’t), how the years, illnesses, deaths and the hand of fate
would implode and disperse our family, I feel a great tenderness for us all,
smiling hopefully into the wobbly camera, at a time when we still believed we
all had happy endings up ahead, just waiting for us to get there.
*****
My mother loved to tell the
story of how she and my dad met. She had just dyed her hair blonde. “I was a
knock-out,” she remembered happily. “I had long blonde hair hanging down my
back and I looked good! I was sixteen but trying to look older and your dad
jumped right over the piano and bee-lined straight across the room to come and
meet me.”
That was it for both of them.
My dad at the time was twenty-seven, unhappily married and the father of three.
Plus he drank and played in a band, My grandparents, in the 40’s in small-town
Saskatoon, were scandalized, as well as afraid for their daughter.
“I didn’t know what on earth
Renee saw in him,” Grandma would reflect. “He was overweight, balding, a drinker, married with three kids. But the
more we objected, the tighter she clung to him. We couldn’t do a thing with her.”
But they tried. By then, Dad’s
wife had found out and kicked him out.
He had rented an apartment near the club where he performed. Grandma told me
how one night, late, she and my Grandpa
let themselves into the suite. In the darkness, hardly breathing,
nerve-wracked, they waited for my father to come home. My Grandpa held a
flashlight and, thin and grey and quiet by nature, a gentleman who had never
raised a hand to man nor beast his entire life, was goaded by my Grandma to
“settle this once and for all”.
When dad opened the door, from
behind it in the darkened room, out leaped my Grandpa and Grandma, tackling him
in a wild melee of curses, yells, arms and legs and at least one resounding
clunk of the flashlight on my dad’s bald head.
When the three extricated
themselves and stood facing each other, panting, my grandparents told my dad to
leave their daughter alone.
“I think he would have, too,
but your mother wouldn’t let him. He tried to break it off but she kept after
him. We sent her to stay with Cecile [her older sister], in Regina for a while,
but he went there to visit her and she came back,” Grandma told me.
“I remember one night she came
home late and crawled into bed with me and she was shaking. I think he must
have already been beating her. She was still only sixteen and just beautiful.
We sent a photograph of her to Norman Rockwell and he wrote back that if she
went to New York, she could be a model, but she wouldn’t leave him. How
different her life might have been,” Grandma would say sadly. But it was meant
to be, for my sister and I to come to this world.
*****
My mom carried lifelong guilt
for the way she left home.
Just seventeen, “All I knew
was I loved Brick and had to be with him. They gave me an ultimatum, it was
Brick or them, so I had no choice. But it killed me to walk out the door, with
both of them crying in the doorway,” my mom would say. “It was the hardest
thing I ever did.”
It was ten years before they
met again. My dad’s ex-wife would not agree to a divorce, and I was born before
they were married. In those days, that was rather scandalous, and my mom didn’t
know how to tell her parents that I had arrived.
By now, we lived in the
Okanagan Mission, across from the lake, a few miles from the centre of
small-town Kelowna. Mom’s younger brother, Don, came for a visit, followed by
her younger sister Audrey. It was Audrey who paved the way for reconciliation,
telling my grandparents about me. They soon followed for a visit and loved
Kelowna so much they moved there, to the house on Christleton Avenue that was
the cornerstone of my childhood, and the nucleus of our many family gatherings.
It was on that porch that the
family home movies were made, in that house where my childhood security
resided, and in that house that I watched the fissure alcohol wedged between my
aunts and uncles and my Grandma who “hated the drink”, a fissure that extended
to the next generation until family satellites were flung far and wide, chasms
death bridged before any of us were able to mend the rifts.
But their lives through those
years had a glamour the grandkids’ lives lacked, like the Hollywood films of
the era, a combined sophistication, innocence and hopefulness lived on a level
far distant from our childish lives and concerns.
Our subsequent liaisons seemed
merely tawdry in comparison, lacking both romance and imagination, rather the
same difference I find in the songs of today compared to the music of my
mother’s age. Or was it the knowledge that life could be better that we lacked,
given our early introduction to the bewildering world of grownups?
Whatever it is, when we run
the home movies, or play the music from those years, it is the whole era’s
disappearance that we mourn, along with all the smiling faces that now are
gone. There was a scent to the lake-fresh morning air, a certain comfort in the
sound of the hose hitting canvas awnings, the smell of pinks and sweet peas, a
quality to the summer afternoons just before a thunderstorm that cannot be
replicated, only remembered, like a country once visited that can never be
returned to, except in reverie.
I am the age my grandmother
was in those long-gone days, when she seemed as old as God. Her life was
circumscribed by housedresses, tea parties, Church on Sunday and her flower
garden, while mine is still unfolding, at the same time it is flying past more
swiftly than the speed of sound.
My children are now the ages
of those glamorous aunts and uncles who seemed so elusively out of reach and
adult then, and they seem too young to me now, too young to be raising children
of their own. I see young moms out pushing prams who don’t look old enough to
babysit, and then I know I’m growing old.
Looking back, with age and
memory, at those old home movies, I start to put it all together: the love story
that was my mother’s, whatever it seemed like to me; the distant dreams that
shone in those hopeful faces made more poignant by my knowledge of how it all
turned out. With a clutch at my heart, I surreptitiously wipe my tears away as
the film sputters, winds down, and the screen goes white: all gone, those
bright faces from the long ago, the 40’s, the swing music, the love, the pain
that I overheard from my bedroom doorway in the wee small hours of the morning.
I remember the last time my
mother watched, and how hard she cried, those years forever gone, with nothing
nearly good enough to take their place. Now she’s gone too, one more face
missing from the film of all those gilt-edged years, she and my dad resting
side by side under a picture of them in their glory days, with the words
“Together Forever” on the headstone.
I find myself more and more
often listening to the tunes she danced to when she was young, the music of her
long ago youth so much more romantic than mine, and I think of her as I sing
along:
“I just smile and say, when a
lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes…..”
***** *****
***** ***** *****
SHINE
Music is part of my heritage.
It’s in my genes. I was conceived, marinated and raised in music, and from the
time I was small, I wanted to be a star. My father had begun as a classical
violinist, but had then fallen in love with jazz. Still in his youth, he
switched to alto sax and clarinet and joined a band, to the dismay of his
parents. Ever after, they rued the day they bought him his first saxophone,
blaming the music scene for his alcoholism, and the downward turning of his
life, which had begun so full of promise.
My dad was hugely talented,
and he bitterly watched lesser musicians, with whom he had played as a young
man, bypass him and rise to some measure of success and fame. He never made the
connection between his drinking and his inability to hold a job for long, in
the music field or out of it. He had a hard time with the emergence of rock and
roll and would sit snorting with disgust at the television. “That’s not music!”
When in his cups, he’d stick out his tongue at the set and make a blowing
noise: “Phhhhhht!” But he was too transfixed with outrage to change the
channel.
Because of him, and because
all the other kids loved them and I wanted to be different, I didn’t immediately swoon over Elvis or the
Beatles. The music of the 40’s serenaded my life: Pennies From Heaven, I’ll Get
By, Stardust, As Time Goes By. They still have the power to take me back to my
parents’ lives in Kelowna. It is the love songs of their era, not mine, that I
remember best.
My mother liked to tell about
how my dad taught me, at age fifteen months, to do the musician’s backwards
hand-clap, on the knee, to the beat: “choo-whish-te-choo, whish-te-choo”, and
how I had the tempo down pat. Nights when the party atmosphere had not yet
degenerated into shouting and the crashing of falling bodies in the living
room, sometimes they would get me out of bed, in my ratty plaid dressing gown,
to perform for the company. I’d wail winsomely “Happiness Is Just a Thing
Called Joe”, do a little self-taught soft shoe with a big grin, and go back to
bed, feeling like a star. It was only a matter of time until I’d be discovered.
I longed to play an
instrument. I would stand beside friends as they played piano, aching with
longing, tears in my eyes, so badly did
I want to be able to sit down and play,
express all the music I felt inside me. I asked my mother for piano lessons.
But we were poor; she said she didn’t want to waste the money.
All I had was my voice and my
battered little box record player. I would close my door, turn it on, leave the
world of pain and confusion behind, and enter a new one, filled with music,
hope and the dfream of a better life.
Briefly, my mother did allow
me to take singing lessons when I was eleven. I was sent to an aged old nun,
who sat at the keyboard resignedly plunking out the notes, bored and
disinterested, as I sang “There Was a Little Green Elf” without conviction. I
was even entered into a singing competition and somehow managed to get through
it without disgracing myself. Nor did I stun those assembled with an
electrifying performance. I just couldn’t get too worked up over a little green
elf. My mother and father sat in the audience, the only time I remember them
attending an event of mine. The judges, bored, noted down my mark without
enthusiasm. It was clear that this was not going to be my fast track to fame. I
stopped going to lessons and returned to my preferred music, about love and
pain.
Also briefly, my mother
enrolled me in ballroom dancing, to help me with the awkward passage from
twelve to teen. There was one shining evening when I performed at the Stanley
Park Tea Room, and stole the show from a room full of adults. Somewhere there’s
a photograph of me, glowing and laughing into the camera, the instructor
beaming down at me as we did the Swing.
But it was with my records, in
the privacy of my room, that I unleashed my real voice, the voice of my
longing, that no one but my long-suffering family ever heard.
There was high excitement when
my dad came home with new LP’s. In those days, they were 33 and 1/3’s. One time
he bought five, then got drunk and sat on them, smashing them before he’d even
played them all.
I was twelve when I bought my
first 45, with my babysitting money. It
was “Twilight Time”. My dad hovered anxiously as I put it on the turntable. As
its slow notes and pure tones sounded, he relaxed. “I guess I don’t have to
worry about your taste in music” he approved. High praise!
I was in my grandma’s back
porch listening to the radio when I first heard Brenda Lee and stood stalk
still with a shock of recognition. She was singing “I’m Sorry” and her vocal
range was exactly like mine. I could sing like her! I had to get her records.
She was only thirteen, like me: a little bitty girl with a great big voice, and
she was already a star.
Brenda Lee saw me through my
teens. My mother called what I did up in my room “coon shouting”, as I balefully sang with all the dramatic
anguish of adolescence. I thought a coon was an animal, and vaguely pictured
some farmer out in the bush calling for raccoons. Only now do I recognize it as
a racial slur, intended to diminish that heartfelt singing that expressed all
the things I could not say, all those bright dreams that one day I would spread
my wings and fly far beyond this life of pain and limitation. As long as I
could sing like this in my room, the possibility existed that one day I might
sing before an audience and they would like it. They would like me. One day I would shine.
It didn’t happen. My stronger
need was to provide myself with the kind of home and family I had not yet
experienced, the storybook life promised me by all the movies and books that
fed my dreams. Marriage, babies and heartbreak claimed the next two decades of
my life.
I didn’t sing at all during my
marriage. But, after it, music once again claimed my soul and rode along with
me. My children remember me singing with Abba, with Joan Baez, with Stevie
Nicks, with The Bells. In my little house full of children, I sang for the joy
of living, for the morning breaking, for the dream of a love that had not yet
come. I sang for happiness and hope. I sang the song that was mine.
I became a great appreciater
of musicians. “Go for it!” I tell them. “You’re terrific! Shine on!” Part of my
encouragement is vicarious; they might do what I did not, might live that part
of the dream for me, that road untaken, due to the circumstances that shaped my
early world.
For a few years, I worked in a
coffeehouse, and was the most rapt of listeners, the music inside me still
aching for release, but this time flying along on the fingers and voices of
others. The musicians always said they didn’t need an audience, as long as they
had me to listen to them.
Music is still a passion, and
I still can’t play a single instrument, still too inhibited even to leap about
at dances and release the beat pounding within me, much as I long to set it
free. I stopped singing some years back. It is enough, now, to listen, to
applaud others in their golden moments, to join my being, with all its inner
music, to the great All There Is, the all-encompassing song of life.
Acceptance finally comes that
it is too late to be a young star rising; too late to be the youngest published
author in Canada; too late to be the person I once dreamed that I would be.
But it isn’t too late, it is
never too late, to shine.
***** *****
***** *****
BROCK AND FRIENDS
A MEMBER OF THE TRIBE
Just as it is in my life, the synonyms for ordinary fall flat, so unaccustomed am I to the state of being ordinary, while I resonate with almost every possible antonym. So: common, everyday, normal, routine, leave me ho-humming and tapping my pen on the desk, while: peculiar, unconventional, bizarre, far-out, queer, weird, wild, eccentric, oddball, offbeat – now there are some good words!
There are wounds that leave no scars, and I am sure there isn’t a person living on the planet who doesn’t carry a fair share of them. My psyche bears the imprint of my beginnings, in a violent, alcoholic household. It took years for scar tissue to form around my numb and frightened heart, decades more to scrape away the layers and rediscover its beating presence within.
My childhood was inevitably followed by a soul-crushing marriage, and then an affair with a man who time revealed to be an alcoholic con-man. After him, I was alone. For years I lived only for and with my four children. I felt safe only with them, beating a path between the library, grocery store, thrift store and home. We did everything together. We hiked up Knox Mountain to fly kites on the grassy slopes, we went to the lake, or for bike rides, me leading the way on my big bike, the kids trailing along behind on their smaller ones like a brood of ducklings. My entertainment was their all-night sleepovers, when they danced and played and had popcorn fights, and I was their audience.
A couple poked their heads over my fence one day and told me that the nature spirits must love me, because my garden was so amazing. We chatted, became friends, and soon they looked at each other and said, almost in unison, “We have to take her to Brock and Friends!”
When I walked in the door of Brock and Friends coffeehouse in Kelowna in 1980, there was a frozen Siberian wasteland living in my chest. I looked at the world through frightened eyes. But something drew me through that door – something that wanted me to live.
I was shy, self-conscious almost to the point of muteness. But when I stepped through that door, something deep within knew I had found home. Here was the other side of life I had been searching for, here were dreamers and seekers, people who lived gently on the earth and with each other. Here one was accepted as they were: people gave freely, unconditionally, unafraid. Here, people who didn’t fit in anywhere else, fit in. I watched people come in the door to be greeted warmly, by name. I thought there could never come a day when I would be one of those people.
In this little old house, full of stained glass and plants and live music, my life turned down another pathway. Out of their abiding kindness, they offered me acceptance and safety and space just to be. My life as I now know it could never have been, had I not walked through that door.
The coffeehouse was run by volunteers, so I pushed through my shyness and put my name down for some shifts. Local musicians signed up for evening performances and, irresistibly, the music drew me forth.
At first, I was afraid to come out of the kitchen. I prepared the food, served it, then scuttled back to wipe the counters over and over. People were kind to me; they never pushed. They were the same to me whether I was happy or sad, mute or awkward. Brock often said “Come out and enjoy the music, Sherry. You don’t have to stay in the kitchen.”
In time, I began to creep as far as the doorway, to watch and listen. Finally, I leaned up against an old treadle sewing machine just inside the door, and let the music take me away. I listened with an ache that was physical. All my life, I had longed to play music. My father was a talented professional musician but we were always too poor for music lessons. So I sang, in my bedroom, by the hour, dreaming of doing so in public. But my self-conscious, “not-good-enough” inner self held me back. Once, at the coffeehouse, thinking I was alone, I was singing along with the taoe deck as I chopped vegetables in the kitchen. Brock came out of his office and said, “Sherry, you should be singing here with the others. You have such a beautiful voice.”
Too shy. Too self-conscious. One part of me trying to break free and fly, the other (the "not-good-enough" part) holding me to the earth.
Magical evenings happened in that coffeehouse. Once after a public concert, some of the musicians from a symphony orchestra came and jammed with the local musicians. One of our favourite songs, written by one of our musicians, was called “Gentle Jonathan”, about his brother who had committed suicide. They took that melody and improvised a ten-minute riff on it that was pure magic.
At the end of the evening, as we were closing up, Brock came to me and, for the first time, gave me a hug. “What a magical evening!” we agreed.
I walked home under the stars with an awakening heart. Other than my children, this was the first hug anyone had given me in years. I woke up the next morning in tears. I was coming alive, and it was painful.
I called Brock. “It hurts to feel! It was easier to be frozen!”
One day Brock and I were chopping vegetables side by side, giggling and joking, and I realized that I trusted him. I had never trusted a man before. But Brock was as safe as a brother. He had given me space and acceptance and appreciation, and time to heal from the traumas of the past. Thus, unforced, the bud of my being slowly began to unfurl.
I realized I was giving of myself, and getting back something I had not had, the sunshine of others’ joy, and a reflection of myself I had never seen before, in all my friends’ eyes. What I gained in those years was so much more than I gave. I gained back my life there, the life I was meant to live as the person I was meant to be. No small gift.
Here, I had found a true home, and family.
Now, when I walked in the door, other faces lit up and called happily to me. One day, while I was cleaning the toilet, down on my knees scrubbing away, feeling satisfied that I was tending those I loved so caringly, the realization hit me: “THIS is the love I’ve been seeking all my life!” I had thought I longed for a partner, to love me and fill up the empty places that had lived in me unfilled my whole life. Instead, it was in giving love, that I was filled. It was a revelation.
One day Brock told me, “You know you’re a healer, Sherry, don’t you?” I did not know. I only knew I was happiest in giving. I took home and housed one or another of the young girls who passed through the coffeehouse, until they could find a space of their own. As we prepared food in the coffeehouse kitchen, there was so much laughter. So much joy in being alive.
One memorable summer night we had an outdoor musicfest in a grassy field out in the country. As a Celtic band called Mullingar began to play, people spontaneously began to dance and leap all over the field in a glorious circle, against the setting sun. A moment that will live in memory forever.
I longed to join them, envied their joy and abandon, remained stalk-still at the edge of the field, still too encumbered to be that free. I imprinted the sight on my retina and can see it now, that joyous dancing against the setting sun.
Brock and Friends healed the inner wounds and gave me wings to fly. With music and kindness and time and gentleness, they raveled a warm cloak of love around me that I carried with me forever after. I tip my hat to the universe for those golden years, when I burst out of my shell and emerged into the land of the living, assisted by the kind folk at Brock and Friends, my family for all time.
My time there had been all about following one’s heart, so the next move was a big, trusting leap to Tofino, the land of my dreams. Tofino was like one big coffeehouse, full of the alternative lifestyle folk with whom I am at home. I came out of myself even more, but still sang and danced only when I was alone.
In Tofino, at every musical event, the entire crowd became a palpitating, writing mass of ecstatic gyration. I was far more open, now, much braver. But still not able to get out of my seat and gyrate with the crowd. I thrummed with the beat of the drums all through my being, but could not leave my chair.
All this lifetime, one part of me has longed to be Out There while the other held me fast. I could reflect on so many wasted chances to fully participate in life, many missed opportunities to fully savor joy – and yet, still, all those times, inside my heart, I danced.
******* ********* **********
******* ********* **********
[Note: Roger Sparks is now Matthew Smith, but as I wrote this when he was Rog, I have left it as it is.]
There is a story I keep coming
across, about how humankind once lived
in tribes that spread across the earth, and every tribe had its magic person.
Now, across the eons, we sometimes meet someone we recognize as a member of our
tribe, at just the right moment in time to assist us in the unfolding of our
journey. When we do, the trick is to know them all our lives.
The universe has gifted me
with a few special and very precious friendships during my lifetime. I have
been sent some magic people I have recognized as kindred spirits and they have
helped me in my unfolding in ways beyond words and beyond measure.
Roger is one of those. I met
him at Brock and Friends coffeehouse in 1980. The first time we spoke, I shared
a poem I had written and Rog turned it into a song. He sang it sometimes, on
coffeehouse evenings full of love and magic, during years when my heart felt
like a wilted daisy whose stem was just about gone from lack of nourishment,
that was beginning to respond to the love, kindness and acceptance of this new
place it had been planted. Fearful, afraid to trust, barely able to hope,
almost against its will it was faintly beginning to turn its head up towards
the sunlight.
I admired Rog from afar in
those days, but it was Brock and Rog and I who loved the coffeehouse the most.
Through the years the three of us bonded over keeping it going and sharing those very special times.
Once Rog told me, “you’re like a bud, Sherry, that is just beginning to open up
and bloom in the sunlight.”
One night that was especially
wonderful, Brock gave me a hug for the first time, saying what a magical
evening it had been. The next morning I woke up in tears, my heart unaccustomed
to what it was feeling. Was this love? Love had always equalled pain before,
and these feelings were warm and happy. I called Brock and told him it was
easier not to feel because with feeling, I felt unbalanced, vulnerable, open to
pain again. He admonished, “Never say that! It is always better to feel. If you don’t feel the pain, you won’t feel
the joy either.” He was right.
In the coffeehouse, I found
many people on the path, living gently on the earth. I found dreamers and
seekers there, and they showed me the way to listen to my heart, and to follow
my dreams. From the moment I first walked through the door, I knew I was home.
This was the place and these were the people I had been seeking all my life.
There I began my journey home to myself, to the person I was meant to be. I
know I was led by divine grace to that place. It was a turning point, the most
significant one of my life.
Rog played and sang often at
the coffeehouse. He was special with a charismatic glow about him, an
unhurried, easy, centered way of speaking and smiling. In those days, I stayed
hidden in the kitchen, creeping out now and then as far as the doorway, to lean
against an old treadle sewing machine, and drink in the music, trying to be
invisible. But I could not resist the music, and it drew me forth. Music speaks
directly to my soul, to the deepest part of me. It sets free feelings and
longings I can keep at bay the rest of the time, but music is the sound of love
to me. And so it called me out of the kitchen and back into life. My eyes spoke
gratitude to the musicians for setting me free. Sometimes only a few people
were there but the musicians said I was all the audience they needed, because I
appreciated them so much.
Rog sang “Gentle Jonathan”, a
song about his brother who had committed suicide; “Inch By Inch”, about growing
a garden, which I was doing in those years, at the same time I was growing
myself, inch by inch, and row by row. He sang “Flying Kites” and my heart
danced. He sang “It’s In Every One of Us”, and I tried to believe. I knew it
was in everyone around me. It was harder to believe it was in me, too, the
light and love, the ease and grace these beautiful people achieved so
effortlessly.
Yet I began to wonder. They
accepted me. They saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. Couldn’t
they see how lacking I was? Slowly, the thought formed……..if they could see
something in me, maybe there was something there to be found. Through those
years I began to open; in the safety my trust grew, and finally my heart took
wing….and flew!
Brock wanted to travel but he
stayed one year extra for me until I was ready to let him go. He knew what the
coffeehouse meant to me. But by the time he was ready for Brock and Friends to
close its doors, I was ready, too. When I hugged him goodbye, it was with
tears, but the certain knowledge I could make it on my own.
What I owe Brock is,
basically, my life as I now live it. I know the universe connected me with the
exact place and people I needed for my soul to learn the lessons it needed to
learn. There are no accidents in the world I live in. Brock started me on my
journey, and Roger took me through the next decade of growth.
The coffeehouse made me brave
enough to take the next leap: over to the wild west coast where I had so long
wanted to be. It gave me the courage to make the biggest dream of my life come
true. In the coffeehouse years, I grew the wings I needed to fly away home,
landing on this beautiful shore.
My friendship with Rog had
been beginning to deepen just before I left Kelowna. Brock had come away from
his travels to put on an evening’s presentation. At the end of the evening, I
was standing in the doorway looking out when Rog came and put his arm around
me.
“Wonderful evening…..”
Hugging him back, I replied,
“Like old times. I wish I had been as open then as I am now, so I could have
participated more fully.”
He said “You were just the way
you were meant to be at that moment in time. It’s all a part of the plan.”
“I guess.”
Rog dropped by often after
that evening, and it was Rog I called first when the offer came to live and
work on the west coast. He said what I knew he’d say, what I most needed to
hear: “This is your dream calling you. You’ll always regret it if you don’t
go.”
So I went and, once again the
questing voice inside of me was stilled. I knew I was in the right place, right
on time. Once again, I had come home.
One day a letter came from
Brock and Rog. They had been talking about coffeehouse days and decided to
write me a letter together. I was touched. For a moment, the three of us were
back in the coffeehouse together, with all the wood and hanging plants and
stained glass, the smell of thyme and basil, and the melodic notes of a gentle
guitar picking out a tune that fell on my heart like sunlight.
Rog and I began to correspond
frequently, in more depth, and he began to visit me at the shore. There, he
found the beauty and wilderness he loved. Our visits were dynamic. Our creative
natures sparked each other. We encouraged each other’s personal best to grow
and flourish. We walked old growth trails, stalked the beach with cameras at
sunset, silent and solitary in the splendor, our eyes meeting appreciatively as
we came back together, not needing to put into words our gratitude, our
gratitude.
We returned home for wonderful fish dinners.
And then Rog would put on a concert just for me, all the songs I loved.
Sometimes his lady came with
him and we three hiked and paddled and explored. But more often, he came along,
in retreat from the city. Our talk was of writing, music, creating, nature, and
the way we aspired to journey on the earth. Our friendship centered on spirit
and growth. And always our love of music drew us close.
When Rog sang to me, my heart
opened with a painful wrench I did not fully attempt to interpret, other than
that it showed me my solitude. He embodied for me the finest of what is
possible in humankind. He achieved a level of grace that I admired, and fell
far short of.
And when he played me his
songs, I saw everything I love and admire in one person, and it made me yearn.
I found myself thinking: it’s rare enough to find one person in a lifetime like
this. It is not possible to find another like him. And that left me with a
loneliness I only acknowledged at those times, when the music opened my heart wide enough to feel that
particular pain.
Another friend, Peter, told me
I already have the relationship I have been seeking: with Rog. The fact it was
platonic was irrelevant. (Now I know this to be true.) The gift was the
communion of the heart and spirit that we shared. I was blessed to have Rog in
my life, and am forever grateful.
I am privileged to have Rog
and Brock and Jeane as members of my tribe.
Rog and I talked often about
spirit, and life and death, which we both viewed as the next stage of the
journey, a continuation and expansion of spirit. We weren’t in any hurry; we
both loved life. But neither were we afraid.
Both of us intuited our lives
may be shorter than the fourscore and ten, and spoke of it, especially as we
aged and our health began to fail.
His call to tell me a scan
revealed tumours across the upper half of his lungs was not a total surprise to
me. We had anticipated there might be trouble with his heart, or
arteriosclerosis, the condition that had stricken his father at a young age.
This is why I had fretted over Rog’s feelings of being trapped in the city, and
was sad at the lines in his song about “doing time in the city”, of looking up
between two skyscrapers to see a lone eagle circling in the sky.
It was his choice, he
explained, the price he paid for his relationship. But he repeated, also, his
doctor’s remark, that sarcoidosis appears to stem, as one of its components,
from a condition of yearning, of the feeling one is not in the right place. And
neither of us needed to comment.
“You are an anchor for me,” he
told me. “You are my biggest fan. Your place is a sanctuary. I love it here. It
is my second home.”
His lady told me, “You give
Rog something I can’t. I am always afraid, when he comes here, that he won’t
come back.”
Because of our connection,
perhaps I felt I need not seek another relationship, so truly did our
friendship in those days fulfil my need for connection. The fact it was
platonic meant it would never end in pain or disillusion. In this way, it has
been one of the golden relationships of my life. It has never tarnished.
Our friendship is now 36 years
old. Never once has he disappointed me, never once let me down, never shown me
anything but grace, great inner beauty – a beautiful spirit striving ever
towards the light. I have never seen him in a moment that caused me to think
less of him. This is an amazement in a world of flawed and broken people, that
I continue to see him whole and shining, as golden now as he was at the
beginning.
An amazement that he continues
to see in me a far better person than I see in myself.
So my response, of course, was
to be there for him as fully as he has been there for me through the years. We
were able to openly discuss the path ahead – treatment options, the fact these
tumours are usually benign and often go into remission. He did visualizations, that his “little
nodule friends” were deflating. He handled the situation with his usual grace.
It is inconceivable to me that
there might be a time when Rog is no longer here, at the other end of the
phone. He has more songs to write and sing, more mountains to climb, more
sunsets to photograph. And lots more love to share.
He told me “Even before this
diagnosis, I was thinking about what I have contributed to this planet, in
return for my lovely stay, and it is my songs and my music, my writings and my
journals. In my will, I have left them all to you.”
In my heart rose a river of
feelings: all the love and admiration I feel for this beautiful person, our
connection over so many years of
journeying: to each other, to the coffeehouse, to the cosmos, to the
universal all-that-is, that makes me know that whatever realm Rog is in, in
loving friendship our spirits will always been connected.
We are reaching the stage of
our lives where partings lie ahead of us. Partings made in love instead of sorrow.
Goodbye for a while instead forever. Lacking the pain and anguish, the anger
and bitterness that have been a part of other endings. We are seeing our
friends – the members of our tribe – through the transitions of our lives, and
they are seeing us through ours. This news of Rog reminds me: the Beyond lies
ahead. Which makes each present moment precious beyond measure. What this year
is telling me is it is time to savor life down to the very last grain of sand,
the faintest whiff of springtime air, every song of the frog at eventide, the
call of the birds each morn. Time to stop struggling, start flowing. To work
less, walk beaches more. To tell my children, my grandchildren, my sister, my
friends , my special people, how beautiful they are, how much I love them.
To make my prayers prayers of
gratitude, not longing. There is nothing left to long for. My
heart is full with all I have been given: the beauty of this magical place all
around me, this village oif friendly folk I live in, and those special people I
am privileged to call themembers of my tribe, sent to help me through the
passages that are slowly leading me home.
“If I go first,” I tell Rog,
“leave your journals on your bedside table and I’ll swoop by for a peek.” And
if Rog goes first, he’ll forever walk with me on evening rambles at the shore.
I’ll always see him, hunched over his tripod, getting just the right shot of
yet another spectacular sunset going down.
******
Update: I still lived in Tofino,
when I wrote this, in the late 90’s. It is 2016 now. Rog left the relationship that kept him in the
city some years ago, and moved to a more natural setting on the ocean amid the
trees. Roger Sparks became Matthew Smith, and he had found his home village.
After some time, he met a wonderful woman and
married her. At his wedding, his new wife sang a song: what is it that causes
someone to choose one person over another? And a sudden onslaught of grief
arose in me, that I am always – always! – the one going home alone, in this
life, for reasons I do not understand. I struggled to get my emotions under
control. As always, the music had unleashed my deepest feelings.
Our connection grew more
distant since the wedding as, appropriately, it should have. He had a wife now.
I was immersed in the world of online blogging, involved in two international
poetry sites. We stayed in touch, but much less frequently.
The hard news came last week.
After a year of severe weight loss and
poor health, they have detected a tumorous mass in his colon that has been
there from three to five years. He is calm with the news, but says his weakness
frightens him a little. I know time is short.
I can’t imagine the day when
he will not be there, on the other side of the screen, where he has been for 38
years. I wrote this for him in the fall of 2015.
STALKING THE SUNSET
We walk the fine edge,
between this world and the
next,
trying to heal our pain,
recover from our illnesses,
adjusting to the decline of
the body
that has transported us so
far.
You have fought a long battle,
old pal of mine.
I am sensing your grasp on life
slowly slipping away.
Your eyes are on the eagle,
flying free of his fetters.
You are communing with deer in
your garden.
The orcas pass by, your mind
engraving
the vision and the joy.
Your heart is loving and
mourning this beautiful earth
you are slowly leaving.
We are never ready to let go
of the beauty we have loved so
well.
For 35 years, you have always
been there:
at the other end of the
telephone,
through my joys and sorrows,
on the other side of my
screen,
sharing all I was learning.
We have witnessed, encouraged
and supported
each other's journey,
collaborated on songs,
shared our love of the wild,
and music,
and sunsets.
You have been my friend, my
mentor,
my guide, my guru.
You have shown me the way,
walking your pilgrim's path of
the soul,
listening to your inner
guides.
You can never really be gone
from me.
On the other side, for you,
there will be a radiance:
your face shining as it did in
coffeehouse days,
when candles flickered on you
smiling in the glow,
singing Gentle Jonathan and
Forever Young.
I will see you forever
strumming your guitar, singing
your songs
of trees and rivers and eagles
in flight.
On the other side: Manders,
curled,
purring on your chest -
and no more tumors, shortness
of breath,
fatigue and diminishing
health.
Just an expansion of the soul
which has grown too large
for your chest to contain,
and needs more room in which
to grow.
In memory, you will always be
on stage at Brock and Friends,
or, later, stalking the
sunset,
camera in hand, at Chestermans
Beach.
It is in sunsets I will
forever see you,
old friend of mine.
Always remember,
on the other side of sunset
comes the dawn.
That is where I'll find you,
once you're gone.
***********
THE DAY MY FATHER DIED
On the day my father died, it
was a sultry, parched, midsummer afternoon. I had just turned thirteen. I was
walking home from my aunt’s, where I had been babysitting, planning to change
my clothes and go to my friend’s house.
As I approached the corner of
our street, I saw my grandfather’s brown and white Ford pull up to the stop
sign. My grandmother was in the front seat and, in the back, sat my mother and
four year old sister.
Grandpa leaned out the window.
“Get in the car, Sherry.”
“But…..!”
“Get in!” he barked grimly,
and I silently climbed in.
My grandma turned to face me. “Sherry,
your dad has been taken to hospital. He passed away.”
“Dad’s dead?” My voice rose several decibels, and my mother began to cry. My grandma instantly shushed me. “Think of your mother, think of your mother.” I subsided, my brain racing. What would happen? What would happen?
“Dad’s dead?” My voice rose several decibels, and my mother began to cry. My grandma instantly shushed me. “Think of your mother, think of your mother.” I subsided, my brain racing. What would happen? What would happen?
We went to my grandma’s house.
The grownups were very busy, talking in hushed tones. No one talked to me or my
sister. Our mother was distraught, crying and in shock. At suppertime, as we
pulled up to the table to eat, she broke down, and had to leave the table.
She told me later she went
home then, back to the four-room rental in which we lived, where my father had
died. She said she felt his presence in the little house, knew he was there
when she walked in the door. She took his hat and, holding it, walked up and
down the creek out back, crying, for hours.
He had had a heart attack. He
was fifty years old. I don’t remember being told what had happened until much
later. He had been there, then he was gone.
While I was at my aunt’s that
morning, he and my mother and sister had gone for a drive out in the country.
On their way home, on KLO Road, the sky blue Chrysler broke down. Dad managed
to roll it into the closest gas station, and sent my mom and sister home with
someone from the gas station. But the car had to be left there and, instead of
calling someone for a ride, or taking a taxi, my dad walked all the way home in
the broiling heat.
My mother was lying on the
couch when he got home.
“I’m either going to lose ten
pounds or have a heart attack,” he joked, then he went into the bathroom, and splashed
cold water on his face. As he entered the bedroom, my mom heard him collapse
and crash to the floor. She screamed for help, tried to give him mouth to
mouth. The ambulance arrived, but too late. He was gone.
When I was grown, with
children of my own, my mother told me that she thought my father had known his
time was short. After his death, she contacted the doctor he saw a year before
he died, who had told him he had heart disease, that he needed to drastically
change his lifestyle if he were to survive. He needed to lose weight and stop
smoking and drinking. He joked he’d rather die than stop drinking, and that is
what happened.
He had come to my mother a few
weeks before he died, and caressed her. “You’ve been a good wife,” he told her.
“If anything happens to me, take care of the girls.”
His death was the line in the
sand that marked everything Before and After. My mother was devastated with
grief. “He’s the only man I ever loved,” she told us all her life.
I couldn’t admit it, but I
felt some relief, though I was sorry for the pain my mother was in. I had
withdrawn from my father in the years before his death, judging him harshly for
beating my mother. I retreated into silence in his presence. Now the drinking,
the violence, the fear I had lived through had ended.
My mother had to get right back
on her feet and keep working. We rented a
different place, on the same street as my grandparents and, for me, life
became more normal and dependable. My mother, I know now, was very lonely and
struggling financially, trying to keep us together. But there were no more
knock-down drag-outs, no more thumps and crashes in the night.
Outside the church door, at my
father’s funeral, I stood beside my mother. She put her arm around me, one of
the few times I remember her doing so. From her strength, she smiled at me. “We
have a long row to hoe now,” she said, and I nodded, ready to be right there to
help.
I went back to school after
that summer changed. It was the first year of junior high, in a brand new
school, fresh pages opening up all over. One other student in my class had lost
his father that summer too. We looked at each other and exchanged unsmiling
glances when it was announced. The other students sat in respectful and
appalled silence, imagining the worst thing that could happen, the death of a
parent.
Then we took out our books and
started the first day of high school, and of the rest of our lives.
********
It was a few weeks or months
later, when I went up to the Capri mall after school, into Long’s Drug Store. I
was standing looking at items on the shelves when I felt someone staring at me.
I looked over to the lunch counter that ran the length of the building at the
back. I went there sometimes after school to have a butterhorn. Standing behind
the counter, where the waitresses worked, was someone who looked exactly like
my father. He was staring at me and smiling. At the time, I thought it very
strange that there was a waiter there who looked exactly like my father, though
I had never seen him before, and never saw him after. Now I know it was him,
checking in to see if I was okay. I wasn’t, but I didn’t know that then. I had
painful years ahead as I worked through all I had already lived through.
I can see him today as clearly
as I saw him then, gazing at me, smiling, wishing me well. Saying goodbye.
******
AS SHE LAY DYING
My sister called
me in the middle of an ordinary workday morning.
“I’m taking Mom
to the hospital. The ambulance is coming right now.”
“What happened?”
“She tried to
get up this morning, and her legs wouldn’t work. She fell beside the bed. I got
her back onto the bed but she isn’t ab;e to use her legs at all.
“It sounds like
she’s had a stroke. That’s what happened to Grandma.”
“oh, maybe. The
ambulance is here now. Can you come?”
“Sure.”
At the hospital,
my mother had been admitted. My sister was sitting by her bed. My mother’s eyes
were fearful, darting. They were taking her upstairs for tests, so I walked
alongside the stretcher. While we waited for the elevator to come, she
whispered to me, with a plain and significant glance, “Once you get in these
places, you either come out again….or you don’t.”
In the last few
months, she had weakened considerably. She was in so much pain from her
arthritis that we now think she didn’t drink enough fluids, to avoid having to
make the painful trek from bed to bathroom. She needed fluid to counteract the
anti-inflammatories, which may have created problems with her stomach. In one
phone call, she told me she had vomited up something black.
“That sounds to
me like dried blood,” I told her, concerned. She called me later to tell me the
pharmacist had told her the same thing.
She had amassed
a great deal of medication. We were not sure if she was taking it at the
prescribed times, or taking too much of it. I now suspect she was stockpiling
them, as her calls to me during the last months gave me clues I didn’t want to
understand.
“When a person’s
quality of life is gone and you can’t enjoy life any more, don’t you think it’s
okay to end it? She’d ask. I’d brush her off uncomfortably, making some hopeful
remark about how things would get better. Now I think she was contemplating
ending her life. In her last months she told me clearly and repeatedly, at
least half a dozen times, the last time not seven days before she collapsed, “I
don’t want to be kept alive on machines. If it comes to that, please pull the plug and let me go.” She
made me promise.
That first
night, we pulled up chairs beside her bed. Late in the evening, we brought her
little black dog, Ollie, to see her. She smiled, and patted his head. He was
afraid, flattened himself on the bed, head down, ears flat. He knew.
After an hour or
so, my mother seemed to float into a dimension halfway between this world and
the next. She was having her life review; she began to ramble through memory,
recalling her life. “There came Brick, holus-bolus, down the railway platform
to meet me,” she smiled. “The only man I ever loved. I had it all.” This was
the last time my mother spoke, or was able to speak; the last time she was
still present as herself, and not as a body that was moving through the process
of shutting down.
I felt her death
was near. But as our mother lay dying, my sister and I had a completely
opposite comprehension of what was happening and what needed to be done.
Next morning,
after he received the test results, the doctor came in to see her. But he
didn’t seem to know what was happening. He had no answers. While he was
standing beside her bed, my mother suddenly vomited up a huge amount of a
charcoal-like substance. Her eyes held mine as I crossed the room to her. While
the doctor rang the buzzer for the nurse, I covered the vomit with a towel,
walked out into the hallway, turned left to the windowed cubicle and totally
fell apart.
My sister came
to get me. “We have to arrange an air transfer to take Mom to Victoria. They
aren’t helping her here.”
“But she won’t
want to go, it will be so hard on her,” I protested. “And what if she dies on
the helicopter with no one with her?”
“In Victoria,
they can find out what’s wrong and get her better. I’m ordering a helicopter,”
my sister said, and she was gone down the hall.
The doctor
called us into a side room, explained she was being taken to Victoria, And asked
for input from those of us present.
I had to speak
up. “My mom told me half a dozen times, the last time seven days ago, that she
didn’t want any extraordinary measures taken if it got to this point.”
The doctor
agreed. “She told me that, too. More than once.”
A friend of the
family stepped forward. “She told me the same thing. She doesn’t want it.”
“So I’ll put a ‘Do
Not Resuscitate’ order on the forms,” the doctor said.
When my sister
told my mother she was being moved, my mother’s eyes got wild, she shook her
heads from side to side. “No…..No……” she protested, but they were already wheeling
her down the hall. I watched the helicopter take off. My sister drove to
Victoria to be with her, and I went home to wait by the phone. I couldn’t
forget my mother’s eyes as her life went into others’ control.
My sister called
me late that night. “They finally saw Mom just now. She has been writhing in
terrible pain for hours, thrashing back and forth. But she kept getting bumped
down the list by emergencies. They looked at the x-rays the Alberni hospital
took and saw right away Mom has a ruptured bowel. They didn’t see it in Port
Alberni, but the doctor here saw it right away. They are going to operate, and
then they’ll put her on something just temporarily to get her through this
hurdle.”
“Not any
machines though, right? She was so clear she didn’t want that.”
“Well, yes, she’ll
be on life support. But it’s just temporary. Once she gets stabilized, she’ll
be taken off it.”
“Oh.” I was
stunned. “But what about the Do Not Resuscitate order?”
“I used my Power
of Attorney to rescind it. It’s just
temporary, to get her past this hump.”
I went to see my
mother the next day. She was sleeping and did not look at all like herself. She
was bloated and swollen, and a machine was pumping loud breaths for her. When
she woke up, she looked wildly at the machines, in terror. Her worst nightmare
had come true.
“Mom, you’re in
hospital. They’re helping you. You’re going to be all right,” my sister kept
repeating loudly.
My mother’s eyes
found mine, standing at the foot of her bed. I was silent before her unspoken
reproach. She thought I had not kept my promise. I could not tell her; I looked
away.
My mother
suffered for seventeen days on the machines. She had had a colostomy which, had
she been aware of it, would have horrified her. She had tubes everywhere and
was in terrible pain. Her entire system had broken down. They would address one
problem, and another would pop up.
We sat beside
her, standing guard; we slept in chairs at her bedside. Sometimes we prayed.
Sometimes we remembered and laughed softly. Mostly, we were just there, waiting
for what would happen next.
I tried a few
times to say what I felt to my sister, but she would not, could not, hear. She
could not bear the thought of our mother dying; she had to do everything she
could to save her. I understood that. But I did not agree.
One final lunch
time, I tried again. “I think we’re asking her to suffer too much,” I suggested
gently.
“What’s the
alternative?”
“Well, had she
died naturally, that’s one thing. But now she’s on machines. Who’s going to
make the decision to pull the plug? I can’t make that decision. And what about
her quality of life? She kept saying if she didn’t have a good quality of life,
she didn’t want to be here. Even when she was still at home, before this
happened. I think the best she can hope for is extended care, and I know she
would hate that.”
“But she’ll get
better, she’ll get off the machines and come home.” She can have years yet.”
“The trouble is,
I just don’t believe that will happen,” I said. We looked at each other across
a great divide.
“She wrote
something on her slate today,” my sister said. “She waved her hand at all the
tubes and machines and wrote ‘goodbye’ on the slate. She let me know she wants
this over.”
But then she
continued, “You’re not going to like this. But they want to do a tracheotomy.
They rolled her over to see a little old lady who had a trach, and asked her ‘This
is quite comfortable, isn’t it?’ and the little old lady shook her head: ‘nooooo,
it isn’t.’”
I had to leave
the table, the hospital, the city. I had to get out of there. It felt like they
were carving her up like a Christmas turkey. I could no longer take part in
something I felt was so wrong.
Before I left, I
spoke to the specialist. “How long does this go on before we know if it is
working or not? I am having a problem with how my mother is suffering. She made
me promise over and over, we would never put her on machines, never make her go
through this.”
“I wondered why
the Do Not Resuscitate order was reversed,” he said.
“My sister has
power of attorney and she….she wants my mom to get well and come home, of
course. But I don’t think she will ever be well enough to come home.”
“We don’t let
anyone suffer too long,” he reassured me. “If things don’t turn around in two
weeks, then we have to make a decision. For now, we will continue as things are
and see what happens.”
Before I left, I
stood beside my mother. I couldn’t stop the tears. She turned her head to me in
surprise, questioning.
“I tried to tell
them your wishes, Mom,” I told her. It was all I could say. I couldn’t explain
why all of this had happened, but I needed to let her know I had at least tried
to speak for her.
I went home,
went back to work for a few days. On the seventeenth day of my mother’s ordeal,
during which she must have burnt off enough karma for several lifetimes, my
sister phoned. It was ten o’clock at night. “Mom is bleeding internally, and
they want to take her off the machines and take the tubes out. Can you come?”
“On my way.”
I drove through
the dark, winding mountain pass, but there was no moon to light my way. I was
listening to a tape about death, about letting go of the past, of all anger or
unfinished business, and simply being with the soul, in love and forgiveness, as it made its
transition. As I drove through the night, I did let go: of all the ways we had
misunderstood and miscommunicated, of the triangle that was my mother, my
sister and myself, where I was odd man out. I knew she had done the best she
could, and was grateful for the help and support she had given me as I raised
my kids as a single mother. I would support her and my sister open-heartedly
through this passage. I would be strong and get everybody through.
When I got
there, my mother was awake. I sat beside her. She reached out and touched my
cheek, an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture.
“I love you,” I
said.
“Love you, too,”
she mouthed.
There wasn’t
much to say. I knew that soon she would understand everything, that all
questions would be answered, all misunderstandings be made right. She would
know my heart; her own would be transfigured. She would transition to the next
world, where she believed she would see my father again. She would fly free.
They pulled out
the tubes, disconnected the machines. Her strong heart kept beating and
beating. My sister and I drifted off to sleep. Then I heard my sister say, “Sherry,
Mom’s awake.” She was awake and looking at us with a strangely piercing look.
We stood up. A line of blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth and she
expired. My sister fell upon her chest and cried, “Oh, Mom, poor Mom, suffering
right to the very end.”
I put my arm
around her. “We have to be strong now. Mom would want us to be close.”
When we left the
hospital that night, it felt like a different world, a world without our mother
in it, a strangeness we were not prepared for. I knew I had done all I could to
honour my mother’s wishes, and that my sister had done all she could to save
our mother’s life. It was over. I handled it by accepting it as it was. There
was nothing else that would bring peace.
*** *** *** ***
A few weeks
later, I was driving to Port Alberni, to my mother’s house. I was thinking of
my mother, my sister, myself. Of how strange it was to now be the family matriarch
instead of the daughter, my feet not ready to fill those shoes. No buffer between
myself and the next world. As I looked in reverie through the windshield, I saw
– in slow motion – a grey owl fly right across the road in front of me, low
down to I could see her clearly, every feather, her beak, her eyes. She was
staring in the window at me, our eyes meeting and fixed, as if she was trying
to send me a message, as if she had something she wanted me to know. The car
must have kept moving, but those moments seemed strangely suspended as she
slowly crossed my vision and entered the forest, our eyes locked the whole
time.
In First Nations
culture, it is believed that the dead visit us soon after their passing in the
form of an animal. This is what it felt like to me: I could see my mother, her
wisdom, her wish to relay a message, in that grey owl.
What was she
trying to tell me?
*** *** *** ***
AN OWL IS THE DOORWAY INTO THE UNKNOWN
I sit beside my mother’s bed
as she lies dying.
Our eyes meet: all the words
we cannot say,
all the misconceptions,
misperceptions.
In this lifetime, it has always been
this way.
I release the ways
we never got it right;
forgive, no need to hold the anger tight.
Just “I love you”,
and her spirit flies away,
out of the room
into the starry night.
Weeks later, I am driving
towards her home
when, in slow motion,
across my windshield flies,
a grey owl,
feathered being,
infinitely wise,
as she passes looking
deep into
my eyes.
Time is suspended
on this point
of traveling.
Somehow I feel
a message has been
received
and, somewhere, my spirit sore,
unraveling,
I know all is understood
and I believe.
Owl, swooping sideways,
into the forest green,
bird between two worlds,
all that we know
and the unseen,
harbinger of change,
of mysteries beautiful and strange,
as our eyes meet,
I know an Oracle
has been.
Wise watcher in the night,
friend of the moon,
fly after she
who left my world
too soon.
Fly, messenger
of my belated transformation,
and give my love to my mother
in the Spirit Nation.
*** *** ***
A LAND OF
MILK-FACED FOOLS
Marcel was a
short, slight, eye-glassed, fair-haired boy in high school. He had a plain
face, long nose and rather pouty lips. His rather effeminate manner made him
the butt of endless teasing by his teenage classmates, macho boys who were all
mouth and muscle. His demeanor was quiet, watchful, withdrawn, often rather
sullen. But when the kids taunted him beyond what he could bear, he would
sometimes flare up, quoting Shakespeare at them in fgrothing, red-faced tirades
that reduced them to fits of laughter, and left him seething with frustration.
“Begone, thou
milk-faced fools!” he’d rant, face red and eyes tearing. He’d follow with a
whole section of quotation, verbatim, while they all roared heartlessly.
In the Old Ways,
Marcel would have been called “two-spirited”. He would have been honoured in
some cultures for carrying the two sides of human nature, the male and female,
within him, thus being doubly blessed. In high school, in small town Kelowna in
the 60’s, he was tormented, for simply being himself, one apart from the herd.
I ran with the
popular crowd, but I, too, felt different. My ready laughter, my bouncy
personality, hid a secret: a home life marked by poverty and alcoholism. I was
either cresting a peak of hilarity, or plunging into profound despair. I
pretended not to see the raised eyebrows, the dismissive, superior shakes of
the head from the “normal” kids, who seemed to ingest balance with their
morning vitamins. My popularity felt a fragile thing, should the other kids
discover who I really was.
I hated how the
boys bullied Marcel, though I was not brave enough to stand up to them on his
behalf. I’d say “Hi” to him in passing, a greeting he would quietly
acknowledge. That was all it took to make him my devoted friend.
He began to
shadow my footsteps, meeting me on the way to school in the mornings. From down
the street, I’d see him trudging towards me, head down, arms full of books,
shoulders hunched protectively in his shabby tan corduroy jacket.
I remember those
dark winter mornings, walking to school with an emptiness inside me as big as
the sky. At the corner of Richter and Elliott, Marcel would fall in beside me,
our boots crunching over the frozen ground, our frozen hearts marching like
brave soldiers with no choices towards the brightly lit school. At the lockers
we’d part; I’d merge into the crowd and he would make his solitary way through
the rest of the day, till we were released like prisoners by the three o’clock
bell.
We didn’t talk
about out struggles, his persecution, my unhappiness. He fell in beside me
again and we walked much in silence, turning off at our respective corners. The
trials that drew us together remained unaddressed between us. But I now think
Marcel may have been the only person in my life, back then, who recognized I
was in emotional depths in need of help that did not come.
There were times
when my heart sank at his persistent presence.
Once a boy I liked offered to walk me home, after the three of us had
been decorating the gym for a dance. Marcel, flushed and happy from the
unaccustomed feeling of being included, chirped, “I’ll come, too!” Later it
hurt to remember that he caught and understood the glance that flashed between
me and the boy, and how he turned off at the first side street and made his
lonely way through the falling dusk.
But mostly, I
was kind, and he was my loyal ally, a quiet and steady supporter.
Kelowna was a
church-going “respectable” community, about ten years behind the times in the
early 1960’s. We attended a Catholic school, which one might have thought would
not tolerate bullying among the students. It was a time of strict mores, and
following the norm. “What the neighbours will think” was highly important, and
neither Marcel nor I filled the bill, he because he did not act enough like a
boy, and me because I acted too much like a girl. My dating, my flamboyant
façade, kept me at risk of being considered “fast”, though in truth I was a
babe in the woods, and a virgin when I married, due to Early Trauma By Nuns. I
was constantly at Mass praying, since I was always in a state of “sin” for
thoughts, feelings, dreams, over which I had little control. The nuns assured
us these were occasions of sin that would send us straight to hell, should we
die in the night. But it was worse for boys – it was whispered if they
committed sin by touching, they could actually “go crazy” – their lives would
become unmanageable.
It is a wonder
any of us managed to eventually procreate at all.
Discipline was
so strict at Immaculata that once, during choir practice, Sister fell off her
stool and onto the floor and not one of us broke ranks or made a peep, beyond
one single collective gasp. In silent disbelief, we looked down upon her, lying
on the floor, a source of angry power reduced to crumpled human proportions. We
felt as horrified as if Jesus had fallen off His cross. Sister rose up, with
ruffled dignity, climbed back up on her stool, wimple crooked, expression
fierce, and we shakily carried on with the next verse.
I spent Saturday
nights necking in the back of ’64 Chevies, and Sunday mornings singing in the
choir, my confused eyes looking out from under the brim of my brushed tan
sailor hat, my soul at a point equidistant from hell and heaven. My white
gloves, though, were immaculate, primly drawn to the wrist, one hand modestly
folded into the other.
I alternated
between wanting to be a nun and wanting to be the mother of six. A faceless
husband figured only in the periphery in this dream, once the beautiful wedding
was over. Life was waiting up ahead, in glorious Technicolor, once I reached
the magic status of adulthood, when I would finally know what to do. A picket
fence, milk bottles on the porch, (they still did that in those days), and
babies in high chairs would make it all come right. It would be perfect.
Meanwhile, Eyes
watched everywhere from behind lace curtains. My heart sank at grave
admonitions from Grandma, because Mrs. Long or Miss Hicks or the Bennett
sisters had seen me laughing too loudly on the street, or, worse, Riding with
some Boy in a Car.
Through high
school, those unseen eyes were my judges, and the feeling I never measured up I
hid behind the jokes and the “I don’t care” attitude.
Times when I was
hurting most, Marcel would quietly fall in beside me, walking home.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“How’s it
goin’?”
“Hangin’ in.”
We never talked
about out pain, but his silent presence was a comfort to me. Only much later in
life did I realize the sensitivity he displayed, understand that he must have
watched me, had seen the feelings I thought I was hiding. Never would either of
us have spoken unkindly to the other. We were adrift together on an unfriendly
sea, and our boat was leaking faster than we could bail.
I was on student
council, involved in everything, and Marcel came along on my coattails,
grabbing whatever crumbs of inclusion he could from the edge of the crowd. The
kids teased that he “follows Sherry around like a puppy dog”. I thought I was
being kind to him, befriending someone so socially uncool, by tolerating his
constant presence. Only when I was older would I understand the gift he gave
me, standing by in silent loyalty, through those painful years, steadfast,
asking for nothing in return.
None of us
understood, in those years, that Marcel was years ahead of us in terms of his
own inner development. Because he lacked social connection, he was forced onto
his own resources. He was a scholar, reading Shakespeare for pleasure. He
listened to classical music, wrote, dreamed, thought about life, planned for
his future, while the rest of us used up megatons of energy having crushes and
getting our hearts broken, turning into, as the principal disparagingly
commented, “a two-headed monster with googly eyes” in the front seats of cars.
Marcel shone
when, for a school project called My Dream House, he produced full architectural
plans, down to the last specific detail. The rest of us cut out pictures from
magazines and glued them on poster board at the last minute. It was obvious he
had put in hours into his project, time the rest of us were unwilling to spend.
Once I went to his
house and he showed me a photograph of himself when he was small. He was
sitting on a bench, one foot up and tucked under his other leg. He had long
blonde ringlets and a dress. I felt he was trying to tell me something but I
didn’t know what. I thought since his parents were European, it might have been
their custom to dress small boys that way.
There was no judgment
in me. Perhaps because I felt its sting so often, but even more because, if
anyone felt unworthy, in any human equation, in those years, it was me.
I hated living
in a small town, yearning for the anonymity of the city, where I fled right
after graduation. I rejected school and the emotional torture kids inflicted on
other kids that made me hate school. So
I refused a scholarship to college (that would have changed my life) and
blended happily into the sea of nameless faces taking the bus to work every
day.
Marcel was in
the city too, attending university. Once I visited his small apartment. I was
impressed at how well he knew himself, and expressed his individuality in his
surroundings. He had shelves of great books, he had a wonderful classical music
collection, he had a stereo, art on his walls, and a mosaic-topped coffee table
he had made himself. He lived like an adult, I marveled. How had he learned
this?
My apartment,
and my heart, were still a girl’s. I had frilly curtains and stuffed animals.
With my first paycheque I bought a stuffed dog. My first piece of “art” was a
black velvet painting of a puppy with tears in his eyes.
Marcel was
happier in his own skin these days. He was among other intellectuals; in
university he fit in. Individuality, mocked by the pack mentality of teenagers,
was now encouraged. The rules had changed; being who you were was everything.
Marcel found friends who were like himself, and his life seemed full. He had
grown beyond me.
When I moved
away, our letters crossed back and forth for a time. In one of them, Marcel
wrote that he was homosexual and he hoped telling me would not affect our
friendship. It didn’t. It was simply a fact that I noted. He wrote me a story,
on a long scroll, in which a princess disparagingly called out, “Marry me,
marry me, before I become a spinster,” which made me laugh, but also aptly
described my mindset at the time.
After I was
married, he sent baby gifts, a silver cup for Jon, and a little pair of
moccasins “to chase the boys in” for Lisa.
When my husband
and I moved back to Vancouver, he asked if he and his lover could come for a
visit.
“Of course!” I
said. “Great!”
When the guests
arrived, the men all sat in the living room, while I made tea in the kitchen.
As I was carrying it in, I noticed a terribly tense silence had fallen over the
living room. My husband sat scowling, arms crossed, beard bristling, refusing
to speak. I made some forced remarks, tried to smile and draw Marcel and his
partner out, but conversation was stilted and very soon they left, Marcel
giving me a sad and wondering look as they went down the steps.
“You were not
very friendly to our company,” I said to my husband, as I closed the door.
“What do you
expect, when a man comes calling on my wife?” he snarled.
I was
speechless, then enraged. “Marcel is my friend! He has never been a boyfriend.
Besides, he’s gay!”
“He still has
the equipment,” my husband muttered darkly.
When I was
older, long divorced and finally at home in my own being, I understood that
homophobia and paranoia exist, and that people of gentle hearts constantly have
to bang our heads against it in order to simply live our lives. Love is such a
private and tender thing between two people. Behind closed doors, we act out
our love and pain, and why should it matter to anyone else with whom we share
our deepest selves, or how we choose to do it?
I also, by then,
knew that Marcel was three hundred times the man my ex-husband was. He knew and
accepted who he was – and who I was! – in a way that was simply not available
to my ex-husband. But all my life I will remember Marcel’s sad look as he left
my house that day, and think of what their conversation must have been , as
they made their way back to their own world. I didn’t hear from him again for
three decades.
*** *** ***
In 2000, I was
living on Vancouver Island, and tracked Marcel down through an on-line high
school classmate search. He still lived in Vancouver. With joy, we resumed our
friendship via email.
“I am overjoyed
to hear from my old high school heart throb,” he wrote.
“I was your
heart throb? Marcel, I’m touched.”
“That was before
I realized I was gay. I thought I was just a late bloomer. However, if I am a
late bloomer, I am somewhere between the last of the chrysanthemums and the
last Christmas rose. I live by myself, with a furball called Paprikas – he
arrived in front of the building a bag of bones, so I took him in. He got his
name because he is the colour of paprika. Am I happy, you ask? Sometimes, when
the sun shines. Most of the time, I am concerned about my future. Ill health is
no joy.”
Marcel had
severe health issues and could not work. He had been battling an insurance
company for disability payments. Insurance companies being what they are, it
could withstand the battle longer than he could. Marcel felt his integrity was
being attacked, when he was not believed.
I was going
through a bad break-up – my last – at the time. Sometimes the email would come
from Paprikas, saying his master requested that I write about something other
than a whiney woman mourning a lost love. When I sent along a missive on
another topic, Marcel returned to my inbox, acerbically remarking “Perhaps you
can still write, after all.”
Around that time,
Marcel was gay-bashed, his hand broken, by a bus driver in downtown Vancouver.
With typical lack of complaint, he continued to painfully tap out emails to me.
He identified
his attacker, but no charges were brought “because it is my word against his”.
Marcel was outraged. He encountered the man on two other occasions and the man
behaved menacingly to him. He felt threatened.
He grew quiet.
Sometimes a short email would come from Paprikas saying he was worried about
his master, he never smiled any more. I was distracted, still shocked and
grieving what had happened to me, and didn’t grasp the significance of the
message. Somehow I thought Marcel would always be on the other end of my
emails. We had only just reconnected. We had so much catching up to do.
In the fall of
2001, after a definitive “claim declined”: from the insurance company, Marcel
planned carefully over three months’ time. In early 2002, he held a lavish and
perfect dinner for visiting relatives, during which he seemed light-hearted and
charming. They said he laughed a lot, reminisced. He almost glowed. Later that
night, after they had returned to their hotel, he swallowed most of a bottle of
antidepressants and, with finality, departed from this life.
He left a letter
saying he felt terrible deserting his mother, but simply could not go on.
“I am tired of
the struggle, of injustice, and of the rage that makes me feel. I cannot work,
and I will not beg. Please find Paprikas a good home. Don’t put him through the
trauma of going to the SPCA. Please.” It was his only wish.
He left
instructions that I be called. I was devastated; we had not even begun to
finish our conversation. I had only just gotten him back. I also felt guilty. I
had been given a second chance to be the kind of friend to him that he had
always been to me and, preoccupied with my own drama, felt like I had let him
down a second time.
He left a letter
for me. “By now you will know that I have left this world. I could not handle
life any more. When my claim was denied, I knew this would be my end,” the
letter said. “I just didn’t have the strength to go on. I am sending you a
little owl to give you wisdom, a Chinese gentleman to give you tranquillity,
and a piece of Inuit sculture to give you a happy family. Thank you for this
too brief renewal of our friendship. All my love, Marcel.”
I went to the
city to attend his memorial, held in his ninety year old mother’s apartment.
She had buried her husband years earlier, has lost her other son who died in
childhood, and had now outlived her only other son. When the door to her
apartment opened, the rooms were filled with relatives and friends. Did he know
how many people loved him? In their midst, I saw a teensy, diminutive woman,
under five feet tall, her shoulders bent with age and sorrow. I went over and
put my arms around her. She felt like a little bird, her arms folded in like
wings.
I had written a
poem to Marcel when I learned of his death. Crying all the way through, I
managed to read it during the memorial. I read it right to him, his ashes
resting in an urn on the coffee table, a photograph of him in happier days
beside it. I was telling him he meant more to me than I had even known.
The family had
had only 24 hours to empty Marcel’s apartment. There was no time, they said.
Paprikas was taken to the SPCA. Marcel’s worst fear. Poor Paprikas.
I returned home.
I unearthed the graduation photos of me and Marcel at seventeen, and hung them on my wall, along with the photo
of himself holding his beloved Paprikas, with one of the saddest faces I have
ever seen. He had had his friend take it just days before his death. His eyes
sent me a message of farewell from beyond the veil.
I grieved for a
long time. I knew he was, at last, at peace, free of intolerance, phobia and
prejudice, free also of the private demons that had plagued his earthly
journey. I was grieving my own failure to do better by him this second time
around. I needed to believe he was still nearby, was still my guardian angel.
Can you still
hear me, Marcel? I miss you more than I can say. But you have finally been
released from this painful, obtuse land of milk-faced fools.
*** *** *** ***
on the corner
of Elliot and Richter
in the snow
all those dark sub-zero
bitter weekday mornings
in the crystal dead of winter
long ago,
under crisply winking stars
fall in beside me,
our steps crunching
across the frozen snow
towards the lighted school
where you would play
my champion,
towards the lighted school
where I would play
the fool.
We need not speak;
you were just there
to guide me
you supported me
and loyally you cared
through all those years
you walked,
silent, beside me
so full of all the words
I could not speak
so left unsaid,
brittle with so many
tears
I knew not
how to shed.
Your presence
along the deep abyss
that I was skirting
was a comfort
you, the only one
to see that I was hurting
you, the only one to see
who I was
really meant to be
hiding behind the gay bravado,
the laughing eyes,
the laughter,
you saw me shining then
and ever after
all my life long,
you've always been
my friend
Perhaps your presence
kept me from
the chasm,
my pain hid deep
behind my
thousand smiles,
you knew I needed
help
along those
so-precarious miles,
and up that hill of pain
so steep,
someone
who would
my painful
secret
keep.
You were so loyal,
you asked for nothing
but it is true
that in those years
that burned us deep
I was your defender, too
When other boys taunted you
beyond your years,
so sage, so wise,
till angry tears stood,
smarting,
in your outraged eyes,
frustration at living in a world
so cruel,
I would fall in beside you
as we walked away
from yet another day
survived in school
I lost you for a long and lonely time,
went looking for you many years ago
you, the one who always made me laugh,
you, the only one from those sad years
who "knew me when"
and who was still my friend
I needed to thank you
for always
standing by,
be your friend
better
than I could be
back then
when you watched me
breaking my heart
over silly boys
who decried me
while all the time
someone who cared
stood right beside me
One day your name was there
on my computer screen
it was so good to finally
make up the lost years
in between
But, Marcel, you left too soon
and suddenly.
This time I thought
that there would always be
more time to tell you
all you mean to me
especially how
kind you are
and rare,
how clear you see,
how loyally
you care,
we still had so much
friendship
left
to share
Once again,
as if the years
had never intervened,
there you were
supporting me
behind my winking screen
making me laugh as I did you
with stories
all too ludicrous
and true
because laughter after pain
is what we always knew
I took for granted
this time you would
always be
at the other end
of an email
never lost again
to me
We never had the chance
to meet again
If we did
I knew your face
would be the same
because your heart was
throughout all the years
unchanged
We did not metamorphose;
from those young ghosts
our spirits rose
and we became
more truly
who we are:
delightfully deranged,
two solitary souls
who are
wicked awesome
strange
I still had a hug
to give you
in this lifetime,
wanted one more time
to look into your eyes
You left too soon
but this I surely
promise:
Marcel,
you'll always
be a friend
of mine
I have to believe
that one day
I'll be crossing
a clear and frozen
landscape
all alone
until I reach the
far and distant
corner
just past the morning star
the corner
where you are
just waiting
to fall into step
beside me,
your presence
in that moment
not denied me,
to support me through
that last stretch of the journey
Once more
I will be
Heading Home
with you.
Marcel,
back when you loved me then
so true,
I'll bet you never dreamed
that it would end up
me and you.
*** *** *** ***
MY ODYSSEY TO
THE SEA
1988
Fall. I’m
heading to the west coast to see the whales, something I have wanted to do for
years. I hope this will help me through another winter in Kelowna, a place
where I no longer want to be, doing a job I don’t want to do.
I decided to
stay here one more year, so Jeff can finish school. Another year of cleaning
toilets, washing floors and simply surviving, the years speeding past faster
and faster, and I still haven’t even begun living the life I want to live.
Off to see my
whales! As I enter Vancouver, it is pouring rain, grey and dingy. Depressing
looking. Too big, too busy, no one has any space. I long more and more for
contact with – immersion in – nature, to be living near trees, in close touch
with the earth. Even Kelowna is too big now, and I have long ago run out of
excitement with the scenery. Not rugged or wild enough. Too tame.
Can’t get out of
the city fast enough, pass right through and feel better as soon as I am on the
ferry. The mountains are beautiful, clouds hovering near their tops, as I walk
the deck and take photos.
Lori and Doug
pick me up in Nanaimo. She looks so happy. She is living on the Island in Mom’s
house in Qualicum, which is wonderful of course, acreage with trees and trails
running through them, a glimpse of ocean from the upstairs window. The house
itself is rustic and roomy.
Early next
morning Lori and I head for Tofino. I relish every inch of the drive. It is
wonderful. Cathedral Grove feels like being in Church. Trees so huge and
eternal you speak in hushed and reverent tones, not to disturb the ancient
beings who have survived for centuries.
Through the
mountains towards the sea, clouds drifting across mountaintops, breathtaking
vistas around every corner. This is my country, where I would live if I could
choose. Will I ever get to choose?
Tofino is tiny
and we don’t see much, as we arrive just in time to go out on the tour. We are
on the last trip of the season, a special four hour trip, the girl at the Whale
Centre tells us. A government man from the Department of Tourism is aboard and
wants to see the effects of logging on the area, and the repercussions to
tourism. I am engaged, say little, but take it all in. This girl is my kind of
people, an actove environmentalist. Listening to her passionately denouncing
the clearcutting of the hillsides, she is speaking my language. I am too shy
and impressed to indicate I am equally passionate, but she has my respect.
I am a little
nervous about going out on a zodiac. Fear of the water runs in the family,
since Grandma’s moher lost a five year old son to drowning when she was
carrying my Grandma. However I have missed the ocean so much for so long and
want to see the whales so badly, I consider this an adventure and throw myself
into it whole-heartedly.
Zipping myself
into the survival suit, I feel like I am donning a different life. And we’re
off.
I am ecstatic.
The water is dotted with little islands. Blue heron, eagles, puffins, seals
that make growling sounds - nature abounds. We investigate little inlets, see waterfalls. Shari gives a running
commentary on the area which has been savaged by logging. What remains oif old
growth is under attack. The whole ecosystem is threatened. Not many intact
watersheds left; the majority have been damaged by logging right down to the
creekbeds, which get clogged with debris, threatening the salmon migration.
We see a
mountainside that is utterly bare. They took everything, left nothing but dirt
and rubble; nothing can grow there for a very long time. When the winter rains
come, Shari explains, slides will take more of the slopes down into the
waterways.
Reforestation is
apparently a pipe dream. Nothing can gain a foothold on a slippery sliding
slope. The ugly bald patch stares balefully outward, a huge slash on the face
of the hill. My heart aches. The trees must feel the touch of doom coming
closer. They stand patient as aeons, yet must feel fear at the chain saws come
ever closer. I am sickened and saddened. I feel their pain, the pain of a
planet that is being plundered.
On the way here,
we passed many clearcut slopes. Beautiful B.C.
Shari points to
a beautiful island slated to be logged. I can see how people here become
radicalized.
She says B.C. is
the only place left where this type of logging is still allowed. And all the
lumber gets shipped out of the country. We are destroying our ecology and not
benefitting (other than the lumber companies.) They say even the loggers, apart
from making good money in the short term, will pay for the over cutting by job
loss when the trees run out. The corporations don’t care – they move on. Their
bottom line is dollars. Our old growth goes to make phone books for L.A., or
gets shipped to Japan.
She says the
government is actually subsidizing logging, since it is not financially viable
any more; plus the big companies expect paybacks for the areas to be preserved.
Selling our children’s future. Will they stop when they realize our oxygen
supply is in question? Will they EVER stop?
Shari was one of
those who stood on the blockades at Meares Island, with First Nations,
resulting in Meares being protected. My admiration grows. She is doing
something for what she believes in. How I wish I could live what I believe too,
not just think it.
We see some
loggers on a devastated hillside and the driver pulls the boat in close.
“What’s
happening?” Shari calls out.
The man does not
answer, acts intimidated, seems to know who she is.
It turns out he
is planting grass seed, throwing handfuls of it over top of the sliding dirt,
debris, rocks, fallen logs and rubble. Keeping B.C. green. We erupt in laughter
and putt away.
I am in heaven.
I hang on for dear life as the boat slaps the waves, but I am ecstatic. This
affinity between me and the ocean has gone on most of my life. I have lived on
the ocean only nine months of that lifetime. Not enough.
Some of the
people on the boat are local. Right beside me is a woman in her 50’s who lives
in Tofino. She radiates peace and contentment.
“Open sea coming
up. Let’s go see the whales!” Shari calls.
We are
surrounded by open sea and we are lucky. Yesterday was heavy rain; today is
sunny and perfect. The universe is gifting me, after all the slogging that came
before this one perfect day.
We stop at a
small rock island where hundreds of sea lions are basking. When we cut the
motor, we can hear a strange growly noise. It’s the sea lions and I am
enchanted. They are everywhere, young ones diving; the largest must be a
thousand pounds!
Then we are on
to the bay where the whales are hanging out. We cut the motor and drift. Shari
says her priority is to respect the whale’s space, not crowd them, not come too
close. Appreciating them, but allowing them to be. It is up to the whale to
decide if it wants to come closer.
At this time of
year, September, the whales have been in the feeding grounds for several months
and are by now well used to boats full of people. They also are intuitive and
can perceive the energy of those on board. Some whales become what is called
“friendlies”, and come up to a boat sometimes, allow people to pat and stroke
them.
(This did not
happen to our boat that trip but, one year later, a whale whooshed and dove
right beside a boat I was on and thrilled me down to my toes.)
We sit quietly,
listening to waves lapping gently. Shari says the whales know we’re here, they
can hear the vibration of our voices under the water; they heard our engine
from far off. In fact, the sound of the motor hurts their ears. (One can
imagine the accumulated sound of many boats, and of larger vessels.)
Suddenly the
surface is broken with a great whooshing sound, and we see a huge knobby back.
My first grey whale! It spouts and slowly, slowly, slowly, dives, the length of
its body rippling, its tail slowly rising straight up. Shari says it will go to
the bottom and feed for four or five minutes, about a minute for each time it
blows while on the surface. She says it has a sort of comb, called the baleen,
on the side of its mouth. It feeds by sweeping up great mouthfuls from the
ocean floor and sifting it through its comb, spitting out the mud, keeping the
small krill as its food.
They feed here
all summer, then in late fall go back down to Baja, where the baby whales are
born. Then, come next March, they begin the migration back up the coast, skinny
and hungry, their babies by their sides.
The first months,
they are traveling and feeding but by late fall, as it is now, they become more
social and play more. Many of them who come back every year become accustomed
to human visitors and every season there is at least one “friendly”. This blows
my mind.
There are
several whales in this bay and we enjoy their spouting and whooshing and diving
all around us. Most are a fair distance away, but one surfaces suddenly very
close alongside us, to our delight.
This is the best
day of my life!
Someone asks if
the whales ever come too close and Shari replies they seem to know where the
boats are and have learned these humans are peaceful and non-threatening. They
are not aggressive or inclined to attack or harm anyone. One day though, she
says, one did come very close to the boat. She was a little nervous, unsure
what it was up to, but was not really scared. I know she trusts them, and they
must know it too. When it surfaced, it came right alongside the boat, and
looked in at her with its big, soft, ancient, intelligent eye. She said she was
mush for days afterward.
We enjoy the
whales for a satisfyingly long time, but it is growing dusk, getting cooler. I
am freezing and ready when the driver says “Let’s go home!” I only wish “home”
for me was right here with these people. They are my people. I don’t want to be
a tourist, I want to stay here, go with them to their homes, work with them to
protect the forest and the whales, help them to save what is left.
I don’t feel
like a tourist. I belong here. Home is not home any more and I know now it hasn’t
been for a long time.
I say little
and, dutifully, I go. We have no time to stop at Long Beach as dark is falling
and the road is twisty.
I loved this
day.
*** *** *** ***
When I get home
I end up getting sick with bronchitis, and my illness keeps me off work for a
month. One rainy day when I am already depressed, I watch I Heard The Owl Call
My Name, filmed on the West Coast, and I am sunk. A cold Okanagan winter stretches
before me, a landscape as bleak as my heart feels here, where there is not
enough nourishment for it, where it feels it is struggling for air, going down,
down, down for the third time.
I write Shari a
letter. During the trip she had said there is so much she needs to do, but so far she has been unable to find
anyone who can run the Whale Centre as well as she can. I write how lucky she
is to be living her dream, how I feel about the forests, the whales, Mother
Nature. How it might be presumptuous of me, but I’d like to work for her, that
I wonder if I might be the person she has been looking for. I don’t believe
anything will come of it, but I have to write it.
My friend keeps
after me. Why am I not sending applications out? If I want to get out of Kelowna,
why don’t I take action. But something stops me. Anywhere other than Tofino
would be a compromise and I have spent most of my living living out
compromises, in the interests of other people. I have no more time for half
measures. My life is going by. My spirit will die if it stays here for the sake
of a paycheque.
I spend the
winter wondering. I hear nothing from Tofino. I decide that was a dream. If she
had replied, I would have been scared anyway. I have always been afraid of
risk, needing some illusion of security. Life as a single mom was precarious
enough. Survival was a 24 hour job. I couldn’t just go off tilting at
windmills.
Could I?
Tofino is wild
and small. Perfect for me, maybe, but for my adult life, I have had to consider
the kids first. Twenty-two years so far, with ten years more ahead. By then I’ll
be old. It will be too late for me. I am
not brave enough to go there without something or someone to go to.
Am I?
I always told
myself if I won the lottery, I’d build on the beach. Is it possible I am
considering going there with holes in my sneakers and one or two hungry kids? I
could never survive.
But the fact is,
people do survive there. Somehow.
I have just been
promoted. I am a supervisor, for the first time making decent money. As the
universe has a sense of humour, this is when the letter comes from Shari, in
Tofino. She offers me a job but can only offer part time at six dollars an hour.
Housing is a problem. There is none. But do I want to come?
Yes! Who would
give up a good paying full time job for seasonal part time low-paid work? No
security, right up against my how-will-I-survive panic. But underneath the
panic is the deep recognition that the universe is offering me my dream, my
chance. If I turn it down, it means giving up my dream. And how can I live
without a dream?
My inner voice
knows what I have to do: I have no choice. A huge leap of faith is required of
me, a trust in the universe so profound my life will never be the same again. I
am being asked to listen to my heart, to live the life of my dreams.
And so I do.
*** *** *** ***
LOVE SONG TO CLAYOQUOT SOUND
LOVE SONG TO CLAYOQUOT SOUND
The wild shores
of Clayoquot Sound sang a siren song to me for years before I journeyed there,
before I ever saw the perfection of its beauty. This song captured my
imagination, my heart and my spirit, drawing me to it as surely as a murrelet
is drawn to its nest, a migrant whale to its feeding ground.
And now, years
after my glorious decade in that place, the home of my spirit, I still hear its
call. Always the wild shores of the Sound pull at me, echo through my heart,
here in my home-away-from-home, where I'm remembering, remembering. It's a song
of the clean and pungent air, the salt spray, the sea foam, whitecaps lined up
and galloping into shore like wild white horses, manes a-flying. A song of the
wild waves, roiling and crashing over black volcanic rock, swirling the
maelstrom of The Cauldron at the base of the cliffs on Frank's Island. It sings
through the forest floor, through the tops of giant cedar, in the lift of the
eagle's wing, seabirds wheeling free above shining waters. Its song sings
inside me still. It always will.
Half a lifetime
ago, at thirty, I discovered I was an ocean person, a displaced ocean person,
cast up like a beached whale on the shores of Okanagan Lake. The peaceful lake
with its lapping ripples, fragrant bullrushes and weeping willows, were pretty
and desirable to many. But it was the wrong scenery, the wrong place, the wrong
"energy" for me. If I ever won the lottery, if Mr. Right appeared and
swept me away, Tofino is where I wanted to be swept to. But it would be another
decade before I finally arrived.
I don't just
love nature - I have a spiritual and physical need to live immersed in it. When
I am not, I am homesick, heartsick. When that most essential component of my
well-being is lacking, when it is citified, tamed or domesticated, I must make
do, and am always aware that I am making do. In a perfect world, I would carve
myself a dwelling inside a huge old tree, on the edge of the sea, with only the
wild in sight, no human footprint visible but mine.
By 42, I had
been longing for the ocean for so many years, I began to feel my soul was
dying. I had waited as my three older children completed high school. Now, with
my youngest leaving elementary and about to enter high school herself, I knew
it was now or never. I could not face four more years of marking time, as my
years and energy slipped away. I grew plaintive about it. I keened; I yearned.
Not brave enough
to make the leap myself, I waited for the universe to make the change for me.
And, in its way, it did. My sister stacked the deck. For my birthday that year
she took me to Tofino on a zodiac expedition to see the whales.
It was as
perfect an experience as it could possibly be. The sea was serene, there were
whales everywhere, the day was sunny and sharply etched and, when we turned off
the motor, we were drifting on the same level as the whales. They were so
unconcerned with our presence that one whooshed up right beside the boat,
thrilling me to my toes. Its ancient eye looked upon us; we gazed back in
silent awe, the whoosh of its every exhalation sounding like the very breath of
God.
We passed rocks
covered with sea lions, who barked imperiously at our passage. Beneath a huge
nest in a scrag we sat, staring at the resident eagle, who stared diffidently
back. Little orange-beaked puffins bobbed diligently atop the waves. We
investigated little inlets, discovered hidden waterfalls. And as we headed back
to shore, sunset spread its palette of color before us. It was a dream of
perfection.
The tour guides
were environmentalists; their talk was of saving Clayoquot Sound's forests,
then heavily under siege by the multinationals. They informed us this one
remaining pristine ecosystem, this last stand of old-growth, astoundingly was
being cut and exported as raw logs, to be pulped and made into phone books for
California. Logging was spreading towards the few remaining untouched
watersheds. It was time for those who cared to take a stand. My heart took
fire. Everything I loved, longed for and believed in was here, and I wondered:
why am I not here too?
I did not want
to go home. I did not want to be a tourist, who had to leave. I wanted to go
home with them: the guides, the environmentalists, the ones who got to live
here. I wanted to sit by their fires, join in their talk, be one of them. With
every fibre in me, I knew that I belonged here.
I went back to
the Okanagan, to my hated job, and to a persistent depression as winter closed
in. I wrote a letter, after a few weeks, to the woman tour boat owner who had
guided our excursion. I told her how lucky she was to be living her dream, and
how long the west coast had been my dream. On our excursion, she had spoken
about her difficulty finding anyone who could handle her business as well as
she did, so she could take some time off. In my letter, I ventured to wonder if
I might be that person, if there might be a place for me there.
There was no
reply, the winter went on. The walls closed in and I felt trapped: by the need,
as a single mother of four, to earn a living, to support the kids, by my
aloneness and the seemingly endless struggle. I felt like I existed only to
bring brown paper bags of groceries in the front door. An aware employer
recognized my spirit was faltering. She encouraged me to take supervisory
training and apply for the position of supervisor in another department, out of
the job I hated, away from shift work, into management. I passed the training,
won the position and for the first time was earning enough money to pay the
bills.
The universe,
having a sense of humor, chose that moment to offer me, in the form of a letter
from Tofino, the choice it has always presented: continued
"security", (a huge issue for a single mother accustomed to poverty),
in the job I presently held, or the life of my dreams, and utter insecurity:
part time work at six dollars an hour, but in Tofino where I longed to be.
I wrestled with
the hugeness of the choice, with its uncertainties and all of its unknowns, but
there was little doubt: though needing assurances that simply were not there, I
knew this was a choice about following my heart, or giving up my dream and
staying where my spirit was dying, for financial security. And I knew I
couldn't live without a dream.
Had I known the
difficulties that choice entailed I might never have found the courage to make
the leap. It is good I did not know. It was the biggest trusting I have ever
had to do, and it repaid me with ten years of unparalleled joy.
What I did know
is that, from the moment I first set foot on the beach, that questing, longing,
seeking voice inside of me was stilled. I was at home, the home of my spirit,
the one place on the planet where I belonged. No matter how difficult it was to
find housing (a merry-go-round repeated every several months), or how many
part-time jobs it took to pay the rent, (two or three at a time), whatever it
took, I would do, to feel this
rightness, this boundless joy, this sense of being exactly where I was meant to
be. Home.
The night I
rounded the corner at Long Beach in the rented Budget truck, a gigantic ball of
fiery scarlet was going down behind the hills, the sky a Gaugin canvas. Taking
a moment from unloading boxes into my winter cabin, I saw a whale in the bay -
a whale in my front yard! It was like the universe was on over-drive: one dream
come true, served up brilliantly.
I arrived in
Tofino with holes in the toes of my sneakers. ("I see you didn't win the
lottery," dryly commented one crone I told my story to), and a grin from
ear to ear. For the next ten years, I ecstatically walked through some of the
most spectacularly beautiful landscape on the planet, with daily joy and
gratitude at the beauty my eyes were feasting upon, and a fullness in my heart
that meant more than any amount of money. Happiness abounded there, free for
the taking, for anyone who had the eyes to see.
That first
winter, I lived in a cabin on Chestermans Beach, Frank's Island across the
sandbar out my kitchen window. Every morning as I plugged in my teakettle, I
caught my breath in wonder, looking out on white-topped waves, a scene of
perfect and unimagined beauty, mine to look upon: mine!
My eyes loved
everything they fell upon: treetops poking out of the early morning fog;
beckoning miles of white sand stretching to infinity; herons picky-toeing along
the pebbled mudflats; orcas vaulting by, half a dozen at a time, in the
harbour, to our ecstatic and vocal appreciation. Lone Cone blushing deep rose
at sunset, little boats all heading in to
port through the dancing waves; interestingly attired alternative
lifestyle folk, my kin, drifting serenely past on bicycles, sometimes singing;
the cute little village center, its appearance unchanged even now, after twenty
years of a hundred million tourists clambering over it like ants on an unruly
anthill.
The sights of
home sang a constant love song inside me: rain-slickered, gum-booted locals,
heads bent against the wind, making their way laboriously to the post office
under the lashing rains of winter.
Radar Hill on an
early springtime morning, the perfect beauty of the natural world for 360
degrees, as far as I could see, coupled with my awareness, in that same moment,
of human-created misery playing itself out down below. Pain the other side of
the coin from joy, awareness a two-edged sword.
There was the
Tall Tree Trail on Meares Island, more spiritual than any cathedral, where one
could visit the Hanging Garden Tree, an opulence of ferns and smaller trees
cascading from it, and the Stairway to Heaven tree, a giant fallen uphill, so
you could walk up it, like a ladder to the stars.
I had only to
step out onto the beach to achieve a meditative state, all worries falling from
thought like weathered shakes from a tinder-dry frame. Every day I chose a
different beach, an undiscovered trail. I explored every beloved inch of my new
home.
My eyes sang a
love song to that place for ten years. It sings inside me still. It always
will.
*****
***** ***** *****
And then there
were the sounds of home that played through my days and nights in that
beautiful place, that will echo within me always: rain pelting, pelting through
the mountain passes against the windshield, and the swish-swish-swish of the
windshield wipers: going home, going home! Enya on the car stereo while wind
lashes the tall gnarled pines at the highway's edge, the sudden shock of a rock
flung upwards -crack! - and you slow right down, heart beating fast. The joy of
heading home - Home! The very word a triumphant smile inside. Loving every inch
of the highway that took me there.
It's the sound
of waves coming in like jet planes at South Beach in winter storm, walking a deserted
shore, the only human visible for miles, feeling like an outtake from Jonathan
Livingston Seagull, the film that began my odyssey to the sea so long ago. The
piercing shriek of an eagle's cry, the raucous keening of the seagulls massing
on the sandbar at Combers, before a storm, the bossy caw of the town crows,
begging for scraps on the common. It's the locals dressed as crows, cawing a
"happy solstice" to a crow-loving friend, on their knees around her,
cawing upwards at her laughing face, lit by candle glow. It's the scold of a
bright blue jay on the rough-planked deck, as Mozart wafts through the open
window. It's the midnight storm lashing the creaky cabin, waves in full fury
against the dunes out front, tall branches whipping the cabin wall, I snug in
bed and listening.
It's the
comforting whoosh of the fire crackling to life in the woodstove, the
putt-putt-putt of boat engines pulling up to the government dock, the bell
tinkling on the door of the Common Loaf bakery as you go in out of the rain,
faces all upturned to greet you, wet rain gear sloughed off and steaming. It's
the mooing of the foghorn at Lennard's Light, sounding all night long through
the eerie, drifting fog. And, in the morning, it's the complete silence, that
lets you know the power is out, no humming appliances to muffle the sound of
Perfect Peace.
It is the sound
of my beloved waves, forever advancing and retreating in my heart.
*****
***** ***** *****
When I moved to
Tofino in 1989, the environmental movement was gathering steam. This was
reflected in the graffiti painted on the concrete abutments rimming the sharp
corners and steep drop-offs along the mountainous Pacific Rim Highway.
We village folk
traveled the highway frequently, for shopping, visiting the Big Smoke,
appointments with specialists. Heading out, we might read: Hug a Tree, in huge
black letters crooked against the concrete. Coming home, on the neighboring
abutment, in even bigger letters, we'd see: Hug a Logger. You'll Never Go Back
to Trees!
Cars got into
the act. My little blue Honda had barely visible bumpers under bright yellow
stickers proclaiming: Money is a Drug - Heal the Spirit, and Money Rules - the
Spirit Liberates!
As the
environmentalists grew more numerous, vocal and visible, the Share B.C.
movement rose in response. Yellow ribbons hung from loggers' car antennas. You
could paint Ucluelet yellow, Tofino green. "Share B.C." said the pins
on the lapels of the purse-lipped ladies at the Post Office, who were married
to loggers. "Share the Stumps!" cheerfully responded the greens.
"Logging Feeds My Family" proclaimed the high-up bumpers of the
monster trucks. "No Jobs on a Dead Planet" said the signs at the
blockades.
Then came 1993,
and the Peace Camp - and everything came to a head. Arrests, placards, banners
across the highway ("No More Token Groves" at Cathedral Grove) -
everything was hotting up and no one was backing down. Those early mornings on
the blockades were some of the most
meaningful of my life. This was my cause, and I stood there with my whole heart
bursting.
I had to work
and couldnt be there as often as I wanted. But I was there some mornings,
notably the Women's Blockade. Proud, joyous, strong, we sang and spiral danced
around the roadway, feeling our power, sharing smiles. That night my son
phoned: "Mom, I saw you on the news, dancing on the road with a bunch of
hippies."
Yup. That was
me.
And now, always
will I remember: the gentle sleepy beat of the tom-toms in the early morning
half-light, as we gathered around the campfire; the fear and determination as
the big trucks rolled in, as the official read out the injunction to move off
the road, and the RCMP moved in to make the arrests, people carried off by arms
and legs, to our supportive cheers and tears - the most profoundly passionate
hours and days of my life.
That summer, I
longed to live at the Peace Camp, set up in the Black Hole, an eyesore of a
clearcut alongside the highway. I envied those who had the freedom to devote
that summer to the blockades. I still had a child to support and, by then, a
small mortgage to pay. I wanted to stand on the road, for the trees, for the
planet, for us all and for the future. I had to work. But I was there when I
could be, hours I will never forget.
I was there the
night they closed the Peace Camp down. I sat listening to Dana Lyons singing
"Magic", watching hippies dancing in a clearcut, followed by a
fifteen-minute group hug and am "OMMMMMMMMMMMMM" that seemed as if it
would never end, blissful smiles amid the stumps, smiled down on by a full,
round Grandmother Moon.
I had just
missed the hippy movement of the 60's. Much as my spirit recognized its
affinity to those gentle beings and their unfettered lives, I was shackled,
back then, by a bad marriage, and had
three small children. I lived one block - and a whole other reality - away from
their liberated lives. Now I had this: the best of all. I had come full circle.
Home.
*****
***** ***** *****
More than the
beauty, it was the community I belonged to there that filled me. They told me
ley lines intersect near Tofino in a way that makes it one of the power spots
on the planet, that it draws certain people to it, as I had been drawn. There I
was enveloped by the most highly original, individualistic, creative,
intelligent, authentic, interesting and fully alive people I had ever met, each
with a unique gift to share. My writing was appreciated and supported there as
it had been no where else.
And the
gatherings! A wealth of events through the years, at which you'd overhear
snippets of amazing conversation, marvelling anew at the folk you were
surrounded by. At the Common Loaf I once heard a tourist observe wonderingly:
"They're like refugees from the 60's." We were, and that is what I
most loved.
During my first
weeks there, I attended a gathering on Vargas Island where, for the first time
in my life, there was no light other than from the campfire or a flashlight,
and an astounding panoply, a universe, of stars. I knew the uncertainty of
being utterly cut off from civilization. I was on "Tofino Time" now,
everything up in the air, unfolding however it unfolded. What if the boat didnt
come? But it came, at midnight, and I waded out to it in my shoes, having my
left leg impossibly high to gain purchase over the side of the boat, my other
still planted in the water. Muttering to myself, "It's hard to be a hippy
after 40!" I somehow hauled myself up and over. On that midnight ride, for
the first time I saw bioluminescence in
the boat's wake, all magical, as brand-new as creation, cleaving my past from
my present like another life.
*****
***** ***** *****
There appeared
to be no barriers of age there. At gatherings, all ages were present, and
accepted. At International Women's Day we'd arrive, bearing plates of food:
lush young women at the peak of their flowering, demure young girls just on the
threshold, decorous-enough-looking crones with gray hair - until the drums
began, at which time we were all transported into a spiral-dancing, writhing,
joyously beaming mass of primal womanhood and rocked the roof off. A beloved
and feisty septuagenarian got up to do a boogy-shimmy, to the raucous delight
of the watchers; a young woman read a poem about menstruation that had the room
in hysterics; a belly dance was performed with the knowing eyes and awesome
sensuality of a lush, full-figured woman at home in her body, followed by a
slender First Nations girl draped in white wolf fur, who danced for the
animals.
In the old dusty
theatre I witnessed the best performances I have ever seen. Local playwrights
offered gems about life and love; we watched child performers grow up on stage
from year to year; we laughed and cried and witnessed moments that will live in
my heart forever. And the audience was as entertaining and involved as the
performers!
The best musical
concerts ever were in this place, where the small local audience was so
receptive they rose as a single entity and danced and writhed frenetically to
the music. No polite pat-pat-patting for applause - but an uproarious frenzy of
appreciative pleasure!
I was at home
among my people there. These days, I am not. Now the town inhabits me as I once
inhabited the town. But all of these precious memories still live, within the
chambers of my heart - they live.
*****
***** ***** *****
After 1993, the
tourists began to come in the millions to see this beautiful spot that had
gained so much attention on the nightly news. The tourist dollars pouring in
changed some of the feeling and the flavor of our little village.In terms of
quality of life for the locals, development decisions began to be a lot more
about money than many would prefer, especially we low-income "many".
Everything
started getting tuned up to welcome the money in. Graffitti was no longer
tolerated; abutments remained pristine. The environmentalists directed their
focus, rightly, to the multinationals- the real rapers and pillagers, with
their bottom line: profit. Even the loggers, now unemployed, began to
understand their livelihoods were being phased out by the practice of
clearcutting, right along with the trees.
The banners got
folded up and put away, and my little blue Honda got traded in for a Toyota and
life in Port Alberni. My current bumper sticker says "I Love Tofino".
I am nothing, if not faithful.
Housing in
Tofino has always been dicey. Year round rentals are scarce. Every spring, locals (who work the low-wage jobs that serve
the tourist industry) are asked to vacate any rooms or small suites available
in winter, so they can be used at top dollar to house tourists. I found the
stress of trying to find winter and then summer accommodation too stressful to
endure well, and eventually I managed to purchase a collapsing wreck of a
trailer, which I had to rebuild from the ground up, simply in order to have a
fixed address.
For ten years I
maintained that dance of survival, the precarious yet deeply joyous clinging of
the impoverished, like a marsupial to the underside of a storm-tossed branch.
But I wager I was richer in happiness there than many of the wealthiest
residents of the monster houses along the beach I walked twice daily.
I came away with
the satisfaction that, alone, with enormous trust, I took the risk and made my
dream come true all by myself. I learned along the way that there is no security
other than that which we carry within.
I worked myself
into collapse the years I lived there, and that collapse eventually cost me my
place there. No choice but to sell my hard-won trailer, my tiny foothold on
that place so dear. I left Tofino suddenly, by ambulance, no time for a painful
goodbye. I woke up in a different place, Port Alberni, the antechamber of
Paradise, as unlikely a follow-up as one might imagine.
I had to learn
to be happy in yet another landscape foreign to my spirit. The universe set me
the task, once again, of losing what I most loved, of learning to bloom in the
least likely setting I could imagine for myself, and I have.
Is it better to
find home and then lose it, than never to have found it? Yes, definitely. How
many lives can boast ten years of joy on a daily basis? I was in the august
ecstatic company of Rumi and Hafiz. My soul sang with one constant
refrain: this place is so beautiful, so
beautiful......I am so happy to be here.....and I did it myself....with generous assists from all the gods and
angels, who assist me still.
I miss it every
day, the dream of returning a beacon I fasten my hope to.I want to end my life
there, where I belong, among the loved and venerable crones in that
eccentric-friendly place. I want my bones to rest in the cemetery under the
wind-whipped pines, where the winter gales howl through.
There, I
replenished my stores of peace, the peace I had sought for so many years and
struggled so hard to win: by letting the sursurration of the waves wash through
me, through my ears, my brain, my skin, my being, until I was as calm as the
lull between waves, as strong and silent as the smooth stones scattered along
the ocean's shore, as patient as the sand dollar that spins its house from the
sand and grit around it and carries it within.
Love for that
place never stops singing inside me. I carry those ten years within me like a
gleaming treasure, like a song of love.
I have made a
home-away-from-home here. I walk the forest trails, spindly pine forests draped
with verdant moss and old man's beard, not old-growth. I find water: joyously
rushing green rivers, burbling creeks, sleepy lagoons and lakes, and not the
pounding sea.
I found a big
rock by the lake the other day. It spoke to me. So I rolled it to my car,
heaving it up and onto the floorboards. On this rock I will paint the word:
Peace. I will roll it across the yard and plant it under the rose bush, water
it well and watch it grow in this unaccustomed soil.
In Tofino,
sunset is an event, as in, "Are you going to the sunset?" or
"Catch you later, at the sunset!" All up and down the beach, people
wander down with their after-dinner cups of tea, to attentively witness the
going down of the sun.
There are no
sunsets here. Sometimes some color behind the mountains to the west throws us
leftovers from the spectacular sunsets one knows are occurring at the beach. I
yearn; I long.
Today I will
spend outdoors. Today, the world is burnished gold, fading soft to starshine.
As the colored remnants streak across the evening sky, I will look to the
mountaintops. Behind them, glorious West Coast sunsets are unfolding, these
richly colored evenings. On tiptoe, I can almost see them shining.
GIFTS
When I first
moved to Tofino, there were two things that I most hoped to find along the
beach: a glass float from Japan and an eagle feather. I spent the first winter
in a cabin on Chesterman’s Beach. I combed the beach daily, eyes trained on the
ground, searching for whatever the tide brought in, always hoping for a find.
One morning,
early, when it had stormed all night, I was sitting at the table writing. The
storm had lashed the cabin all night long, and I had heard the waves pounding
as close as the bottom of the dunes out front. I was thinking “After a storm
there is the greatest chance of finding a glass ball. I should go out there and
look.” But the morning chill, the crackling heat from the woodstove, my cup of
tea, conspired to give such comfort, I was loathe to go outside. “Later,” I
decided, and kept on writing.
I did go out, an
hour later, but found nothing. However, in the Co Op later that morning, my
neighbour on the right hand side, Marilyn Buckle, who had lived on Chestermans
for twenty years, came up to report, “Guess what I found this morning, right at
the bottom of your dune?”
“What?”
“A glass ball. A
big one, too!”
“Ohhhhhhhh! I
knew I should go out and look, but it was so cold.”
“Right after a
storm is the time. In fact, some people go out in the storm. Their flashlights glint on the glass; it makes it easy
to find them in the dark.”
I was chagrined.
The universe had brought me my glass ball, had rolled it right to the foot of
my dune. It had urged me to go outside and gather it, and I had not listened.
I kept looking.
When eagles flew along the beach, I stumbled through the driftwood, close up by
the bush-line, as residents told me eagles often dropped a feather there,
underneath the trees they perched on.
No luck.
On a weekend
when two friends from the city were visiting, we were walking along Lynn Road,
heading back to the cabin after a beach walk. I was telling them about the
glass ball, and about looking for eagle feathers.
“I have let go
of finding a feather,” I told them. “I have come to believe you can’t just get an eagle feather. The universe gifts
you with one, when it feels you are worthy.”
At that very
moment, the three of us simultaneously became aware of an eagle feather lying
on the road about fifteen feet ahead of us.
“I believe this
is for me,” I said, bending to pick it up.
“I believe it
is,” one of the women said, looking at me in awe.
The three of us
stared at each other, thunderstruck.
The universe
brought me another gift a couple of springs later, a wild little wolf-pup to
companion my days.
One day I had
moved the stereo and was busy reconnecting all the cables. I heard the puppy
crunching on something behind me. I knew I should check on him, but was too
preoccupied. “Isn’t that cute,” I thought. “He’s eating his pig ear.”
When I finally
turned to look, my eagle feather had been consumed, all but the spine.
Gifts given,
gifts taken away.
One learns to just
be grateful for it all.
*****
THE PRINCE OF COMPASSION
The night my son collapsed with schizophrenia,
I went to the shore. My heart was aching; the familiar, resigned stoicism with
which I had endured so many crises was creeping over me again. I was bracing
myself for certain heartbreak, clinging with all my strength to the comfort I
found in the sound of the ocean rolling in, wave on endless wave, upon the
sand.
Pacing up and down the water's edge, nervous
and shaking, I thought of my gentle, happy-natured son as he had been when he
was little. Jeff was my third child and he was born laughing. His disposition
had always been sunny. In our noisy house of four children, he was my quiet,
sensitive one, the one I felt was most like me.
Jeff is an Old Soul, one who lives gently and
kindly on the planet. He seems to have brought wisdom with him from wherever he
was before he came to me. Now that laughing, tender little boy was a lean,
fragile six-footer, seventeen years old and in the psych ward.
I had just moved to Tofino, and was working to
get us re-established. Apparently, he had run out of my mother's house in
Vancouver, where he was staying for the summer, and raced through the darkened
night-time city streets to the hospital, where he had checked himself in.
He was psychotic, suicidal. They needed me to
sign the consent forms, they could not begin treatment until I came.
*** *** *** ***
I didn’t know what to expect when I got to the
hospital that first time. In the modern front lobby, I was directed to a
separate ancient-looking building across the alley in the rear. The psych ward
was old and dreary, its nicked walls needing paint. I walked up the scuffed and
shabby stairwell. It felt like the abandoned ones lived here. At the nurses'
station, asking for Jeff, I felt them sizing me up, with my frizzy hair, thrift
store clothes and natural temerity. My seventeen year old son had broken down,
was in desperate shape. What had I done to cause it?
I signed the forms. I asked to speak to the
doctor. He would be in this morning, they told me, pointing me down the hall to
Jeff's room.
Peeking into the darkened room, I saw the usual
evidence of Jeff's occupation: clothes and belongings strewn all over the
floor, blankets ripped off the bed, dirty and clean clothes and wet towels all
together in a tangled heap.
On a bare mattress, wrapped, head and all, in a
blanket, was my son.
"Jeff," I called softly, and his
shaggy head burrowed out from underneath the blanket, long tangled
reddish-brown curls in disarray. He smiled, the same big smile, our eyes met,
his same blue eyes. He got to his feet, tall and thin and tousled, and we
hugged. I felt relief. This was still Jeff.
We went down the hall to an alcove, where two
chairs sat by a window.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I couldn’t take it any more. I needed
help."
"I am so glad you did this, that you came
for help. That was a really smart thing to do."
He nodded.
"What do you want them to do for
you?"
"I want them to make it stop."
"Make what stop?"
"It's like a bad trip that hasnt stopped.
I've been scared all the time, it's like living in a nightmare, like being in
hell. There are voices, clamoring and shouting. It's scary."
His eyes turned on me once more. When he was
little, he had the round untroubled blue eyes of an angel. Now they were
haunted by the visions of his waking dream.
"Is it from the drugs?" Jeff had
taken LSD fifteen times the previous winter, but I hadnt found out until he was
already in trouble.
"I don’t know. I haven’t done drugs for
six months, but the last bad trip never stopped."
"Well, you're in the right place." He
nodded. "They'll be able to help you. We'll get through this."
I felt a difference happening, the beginning of
real communication between us, in the midst of a crisis, a breakdown. The son I
thought I had known was now a son who was openly suffering. All the hidden
demons lay revealed. My response was to roll up my sleeves and muster all my
strength to help him. We would talk our way through the next twenty years, but
we didn’t know that then.
For now, my son was tired and retreated back to
bed, pulling the blanket up and over his head. While he slept, I paced the
hospital halls that smelled of urine, stuffy unaired rooms overlayed with
sweetish disinfectant, and waited for the doctor.
I saw people in various stages of depression,
locked within their lonely worlds of pain. People of all ages were making their
solitary treks through the labyrinths of their own minds. My son now inhabited
this landscape. It brought very close to home the fragility and, at the same
time, the incredible resilience of humans, that in a nanosecond, any one of us
might topple over into that land of rain-speckled windows, tears and no more
hope.
My son, brilliant, talented, a writer, a mystic,
a dreamer, a musician, a lover of life, with all of the suffering soul and
sensitivity of the creative artist, had walked the fine line between daybreak
and hellfire, and had fallen. He now paced these drab corridors, his hours
marked out in paper pill-cups, naps and hospital trays. Where would his beauty
ever find a place to land, in halls so bleak and bare? How would his tender
heart find its way home from this land so strange and new? And where was home,
now that I had packed it up and taken it away?
How had I helped to bring him here? And what
could I do now to lead him safely out?
*** *** *** ***
Dr. P. came rushing in, white hospital coat
flying, and raced down the hall. I lurked around the nurses' station while he
ran in and out of rooms, conferred briefly with nurses, pored over medical
files, barked short commands. I hovered, saw the nurse telling him I was Jeff's
mother. He glanced over, sizing me up. Once more I felt my general inadequacy,
both as a parent of a boy who had fallen apart and the responsible adult who
somehow had to deal with the situation.
Finally, he called me into a small office. The
doctor peered at me, shuffled some papers, then began.
"Jeff is suffering from psychosis, a psychotic break. This may or may
not be drug-induced. It may have happened even had he not done drugs. Jeff is
going to need medical help, his medication has to be monitored. First we have
to get him stabilized. There is the possibility that it may be schizophrenia.
In any case, the treatment is the same. We will try him on anti-psychotic
medication and will try to stabilize him."
"I hope this is drug-induced then." I
said. Schizophrenia was an illness of intense suffering. The thought of my
gentle son suffering for months, perhaps years, was too starkly terrifying to
consider. I wanted the magic pill that would restore my son to himself, so we
could all go home and get on with our lives.
It is good we did not know, then, the long road
that lay ahead of us. Life is merciful that way.
I still had questions but suddenly the doctor
leaped up, rushed down the hall and was gone.
I left some money at the nurses' station for
Jeff, then tiptoed back into the room where he lay sleeping. On his bedside
table was a scrap of paper, with a few lines written in Jeff's distinctive,
quirky script, a sort of spikey printing with jagged downstrokes. I read what
he had written and my heart turned icy with fear.
"I am Cloud.
Someone blow me away."
I walked out of the room, down the grey hall,
the grey, drab stairs, out into the noisy brightness of the city street. Life
roiled around me, normal and noisy, while my son lay in the psych ward, his
life hanging in the balance.
I couldnt get the words out of my head and
still recall them frequently, two decades later.
"I am Cloud.
Someone blow me away."
*** *** *** ***
Next day and many, many times after that, I
went back to the hospital, to the city, to Jeff's side. I remember walking down
the rain-washed dark city streets beside my tall, guant, suffering son in his
long black trench coat, as he cried.
"It will get better," I'd say.
"I'm afraid it never will."
"It will." It had to. "I couldn’t
handle it if anything bad happened to you."
"I know. That's why I'm still here."
*** *** *** ***
Jeff writes some of the most beautiful poetry I
have ever read. He composes beautiful classical musical fragments; one wishes
he were able to complete the entire opus.
All of his beauty and loneliness is evident in
his music, all the sensitivity, the genius that somehow got its wires crossed,
his youth which should be flowering, on hold, as he sits alone at his keyboard
and sings into empty rooms where no one hears him.
Except me.
He phones me every day or two, sometimes in
tears, from the psychiatric group home where he has now lived for a dozen
years. We talk, we say 'I love you', we hang up. I picture him, drifting back
to his room, his messy sanctuary, lying down on his bare mattress, bedraggled
blankets strewn all over the floor. Awash on his boat of pain, steering his
solitary course towards a horizon he can’t see, no route markers, no compass,
no hope, no dreams, no one to hold him and tell him it will be all right.
Truly, he is the loneliest person on the planet.
He is as in-the-moment as a small child, and as
lonely as a coyote howling at the moon. He calls himself Jeff Siddhartha Crazy
Horse Marr. He has the gift of appreciating the little things. I recall buying
him a little ninety-nine cent violet and how tenderly he carried it home.
Peeking into the bag, he whispered, " Come home with me." And when we
got there, he made it a little altar with a soft piece of cloth, so its
protruding roots would not be hurt.
Though Jeff is one of the poorest of the poor,
his generosity is legendary. He gifts his brother and sister-in-law on their wedding
day with his favorite Neil Young cd. "My gift will be my ambassador,"
he smiles.
When I visit, I shake my head with mixed chagrin
and pride as we walk down Granville Mall together. Jeff, in his raggedy
clothing, impoverished, cannot pass a homeless person without emptying his
pockets - those pockets I have just filled with hard-to-come-by cash. The
Prince of Compassion, freely sharing his largesse.
"How're you doin', man?" he asks,
dispensing coins and cigarettes. "Take care."
***
ENCOUNTERS WITH WILDLIFE
My life has been
a journey in search of the wild places. My father’s dream – and mine – was to
live completely in wilderness, no man-made structure anywhere in sight, just
water, trees and the denizens of the wild.
When I was
twelve, my parents bought an untamed two acres in East Kelowna for a song, that
is likely now worth a million dollars an acre, so crazy has this world become.
It was rough, stubby land, ideal for back-to-the-landers like us. My mon
gardened intensively there. We drove out frequently on weekends and in the
evenings, to tend the garden. She hoed long trenches alongside the plants and
my dad carried bucket after bucket of water from the creek, and sent the water
tunneling down the furrows to water the thirsty roots.
Somewhere there
is an old video of my small sister and I walking through the tall rows of corn,
and sitting bareback atop a neighbor’s work horse, that pastured on our land in
the summertime. The neighbour also let his herd of cows roam free there. At one
point, my dad built a rough pen and we kept a pig captive. Dad got tired,
hauling water up from the creek. I remember him beating the pig one day for
overturning his water bucket, and how my sister and I cried in outrage, our
sympathies with the pig.
I loved walking
in the hills above that acreage, breathing deeply of the pine-scented air, the
pine cones, the dusty earth, the hot summertime smell of the land. I dunked my
head into the raised tin conduits built upon wooden trestles, that carried
water down to vineyards below.
Sometimes I rode
my bike out from town, to spend time there, which we lost the following year,
no dollars to make the small loan payments. I’d leave my bike at the gate, and
walk up and down the hills, singing. One day the herd of cows watched me with
great interest as I came up over the hill singing. They fell into step behind
me as I circled back down, lumbering behind me, slipping on the slope. I kept
singing, but moved a little faster, afraid they’d overtake me, with their huge
girth and enormous hooves.
My uncle, then a
dashing young man, sold bread for McGavins in those days. He drove a zooty
white and orange convertible. During one
trip through Rogers Pass, top down and back seat piled with bread and aromatic sweet
buns, traffic backed up and came to a standstill. A bear was attracted to the
smell of the sweet buns and came right up to the car, sniffing. My uncle tossed
him bun after bun to keep him happy and outside the car, as he nervously waited
for traffic to resume, hoping the buns would hold out. Cars started moving just
as he was nearing the end of his supply.
In Tofino, my
hippy friend, Paul, lived in a yurt perched on top of a cliff. From his dront
deck, we could sit and look across the top of the forest and right out to sea.
One day he told me about a hike he had taken.
“Don’t you come
across bears on your hikes?” I asked.
“I did once,” he
said. “I came around a corner, and there was a bear standing right on the path
ahead of me.”
“What did you
do?”
He looked
sideways at me, assessing my possible reaction, then smile sheepishly.
“I…..I sang to
the bear.”
I was delighted.
“Oh, that’s so cool! What did he do?”
“Well, I acted
humble, and told him I meant him no harm, and began to sing. I’d sing a bit,
and he’d move a ways, I’d sing some more, he’d move a bit more…..eventually, in
this way, he finally left the path and walked off through the bush and I went
on my way.”
My daughter and
I were sitting in the old Wickaninnish parking lot one afternoon, just getting
ready to let the dogs out of the car for a run on the beach. Someone came past
and told us to stay inside. There was a bear nearby. As we sat there, the dogs
barking hysterically, a bear came out of the bushes and walked alongside our
car, passing us by, given all the noise, and wandering along the line of cars.
At the end of
the parking lot was a small white compact car. There must have been food
inside, as the bear stood up on its hind legs, and began rocking the car
vigorously with his front paws. Suddenly a side window smashed under the
pressure and the bear hopped right inside the car. I couldn’t believe what I
was seeing. I imagined the relaxed diner inside, watching the waves come and
go, serenely enjoying his meal, while out here a bear had taken possession of
his car. We left before the wildlife officer arrived. I wish now we had stayed
to see how they managed to extricate the bear. I imagine the expression on the
ICBC clerk’s face, as she read the claim.
My favourite
wildlife encounter was with my grandchildren when they were small. My daughter
at that time lived in the Lower Mainland. On the way to visit me, they had
stopped at Stanley Park, where they had seen the whales and seals, the bears and the monkeys.
In Tofino, their
big adventure was a boat ride out to see the whales and the sea lions. After
the tour, we took them all to the beach, where they played happily for a time.
As we walked up the path to the parking lot, my son-in-law was ahead of us with
the two older kids. Suddenly, people came rushing down, telling us there was a
mother bear with two cubs on the path ahead of us. We returned to the beach and
Len and the kids soon joined us. They had seen the bears.
After a time,
someone told us the bears had moved off, and the path was clear.
As we climbed
into our van, I noticed five year old Tyler was looking very thoughtful. I
thought he may have been frightened by being so close to the bears. He
obviously was reviewing the day……whales, sea lions, bears…….
“It has been a
big day, hasn’t it, Tyler?”
He nodded,
gravely. “Now can we go see the monkeys” he asked, and we all cracked up.
Stanley Park, Tofino-style.
My favourite
wild creature is my eleven year old big black wolf-dog, Pup. When I worked at
Kakawis Family Development Centre, on Meares Island, one March in the midst of
the winter rains, the maintenance men found him, nearly dead, lying at the edge
of the garbage dump. He had likely followed the big dogs over the trail from Opitsaht
and had gotten left behind. He had been scavenging. But by the time they
brought him to the office, his body was cold and he was nearly dead. I picked
him up and that was it. I had to bring him home.
I tracked down
the owner and asked permission to keep him. They told me he was part-wolf, as
dogs mated with wolves often on the island. Pup, short for his puppy name
Goofypup, flourished, growing so fast it looked like someone was inflating him
with a pump. His huge puppy paws promised he would be big.
He has always
been very Alpha, and maintains a lordly air. The old wolf living inside him
vocalizes importantly, chest puffed out, guarding all movement on the street.
He is resistant to command: “I’ll Do It My Way”. He is highly intelligent. When
he was a puppy, he wanted to bury the opig ears I gave him. He remembered
hunger, always wanted to save something for later. Indoors, the only possible
place was the largest houseplant container. The first two times I came home to
dirt scooped out onto my brand new cream coloured carpet, I scolded him. So when
I arrived home the third night to no dirt on the rug, I praised him lavishly.
Such a smart puppy! Till I looked behind
the planter, where he had carefully scooped the dirt down against the wall
where it was less visible, hoping I wouldn't see it, in order to bury his
treasure. Way too smart!
He hated me
leaving for work. I would run him on the beach early in the morning, then bring
him home and offer him a treat as I left. He would sit in the hall looking at
me reproachfully, and disdainfully spit the treat on the floor. The neighbour
said he howled like a wolf every morning as I drove away. When I got home, he’d
happily eat his treat, and then we’d head back to the beach.
He ran the wild
beaches at least twice a day all year round, all through his puppy years,
accompanying me down every forest trail. He was the companion of my wild
wilderness heart through the happiest years of my life.
Moving away from
the beach and into Port Alberni was a huge adjustment for us both, especially Pup.
We walked all the trails in Port, and still do, just not as often now as we
would like, both being hobbled by age and mobility. He is eleven now, with a
grizzled snout and severe arthritis. On the last wild ramble we had through MacLeans Mill, he ran so hard
his legs collapsed on him and he couldn’t move for 24 hours. Amazingly and
thankfully, he managed to get back up on his feet, but that was a warning to me
that this last pathway we are walking together is inevitably leading to a very
sad parting.
His happiest
times now are when we go to Stamp Falls. He plunges in the river, feeling the
wilderness around him once again. When I point the nose of our car towards the
wild beaches, he grins from ear to ear and paces excitedly in the car, leaping
from front seat to back, to front, whapping my face with his tail with every
leap.
He has been my
most troublesome and badly behaved dog, and the one I love the most, and whose
death I will find the hardest to bear.
For now, I
treasure every day with my wild wolf. We have shared so much that has been
glorious, and mourned together the wilderness we lost. I am saving a quote from
“The Housedog’s Grave”, by Robinson Jeffer, that will honour Pup when he has
moved onto wild beaches on a more
distant shore, where he can once again run freely and joyously, unhampered by
pain:
“I am
not lonely.
I am
not afraid.
I am
still yours.”
***
THE HARDEST GOODBYE
Pup ~ March 1997
~ January 15, 2011
In my lifetime,
I never found the partner I was seeking, but I did find my soul-mate. An
unlikely one, but one who gave me the unconditional love and devotion, the
steadfastness, the intuition, the laughter and companionship I waited a
lifetime for.
This is Pup, my
wolfish companion for fourteen years. He
was my buddy, loping along miles and miles of sandy beaches that stretched
ahead of us forever, the years we lived in Tofino. He accompanied me down every
forest trail, tail up and ears alert for critters in the bush. He was the
companion of my wild wilderness heart through the happiest years of my - and
his - life. His spirit, like mine, found its home on the wild shores of
Clayoquot Sound.
He was, my
sister said, "an unprepossessing little puppy", a little black fellow
with ears too big for his head, off the reserve in Opitsat. He must have
followed the big dogs over the trail to Kakawis, where I worked, and got left
behind. The maintenance men found him, more dead than alive, in the March
rains. He had been living off the dump. When they brought him to me in the
office, his skin was already cold. Another hour would have been too late. I
gathered him into my arms, and I was sunk.
He might have
had a life more to his liking if I had left him on the island, to be a Kakawis
dog, free to roam the island's trails and ocean shore. But somehow he needed me
and I needed him. The staff told me he was from the Chief's dog's litter, and
was part wolf. I got permission from the Chief to keep him.
Then life got
very comical.
He has been the
most hilarious dog. When he was little, I sometimes called him Goofypup,
which got shortened to Pup, a name
difficult for calling over vast distances, and I was always calling him over
vast distances! Sometimes, when he was older,
he was Mr. Dog. But mostly he was Pup.
He adapted
willingly to living with me but, being in large measure wolf, he remained very
Alpha. I, in a word, am not. So there was little doubt who was soon running the
show.
I lured him with
treats to do my bidding, but he got very smart. I'd throw a treat into the car
to get him to jump in. But soon he'd refuse to enter, if I didn't throw the
treat. Argh. When we started disputing who was going to sit in the driver's
seat, I knew I needed to get a grip!
He was highly
intelligent. Had I put in the time training him, he would have learned fast.
But he was so funny and cracked me up so often, I let him be himself. I didn't
want to curb that free wild creature living inside him. It was compromise
enough expecting him to live within four walls, when his spirit so inhabited
the wild.
He hated my
going to work. In those days I was beginning the disability process and working
part time. On the days I worked, I woke really early to take him to the beach
for a run. Even mornings when the winter storms raged and the rain poured down
like a fire hose, he had his run every morning. As I got ready to leave, he'd sit
balefully in the hallway staring at me reproachfully. I would offer him a
treat. He would accept it, then spit it disdainfully onto the carpet. He would
not be appeased.
The neighbor
told me that after I pulled out of the driveway each morning, he would howl
mournfully like a wolf. Poor Pup. I returned at the end of the day to a riotous
and joyous welcome. The treat would still be lying there, and would now be
eaten. Then off we'd go for our second, more leisurely lollop along the beach -
morning and night, twice a day on the beach, pure heaven for me and my pal.
He grew so fast,
it was like someone was inflating him with a pump. He was little for such a
short time.
Then, I had an
eighty-pound half-wild animal at the end of the leash, in a huge hurry to get
to freedom. He hauled me along, heels skidding, for years, calling after him
(to absolutely no effect), "Don't pull me!" Once we went downhill
past the gas station, where some young men were gathered. Pup whipped me around
so fast, in his rush to greet them, that I actually twirled in a circle, the
leash wrapping around me. The guys cracked up. "Never saw that
before!" one said.
He hoarded the
pig ears I gave him. He remembered hunger, and always saved something for
later. One night I came home from work to see he had buried his pig ear in the
hugest plant pot, a great big tub with a fig tree in it. A mound of black earth
sat on my brand new cream-colored carpet. "No! No! NO! NO pig ears in the
planter. BAD!" A second night: "NO PIG EARS! No,no, no!" Pup
looked nonplussed: but where else can I bury it in here?
The third night:
no dirt on the carpet. "WHAT a smart puppy! What a GOOD BOY!" Until I
saw.......he had craftily scooped dirt from the BACK of the planter, down along
the wall, burying his pig ear behind the tree, where I couldn't see it as
easily.
Waaaaaay too
smart!
And goofy!
He led me a merry chase - literally. He'd run
around and around bushes, dodging back and forth, grinning mightily, like the
bad-ass he was, as I huffed and puffed after him, demanding he Come Here NOW!
Passers-by would comment, "That dog is having way too much fun!"
He would run far
away from me along the beach. I worried about other dogs, about him getting lost....until
I began to realize that, no matter how far ahead, he always knew exactly where
I was. He would come back - when he was done.
Once when I was
away, my sister took him for a walk in the forest with her dogs. At one point,
Pup disappeared. She was worried. I'd come home and she would have lost my dog.
She spent an hour retracing her steps, calling and calling. When she finally
gave up, there he was, sitting beside the car, waiting for her - "where've
ya been?"
There were two
things I coveted when I moved to Tofino: a glass ball and an eagle feather. The
glass ball got delivered one early morning after a winter storm. I was
thinking, "I should go look for glass balls," but decided to have my
tea first. Later, at the Co-Op, my neighbor told me how she had plucked my
glass ball from the base of the dune right in front of my house. Argh.
I was walking
along Lynn Road one afternoon with two visiting friends, explaining that I
wanted an eagle feather but how you couldn't just "get" one. "It
has to be gifted to you, by the universe, when it decides you are worthy."
As I was speaking, our six eyes were fastened on something lying on the road
directly in my path. It was....an eagle feather. "I believe this is for
me," I said, picking it up.
A few months
after Pup had come into my life, I was moving furniture around, and was busy
hooking the stereo back up when I heard crunching right behind me. I figured
Pup was eating a pig ear. How cute.
When I finished
hooking the equipment up, I turned around and - you guessed it - he had eaten
my eagle feather, all but the spine. I could only laugh. The universe gives,
and the universe takes away.
He was always
very bossy in the car. We could never get to the wilderness fast enough. The
grandsons remember him barking relentlessly in the car, bark, bark, bark. Once
Lisa and the kids were driving behind Pup and I, on the way to the beach. They
said it was really funny, watching from behind, him sitting beside me in the
front seat; they could see his head turned towards me and his mouth going,
bark, bark, bark, me turning my head every now and then, my mouth moving,
obviously telling him stop barking!
One fellow I
dated, had one comment after riding with him: "Dog needs a muzzle!"
I never would do
it now, but in desperation, I did actually try a muzzle once. Because an hour
and a half of barking each way to the beach gave me headaches. He spent a few intense minutes, flipping
himself around the back of the car, clawing at his nose. Then he - somehow -
simply ENLARGED his snout until the muzzle ripped and he was free. I resigned
myself to the barking. Fourteen years of it:)
He has been a
handful - the most badly behaved dog I ever had, and the one I loved the most.
He needed a firmer hand than mine and I loved him way too much. I so loved his
irrepressible spirit, and always remembered that he was part wolf. I didn't
really want to tame him, had it even been possible, though it would have made
my life easier. He also was a chauvinist. He would listen to men, but not to
women. That always burned me up!
Once I took Pup
and the grandkids to the lake for a picnic........he disappeared to the other
side of the beach, where there was a family setting out their picnic. When I
looked over, there was Pup, hulking across the sand with a long trail of
weiners hanging from his mouth. By the time I reached him, it was too late to
save them. I was so embarrassed.
Another time he
and Ali ran ahead of me onto the beach. I heard a kafuffle and went to see.
There was Pup, dragging a hysterically laughing and on-the-ground eight year
old Ali along the sand by her sleeve
He was born of
the wilderness and the ocean tides. Like me, his spirit was woven into that
place, and was meant for no other. When we had to move away, we both grieved
the wild beauty and freedom we were leaving.
But I was ill,
and the insurance company declined my claim. While I had no income, couldn't
work, and was living on line of credit, the debt mounted. I felt rising panic.
I couldn't afford to wait it out, and didn't think things through. I should
have held on. But I sold my trailer, my toehold on life in that beloved place.
There is hardly any year-round housing in Tofino. One finds place after place
to rent for a few months at a time, if they are lucky. I was too ill for that
kind of stress. And too poor to pay the high rents for anything one did find.
And I had a big black badly behaved dog.
We decided to
spend the winter up north with my sister while I decided what to do. Steph
drove Pup and I to the airport. The vet had given me some sedatives and told me
not to exceed five, that I should only need two or three. Ha!
Two....nothing....three......not at all sleepy. He REFUSED to be put in the
kennel. He made his body heavy like cement. He could not be budged. We got up
to giving the fifth pill. I hesitated, but gave it to him. Finally it was down to
minutes. He HAD to get in the kennel or we were going to miss our plane. A man
saw the two of us struggling to push this big, resistant, feet-planted dog into
the kennel and came to help. The three of us got him in, slammed the door, and
I made the plane. But when we changed
planes in Vancouver, I saw his kennel on the tarmac. There was Pup, STILL
sitting upright, ears alert, watching everything. He would not relinquish
control for one moment.
He was very
stoned when we arrived up North.
Pup loved the
north, loved the cold, the snow, the wild scents on the air. Loved the freedom
of running loose. He never wanted to come in at night. I'd pace up and down the
freezing streets in my pajamas, calling,
while he eluded capture. "Let him freeze, he'll come in when he's
ready," my sister would say. But I couldn't rest inside with him out there
in the cold.
When we headed
home in the spring, we were both ecstatic. By now, I was receiving monthly
benefits. I was going to try to find somewhere to live in Tofino. When we got
off the ferry up-Island, I pulled the car off the road right away, and opened
the car door. He was off, joyously pelting along the beach like a newly
released prisoner.
We found
temporary digs in the basement of a family in Port Albion, outside of Ucluelet,
beside a pond, where Pup ran free, barking at bears and every passing truck,
playing with their dog, Shima, and generally behaving like the bad-ass he was.
But I couldn't
find a place to live in Tofino,
especially with a big black dog. And I was simply not up to the
uncertainty of temporary housing and the stress of always searching for the
next place to live.
We were going to
have to leave our beloved beach. Unthinkable.
I made the
difficult decision to move to Port Alberni. My daughter and the grandkids had
just moved there, housing was cheap, and
it was one and a half hours from the beach - the closest I could afford to
live. These would be my grandma years. The Tofino years were mine. All of the
other years of my life have been for family.
So Pup and I
found ourselves on a city street, cheek by jowl with other houses - and
neighbors who did not relish a loud barking dog next door. There was no fence.
He had to be tied up. A wolf on the end of a chain. It killed me. And it made
him even louder.
I took him every
day to a different trail, to the river, to the lake. He lived for those hours
off-leash, when he could run free and be the wild creature he was born to be.
The other hours, he endured.
He would sit
looking out at the city streets. He was remembering the wild beaches, the days
of freedom, the forest trails, the pond where he and Shima used to play, just
like I was. He needed the wild, like I did, to be happy. It was part of his
soul, his spirit, as it is mine.
We were both
depressed that winter. Shortly after we moved, I had a car accident and wound
up in intensive care. I had a broken collarbone and knew it would be a month
before I would be able to manage Pup on a leash. I arranged for our former
landlady in Port Albion to take him for a month. I was in bed at home and Pup
was sitting by my bed. I knew Sandy would arrive soon, and asked, "Do you
want to go and run and play with Shima?"
He practically
sobbed his response: "Bark! Bark! Bark!" There was a shrill edge to
his bark, nearly hysterical with longing. ":Yes! Yes! Yes!"
He didn't look
back when she came. He leaped out the door and into the van as fast as he
could. Poor boy. He missed Home as much as I did.
Now we were
really sunk. I had totalled the car. We were stuck in the city and I could take
Pup only as far as I could walk, which wasn't far. I was ill. We sought out
every wild undeveloped corner in our area. But soon I had to have another car
to escape the confines of the city. Neither of us could stand not having a
daily dose of the wilderness.
Once we had
wheels again, our rambles resumed. But
it was when I pointed the nose of the car towards Sutton Pass and he knew we
were going home that he would blaze with joy. In his excitement, he'd
"pace" inside the car, leaping from back seat to front, front seat to
back. Each time, his big thick tail would "whap!" me across the face
and I would laugh. Such joy!
After two years
uneasily in town, feeling alien, I bought a little trailer out Beaver Creek,
right across the street from my sister. It was a rural area, and I had a huge
green sweep of land and big old trees around me, a ravine out back and a little
creek. Our spirits expanded. We had
space and greeness again. Now we could manage.
At first we didn't
have a fence and he had to be on a run.
But he had a huge front yard from which he monitored all movement on the
street. He had the scent of nature in his nostrils once again. We still went
for our rambles. Life got better.
The sight of
green and trees all around eased our spirits. While we were not in our true
home, we made a home with what we had.
When my
brother-in-law built a fence, and I finally could unsnap Pup's chain and tell
him "you're free", he ran around in ecstatic circles, so grateful to
have what he should have had all along.
But, in order to be with me, he accepted every change we made, in our fourteen years together. He was my comfort in
losses that broke my heart. He kept me from loneliness, always there to welcome
me home, to lounge by my computer while I wrote, or in the living room while I
watched a movie. To walk by my side through tame forests, while we remembered
the old growth, and the wilderness that coursed through our souls.
He had a way of
giving me affection: he would come up to me, smiling, bend his head down,
pressing the top of his head against my legs, and stand there a bit, tail
softly waving. It was his way of giving me a hug. Beautiful boy.
When we went for
car rides, out to the river or the lake, he remained all excitement, even the
last few times, when it was nearly impossible for him to get back in the car.
Once he had had his portly, slow, old gentleman's swim, and we were driving
home, he'd sit behind my shoulder. This is what any kid in the car loved best.
I always had
treats in my pocket. He'd softly nudge my cheek with his nose, like gentle
kisses. His eyes would be focussed intently on my pocket, his head tilted,
especially if my hand went in that direction. "Awwwwwwww," I'd say,
"little kisses!" thinking how terribly endearing he was being. The
kid in the passenger seat would be saying "look, he's making his cute
face!" His nose would nudge again, more forcefully. And if I took much
longer, he'd take his snout and WHACK me across the cheek! I'd collapse into
giggles.
Cesar Milan
would be horrified. But I could never have mustered the severity required to
undo all the bad traits I had enabled. At some point, we recognized our
failings, just agreed we were in this
soup together, and muddled our way through, with much affection and laughter.
My boy.
Yes, I have been
known to suffer indignities upon my wolf-dog, which offended his wolfish
sensibilities deeply. In his dotage, I recognized the deep embarrassment in his
eyes, and stopped doing it. I never should have. I do not include the shameful
antler photos, out of respect.
Because of his
puppy days out in the March rains, his body was riddled with arthritis for
years. His front paw was lame from the age of seven. Then his hind end began to
give out. The last few times he overdid it, he collapsed. Each time I was
afraid he'd never get up again. Each time, somehow, he did.
I curtailed his
walking to a slow, stately hobble down our street a little ways. He lay on his
side all day long now, and avoided getting to his feet. His legs thrashed when
he slept, his whole body jerking, and when I placed my hand on his head, I
sometimes felt a sort of current, like little seizures. His hind end was barely
there. Just crossing the porch, it would give way on him and he'd collapse to
the floor, then get back up.
He loved his
last snowfall, rolling over in the snow and gyrating luxuriously, like a young
pup.
Even in these
last weeks, he asserted his Alpha nature. When I went out to run errands, he
agitated to be outside. He liked to be on guard when I was away. But in bad
weather I made him stay indoors. He didn’t like feeling confined. I think he
worried something might happen and would have preferred being outdoors, old
wolf that he was.
I blocked the
furniture to keep the dogs off it. They
were both big dogs and a lot of the
outdoors came back indoors with them. With Jasmine, simply putting pillows
across the top of the couch seemed like
an obstacle to her and she stayed off. When I came home a couple of times
recently, I noted the pillows had been TAKEN OFF the couch and tossed onto the
floor and Himself was up on the couch, grand as you please! I had to laugh.
I somehow enjoyed how difficult he was. He
was a wild creature. He agreed to live with me. But he did not surrender his
spirit. I would never have wanted him to.
But things were
getting worse. I was watching for a
sign, to know when it was Time. But I started to worry that, if I waited too
long, he might go into distress, and have to be put to sleep during a crisis. I
heard of a dog who went into seizures and howled for the last few hours of his
life. I could not bear one moment of that for Pup. I would spare him that.
I took him to
the vet. I joked with her that "it took him fourteen years to
mellow". It was the truth. She told me it was the End Time. She said the
"euthanasia" word and gave him some anti-inflammatories to get him
through Christmas. They perked him up and he enjoyed seeing everyone. One by
one, he made the rounds to all his people, gently butting his head against
their knees, tail waving softly. A hug, to say he had missed them.
"Is it
Pup's last Christmas, Mom?" asked Jon. I looked over. Pup looked sad.
"Yes. I don’t say things like that in front of him,
because he's so smart."
But it was.
Pup's last Christmas. With such a sinking in my heart, it was.
I began grieving
Pup's loss about three years ago. I knew it was going to be the hardest goodbye
of my life. The mere thought of it brought me to tears. I have experienced no
love purer or more devoted than his. He was my once in a lifetime dog for
certain.
I began reading
books about dogs, and of course in every book about a great dog, the dog dies,
reducing me to rivers of tears. I was
trying to prepare myself for this passage we all navigate, when we love someone
or some creature - or some place - and have to give it up when we most want to keep
it forever. I can believe the words that each soul has its journey, the path is
the path, the love we had is never gone. But to not have this big black
wolf-dog physically here ? When he has been the biggest part of my life for so
long? I can't philosophize that one away. There was no way to prepare for such
an absence. I knew the hardest goodbye of my life was almost here.
One night,
towards the end, I told him that when I die, I want him to be the one to come
and meet me. He listened hard, as if he understood it was important. He noted all
my tears the last weeks, when he asked for and received all the treats he
wanted, when I put extra special fish or chicken or buffalo on top of his
kibble, told him I loved him so many extra times.
One just has to
remember that the only way out is through. In time, it will get easier, as have
all the other heartbreaks, all the other losses. The one thing we have in
abundance in life is loss.
My other losses
have taught me well and I will never say goodbye to my boy. I'll carry him
within me, like the wind and the rain and the ocean's roar, like the shores we
roamed together all those happy years.
Yesterday in
late afternoon, he barked to go out. Luckily, I had the gate across and the
porch closed off, because as he stepped onto the porch, his hind end began
collapsing, first to the left, back up, then to the right, back up, several
times dizzily around the porch. I called my sister, then the vet. It was Time.
Pup had made the decision.
The vet was
wonderful. Pup, of course, resisted sedation to the end, she had to give him
more. But finally, finally his big head relaxed, and she administered the final
shot and he was gone.
I had a struggle
over cremation. I couldnt bear the thought of him burning. I thought I should
let him return to the natural world he so loved, become one with the wind and
the rain and the earth and the trees and the sky - that ineffable spaciousness
his soul needs, as does mine, that we have both so sorely missed these past
years. But I couldnt bear the thought of putting him in the cold wet ground
which is all running with mud right now either. And I wanted him with me in a
way I could see and feel. If I moved away, I didnt want to have to leave him
behind.
So I walked away
with his collar and leash but without my boy. His remains will come home this
coming week.
I will never
love another creature on this earth the way I love him. The house is silent now
with his absence, and empty. Jasmine feels it too. I am grieving, and shaky.
But it was good that Pup was the one to make the decision. There was no
wondering, no ambiguity. His body could not get back up again. It could not
keep walking. His spirit, though ~ that was right there to the very last
second.
We shared so
much that was glorious, those golden years we spent along the shores of our
hearts' home, the most glorious years of my - and his - life. And he was by my
side as I weathered the pain and losses that followed. He accepted all the
changes, all the hardship, just to be with me. We shared the utter devotion of
two hearts, each of whom was all in all
to the other. We had time, fourteen
years of it, to be together.
He had a good
life. He would have wanted no other.
And now he has
gone on to run wild beaches on a farther shore.
This is where we
will leave my poor old boy, once more beside his beloved beach. I hope to dream
of him, young and joyous and running once more along the water's edge. As soon
as the roads are clear, I will be heading there, to walk there on my own. If I
can bear to, I will scatter just a small handful of his ashes there, where his
spirit - and mine - belongs.
I know all dogs
go to Heaven. And I believe that God is kind. So I'm counting on seeing Pup
when I cross over. He'll lead the way, because he always has, along a forest
trail that winds down to a long, long beach, with Forever in the distance. And
we'll begin the next leg of that journey, together once again, with the sound
of the sea in our ears, and the fresh wind hitting our faces, as we're heading
Home together.
Good night,
Sweet Boy. But never -never- Goodbye.
[Note: It is now
over five years since Pup’s death, and I still mourn. I am still brought to
tears whenever I read something I wrote for him, or when I think of him and the
hole he left in my world with his passing. I have never grieved any being so
deeply or so long. Along with Pup, all of my losses seemed to hop aboard the
grieving train, not least the loss of my wilderness home in Tofino. How I miss
it, and my wild boy, and those glorious years we spent in our hearts’ home.]
*** ***
SILENCE
She had spent
many years looking outward for answers. Friends, trying to help, told her,
"It isn't in books, it's in you." In her twenties, she heard the
words, but did not understand.
She remembers
walking down Granville Street when she was twenty-seven, looking out with sad
eyes from her painful inner prison, and a man passing by in the street smiling
at her, saying, "You just have to get over that mountain. Just get over
that mountain." His look was so kind, so understanding, she still
remembered him all these years later. Even books said, "It isn’t in books,
it's in you." She had read many books, hundreds, about the spiritual
journey. In her bed late at night, she trekked the Himalayas, completed the
pilgrimage along The Camino, followed the path with heart. Life is our greatest
teacher, so eventually it all began to make sense.
She had always
been on this journey, but now she knew she was on the journey. She began to
trust herself and the universe, to follow her heart and her inner voice, take
the scary leap into the unknown, trusting "either there would be ground to
stand upon, or she would be given wings to fly." Her forties were a
healing decade, when she stopped running from and came home to herself. Then
finally, finally, she flew.
It was the
biggest trusting she had ever done. But her inner voice told her it was now or
never. Her dream was to live on the wild west coast. If she didn’t go now, she
never would, she would have to give up her dream. And she knew she couldn’t
live without a dream. She left behind a hard-earned promotion, good salary and
long-awaited "security", to move to Tofino, for twenty years her
dream; she now, finally, brave enough to make the terrifying leap, the biggest
trusting she had ever done. It was here she learned the only true security is
what we carry within, here she released her fear of tomorrow in order to more
truly savor the goodness of today.
Here where she
found her home, the home of her spirit, within the forest and along the ocean's
shore.
All her life she
had sought peace and now it came to live inside her, spreading out in that vast
interior silence where there were no words, no thoughts, no worries. It lay
beneath the daily ups and downs of those around her, so she sailed serenely
past, compassionate and caring, but holding fast to her hard-won inner
sanctuary, to her peace, to her joy.
She had always
been a lover of the sky, the forest, the wild places. And here, surrounded by
beauty, she was so consciously grateful for it all. Her life was one long
"Thank You", that ran through her days, a counterpoint to the
distracted busy world around her. Thank You for the sky, for the brilliance of
sunshine on fresh green leaves, for the eagle's flight, for the tiniest
intricate bouncy patch of moss upon the forest's floor.
Joy was her
companion as she walked along the beach, the susurration of waves washing over
her spirit as balm, smoothing away any concerns that had been trying to hitch a
ride.
Her eyes feasted
ecstatically upon islands, herons, old-growth forest, frothing white caps
crashing over rocks, the dip of the eagle's wing. Lone Cone staunchly guarded
the friendly harbour, blushing a deep rose all along the ample bosom of Meares
Island, as the sun fell upon it at the close of day. She lived in contented
self-sufficient silence for ten glorious years, needing, wanting nothing more
than nature's bounty, splendiferous around her, so rich and various, free for
the taking, whether human eye was there to appreciate it or not. So much life!
She watched
others chattering, talking, sparking ideas off each other, laughing raucously,
needing to mark their presence with sound, and she smiled, needing no words,
content to simply Be, to look about feeling a deep-seated harmony, a kinship
with all beings dwelling in this power spot, her spirit come home at last to
its right place.
There were times
she recognized that she had created a sometimes lonely exile; times she longed
for what others had, a partner to share the wonder of the journey. At the end
of ten years of self-imposed exile, she opened herself to the universe once
more, ready to accept the change that she felt coming.
The change was
illness, inability to work, and she was forced to leave her h0me, her place in
the world, to move to a more affordable town inland, away from the smell and
sound of the sea that she needed, she needed, to be happy.
The universe set
her the task of losing what she most loved. She rolled up her sleeves. She made
a home and a life, once again; she learned to be happy where she was. But her
heart longed every moment for the sea and there wasn’t a day she didn’t miss
it.
Then she thought
she had found the love she had sought forever. Her formerly withheld heart
blossomed, opening farther than it ever had before. The white knight turned out
to be play-acting; the romance she had believed was real turned out to be a
farce. When it ended, she knew her heart was finally whole. She had been brave
enough to risk, had loved and lost, once again emerging strong and whole and
ready to move on. The worst had happened, and she had made it through.
Traveler, there is no path. The Way is the path.
Now here she is,
poet, star dreamer, inner voyager, moving through her days one by one, opening
each like a Christmas package all unknown, under the shiny wrapping a wealth of
smiles and unexpected tears, of shining moments of sudden grace, strung like
winking stars across a canopy of midnight sky.
She knows all
about 'the silence from which all music comes.' It is her dearest friend. Out
of that vast silence, that knowingness, has grown the full authenticity of who
she is, at home within the universe and her Self. Through it, the beautiful
symphony of life plays like a mellow clarinet on a summer afternoon, warm and
golden, counterpoint to the full brass band of daily experience, all
inter-woven and living mellifluously together in her heart.
*** ***
A SENSE OF
WONDER
The blue sky has
gotten me through a lot of hard times in my life. I remember my mother asking
how I could handle it, right after Stephanie's father burned down my store on
the ocean, taking off once he found out there was no insurance money. ("I
took you for everything you had," he told me, departing.) "You've
just lost everything you had in the world," Mom said. And I replied,
"But we're still all alive, and there's still sunshine and trees and blue
sky. All the things that mean the most to me are free."
I have started
over from scratch many times in my life. It almost feels like each decade was a
completely separate lifetime. Except for the sense of wonder that accompanied
me through each decade.
I remember
sitting with my grandmother at the end of her life, when she was mourning all
that was no longer in her life. Looking up at the dark trees, breathing in the
scent of the forest, I felt a grateful connection with earth and sky. Grandma
watched me wistfully, then said, "You have great joy in being alive, don’t
you?"
It is with a
sense of wonder that I have walked through my life, and this has been one of
life's great gifts to me: that even in the most painful moments, my heart has
still lifted at the sight of trees poking through wisps of fog on
mountainsides, at the way clouds look against a backdrop of blue sky.
It all seems
such an incredible gift, that the earth should be so beautiful. That there are
canyons of red clay, towering blue peaks topped with white, forests full of
magical peace, and always the murmuring sursurration of the sea.
It was to the
shore I went the night my son was diagnosed with schizophrenia. (More about him
soon. He is the one now battling cancer - life is not very fair.) The rhythmic
sound of the waves calmed me, reminded me of trust, spoke to me of his and my
connection to something much greater than our little lives, reminding me that,
even in times of difficulty, just being alive is a gift. In the tidepools at my
feet, in small universes full of life, tiny critters were as intent upon
fulfilling their destinies as I was mine.
Life brings us
pain, but it also teaches us that whatever life sends us, we can handle. (Do we
have any choice? Only in how we respond to challenges.) Especially if we
believe something larger than what seems to be happening is really going on.
"There is a larger landscape than the one we see." (author unknown).
Along with the pain, life brings us so many moments of wonder, so many minor
miracles.
When overwhelmed
with grief, one's instinct is to shut down from pain that feels too intense to
be borne. But in protecting ourselves from pain, we prevent ourselves from also
fully experiencing joy.
It is in opening
up to the whole of life: the joy and the pain, the difficulty and the wonder,
that we live and grow. I finally learned that, when pain comes, I must push my
way through it and out the other side, trusting it is part of the process, part
of going forward, meeting life with the best one can muster. My work now is to
be as perfectly present as I can be, to open myself to whatever work the
universe has yet in store for me. J.C. Lucas, our West Coast First Nations
medicine man, once told me, "Your greatest pain is your strongest
medicine," and it is true. When we say yes to the whole of life, we begin
to see a myriad of miracles strewn along our everyday path.
It seems as
deeply as we sometimes sink in sorrow, just as high may we also rise in wonder.
When we learn to trust the universe, and ourselves, to know something a lot
bigger than ourselves is in charge, to surrender, to let go and to flow, our
eyes open to the little gifts: herons picky-toeing along the mudflats, eagles
perching regally atop scraggy branches, friendly ancient tree trunks breathing
peace through layers of moss, crimson sunrises, and always always the sky like
a backdrop, a protective cover, a canvas across which cloud shapes more perfect
than paintings roll serenely by. In the midst of pain and struggle, hardship
and difficulty, moments of grace lift the heart, connect us with all that is,
remind us to raise our perspective to encompass the big picture, and to merge
with the whole grand scheme of things, rejoicing that we are alive in this
moment in time, able to breathe and fully savor the wonder of opening our eyes
one more morning to the beauty of a brand new day.
Life is a
journey fraught with many tears, but the reward for it all is wonder: when I
stood on Radar Hill one early springtime morning, I could see heartbreaking
beauty for 360 degrees around me, the perfect and utter beauty of the natural
world. I thought of all that was going on below: humans creating havoc for
other humans and for the planet. My heart aches for humankind, even while it
lifts at the sight of sunlight consecrating trees, and birds wheeling freely over
shining waters.
Once I learned
to trust, to listen and to really see, life became such a magical journey that
I now believe, whatever pain still comes, my solace and support and joy will
always be nearby, in the natural world that brings gifts each day to those who
know how to receive them, and in connection to the spirit world, that is as
equally all around us and within us.
I walk each day
in gratitude for the gift of being alive, in acceptance and in peace, because I
trust there is something leading me the way I'm supposed to go. My heart is
humbly grateful to have reached this part of the journey, so open to the
wonder, the incredible beauty and blessings I am surrounded by every day.
I feel my spirit
rising to meet life, all of it, the joy and the pain, human frailty and
heroism, peoples' hearts reaching out, hungry for simple kindness and goodness.
I find myself wanting to applaud the courage of those who keep on striving to
find their way, as I did, through the darkness and closer to the light. I want
to tell them: "you're almost there - the other side of that coin of pain
is incredible joy. It is waiting for you, up ahead."
My prayers are
almost all prayers of gratitude now, for having come this far in finding peace.
I love the fresh hopefulness of each new day breaking, all fresh-smelling. I
cant see over the mountain range that separates me from the wild shores I love,
but in my memory I see crimson dawn rising over the inlet, love the sight of
windswept sandy beaches which each morning bear different patterns from the
waves of the night before. I remember my feet fairly dancing as I stepped out
onto them to walk to the rhythm of the waves.
It is enough and
more than enough to fill my heart to the brim, riches beyond measure, free for
the taking. And I feel myself, not falling, but rising in love.
*** *** ***
L’CHAIM
[This is a
fictionalized account of true events I read about some years ago, about two
people who met at a grief group, and wound up falling in love and getting
married. And the toast made at the end is true as well. That is the bare bones
of it. I invented the story around that situation. But way cool to think this
stuff really happens!]
At 3:17 on a
snowy Thursday afternoon in November, Keith Govnell fell over his desk, dead of
cardiac arrest at thirty-eight. Life as his loving wife and two small children
knew it was appreciably over at that moment.
When they came
to tell her, Karen reeled with shock and incomprehension. How could this be?
Keith had hugged her goodbye that morning, smelling cleanly of toothpaste and
his morning shower; they had shared a casual, distracted smile over the heads
of seven year old Jared and six year old Samantha, who were noisily slurping
their cornflakes and arguing over toast, and he was out the door. Not long
after, his wife shepherded their children out to the car, dropped them off at
school and proceeded with her normally busy day.
That night,
after the police, the hospital corridors, the watchful nurses, the weeping friends
and relatives, after all of that horribly unreal day was over, she stopped
short at the door of their bedroom, staring at their marriage bed. It now was
an alien and unthinkable country, and she retreated, closing the door quietly.
For months, she would
sleep on the lumpy couch with a fuzzy blanket clutched around her. She wondered
if she would ever be able to sleep in a bed again. She was certain she would
never again know the joy of being loved, of being held, of sharing the
comfortable darkness and the coming of a new day with a lover and companion,
her soul-mate. It was cruel enough that Keith was dead at thirty-eight, that
they had had only eight short years together. It was harder to be her, to be
left, knowing her one shot at love, at happiness, had been and gone. It was for
the children that she remained; for the children that she got up every morning,
to make breakfast, to start them through their days, the days that yawned
emptily before her to infinity, the days she would somehow have to live
through, breathe through, move through until her useless stump of a body
finally withered and she could be with Keith again.
A huge weariness
moved in, once the initial raging grief subsided, and it took up residence in
her sluggish limbs, her hopeless heart. It looked out through her tired,
unseeking eyes and the absent smiles and abstracted murmurings with which she
tended her children. Sometimes she'd give herself a shake; the childrens' grief
and loss was terrible too. They needed her, desperately. Then she'd clutch them
to her, almost too tightly. Sometimes their hot tears mingled together and
after, as she dried their faces and wiped their noses, she'd promise them - and
herself - that they would make it through. But how were they supposed to do it,
without Keith?
***** *****
***** ***** *****
At 9:54 on an
icy Sunday morning in December, on a country road not twenty-five miles outside
that same small city, not far from the farmhouse she shared with her husband
Peter and three year old daughter Ariel, Amy Fraser felt the icy road under her
tires suddenly fall away. In an instant, it had turned into a glassy skating
rink. It felt like the wheels were toboggans that lifted, lifted her off the
lip of a mountainside, then spilled and spilled her back to earth again,
landing in a pillowy soft cloud of snow, brilliant with sunlight, where she
could feel and hear nothing at all but peace.
Afterwards, as
people repeated what had happened, how fast it had all occurred, they hoped the
velocity of the crash had spun her safely beyond the physical realm on impact,
sparing her any pain.
Pain was what
was left behind for her loving, grieving husband and baby daughter. Peter lost,
in that instant, his wife, his companion, his best friend and childhood
sweetheart - his soul mate.
Bewilderedly
clutching his uncomprehending little daughter, rocking her back and forth in
the nursery chair Amy had used nightly to rock Ariel safely into the land of
dreams, Peter's broken heart spilled out of his eyes and ran down his cheeks.
The house, once so alive, was suddenly big and dead around him. It was so
still, he could hear the whispery breath of his sleeping child, the eeriness of
the wind outside, every creaking stair and dripping tap and ticking clock. So
silent he could hear icicles cracking under the eaves. As he stared emptily and
unseeingly into the dark night, he wondered how on earth they were going to
make it, Ariel and he, without Amy, who had been the laughter and sunshine of
their days, the light of both their lives.
***** *****
***** *****
Hovering close
by, concerned, Amy's radiance was tinged with a hue of sorrow. She now
understood life and death were simply other sides of the same reality. But her
heart ached for her sorrowing husband, her innocent and unaware baby daughter,
for the depth of her husband's grief and for all her child had lost.
Wistfully, she
held back from her journey beyond. She could not quite let them go, could not
move forward, until she knew that they would be all right. Through the days
afterward, through the dark nights of the soul when Peter's tears soaked Amy's
pillow, clutched tightly against him in the suddenly cold and too-large bed,
beside him as he walked gravely up the aisle at the funeral, (the same aisle
they had walked, so radiantly in love, at their wedding), and in the evenings
after, when Peter had put his child to bed and sat staring into the lonely
dark, Amy was never far. She longed to comfort him, to help him understand that
her love, her presence, was still there, that this was all part of the plan,
the divine mystery whose meaning is only revealed at the end of life.
Another had made
the crossing with her; a young husband and father had suddenly found himself on
the other side. He, too, was worried about his wife, his children. Because both
had left so suddenly, so abruptly, in the time of their lives when they thought
their married lives lay long before them, there was unfinished business keeping
them attached to the earth plane. There was no way to say goodbye, with their
loved ones in such pain. These two remained close behind the veil that
separates the living from beyond, and in moments whispered hints of their loved
ones' presence comforted Peter and Karen, in a way neither could fully understand, yet neither would deny.
***** *****
***** *****
At first Karen
wanted only to be home, hidden from others' eyes, from the rushing, bustling
noisy world that was an affront to her, whose life had stopped that snowy
afternoon. She drew the children close to her; the winter evenings found them
all sharing the firelight, talking quietly, eating popcorn, watching
television.
But by spring,
she saw her children responding to the natural life cycle that was happening
outdoors. And she knew she needed to get some help to pry her out of her
armchair, out of her reverie. She would never get over Keith, never. But she
had so many years ahead of her. She needed someone to help her, to tell her how
she was supposed to manage to live out the rest of her life.
She was quiet
and shy for the first while at the grief group. There was a vast tiredness on
her face and living inside her body, the certain knowledge that her last chance
at love had been and gone, too soon, and somehow she had to make something
survivable out of the years ahead. One night she finally found her voice and
spoke.
"Help
me," she asked simply. "Help me to know how to keep going."
And somewhere,
not very far away, her husband smiled.
***** *****
***** *****
Finally one night
he opened the door of the church basement meeting room, and peered inside at
the circle of people. They made him feel welcome, they gave him coffee, they
didnt expect him to speak and so, of course, in time he did.
Beyond the
shadows, two spirits smiled at each other, and linked hands.
***** *****
*****
For six months,
Peter and Karen related particularly to each other, as they shared their
journeys of love and loss and tried to find their way back to life in the
support of the circle. Their situations were so uncannily similar, their losses
so recent. They were feeling so many of the same feelings. And they both feared
they would never love again.
Then Karen found
herself one day thinking, idly, "He's cute!" and, stunned, a moment
later: "If I think he's cute, then I must be alive!"
Peter saw the
great weariness in Karen's face and told himself, if it had to be, he preferred
being the one to be left. He would not have wanted his wife to go through what
Karen was going through. He began to feel protective and supportive, wanted to
help ease her burden.
By the time the
first year anniversaries of the deaths rolled around, they had begun to meet
for coffee to talk more privately, to share their common experiences more
deeply than they cared to in the group. They began to phone at odd hours, when
the nighttime lasted too long and was too empty; each knew the other would
understand as no one else possibly could.
It was in the
second year that they knew that they would marry, would make a home for the
most precious legacies their mates had left behind: their children.
It was a wedding
of joy and tears. Each of them remembered other faces coming towards them down
the aisle; each of them loved the new face in a way that somehow included the
beloved former partner's face and encompassed all the pain they had passed through
together. It was like the four of them somehow united on this day, all
soul-mates.
When Peter rose
to thank family and friends for their support through these hard years, he told
how their coming together brought he and Karen the companionship and strength
they both needed and wanted, and brought Jared and Samantha the father and
Ariel the mother the children so badly needed.
As he raised his
glass in a toast to his bride, the tears came and his voice caught in a sob, as
he added, "I raise my glass also.....to Amy and to Keith.......for gifting
us with three beautiful children and making us a family. To Life: L'Chaim!"
"L'Chaim!"
everyone echoed, clinking lifted glasses, wiping away tears.
Somewhere, not
too far, two spirits glided ever so softly away.
***** *****
***** ***** *****
[Waking from the dream........and holding the vision of change: my relief at the election of Barak Obama 2008. I am referring in this piece to my frustration with George W. Bush's presidency, not to the United States as a whole, or its wonderful people, so many of whom are striving to do great work in the world. And to my relief and joy when a new era was ushered in, one that inspired my hopefulness to reawaken. I cried with joy the night Obama was elected. This piece was written in the days just preceding voting day.]
It is November 1963. Our grade twelve class is facing a TV at the front of the room. There is not a sound, not a rustle, as we watch the horse and cart carrying John F. Kennedy's casket clip-clop past his wife and two small children. Jacquie is wearing a black veil, her beautiful face stricken yet composed, bearing her loss with dignity and a controlled grace. Caroline stands on her right, face heart-shaped and bereft. On Jacquie's left, John-John, three years old, in his little overcoat and short pants, raises his hand in a final salute to his father, a gesture that rips out the hearts of the nation.
In the 60's, we are the generation that thinks we will change the world. And we almost do, until, one by one, all of our leaders and visionaries are assassinated. Our generation rises up against the status quo and challenges it all: the capitalistic ethos, the war in Viet Nam, the "do as we say, not as we do" code we've been raised by. We have some visionaries capable of painting on a bigger canvas, dreaming a bigger dream than the world has dared to dream thus far.
Gandhi preceded us, standing against an entire nation to free the shackles of his people. One small man, armed with a walking stick and wearing a loin cloth, faced down the might of the British Empire, insisting that they let his people go. His assassination in 1948 is the first shot heard around the world, the first of all those that will follow, extinguishing our luminaries one by one, till it seems that a blanket of darkness and greed has covered the planet.
Before JFK's assassination, it is Camelot. Girls wear flouncy dresses; young men in sports coats slick back their hair and act debonair. There is a young charismatic leader in the White House, we still have some innocence, and everything is possible. Till the unthinkable happens, he is slain before our eyes on television screens across the land, and Camelot comes to a crashing end.
April 4, 1968. Martin Luther King has a dream. His words the night before he is assassinated reveal a prescience that he will be killed. "Like everyone, I would like to live a long life. But I'm not concerned with that. For I have been to the mountain top and I have seen the Promised Land." One more shot rings out in the early hours of the morning. One more leader with a golden tongue, far-reaching vision, and a thirst for justice slain.
The late 60's, the early 70's: in San Francisco in Haight-Ashbury, in Vancouver along Fourth Avenue, the young throw over the traces and are exploring everything: counter-culture, drugs, rock 'n roll, Eastern philosophy. Peaceful long-haired smiling beings in unbelievably interesting clothing stroll up and down the streets: "Peace 'n Love, baby, Peace 'n Love." There are anti-war protests during which the Law of the Land clubs, beats and even shoots young college students for saying the war in Viet Nam is wrong. (A fact borne out indisputably some years down the road. We apparently learn nothing from this.)
Then along comes Bobby. With him as President, the world WILL change. Until a morning in June, 1968. I am a young wife then, in Alert Bay. I am standing in my living room, stunned by the words coming from the radio. It cant be true, but it is. My husband has just come home from work. He looks at me. Disbelievingly, I tell him, "They've shot Bobby." By now, the dream is dying. We are hearing its death rattle. Everyone who dares to dream is shot, gotten out of the way, by those who cling to power and corruption and wealth literally to the death.
But John Lennon's voice can be heard above the despair, trying to light the way of the broken-hearted: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
The music of John Lennon, Elton John, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Carly Simon, Simon and Garfunkle, is the backdrop of our days in the 70's. We know the world is out of whack, but we have been soundly trounced, our voices silenced with clubs and guns. We are just living now. The world has taken a turning down a darker path, with LBJ and "Tricky Dick". Conspiracy theories abound, and personal survival replaces changing a world that refuses to change. We pour our angst into music and poetry and bad love affairs, sullen soldiers marching to a beat we have not chosen. Still trying to believe.
Then on December 8, 1980 a final shot rings out: a crazy man has shot John Lennon. Thousands pour into Central Park in disbelief, standing vigil, holding candles aloft, tears pouring down their faces, as they sway back and forth to "All We Need Is Love."
It is too much. Our heroes, our visionaries are all dead and we are left with Darwin's nightmare, a system gone awry. [Darwin's Nightmare is the title of a documentary about the fishing industry harvesting perch in the Nile. The predatory fish, which has wiped out the native species, is sold in European markets, while the local natives starve.]
"The dream is over, what can I say?" mourns John's voice from beyond the grave. Our dreams all got derailed somewhere along the way.
But the more gunfire tries to silence those voices, the more powerful they become. Years later, all of those fallen heroes still live, their voices ringing out from television and computer screens, and across the airwaves. There is a catch at my heart and tears close by, every time I hear the words and music of those long-gone dreaming days when we lost our round-eyed innocence. Just this way are their dreams still alive, in the hearts of aging baby boomers looking out at a world gone mad, where profit is everything, even at the potential cost of humanity's survival.
It is 2008: now we are looking back at horrible wars fought for highly selective political or financial purpose: Operation Desert Storm, Operation "Enduring Freedom". [This piece is about the political will to wage war, not about the brave men and women who are sent to do the fighting. May they all come home.] War is everywhere, on-going troubles in Ireland, Kosovo, Georgia/Russia, the Middle East, Africa. Tibet has been suffering, ignored, for decades. No enduring freedom for them. The USA administration, so quick to leap aggressively into areas where oil or political might is at stake, and even the United Nations, supposed upholder of international rights and freedoms, responds with indifference when genocide and starvation are wiping out the peoples of Rwanda or Darfur. Then the towers fall on 9/11, a wake-up call if ever there was one.
"Could it be," asks Arundhati Roy in The Algebra of Infinite Justice, "that the stygian anger that led to the [9/11] attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government's record of commitment and support to.....military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide (outside America)? Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease......If it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings....." This is the best explanation of 9/11 that I have read. Someone in Oprah's audience, a woman of colour, said, "Everyone acts like one white death is more tragic than the death of a person of colour, those who are dying in the millions, ignored by the world". And it is true.
John Lennon's assassination marked the death of an era. The interval since has been one of corporate greed and pillage, and military intrusion. [Again, political decisions, with the young men and women of the nation sent to pay the price.] The world's image of the US has changed from the cool conquering heroes and fly-boys who arrived during World War II as liberators, to a bully whose presumption is "might makes right."
In the 70's, we were like rebellious adolescents. We got slapped down, went underground for a time, and learned some things. We are much older now, and wiser. We can dream a farther-reaching dream and take the steps to get there. Dream, all crones and creaky-jointed crooners, of a global community working and aligning itself in harmony with Mother Nature, harnessing the power of wind and water, sharing the resources of the earth among ALL its peoples, and bringing us into a kinder, gentler dawn. It's time to dust off those broken dreams, put on our granny glasses, and conjure up the thousand years of peace that has been prophesied and whose time has come. These turbulent times are the birth pangs of a new age trying to be born. I remember the words of a song sung by three gentle B'hai musicians back in coffeehouse days:
"It is time to turn swords
into ploughshares,
to till the hearts of all men...."
There is a struggle between dark and light forces all over the earth right now. But I remain stubbornly hopeful. After a long time without heroes, a young man of the people has risen up once again with a vision of Change. And we are so ready for Change! In Barak Obama, I feel a hope I havent felt since Bobby Kennedy was shot. But I fear for him. In my experience, every time a man of the people has risen up, he has been felled and silenced. I dont even want to put that thought out into the universe, but I pray for his protection.
The last election was a stolen one; this time the groundroots swell of the common man backing Obama tells me we've had enough of political corruption and war-mongering. It is the dawn of a new epoch: we must turn towards the light; we cannot continue in the darkness. Each one of us can add our small flicker to the growing light of conscious choice we are being called upon to make. We are beaten down, but it is not yet too late to redeem the dulling of our bright beginnings, of what we owe to our fallen heroes, who were the voices of our youth.
We need more than a dream now. We need a shift in human consciousness across the planet so far-reaching that every peasant in a hillside cave in Afghanistan, every suffering monk in Tibet, and every starving orphaned child in Darfur can feel it. This planet is battered, distressed and storm-tossed. Mother Earth is expressing her displeasure, and we are reaping the whirlwind. But my heart refuses to give up hope that there will be a turning in the tide of human consciousness. It may take a series of disasters so stark that humans have no choice but to return to more modest and sustainable living. What will it take to make the warring factions all over the world put down their guns and feed their people? Einstein said he was certain of one thing: "If World War Three is fought with nuclear weapons, World War Four will be fought with rocks and clubs."
But "Love is the intuitive knowledge of our hearts," says Marianne Williamson in The Age of Miracles. And I believe. "As we look, not back nor forward, but deep within, we see a light that is greater than the darkness of the world, a hope that surpasses the understanding of the world, and a love that is greater than all the hatred in the world....we shall follow that light........toward humanity's rebirth."
As I sit on my porch swing, exhausted by the life I have lived and the losses I have weathered - that we all as a species have weathered collectively - I add my small push to shift, shift! the tide of universal consciousness out of the darkness, into the light of a brand new day. It is happening now, consciousness is rising across the planet so strongly we can feel it! Each of us can add our own little nudge, to tip it over the edge into a vast global awakening. We can dream a kinder, fairer world into existence, we can speak it, we can pray it, we can march for it, we can vote with our feet and our pocketbooks for it. With enough of us holding the vision, it isn't too late yet to change the world.
[2016: Barak Obama has come to the end of his eight year term, during which his hair turned grey, the Republicans fought against every single thing he tried to do, racists were forced to endure an African American Presidency. Even against such determined opposition, Barak achieved a great deal and never for one moment lost his integrity. He was the best President ever seen. But the recent election of his successor has horrified us all. The narcissistic racist fascist Donald Trump will succeed him, and has said he will swiftly undo everything Obama has done. He promised to drain the swamp - he is doing so by appointing racists and scary men with hard dead eyes, setting loose the swamp monsters on the halls of power. Times are going to be very bad. Looking at his soulless eyes, I wonder if he is the 666 who was prophesied. A battle of Dark and Light for supremacy is upon us. I do believe love and light live in more hearts than does darkness. But darkness is in control now, and it is going to have itself a field day. My best hope is that they don't press the buttons to blow the world up. It is horrifying, having watched the slow struggle of the civil rights movement, to see us set back seventy years with this election. Dark days ahead. I take my candle to the cave within, to ride out the storm.]
*****
ALL THE CHRISTMASES THAT WERE
There were all their faces, alight with laughter. Kids playing, mugging for the camera, on jungle gyms, kids grinning out through tire-hole climbing structures, one face atop another, Baby Steph's at the bottom. (Steph's favorite saying in those years, "I'm NODDA Baby!") Lisa and Jeff, hanging upside down by one leg each from the metal bar. Jeff and Steph, upside down, butts to the camera, grinning at me through their legs. Jon with his first rocket, his new bike. Jeff and Steph, arms wrapped around each other, beaming. Jeff and Steph dancing, faces aglow with gaiety too great to contain. Lisa leaping into the air, her mouth square, shrieking her joy at getting the new clogs she wanted so badly. Jon fishing, hiking in the hills. Jon on a roughly made raft, poling up the lake in the dead of winter. Lisa cuddling a furry little pet under her chin, looking out at me with the same tender softness I see in her eyes now, cuddling her children and her kittens.
Jeff and Jon, plastic swords over their shoulders, marching to the Tolkien-like music we liked during the winters when my boys read Lord of the Rings over and over. Jeff, tongue hanging out comically, his head inside the mouth of the concrete Ogopogo statue in City Park, pretending he was being eaten by the monster.
All of us, up Knox Mountain, flying kites. All of us strung out in a row on bikes. All of us, having a winter picnic at Gyro Park, on ground white and frozen, grinning around our sandwiches.
And there were all the Christmases, when somehow, against all financial reality, magic happened in our living room, and the wee hours of Christmas morning resounded with happy shrieks and an orgy of gift-opening. Now, I dont know how I did it, but I remember my determination that, on that one day of the year, my kids would have everything they wanted. I was trying to make up for the daily reality of never enough money, never quite enough food, and all the times they wanted things in silence that they never asked for, because they knew our lack of money by the contents of our fridge.
That Christmas magic lasted until my children hit their teens, when our family hit rough waters for a time, as my children, like so many others in our culture, explored drugs, alcohol and paths that took them away from me and any magic I might have available. As I looked at their shining pre-teen faces in their childhood photos, my throat closed over a massive lump. Back then I could still afford some slight protection, or so I thought. I had not yet learned the most perilous years lay in wait, full of dangers far scarier than my childrens' worst childhood nightmares. We entered those years all unaware and unprepared, and none of us came out unchanged.
What the photographs don't show is the other side of Christmas, in the years when my heart was aching for my children, when I valiantly traveled from place to place among them, bright smiles and cheerful wrap belying the hidden pain, the unspoken words one or the other of us was not yet able to say. Christmas lost its magic for me in the years when one, then another child was away from home. And in the years when Jeff, who had been so sunny a youngster, made his lonely trek through the valley of despair.
I remember the Christmas concert just after one daughter left home too soon, and the depth of sadness in my heart as I watched the two children who were still with me, up on the stage, the sweet sound of children singing piercing me through like a lance. Another year, another Christmas, and Jeff, wan and pale, fragile and shaky, singing, "If I were a swan, I'd be gone," me encouraging his talent and brilliance, at the same time trying to anchor him to this earth he had such a fragile hold upon.
Some Christmases we spent scattered, me traveling among my children. Some we spent together, with inner distances between us we didn't mention, our smiling faces turned to the camera, our secret pain and memories within.
There are no photographs of the fractured Christmases, when one or another of my children was either physically or emotionally distant from me. No photographs mark the passage of those years of family unraveling and reweaving. Years when I learned to stay steady, cling firmly to my life and carry on, believing in the power of a mother's patient, steadfast and unconditional love - and the healing powers of the passage of time - for my children to make their inner journeys away from and back to me.
Back and forth among my children, as the years passed, I traveled, a little shorter, a lot tireder, a little more frazzled with every year. Encouraging, supporting, trying to instil my belief that life holds goodness and wonder, once we are ready to let go of all the pain and anger. For a time, I thought the Christmases we once had only came with small children, and were forever gone.
For years, I could not bear to look at the photos of those young faces, knowing the pain we all had gone through since. There were years I took photos mainly of scenery and tried to heal myself from all the pain and struggle. This year, I could look. This year was the right time to give my kids back some of those happy childhood memories, remind them there were many more good times, much more laughter, than there were times of trouble. My children are on their own journeys now, have made peace with the past, embracing the present. They have become spiritual warriors on the path, and I watch with amazement as they grow in strength and wisdom and awareness.
And I am traveling too, to the season of my life when time becomes more finite, when there is a lot of looking-back and summing-up, and a wish to pass on all the love and gifts and wisdom one possesses while one still can.
While my children were growing, I was growing too, willy-nilly. I did some growing whole, some seizing of the reins of the galloping wild horses that were my children in those years. There were times when I felt utterly unable to cope, knowing I had no choice but to cope with what felt like too heavy a load. When my children were floundering in treacherous waters, somehow I had to encourage them from shore, throw life preservers, guide them through. Sometimes I felt like I was hanging onto the tail of a lashing dragon, that was wagging me.
Those years have been past a long time now. My children are no longer children. Some time back they assumed the reins and tamed their own wild horses.
Grandparents' faces are now missing around the table; I find myself the matriarch and wonder how it all happened so fast. But my children have been coming home for Christmas most every year, and some of the magic has been creeping back into that day.
This year was like the Christmases of old, kids disappearing under a sea of wrap, their heads poking out above the surface. Jon, giving me the best gift he could possibly give, in gifting his brother with a ghetto blaster to play his music. Jeff, more himself than he has been for years, hovering protectively over freshly caught fish Jon was cleaning, like a young priest, telling them "It will be okay." Lisa filling with new strength and awareness of her worth and rights as a human on this earth. Strong enough to hold her head up bravely under judgment of those who do not know, in order to live her truth. Gifting me with the honesty of her communication. And Steph, who for so long sought family outside of our family, now finding it with her brothers and sister, as the family mends and re-weaves itself, growing strong at the broken places.
My friend had a similar Christmas with her children, her son giving her the verbal gift of forgiveness first thing Christmas morning, reducing her to tears. As we remark on the growth we are seeing in our children and the richness of our new relationships with the adults they have become, she remarks, "Our Christmases will be different from now on. Consciousness is growing in our children." And she is right.
I feel less lonely on my path, now that my children are so strongly embarked on theirs. Our conversations have new depth and recognition. I feel proud of the journeys they are making: journeys of the heart, of finding and living their own truth, pride in their heart and courage and honesty.
This year, once again, we took the Christmas photo. This year I have been privileged to see deeper into who my kids really are. We are now a mutual cheering section for each other, comparing notes on the journey. My health is faltering, exhausted from decades of pain and struggle, wanting only rest. But my childrens' light is outshining the darkness, and it is an awesome sight, brighter than any yuletide tree. Sometimes I feel it is by my sheer determination that we all made it safely through.
If I had one gift I could give them, it would be the incredible gratitude and reverence I have always felt for life, just life. I made it through my dark times because there was always blue sky and sunshine and trees, filling my heart with thankfulness, to keep me looking up. I wish that heart-lift for my children, that gift of seeing past the pain to all the beauty that is available when we are ready to reach out for it.
Sometimes I worry about what might yet lie ahead, knowing I dont have the strength for much more. I feel the deep tiredness of someone who has been paddling hard for a very long time, whose arms are growing weaker. My mother's heart is always braced against the possibility of unbearable pain should anything happen to any one of my children.
This year the difference was, my children were helping me and easing things for me, instead of me helping them. And it felt really good, like we're all in this together, so maybe I dont have to be so strong any more.
As I lose strength, my children are gaining it. With what pride I survey my life's work: four very special young people who emerged from some very perilous passages with the mark of the wayfarer on their faces, and knowledge, compassion, caring and strength shining from their eyes. We are now journeying together, and can recognize and applaud each other's progress as, by different paths, we find and live our truths. The cycle of life is turning, turning, and my children are leading me Home.
*****
NO GREATER WORK
[written in 1963, when I was 17.
This story won me the opportunity to study to be a missionary
at Gonzaga University, but I was too scared to go that far from home. Sigh]
To the sailors who panted and grunted under heavy loads of tobacco and flour between the ship deck and the dock, Paul was just another dark-skinned youngster in another of the small , identical ports lining Africa's coast.
It was a necessary chore to tolerate the villagers' silent curiosity as they deposited the heavy bags and hastened departure from the dusty, broiling shanty towns. If any of the swarthy shipmates gave a passing thought to the emotions behind the blank, staring little faces, it was brief wonderment at how man could live in such neglect, with even the forces of nature in apparent opposition to comfort.
But for the most part, the "darkies" were soulless in the minds of the sweating men who hastened to feel the cool breezes of the sea on their faces, after suffering land's merciless African heat. They were just faces; too many of them after years of entering and departing port after port, each with its row of dark, thin faces.
Once in a while one of the younger men might notice something beyond idle curiosity spark in the eyes of one of the poorest of the children. The youngster stared at the ship and the men from another world with an indefinable expression which set him apart from the others. That was Paul, though no white sailor ever learned his name. Perhaps he would receive a passing smile from one of the red-cheeked young men, or maybe a British copper, and he would treasure the memory and rush home to share it with his mother. The too-infrequent coin would immediately be spent on maize, such a welcome relief from the long weeks of boiled greens, interspersed with the tough meat of an occasional bush rabbit.
Paul was one of Father Meyer's brightest pupils. Father had been teaching the unfortunate victims of western Africa's poverty for twenty-three years. Upon arrival, he had had to remind himself sternly that every man possessed potential. The lethargy of the community's people was the result of generations of impoverished hopelessness. Little by little, attacking its spirit through its youth, Father Meyer managed to enkindle a slow-starting interest in development, which eventually became an effort to meet the struggle for survival with something akin to hope. For the most part, the villagers were still slow to begin projects but, once underway, they carried them through with methodical doggedness.
But once in a while the accustomed pattern was broken by a flash of greatness glowing in the heart of one of his people. It was this too-infrequent promise of better things for the village that made the long aching struggle worthwhile, Father told himself.
There was Paul. The boy was like a gentle, misting rain after a long drought in the soul of the priest. In his teens, even now he was revealing an inner fire that lifted him above the plane of his classmates and predicted a higher path for him.
When the priest first noticed him as more than one of a crowd of parishioners, Paul was about seven, all knees and elbows in his small garments. A stumbling discoverer of education, he was enthralled by the knowledge of God, and grasped readily the history of Christ. He loved to pray. Though his speech was halting, and his heart raced ahead of him faster than speech could ever hope to follow, he always prayed aloud. He used to sit under the trees in the schoolyard and mumble them in his groping fashion.
One day a few of the older boys approached him and derided him for "acting so holy". Paul was no longer uncertain. Remembering his teacher's description of God's love and understanding, he stood up to them and talked away their jeering smiles. When one of the boys told Father in confession, the priest knew that Paul must someday do something great.
He began to take special interest in the boy, and there formed between the two a close friendship. Paul was eager to learn, and his teacher unfolded visions of the world beyond the dusty port. Given the use of Father Meyer's library, Paul displayed an aptitude for reading which amazed the priest, who began to send overseas for more of the slim volumes.
As the boy's knowledge grew, a dream formed in the heart of the older of the two: one day Paul might become a priest and fill those he taught with inspiration that comes to few in a lifetime.
He never spoke of it to Paul. The boy must find his own way. He hoped it would not be away from Port Luwali. There was much to do within he village, and he would dearly love to have an assistant until such time as he could hand over his duties completely in his old age. The world needed Paul, but perhaps his peoples' need was greater. And Paul had so much to give.
Father Meyer sometimes wondered if he was thinking as much of the villagers as he was succumbing to to fear that the world might break Paul's fire. He was so sensitively balanced. Yet the boy displayed an extra strength that others seemed to lack.
Paul lived with his widowed mother in one of the row of huts lining the road between the village centre and the church and schoolhouse. They lived in stark simplicity, but the boy seemed unaware of the lack of possessions. As he grew older, he came an uncannily capable hunter, and often a small forest animal balanced their scant menu. They worked a few dry feet of garden which produced limp, drying vegetables, and a few pecking chickens, deriving existence by their own means, were traded regularly for staples at the market place. For the rest, they depended on the generosity of others. Often Father Meyer sent basket from the rectory. Perhaps an unexpected windfall would come to them and they would be presented with a small gift of maize or wheat. Their meals were seldom satisfying, but they never failed to ask God's blessing on their scanty meals, and thank Him that they had food for their table.
The priest was relaxing in his swivel chair at his desk in the rectory office, on one of the warmest days of a lingering African spring. He supposed he was getting old. Far too melancholy for his own good, he told himself. He remembered another spring when Paul was a young lad, first showing gleams of promise. But Paul was almost seventeen now, and would soon be choosing a profession. The village had never looked lovelier than it did now, peering through its fringe of new green foliage........
"Father...?"
"Oh, Paul. You caught me daydreaming. Have you finished your book already?"
"Father, I've been thinking of something for a long time and couldn't decide. But yesterday....."
"Whoa! My mind is old and lazy, Paul. How about starting at the beginning?"
"Sorry, Father."
The boy's face was very grave and the priest had a sudden premonition of what was coming.
"Father, I want to be a priest."
"I had hoped and prayed that you would find it in your heart to be a priest, Paul. Only you can make that decision. You seem well fitted to the life."
"For a long time, Father, I have felt the vocation was right for me, but other things distracted me. There were doubts...."
"There always are. Take it easy, fellow. Straighten out your thoughts........"
"Father."
"You want to tell me something and you don't know how. Why not just say what you're thinking and we'll try to make some sense out of it?"
The boy's look was shrew. He was apparently making a quick analysis of the priest's disposition, attempting to anticipate the forthcoming reaction to his words.
"Father, yesterday I went down to the river's edge. I felt tired, so I lay down and was listening to the river. I heard a rushing noise, that first sounded like the river, then became greater, and I knew it was something more. I felt a silver light around my eyes and couldn't open them, and...."
"Go ahead, Paul."
"A Voice said, 'Paul, you will be my priest.' Then it seemed to me I woke from a deep sleep, but it was so real I knew it could not have been a dream."
The priest massaged his chin, looking thoughtfully at the few littered papers in his letter box.
"Well, if it was a dream, it contained an important message," he finally said slowly. "Do you believe you had a vision, Paul?"
"I don't know, Father. It felt like I was asleep, and I was tired when I lay down.....But if it was only a dream, would that make its meaning less important?"
He's looking so desperately for the answer to his big question, the old man thought.
"God uses strange ways to tell a person what He wants them to do," he said. Help me to say the right thing, he thought swiftly. "Saint Paul was struck from his horse and blinded when God called him. He could have sent you this dream. Do you feel He answered your question about a vocation? Are there any doubts left? Or could it be you thought about it so much you brought the dream on yourself? You must be very careful now."
"I am sure God answered me, because just before I lay down I asked Him to help me to know somehow. I was so confused, my thoughts didn't make sense even to myself. I know now that no other life would satisfy me.
"Then I am very happy for you. If you are sure, then I can tell you from the beginning that I have been hoping it for you. You have been given a lot, and I am glad to see you wanting to give back."
A sudden change came over the boy's face, and a frown puckered his features.
"There is a problem we haven't touched..."
"I know what you're thinking, but I wanted to get one question figured out before we tackled another."
"The money...."
"There is a seminary in Kuwana Kara."
"Father, I....I want to go to Canada."
"Canada! Why?"
"You have told me so much about the training there. I feel it is the place where I am supposed to go. I can't say why; it's just a feeling."
"Well, actually the only difference in cost would be the passage. If we can somehow raise the seminary fee, I will pay your way there as a gift."
"Father, you are too generous!"
"I wish I could do more to show you how much I believe in you.. But the parish is poor. Our people are barely existing. I am afraid that the fee will have to be raised by yourself. It will be hard, but the reward is great. You will make a fine priest, son."
Paul was loathe to leave his mother alone but when he told her, she wept for joy and told him to do what his heart told him and that would be the greatest blessing she knew. She would make her way alone.
"We will always be together in spirit, my son. You have always been the joy of my life. I only wish now that I could help you somehow. How will you get the money?
"Today I applied for a job in the mines at Tawana. I need three hundred dollars. In two years...."
"The mines, Paul! Not the mines! The danger! The women of the village say their men get a sickness from the dust and cough and cough into the morning hours. Find another way, Paul."
"Mother, this is the only way. There are not enough jobs for even the men with families. A boy just finished school can hope for nothing more. I will go to the mines for God, so I can be his priest. I know He will help me."
"I will pray always that He will help you, my son, and keep you well and safe."
Paul was given a job in the mines. Day after day he climbed down the shaft with a last lingering look flashing to the sky before the ground swallowed him. With the other men, he grew accustomed to the thin film of grey dust which daily settled over skin and clothes with a ghostly shine. He established a slow methodical rhythm in the swinging of his pick, pausing only to take a damp, grimy handkerchief from a pocket, to wipe away the rivulets of perspiration which streamed down his face, and kept his palms perpetually clammy. At night, he left the mine's dampness and entered the gentler blackness of night.
He walked slowly, enjoying the cool breezes, his eyes always on the stars, pin-pricks of glitter against black velvet. His body grew accustomed to the weariness which settled over him like a cloak when work ended for the day. He felt it, but put the thought of it away from him.
Life became grim routine. There was nothing in the world but the endless flat black stone, and the sound of chipping and scraping. While he worked, he thought little about the reason behind his efforts; it was in his solitary night-time hours that he thought ahead to the future, and dreamed his dreams of cassocks and rosaries. And his heart would soar towards Heaven as he watched the months near a year. Soon he could go home for a brief visit!
Sometimes, as he worked, a great hope and a sort of stilled joy filled his heart, and he began a slow hymn, keeping time to its beat with his pick on the rough stone. His fellow workers would look at each other and shake their heads in passing wonder. Oftener than not, though still with mirthless amusement, one or two of the older men would join the chant, until soon the black pit would echo with the melancholy strains.
In the offices above, the sound came faintly to the supervisors. Halted in their duties, something akin to pain clutched their hearts, and they exchanged grave looks, before silently turning from the poignancy. There was work to be done. Someone had to do it.
It was during that first winter that Paul contracted the bronchial cough. Soon his cough joined the others during working hours. His nights were restless with sleeplessness brought on by ceaseless coughing. In time, a mild fever accompanied the cough. His eyes became ringed with fatigue, which accented their burning directness. Always gaunt, he now looked alarmingly angular. Feeling the need of haste, he cut down on meals to add to his savings. There was no one to advise him. His friends were his fellow miners, as skeleton-like as himself, and as plagued by the wracking cough. His landlady tried to admonish him; often it was the plate of buns or bowl of hot soup he brought to his room when she saw he had little else that kept him from starvation.
He had no outer interests, just one engulfing aim. He lived his days in the mine, then went home to scratch together an inadequate meal, then fall into bed, aching from exhaustion. Daily he prayed that this time might hasten to an end. Sometimes he cried from sheer longing to have it over but, mostly, he was too tired.
After a year he went for a visit. He noticed deep lines around his mother's eyes and mouth. Her hands were gnarled and wrinkled. She had an alert air, as though she listened constantly, and her eyes were forever seeking out something beyond her vision.
She fell to her knees before the crucifix and cried, when she saw her son coming down the road. When he arrived, she was at the door with a welcoming kiss for him; she carefully avoided mentioning her perception of how he had altered.
Father Meyer was arranging the altar for Benediction when Paul entered the back of the Church. The boy knelt briefly in the back pew. Turning to reach for an altar cloth, the priest noticed a dark shape in the shadows but paid no particular heed. It wasn't until the youth rose and started down the aisle that he gave the young man sharp look. It couldn't be......
"Paul! You're so....How are you, my boy? You look tired. Working hard will do that, all right! Into the sacristy, where we can talk. Bless you, Paul. You're home!"
Smiling, he put his arm around the boy's shoulders and suppressed the sudden exclamation that rose to his lips at their sharpness. The priest tuned Paul to him, placing a hand on each shoulder and admitting to himself a sudden gripping fear as he looked at the hollowness of the face before him.
They were both fighting emotion. Their closeness was such that the reunion caused hot tears to lurk behind their eyes, and a strangled sound prefaced their first words.
"Do you have to go back, Paul?"
"I have one hundred and fifty dollars, Father. I'll go back for one more year."
"Very brave, son. You will be better for this experience. Sit down and tell me how you've passed the year. Your letters were infrequent, but I know you were busy."
Too busy, he thought. Yes, this is making a man of you. Just don't let it kill your fire.........
Father Meyer placed the money Paul gave him into a carefully locked safe in the rectory. He told the boy he would try to add to it.
"I'll turn the parish inside out, Paul. Surely, in some corner people have an extra penny for a good cause. I'm going to try to get you away from the mines before another year passes."
As he saw the faint smile his plan brought to Paul;'s face, he admitted to himself he was terribly afraid. He never betrayed anything to Paul but his complete faith and hope. The day after Paul's visit, he mounted his bicycle and went to see Dr. Luke.
He had already seen Paul.
"The boy's mother was worried. It wasn't hard to bump into him in the village. There is indeed reason for haste. Is he quite determined to go back to the mines?"
"Quite determined. I want to shorten the time, but the parish is so poor. There is so little I can do....."
"If he goes back, we shall have to watch him die. He is too sensitively constituted to take the constant strain and fatigue. It is only his extraordinary selflessness that keeps him going. But even that cannot preserve health. I fear this is serious."
"I was hoping it was only fatigue, that time and rest would cure him. If I kept him here for a few months...."
"I must examine him first, before I can say, but I am fairly certain this is an illness that cannot be arrested at this late date. He has suffered too much damage in a year."
Paul saw Dr. Luke. The priest's worst fears were realized. Paul had the dreaded mine sickness, so far advanced that it could not be reversed. Father Meyer took Paul back to the rectory.
"Sit down, son."
Nervously, he rattled a few papers on his desk and then sat down himself. Jerking his hand impatiently, he rose again and walked to the window. Looking out at the sunny meadow, he attained a measure of calm, and finally asked, "What do we do now, Paul?"
Strange, Paul thought. I should be asking him that.
"Father, the doctor says the illness will eventually wear away all my strength. It is too late to cure me, is that right?"
"We can postpone it by complete rest, Paul. I don't want you to despair."
"Father, it will eventually get to me. What good would I be to anyone if I just sat down and waited for the end?"
"You mean....?"
"I want to go back to the mines. Don't protest! That way I could add to my seminary fund. I cannot sit out the rest of my days waiting for something to happen. I can't let my first year go for nothing. And if something does happen....perhaps another boy could use my money to realize his vocation. At any rate, God will have his priest."
"God forgive me, Paul. You know courage, but I don't. You'll never taste defeat."
"My one hope has been defeated, Father. It was the inspiration of my life. But there is a reward. I can still serve God, if not as His priest, then as a servant who sacrificed all for his Master."
Once again, Paul's footsteps turned towards Tawana and the mines. This time when his mother kissed him goodbye, he tasted the salt of tears on her face. Some inner feeling warned her that she might not see her son again, and the ache left a hollow feeling where her heart used to be. She watched his bent back shaking frequently with the hacking cough, until he reached the bend in the road, and turned to wave back at her. The tears coursed down her face as she responded. He blew her a kiss with his fingertips, then turned away. She watched him out of sight. "May God go with you into the black mine, my brave son, and guard you from all pain."
Eight months later, a messenger brought the letter to Father Meyer. It was written with a shaky hand, with the firmness of the penstrokes dwindling, becoming at the close a childish scrawl.
Dear Father,
The doctor here tells me I haven't much time left. I held out as long as I could, and can't yet believe I didn't make it. I prefer to believe this is just a setback. Only fifty dollars more.......I enclose my pay so far. Put it with the rest. Four more months and I will be home again. Perhaps a year of rest, and I will make Canada after all. I want my cassock so badly! Father, if this doctor is right, then you will remember my plan for the fund. I promised God a priest. I must keep that promise.
Tell my mother she has all my love. I feel too tired to write more. Bless you for all you have done for me.
It was signed illegibly. Father immediately locked the church and set out for Tawana. When he arrived, the landlady was just leaving Paul's room. She burst into unrestrained weeping as she saw the priest, and managed to tell him the boy had died that morning.
"His last thoughts were of you and his mother. He asked God to bless the miners, then he called your name, and his mother's. He was smiling...."
He brushed past her and closed the door on her sobbing. The boy's face was exalted, and peace had finally conquered the jerking cough and stilled the aching chest.
Poor fellow, you never gave up, did you? Paul....no need for the Last Sacraments. Bless you, son.
Then, groping for his vestments through his tears, Father Meyer began the recital for the Last Annointing, and laid to rest all of his brightest dreams as he looked for a last time at the lined young face, for so many years the promise of his inner greatness. For the first time in his life, he felt old.
APPROACHING THE INNER CAVE
[workshop with Elizabeth Crawford, The Hero's Journey]
APPROACHING THE INNER CAVE
All of my young life, I lived surrounded by mercurial,
volatile and crazy people. Life was too loud for my spirit, which shrank
inward, curled up, quiet and voiceless, in my inner cave. I read books as
escape and as maps, seeking a pathway out of pain. I knew there was a world of
gentle, soft-spoken, loving people somewhere. I just had to find them.
When I walked in the door of the coffeehouse, there they
were: Brock, the only man I knew I could trust, after the trauma I had been
through. He was beyond gender: kind, intuitive, offering me a picture of myself
I had never seen, that took me some time to believe. Jeane, soul sister, shy
and wise, and quietly always there. Roger, with his guitar and his songs in the
candle-glow, who showed me the type of man I should have been with all along.
These three became my guardians and supporters then, and remain so to this day.
In the coffeehouse glow, I saw people who understood how to
live gently on the planet. I began my education in healing and becoming a
healer myself, in living with the nature spirits, in seeing the bigger picture.
There was so much more beyond surviving. There was laughter, joy, growth, and
thriving. There was wholeness enough that it began to spill over onto others. I
recognized others trapped in their inner worlds, and gently led them out, as my
friends had done for me.
I turned the page on the blind misery of the past, and began
a new chapter along a sunnier path.
Summer guardians of my
flowering heart,
I loved you then and love you now,
with gratitude and blessings.
I loved you then and love you now,
with gratitude and blessings.
There was a Knowing inside me, in my late twenties. My inner
voice told me when I turned in the wrong direction. Sometimes she screamed. But
my head was willful, my emotions confused, and I ignored the inner shrieking,
more than once, and paid the price.
My poems from those years of unhappiness show me how much I
“knew”, that my conscious mind could not then fathom. I wrote about the cage,
the open gate, staying within feeling impossible, yet too fearful to set myself
free. Those were years of suffering. My self-worth was zero, which meant I
didn’t believe I deserved to dream the dreams that others did. Or maybe I could
dream them. I just didn’t believe they would come true for me. I remember
thinking “happiness is for other people, not for me.”
At age twenty-seven, I had shaken off my marriage. I
remember walking through the leaves in West End Vancouver that fall, realizing
that finally my life was my own. But I wasn’t alone for long. I was depressed,
fatalistic about my chances for happiness as a single mom of three very small
kids. I thought if I met a man, HE would complete my life, I would then be
happy and become the person I was meant to be. What happened is I brought my
hurting, unhealed lack of self to every situation.
My sister introduced me to the man who would be Stephanie’s
father (in biology only; he was gone for good by the time she was seven months
old.) I was not attracted to him at all,
but he pursued me. He also hooked me into feeling sorry for him. He had a hard
life, a struggle to survive, a history. He drank but would always excuse it by
saying he was heartbroken over the two little girls he had left behind in
California.
I knew he was wrong for me, but thought the chance of
happiness for me was slim, so I might as well try to help someone else. Also,
given the choice of men I admired and men who felt “less-than” to me, I would
choose the “less-than”. Not feeling worthy of better. Not feeling equal to men
I admired. “They would never be interested in me.” It was a fatal flaw. I met a
concert pianist and an alcoholic con man at the same time. Who did I pick? Yup.
I picked the con man and tried to help him with my broken self. Classic
behavior of children of alcoholics, children of trauma. Text book.
Tom lived outside the law. He was in Canada illegally. I
didn’t know it till later, but he had a long rap sheet behind him, a volatile
history. He lived for the seedy pub life, where he could brag about his
exploits before falling over drunk. He saw my condo, and me, as a means of,
first, survival, and then easy money.
Already, I found myself in great pain, which became a sort
of emotional bondage. I did not know how to escape. I wrote a poem back then
about “the cage, the open gate, afraid to stay within, afraid to fly free,
longing to be, but afraid to be me.” I Knew, but was unable to act.
How could I kick him out when he had no where to go? (Now of
course I know: with my hardest-toed boot. LOL.)
Because they suspected him, they did not pay. I signed the
land over to my mother for her investment in the venture, and was on welfare, now with four kids. With no payout, he was soon mercifully gone.
As a child, I retreated within myself, grew numb, shut
myself off, closed others out, to survive the violence, the drinking, the
turmoil. With an impossibly wrong partner, I did the same. After what he did to
me, I was as frozen as the Siberian Gulag. All I wanted was to be with my kids.
My path was the library, the thrift store, the grocery store and home, for
years. I did my living in books.
Then I found the coffeehouse. My Threshold Guardians were
three.
There was Brock, coffeehouse owner, who has spent his entire
life spreading Kindness in the world. He was the first man I came to trust,
after a lifetime of untrustworthy males. He was the first one to say to me,
“You must know you’re a healer, Sherry, don’t you?”
I walked in that door frozen solid. And then I thawed. It
hurt, when my feelings came alive. It made me feel how much I had missed out
on, reminded me of all my dreams of a loving partner. “I’d rather be frozen!” I
told him. And he replied, “Never say that. If you don’t feel the pain, you will
never feel the joy either.” He told me, “Just love people.” Instead of needing
love, I learned to give it and feel whole and satisfied doing so.
I ran the coffeehouse
for a few years, years when we laughed so hard we cried, years of fun, good
feelings, live music. Years that shone.
The people there saw something in me I did not see in
myself. But I figured if they liked me, there must be something there to like.
I began to believe I was a person worthy of being liked, of having friends, of
having fun. They taught me to dream. They taught me life can be more, that it
is precious, not to be wasted.
Jeane was quiet, self-effacing, gentle, humble. She was a
fan, a quiet soul sister. Always there. The kind of friend, then and to this
day, that you can go weeks or even months without contacting, and pick right up
where you left off next time you talk. She has always believed in me. She knows
me as a good sister knows you - with
acceptance and mutual support.
Roger was my ideal man. He played guitar in the glow of the
candles, songs he wrote himself…we wrote one or two songs together…his music
drew me out of hiding in the kitchen, out into the doorway, where he swept me
away to a land of dreams. I was still so young, in my early 30’s, and had never
been loved or in love. He told me “You’re like a small bud, unfolding to the
sun and it is beautiful to watch your flowering.”
At the end of those coffeehouse years, I did find love, a
man from the coffeehouse who is the only man I ever truly loved. He warned me,
“You’re a free spirit, and my spirit is not free”. But I thought my love might
set him free. Between us, we had five teenagers, all creating chaos. And he
could not say the words I needed, could not commit. Without a commitment, it
felt too selfish to put my kids through such upheaval. I gave up too soon, was
not whole enough, yet, to just live and love and surrender, to trust it might
last. I did not yet have the self-worth
to think that I might hold him, if I did not hold on too tight. One more
mistake, understandable to me, as I was still so far from whole.
Next came the move to Tofino. During the Tofino years, Roger
came to visit me regularly. We would stalk the sunsets together, he with his
camera, I with mine. We had wonderful visits. Each time, he would give a
concert just for me, in my living room, all of his songs that I loved so much.
His music opened my heart, and made me dream of what it would be to have that
companion I had longed for all my life.
He has been my mentor, my lifelong friend, and there was a
time back then when I picked up mixed signals from him and had to ask him: what
is this I am feeling? He was good about it. He told me I gave him something
other women didn’t, in how I loved and supported his music. I admired how
beautifully he handled what might have been awkward, and we continued our friendship
exactly the same. But for me his shine was tarnished just a tiny bit, as I knew
it had been his ego, singing me those songs, making me enthralled, enjoying
being so adored. Not totally fair, when he knew how alone I was.
My work during these years at a residential treatment centre
for First Nations families, was a work of heart, where I came full circle to my
beginnings. As the years went by, I learned so much, and grew more whole. In
helping the clients, in understanding the trauma they were coming from, I
healed my own heart. I watched them come in, heads low, not meeting our eyes.
Over the weeks, I watched their heads come up, their shoulders straighten,
heard their laughter ring out even more often than the tears they shed. They
were so ready to laugh, no matter the unspeakable pain of their pasts.
At this point, my work sent me to a five day intensive
workshop at Haven By the Sea, and it was a revelation. Each day during the
program I watched one person after another break through their barriers. I
witnessed and shared their tears as they made their triumphant steps towards a
fuller life. The atmosphere was so supportive, so nurturing, that as it came to
an end, I recognized how isolated a life I had made for myself. Yes, it was
peaceful. Yes, it was happy and full. But I still had no partner to share life
with. I had guarded my peacefulness so well, no one had a chance of entering
in.
I phoned Roger when I got home. I remember hanging onto the
phone in agony, and him saying “your heart is blown wide open, isn’t it?” It
was. And how it hurt.
I was at the approach to the inner cave now. Illness would
carry me across its threshold. I had another journey before me, away from my
beloved Tofino, a leaving that broke my heart. The challenge was to learn how
to be happy and whole in the last place I ever would have chosen to live.
I had a companion, my last year in Tofino, who made this
journey with me. Now I walked with a big black wolf at my side.
*************
MY DEEPEST FEAR
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our
deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Quote by Marianne
Williamson
My deepest fear, as an adult child of alcoholics,
born to parents struggling with their own hard lives, love story and
addictions, was always that I was unlovable. This carried through the first
three decades of my life and it took some gentle, caring people, of whom I have
written, to convince me there was a person within me worthy of love and
happiness.
In November, 1995, I was working at Kakawis, in
Tofino. It was a treatment centre for First Nations families struggling with
addictions. The children came to treatment too, and it was full circle work for
me. I knew only too well how children suffer when their parents’ lives are out
of control. It was my job to contact the families before they arrived, to make
a connection, to encourage them to come to Kakawis. I watched them come in,
heads bowed low, no eye contact and, over the weeks, loved seeing their
shoulders straighten, their heads come up, their eyes begin to sparkle again. I
loved hearing their laughter ring out as it did so often. First Nations are a
people who have known great pain. But how they love to laugh!
I will write more about my time at Kakawis
separately, for it, too, became an ordeal. But this story is about a place
called Haven By the Sea, on Gabriola Island, off the east coast of Vancouver
Island, where my boss sent me for an intensive five day workshop. Kakawis was
going through many changes, which were hard on the staff and we were being
given a lot of group training. This offer of an individual workshop rather
annoyed me. I inwardly sneered that they were trying to “fix” me when it was
them, not me, who was broken. But I had no idea what I was in for. I went in
resistant, planning to observe, and emerged with a whole new awareness about
the life I had created for myself.
November
5.
At
Haven By the Sea for a 5 day Professional Development Seminar, paid for by work
– I figure they owe me, after all the stress they’ve put us through. All
remaining staff – who have not been fired – are being sent to workshops.
I
know they think I am unwell (though I can’t help thinking to myself: Pot
calling the Kettle!) What they don’t realize is I am unwell from what they have
put me through the last few months trying to “fix” a place that WAS NOT BROKEN.
THEY are the ones tearing the place apart, the place I love so much. I have
watched them fire people I love – Pat, Mabel, Joe, George, Mahara, so many
others – month after month, session after session. So many new bosses, so much
turmoil, Most of all, mourning the Kakawis that was. I miss it!
I
will take what I can from this workshop. I have my boundaries and will go as
far as feels right.
Traveling
down was one long smile. Hallowe’en pumpkins were sitting in unexpected places
– by the side of the road, on rock ledges, on tree branches – with their
infectious grins, even through Cathedral Grove. When I arrived, I drove all
over Gabriola, playing my usual game of “if I lived here”. It is very pretty
and treed and laid back, very rural. A few sheep farms. It is not as developed
as Tofino, everyone has room and trees are everywhere.
But
when I got to Haven and stood by the tame ocean, watching a muted sunset, I
felt so fortunate to live where I do. I kept wanting to look Beyond, to the
real, full sunset I knew was happening so splendidly at home. It’s a nice
feeling, to be in a beautiful place and know home is better.
Nov.6.
Sunrise
at Haven-By-the-Sea. I have too much to tell you, and am hampered by no
keyboard! This place is amazing. I think Hollyhock would be more my style, but
I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
It
is first thing in the morning, and I am the only one awake. My roommate Izmina
is sleeping soundly. I’ll ask her and Andrea (one of the intern counselors) to
visit me in Tofino.
A
huge group of people – no idea how they’ll all get time to process. They’ll
break us into smaller groups for that. Interesting to hear so many people on so
many life paths – some wanting to die, some not knowing who they are, all
seeking to be more of who they are meant to be.
This
is my first time in such a setting and it is hard to see how it will be as
powerful as everyone says it will be. It is amazing how differently people
react to life. I see victims, to whom not much has happened, and heroes who
have suffered terribly. Peter, the young widower, is so positive, while others,
with fewer challenges, are a mess. Each one on his or her unique path.
It
is raining today so in between sessions will be good for reading and writing.
Everyone is madly connecting. There are too many people. I connect with one or
two.
How
to describe Haven? There appears to be a whole movement out there who make a
career out of going to workshops. There is a lingo, a “workshop-speak”, I don’t
have. How do they afford it? There are 40 in our group. I calculate the fees paid
total $30,000 for these four and a half days.
I
smiled when they put me in the cabin named Heron – one of my friendly birds at
home. As usual, I am like the frog sitting in the pot of water who takes a long
time to warm up.
I
recognize I don’t have time to be that slow if I am to get anything out of this
workshop. I don’t know what will happen, but am open to it. Whatever is meant
to happen will happen, and I will get a lot of good out of it. Peoples’ stories
always knock me out. One young man, Peter, lost his wife recently and is
raising his seven year old son. His comment: “It’s made me bigger inside.” Wow.
People
here are at all levels – the professional workshoppers, manic in their need to
talk about their “process”. Some have only pain in life, no joy. Some with lots
of humour. All with courage. Trying to be more.
I’ve
connected with a few people, but stick to my solitary ways. In free time, I
write, and read and walk, while everyone else is madly “connecting”.
There
are good presenters and one or two “interns” being trained to join the staff.
[I had no idea!]
“To
Be is to Do.” Sartre
“Do
Be Do Be Do.” Sinatra
Smiles.
A
new phrase: “I’m in solution-focus.” Hmmmmm.
Here
is a quote I read here that I relate to much more:
“I
wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.”
Gibran.
Afternoon:
In
the morning session there were exercises in communicating with people. I am
warming up quickly, as I know more and more people, see we’re all just humans
walking our paths. The most important thing I heard this morning is how we are
each responsible for how we feel. The really suffering young man – Doug – said,
“God, I really hate that!” He got a big laugh. So did Izmina when she said how
nurturing I am, and thanked me for making her bed this morning. LOL. I replied,
“I’m co-dependent, what can I say?”
I
told Peter how him saying his wife’s death made him bigger inside impressed me.
Lunch
was good. So much talking, talking, talking. I know that’s what this is about
and I will gain a lot from it. Not least having a week to devote to myself
after working so hard forever. I would rather be at a seminar on “Spirituality
and Autobiography”, but will take the gifts given. I expect the universe will
throw in a few punches, just to knock me down a few pegs. I am taking it all
in. I am the Observer. I hold back.
People
may see my solitary ways as avoidance. Years ago, I stayed apart out of fear,
lack of confidence, inadequacy. Now I feel a calmness, no real need to babble
on for hours talking about myself. My solitude replenishes me.
I
read a bit from Jack Kornfield’s A Path With Heart.
Some
good interactions with unlikely people this morning. Now finding the circle
interesting rather than intimidating.
At
night we’re going to break into smaller groups. Getting closer to the real
stuff. My heart goes out to the ones, especially the young ones, who are
suffering so intensely.
These
people have paid a lot of money for this workshop and are hoping desperately
for some sort of breakthrough, some hope. For me, this is a rare gift of time.
November
7.
This
process is amazing. It feels like we’ve been here much longer. It is raining
hard. I am in the glassed-in room looking out at Canada geese and ptarmigans.
It is wonderful watching all the faces opening up – seeing all the smiles –
people are connecting, trusting. There have been breakthroughs. The program at
Kakawis takes weeks. It is amazing to see what this group does in only days.
Last
night we met in our small group. The trust level was already there – they seem
to know just who to put together. If I thought I was going to coast through
this, I was mistaken. Last night we did a visualization, and I thought I was
“handling it”. But it’s a different matter when I begin to speak. Eric, my
childhood, the tears came.
Andrea
asked if I had done any therapy for my childhood. Maybe I need to. Two or three
people have asked that now. I am happy,
I have made a good life, but those tears are still there.
Tonight
I will tackle Kakawis. I have to be careful what I say. But in telling Andrea,
the tears were there. I had thought I could stay in control, but what is ready
to come will come. I can see why people do this. It is a very supportive
environment in which to be vulnerable, to assist oneself towards wellness.
A
place like this would do so well in Tofino. I wish my friend Roger and I could
get a big house and do this on a smaller scale. Off to morning session.
Tears
are closer today. It’s okay. It’s safe here. The pain some of these people are
carrying is so huge it amazes me. Peter, last night, speaking of his wife’s
death, said he was holding her hand as she died and felt the same way he did
holding her hand when their son was born. The cycle of life and death. The joy
and the pain. “That’s the deal,” he said. He spoke of “this miracle we all live
in.” An amazing and gentle man. He seems to share the same worldview I do.
Noon
break:
This
morning was awesome. First John mourned his late wife and the circle was in
tears right along with him. Then Claire released her anger at her mother for
not being there. More tears. And then she danced. Beauty. My heart broke
watching her. Rod, who feels so alone, dancing gracefully with Claire, both of
them transformed.
Then
Doug was a wreck and was ready to release. Jock hugged him while he sobbed.
Then the circle lifted him and rocked him. For each person, when it is their
moment, a song plays that could not be more perfectly chosen for that person.
Afterwards,
I spoke up: “Sometimes there’s not one love – but still there’s love” – looking
around the circle.
I
am surprised at the tears I am releasing for I never cry. You’d have to have a
heart of stone not to. Plus the music goes straight to the heart. For Doug, it
was “When you feel all alone and cant go on,
hold on………everybody cries. Everybody hurts sometime.”
The
circle has grown so close. All ages, all walks of life, all human beings with
pain, caring for and helping each other. Very touching and beautiful to see and
I already wonder how we’ll say goodbye.
Afternoon
group:
A
long visualization of childhood. Again, me thinking “piece of cake, that was
then, this is now,” till they played a song by Ann Mortifee from a mother to
her child saying she’d done her best. (As my mother did, as I did, as
inadequate as one’s children perceive that to be.) It slayed me.
In
group, I shared, “This is a room full of very beautiful people. When I think of
all the pain we inflict on each other, I have to also see the caring we are
capable of. And I also thought about how our mothers failed us and how, in
turn, with the best of intentions we fail our children, through the cycle of
not enough nurturing.”
I
want to write my children and tell them because of what was done to me, I might
not always have had the skills. But I loved them and did my best.
I
have to track down that song.
[I did write that letter when I got home.]
November
8.
Last
night’s group was mellow and I was glad. I was tired. It has been intense. I’m
feeling calm and all right about everything that’s happening. Venita said “You
came in open and you’re staying open.”
One
of the counselors suggested I take the training to be a facilitator. They
notice the supporting, encouraging things I say to those who are hurting most.
They do deep breath work on the ones who are most blocked.
I
identify with Azmina’s inability to express anger. It is easier to access pain
and sadness when you have never been allowed to express anger.
Lunch
break.
Dale
was worked on this morning and the music at the end was “Can You Feel the Love
Tonight?” Andrew triggered tears because I have young sons the same age and it
hurts to see young people in pain. At the end they played a victory march.
I
talked to young Adria at lunch – a very anxious, suffering young girl, who
stays draped in a cape, her face covered. She is trying to figure the rest of
her life out and it is overwhelming. I found myself suggesting “Just BE first,
then worry about doing. When you feel good inside, the rest takes care of
itself.”
Peter
and I talked this morning. I really admire him. He’s ten years younger than I
am, a very gentle soul, with a lot of wisdom. We connect.
Evening,
late. After small group.
The
amount of love among us is growing, especially in our small group, an
especially caring one. Peter did some work tonight and really let go of the
pain. Gord released anger and pain. He is a caretaker like me and is tired of
looking after everyone but himself.
I
feel calm through it all – calm and loving. I cry with each of them –
especially when the song comes on. For Peter it was John Lennon’s song to his
son, Sean, “Beautiful Boy”. Killed me dead.
After,
he said, “I’m laughing. I’m crying. It’s good to be alive.”
I’ve
walked in each person’s shoes, can empathize with their pain. My tears come
easily for others, but for myself, I shy away from doing deep work, especially
in the big group. And in small group, I’m guarded. I don’t want to force
anything. Don’t want to touch anything too deep. I fear the pain. What really
brings tears is the loving and caring after each sharing. My life is good, but
it completely lacks this kind of nurturing.
I
get lots of love here. Peter hugged me and said “You’re beautiful, you know –
the sweet things you say to everyone. You’re just precious.”
And
Gord said “you’re so bright , you make my day.” I feel too happy being here, in
the midst of all this love, to access any deep pain. A lot has happened to me.
But I’ve had joy for six years. I can’t feel sorry for myself. I feel more of a
supporter here.
Today
at lunch Adria and I talked and this afternoon she did her work. From being
anxious to the point of desperation, she ended up dancing so gracefully and
proudly – cape flung off – face revealed and shining – a miracle of what love
can do. A glorious moment. I hugged her after and told her “Keep shining When
people see something beautiful in you, it’s because it’s there.”
A
28 year old, Pat, held my hand tonight after group. Here age is no barrier. We
are all humans supporting each other. I’d love to work in a place like this.
When a program is effective, it does wonderful things.
November
9 5 a.m.
I
woke up with a “Bingo!” this morning and identified what it is. There was a lot of pain in the past and I
have overcome a lot. I have had six years of happiness.
But
1) I am alone and 2) there is a shortage of hugs and touch and nurturing in my
life. I have thrived in this supportive atmosphere. How do I translate these
feelings home?
It’s
an effective program that can crack a tough old nut like me, used to looking
after the whole world.
This
is the thing. If you’re alive, you have needs. I am such a slow study.
I
have come far in my openness here, even with the men. I usually keep my
distance from them. I am drawn to Peter and hope we stay friends. I have a soft
spot for him.
This
is going to be a rather momentous day. Long and tiring, especially as I didn’t
get much sleep. Tears are close but I feel calm and able to be present for
others. It’s okay to feel. And to reach out for something for myself.
I
have resources. I can take the awareness I’ve gained here and choose how, at
home, to begin to reach out for what I need.
After
supper.
Sad
all day. Going to share in small group tonight. Gail asked me at supper: was it
patience I’d shown in my life, or avoidance? I
have avoided pain like crazy. I went through so much in my life, pain
upon pain. It nearly annihilated me. I just didn’t want any more. I remember
telling my former boss that I never cried, because I feared if I once started,
I might never stop. He told me that was a very telling thing to say. I guess it
was.
My
happiness in life is genuine. For six years I have had joy living in nature,
having it be my lover. I have shut myself off from anyone who was interested in
me, feeling, first, I didn’t want to risk any more pain and second, “no one
would be interested in me.” Even when a few clearly were.
What
hit me this morning is how alone I am. Leaving such a nurturing, supportive
environment will be hard.
November
10.
Last
night’s session was a surprise. I had expected tears but I got into my
breathing and nothing happened. After only a short time, Venita stopped me and
suggested instead of trying to force it – though she identified my lower back
as being where I carry my grief – we’d do something different. I went around
the circle and asked each person for something. This was hard, as it is not
something I would ever think to do. Also there were some I would never have
asked for anything. When I got to Peter I said “you give the BEST hugs!” and
asked for one. He gave me a long one and said he’ll come visit me. The circle
was so warm towards me. I had told them how alone I am and how hard it is to
reach out and ask for something for me.
They
cradled me at the end which was overwhelming. I was lying in their arms as they
rocked me back and forth. I was so overwhelmed I didn’t hear the song that was
playing but people said it was perfect. I wish I knew what it was. I was glad
it had been gentle. That was all I needed. So it was good.
However
I am still sad, because now I know there is an ocean of unshed tears in there.
[After Pup died I cried for six years and finally
shed many of them. Yet there are still more. Almost daily, now, some suffering
dog or wolf or human triggers tears in me. After being stoic my whole life, Pup
helped me finally release a lifetime of pent up tears. That big black wolf is
healing me even now.]
The
downside was that they worked next with Bill who triggered stuff in me. He
reminded me of Tom, the alcoholic con man who was my youngest’s father. Bill
had that hard, dark, oily conman feeling and his wife was me back then – in an
agony of trying to make right what could never be right, in an agony of love
and tears – I had to remind myself that I will never do that to myself again.
As he lay in the circle, we were told to put our hands on him and I was right
where his hand was and was forced to hold his hand, which triggered me. The
whole time everyone was sending good thoughts to him, and his wife was in agony
over him, he was slowly circling his finger around and around in my palm.
Disgusting.
I
went to the dance after, feeling quiet. Danced a bit then left early. It was
wonderful to have watched the transformations though this week –widower John has decided to learn to fly.
Adria is radiant tonight, and laughing. Doug seems happy, as if four days ago
he was not ready to check out of this life. Wow. Rod and Doug both protected me
and came to be with me when I was alone. Peter smiled at me with his kind eyes.
I have to take this warmth with me – that people who barely knew me saw beauty
in me. I will keep in touch with a few, especially Peter and Azmina.
It
is amazing progress to feel comfortable with the men. It was wonderful to see
the goodness in them. Men have been such a source of pain for me.
Just
one more session and I go home. It will be okay. It has been an amazing
experience. A gift to my heart.
November
11.
When
I went for coffee this morning, Peter was there and I went right into his arms.
He said, “Finally, the tears come.” I told him that Bill had triggered me,
reminding me of a bad relationship. Peter said, “But we know we don’t have to
do that any more, don’t we?” I nodded.
Time
for our last circle. Time for goodbyes.
At that closing circle, I told the group that having
spent a week in such a nurturing, supportive environment, I recognized that the
life I had created for myself that kept me free from pain, also kept me alone.
That I hated to leave the closeness and go back to being so solitary.
As we said our goodbyes, Peter came and gave me a
hug. “Sweet little princess,” he said, “you know I’ll be knocking at your
door.”
I drove up-Island with my heart in a whirl. I know
now that I had fallen in love with Peter. Our attraction was strong. This
feeling always sent me into an insecure panic. I felt fear in both directions.
What if it happened and brought me pain? What if it didn’t happen and brought
me pain? I seemed not to know how to trust anything, when it came to love.
I was in agony hanging on the end of the phone. Rog
said, in awe, “your heart has been blown wide open, hasn’t it?” and I told him
yes, it had.
Peter and I were in contact afterwards, exchanged
some letters and a couple of visits. Once I visited him and once he came up to
Tofino. But I did my usual thing: he is
younger, he is handsome, he couldn’t possibly be interested in me, he deserves
better…I closed off, held back.
My deepest fear was that I would never be enough for
a man I admired, which is why I always chose men who were less-than, which of
course never works. I did tell him, a couple of years later, that it was love I
had felt for him. I wanted to cross that t and dot that i. He phoned me last
when I was in the middle of a very fast moving of households. I was distracted
and as usual focused on the task at hand, rather than giving my full attention
to his call. That was the last I heard from him.
I blew it. But, still, I look back on that time at
Haven By the Sea and know all the good it did me. It showed me the life I might
have had, had so much damage not been done to me as a child, a teenager, a
young adult.
Being alone would eventually be all right with me.
But that would take some more time.
PLACE OF BERRIES
After two years living and working in
Tofino, I found my way to a job at K-, the translation for which is place of
berries. It was a treatment centre for First Nations families struggling with
addictions, run by heart-centered people, a program of love and respect, with a gentle approach for encouraging people in
pain that life could be better.
When I began there, my
role model was Kathryn, a woman who was all heart. She was the person who
brought the clients in. I admired her greatly. I remember her saying, “It’s
simple. They come to us saying ‘I hurt. Make it stop.’ ” The director was Pat,
the most respectful boss I ever had. The plan was to train First Nations people
to eventually take over the running of the centre.
I had the job of my
dreams in the place of my dreams. It wasn’t long before I was the intake
worker, the person who worked with counsellors in other cities to determine who
was ready to come in to which session. Then I made contact with the clients
themselves, to encourage them they were coming to a safe place. When they
arrived, I was there so they had a connection on site to welcome them.
I was in heaven. As I
have written elsewhere, the clients came in with heads and shoulders bowed low,
no eye contact. Their children came too. No one knew better than I what
children in an alcoholic home went through. The program was six weeks long and
it was a joy to watch their heads lift up, their shoulders square, their
laughter ring out, their eyes twinkle. First Nations people have lived
generations of pain, much of it caused by government. But how ready they are to
laugh!
We had an exercise
called Healing of Memories, where a fire was built outside and the clients
wrote letters full of their pain and threw them into the fire. Every single
time, eagles came and circled overhead. Sometimes, wolves came, below the
office, on the beach.
The things I
experienced there! It was a golden time; it was a privilege to be there among
the people, to be accepted and trusted by them. I grew so much in those years.
Something began to
change halfway through my eight and a half years there. Some people came onto
the Board of Directors who had a different vision for the place and a different
perspective on the staff.
The program I loved and
believed in so much was changing: from Heart People to Head People, from gentle
steps to “tough love”. It hurt my heart to watch the changes, to see the focus
changing. Our clients were heart people. Here were more white people with book
learning. One client said “I think the staff is sicker than we are.”
The first person to be
forced to resign was my boss. In his place there came a series of directors,
almost one per session, each worse than the last. It was my job to assist each one to learn how
things ran. One of them was a man who made advances to me and to a First
Nations woman. There was a climate of fear there by then, and each of us turned
to someone we trusted – someone no longer on staff. The result was one of the
Chiefs gathered us together and accompanied us to a meeting of the Board. He
shook his rattle and sang a prayer. Then he spoke to the Board saying we staff
were in fear for our jobs, many of us being sole supporters of our families, and
that things were not right with the current boss at the Centre. Then one by one
we spoke of our experiences, hearing for the first time what the others had
been going through. The result was the firing of that boss.
The Chief said to me “One
day you’ll be in a treatment centre for what they are doing to you here.” I
laughed, but he said, “It’s true.” And it was true, I cared too much to detach
from what was happening to the place I loved so much.
Every session, I
watched my friends being fired. It broke my heart. Counsellors the clients
loved were let go; others from other areas came in, then moved on.
We had staff trainings
all during this time of upheaval, and I benefitted greatly from it. I had
always been afraid to speak in front of a group of people. But in this
training, I was forced to sit facing a man I had problems with, because he didn’t
care for the clients, he didn’t “get” what the program was about. His clients
would tell me things he said that were not supportive. I would not comment to
them, but passed that information on to a staff member I trusted who said he
would talk to him. Plus I observed instances where there was an incident of
violence, and this man put eating his lunch and having his swim before dealing
with an unhinged client.
Sitting in front of
him, I couldn’t find the words. Then I met the eyes of one of the counsellors
who had also observed what I had (though we had not spoken of it). He gave me a
look that urged me to say what needed to be said, and I began. I finished
relaying the examples by saying “Sorry, D-, nothing personal, but it is my job
to encourage the clients to come here and I have to know they are coming to a safe
place where they will be respected and supported.” One of the facilitators, a
First Nations man, came and knelt before me. Looking me right in the eye, he
said, “Never apologize for caring.”
A truly gentle and
beautiful woman came next as our director. But she lasted two sessions and said
“I don’t know what it is. Everyone is so wonderful singly. But together,
something isn’t right here.” The next boss was my nemesis, one of the hard-headed
women in the program who came from exactly the opposite headspace I had. Working
for her, knowing she was so completely wrong for the place I loved so much,
stressed me beyond belief. (Three of us went off on stress leave under this
woman. She was fired a couple of sessions later.)
My health began to
suffer. I started feeling weak, unsteady, dizzy, exhausted. My cognitive
function seemed impaired, I was not functioning as I once had. I had worked
circles around everyone, now I was mustering all my resources to keep going. I
was stressed to the max. My sense of justice was outraged at the injustices I
was witnessing, good people being fired, unwell ones coming. My heart was breaking.
Then came the final
straw. They fired two more of my friends – this firing was so wrong, it broke
my heart. (In town, one of the natives said to me, “They’ve lost their minds,”
referring to the Board of Directors.) I went straight from work to the doctor,
and my blood pressure was through the roof. He wrote me off work for a week. He
cautioned me, “if nothing changes, something’s going to blow.”
Then I took a month of
holidays. But I was still feeling weak, dizzy, unsteady. I actually fell a few
times, inside my trailer, for no reason.
Finally I was sent to a
specialist who immediately diagnosed chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.
I applied for short
term disability, and began a round of doing battle with the insurance company.
They sent me to their doctors who said there was nothing wrong with me. I would
have to counter with trips to my
specialist and a report from my doctor.
They kept forcing me to
work part time to “prove” I couldn’t work. I called the specialist who had finally
given me a diagnosis. He told me I had already
proved I couldn’t work and he wrote a really strong letter saying I couldn’t work
and that the insurance company was putting undue stress on me which was
preventing me from getting better. Which was true.
The insurance company
kept declining my claim, I had no income coming in, I was living on line of
credit and I began to panic. Finally I felt I couldn’t hang on any longer and
sold my trailer. Before I could finish the packing and cleaning, I wound up in
hospital with a gall bladder attack. I left Tofino by ambulance, no time for a
painful goodbye.
From the hospital I
went up north to stay with my sister for the winter. By the new year, the
insurance company approved my claim but it was too late by then. My life in
Tofino was gone.
(Through the course of
applying for long-term disability, later, this insurance company fought me some
more. They involved a company to try to force me onto a back to work program,
but I was still very ill, and knew the more I pushed myself the worse my
symptoms got. I knew I couldn’t work. Doing battle with them made me even more
ill, and was utterly counter-productive to my recovery. This battle went on for
a few years.)
In spring, I traveled
from my sister’s down-Island to Ucluelet, Tofino’s sister village, where I
rented a tiny room in a basement in Port Albion, right on a lagoon in the boonies.
Pup was ecstatic.
From there we moved to
Port Alberni, because it was cheaper to live in a whole house there than it had
been to live in that tiny basement room and pay for my stuff to stay in storage.
But there we were, transplanted
from our wild heaven, on a city street in a grey little industrial town. Pup
sat looking out the window, wondering where his wilderness had gone. I could
see grief in every line of his body, feel it in my own.
I took him every
afternoon to a forest trail, a river, the lake. We made do. Two years later we
moved to our little trailer out Beaver Creek, and then life was better. It was
Pup’s final kingdom, in that big yard on the creek. But how he came alive with
excitement when we pointed the nose of the car up and over the mountains
towards the beach! He would pace, leaping from front seat to back and back to
front, his big tail whapping my face with every leap.
Loss and struggle,
struggle and loss. And yet, the whole way through, love of nature’s wonders,
the forest, the sky, clouds, the greenly trees, birdsong and sunsets. Nature
has always been my lover, and she has always gotten me through. Nature, and a big
black dog.
REWARDS
After ten glorious
years of living my own life in Tofino, I entered two decades of being “Grandma”
in Port Alberni. I helped raise the grandkids - (literally, I had one of them
living with me for years, because he was unmanageable at home.) My daughter was not fully up to the challenges of raising four kids on her own;
she said the helping I did was my choice, I didn't "have to" do it. But being a Major
Coper, responsible for the whole planet, I felt I had no choice but to step in and make sure the kids' needs were met.
There were
satisfactions in my Grandma role. But my writing happened only rarely. I felt
over-loaded, too busy, and my health was presenting issues: high blood
pressure, thyroid issues, vertigo, chronic fatigue. I also had to babysit and clean houses on
the side, for extra cash. For years and years.
But I was in mid-life
and finally felt fully present in my body. I had come to terms with and healed
from the trauma of my early life, the
many losses and betrayals, and I presented a sunny, cheerful, “Can-Do” face to
the world. I also provided respite care for foster children, and those little
wayfarers added so much to my life, and I to theirs. I took all of them to the
forest, the river, the lakes. I gave them the gift of appreciation of nature
which I know lasts a lifetime. Many little souls came through my doors, and
left to go on with their lives. It was good work.
I loved my little
trailer in the country, set on a huge piece of land with big trees, and a creek
out back. Once again I had a home. I gardened, I walked Pup on the trails, I
relished my cute little place. Sanctuary and peace.
My writing was very
sporadic at this point. I was so busy and outward-focused. Occasionally a poem
would come. But there was nothing to encourage more, no writers’ group, no
outlet for sharing what I wrote.
So, when I look back at
this time, it was discovering the online world of poetry that most changed my
life, and was the best reward of all. A friend encouraged me to create a blog.
She actually insisted I do so. I had had a blog before that only family
visited, so I was un-enthused. But since
this blog happened to be blogspot, to my amazement a few people found it and
read my poems. I couldn’t believe it. Ellen Wilson of Ella's Edge, was one of the first.
I went to the blogger
forum and asked “where can I find other poets?” and Robb Lloyd wrote back: “Why
not try Poets United?” And I was off.
Since 2010 I have
written more poems than in all my life before. (And I had written at least a
thousand poems before.) Having my work read, sharing with other poets, having a
network of poet friends, has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. In
years when I have been more or less house-bound, it has given me connection
with, and a window on, the world. It is the driving force of my life in these
my later years.
Now my main identity is
that of poet. Here in Tofino I no longer am at everyone’s beck and call, no
longer babysit. My time is my own, a huge gift.
I look back at the long
journey I have made from childhood trauma, and the terrible things that
happened to me at the hands of abusive men once I was grown, and I remember
those early poems that poured through me at fourteen, and the string of poems
written throughout my life to chart my journey, and I see I am the same person.
The journey was away from and then back home to myself. Once I healed, I became
with each decade more fully the person I was always meant to be.
Now, Wild Woman may
seem to be living a pretty tame life. But that inner spirit is still very much
alive. Wild Woman has come home. She has come into her own. She is actually
more alive than ever.
THE THREE BEARS
My uncle LaVergne, his wife, Greta, and their
daughter, Jeanette, from the Prairies, visited our family in Kelowna in 1958,
when I was an awkward, freckle-faced, pony-tailed twelve, and Jeanette was a
beautiful seventeen.
I remember sloshing along the main street of town beside her in my gumboots, noticing how the
boys stared at her, seeing her confident quiet smile as she took note. It was
impossible that that would ever happen to me, that my ugly duckling would ever
transform into such a swan. I simply basked in the warmth of her glow.
My uncle was my dream man: handsome, gallant,
courtly, in love with his beautiful wife. She had only to pensively withdraw a
cigarette and tap it on the package, and he would swoop across the room
to light it for her. No woman had ever been so adored. I swooned, and dreamed
my twelve-year-old dreams.
My uncle had the soul of a poet, but he didn’t
write. Only letters from the war, that my grandma saved in a scrapbook. I
remember reading one about his platoon landing in Sicily, the soldiers walking
through the vineyards. I loved how he described
the grapes as “dusty, but that can be washed off…..”
The war and what he saw there lived inside him,
behind his eyes, which had seen things that hurt his spirit. But he got home
safely to his wife and child and they built a good life together in Saskatoon.
“The Three Bears,” he called them. I can still see the love in his eyes, gazing
with a twinkle at his lovely Greta. “Ready to go, Mama Bear?” he would ask,
smiling, when it was time to leave.
The only thing certain in life is change. Jeanette
grew older; she chose a husband her parents disapproved of because of his
ethnicity. He was a First Nations man. In my teens, an avid reader, I was concerned about social justice
issues and civil rights. I had to face
the fact that racism and intolerance was alive and strong in my own family. In
those days, “what people think” mattered greatly. It seemed it mattered more
than a child’s happiness. They stood firm. If Jeanette went ahead with it, they
would not attend the wedding.
In the West, the family reeled. The storybook family was fractured. I imagined
how heartbroken my cousin must have felt, the morning of her wedding, no mother
to fix her hair, adjust her veil. I knew they were wrong. Such judgment. Only the groom’s family attended the wedding.
After my grandpa died, LaVergne and Greta moved to
Kelowna to support my grandma. Greta was unhappy with the move – perhaps
unhappy in general. She grew cold towards my uncle. There was disappointment,
pain, betrayal in his eyes, but he limped gallantly along, on his now painful
legs, trying to start a new business, which was not catching on. He saw my
grandma every day.
One year of a failing business and chilly marriage
later, Greta heard a thump late one night, and it was my uncle. A blood clot
had travelled from his leg to his heart. He was gone before he hit the floor.
Greta moved back to Saskatoon. There was much
criticism of her in the family. She had let my uncle down when he needed her
most. But my Grandma intervened. “I don’t want to hear any more criticism of
Greta. He loved her. We have to respect that.”
We didn’t hear from Greta after that. I don’t know
if the rift between her and her daughter was healed. I hope so. Some years
later we heard she had died of cancer.
Gone, now, all gone, the people of my youth. When I think of them, it is their glory years
that I remember: all of them coming out the door of my grandmother’s cottage,
one by one, curled hair, big smiles, looking like movie stars. I see Greta
taking out a cigarette, tap, tap, tapping it on the package, my uncle swooping
across the room to light it, all of us laughing in delight.
Breathtakingly honest and beautiful, Sherry...you have begun. Congratulations.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth
Enthralling, absolutely! I think this is your brilliant start to your memoir, and I want to know all the rest.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful write and a wonderful read. The beginnings of a wonderful woman! I love the discovery! Love is where you give it, live it, you are love!
ReplyDeleteSherry, I am thrilled to read this. It is like watching a flower bloom. Your story is enthralling, and your style of telling it is so honest and enriched by your beautiful writing. I'm so happy for you now. Happy that you've begun to tell your story.
ReplyDelete