Category Archives: loss

Finding light in the darkness

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“What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today.” ~ William Glasser

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Looking back at my past, I can almost see the lines in the distance of the paths that I have chosen.  They are faint in the waning light but the traces are still visible.  Those lines, those roads I chose to follow, helped to carve the figure of the person I am now.

Along that road not everything was painful but I can say that those arduous moments gave me more definition as a person than the happier, less stressful times.  Those darker moments made me a stronger version of myself.  Those difficult stages during my life gave me the tenacity and the persistence to overcome obstacles that I may not have been able to cope with had my life been easier.

It is how we carry ourselves through the difficult moments that gives us our strength.  It is how we persevere through misfortune that builds our character.  I am who I am because of what I have experienced.  I am a better version of the me I could have been because I endured pain and suffering.  I made a point to learn from it and now my inner light far outweighs any of the darkness from my past.

Empty chairs

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chair

Vague memories cling to the fabric,

permanent indentations show in the cushions

of the now empty chairs you once sat in.

As time marches forward,

I hold tight to the moments created while sitting in those chairs.

Your laughter is embedded in the cloth.

The fiber of your being is worn into the stitching.

The very essence of you lingers in the shadows,

hiding in the nooks and crannies of those chairs.

You left behind a part of you in something so simple,

and now those empty chairs no longer hold sorrow,

but are cushioned with memories

and framed with love.

When the past slaps you in the face

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It is a very rare occurrence when my emotions take me by surprise.  I am usually fairly in tune with them and I can feel them bubbling gently below the surface.  But last night on my way home from work while driving past my mother’s old house, the same house I drive by every day on my way to work and again on my way home, the emotion stored within my walls hit me like a ton of bricks.   Last night I glanced at the house, as I do every time I follow that familiar road, and I burst into tears.

I don’t know where the tidal pool of emotion came from but suddenly I was flooded with images of moments that had become important memories in my life.  Christmases, birthdays, family gatherings and quiet nights spent as a family were at the forefront of my brain.  Lingering snapshots of magical kisses witnessed by only the walls upstairs slowly transformed themselves into moving pictures to replay those scenes.  That house, the building others would only see as walls and a roof, was my home.  It was the vessel that helped create and store some of the most precious moments of my life.

And I do the same with my childhood home.  Every so often I feel the pull to drive by and just look at the house that began our journey to becoming locals in this town.  It was home to my family and a welcoming second home to many of our friends.  It witnessed great happiness and great sorrow, but it was always filled with love.

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Although there were many happy times in our second home, there were also moments of great sorrow.  Those walls echoed my overwhelming grief in May of 2003 as I told my parents through hysterical sobs that my best friend had passed away unexpectedly.  That roof sheltered both my parents as they battled their illness and those walls protected them for as long as they could.  That structure, that old building that is seemingly unnoticeable to passers-by, will forever have a large part of my history carved into its frame.

That architecture will always be a part of me.   And each time I drive by and take the time to trace the outlines of those walls I will always have an affinity to its design and purpose.  It is said that we need to let things go to be happier but I feel the need to embrace those things to stay connected.

 

When you just have to listen to show tunes…..

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“What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”     George Elliott

~~~

Some moments sneak up on us, catching us completely off-guard while other moments just slap us in the face.  The hand print is still on my cheek from my experience this afternoon.

We were being bombarded by the first snowfall of the season.  It was in our forecast so it was no surprise.  What was a shock was my immediate thought to call my mother and tell her to stay indoors today.  I was driving home from work and, without hesitation, was reaching for my speed dial to call her number when I realized what I was doing…..and then the tears came.  My mother passed away in March of 2014.   Even though I was a mere 1/2 kilometre from my house, I had to pull over at the end of my road to collect myself.

I have felt my mom’s presence quite a bit lately, and so has my brother.  He actually admitted to me that he was listening to the Cabaret soundtrack at work (sorry, Jamie) and I know that was my mother’s doing.  Cabaret was one of her favorites, and although my brother didn’t spend the countless hours my mom and I did watching old musicals, the nostalgia of the music was not lost on him.

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I never doubt that my mother will always be here when we need her.  As I took a break from writing this post, she prodded me once again in her subtle way.  A duet with Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb magically appeared on my news feed on Facebook and it was one of my mom’s favorite Barbra songs.  “What Kind of Fool” doesn’t believe that messages can be sent from those who have passed?

She is here….inserting herself into the moments that she feels she is needed.  Her mother-instinct is still alive and well and she knows, perhaps better than we do, that she can still help guide us through those moments when only a mom can say or do the right thing.  And, once again, she is correct.  I do need her now…..and maybe my brother does as well.  And even if my worries are not about me, her presence and her calming influence are making me feel like everything is going to be ‘real fine’.

 

 

 

 

Balls to the wall

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It lay dormant, nestled in the corner of the family dining room at the cottage.  It listened to every one of our crazy conversations and eventually became the topic of many of those conversations instead of just blending into the background.

Its birth was accidental.  It came to be through a simple act of property maintenance.  The family cottage was built in the early 1900’s and had begun to show its age so, without regard for its final appearance, a spray foam was used to seal a few cracks in the old building.  What resulted in the upper corner of that dining room was eventually named and heralded as a true piece of our family history.

Perhaps this innocuous object was made more grotesque by my family’s depraved sense of humor.  It is even reasonable to say that other families may never look at this simple mass and see what we all saw.  But from the first time it was noticed at a family dinner, it was affectionately dubbed the “shiny ball sack’.

Over the years, this harmless protrusion witnessed our highs and our lows.  It feasted on the sounds of our laughter and it absorbed the collection of our tears.  Somehow that inanimate object became a large part of the traditions of our family meals and I was devastated to find out it was going to be amputated from its place in those family traditions.

I haven’t been able to visit the cottage yet this summer so I was unaware that the surgical removal had taken place – until today.  I came home from work to find a lovely gift bag on my front door step and when I saw what was inside, my heart swelled.  There, gently preserved in a shadow box, was the shiny ball sack that has been a part of our family dinners for decades.  My aunt had painstakingly saved this piece of history and presented it in a way that would allow me to keep this little gem of our family history safe and sound.

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My mom and I used to laugh endlessly about this mutation of foam and it will now find its place beside a picture of my mother in my living room.  It is a fitting ending to this chapter knowing that two of the things that brought me so much joy will be together again.

 

 

A part of life

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Death is selfish.  It lurks in the shadows.  It hides in a realm of certainty,  somewhere between acceptance and denial, and it feeds on our inability to process its inevitability.  It waits for nobody.  It heeds its own agenda and it gives no signs of compassion.  It simply reaps.

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Last week we had a senior’s bus tour at the lodge.  Unlike the previous tours, we had neither mildly concussed nor toppled our guests on top of one other.  The tour had been relatively trauma-free with the exception of a phone call a mere fifteen minutes after the bus arrived and our guests had been shown to their rooms.

Death had been hovering at the precipice and chose to include us in its folly with one phone call for the sister of its intended victim shortly after she arrived at the lodge.  What should have been a glorious adventure for Kathleen suddenly turned into a feeling of helplessness and isolation as she mourned the loss of her sister surrounded by a group of strangers.

But even in the face of sadness, there was no surprise in discovering that the group of strangers had chosen to embrace Kathleen and take on a part of her burden as their own.  As much as death wanted to be the headliner in this performance, the supporting cast was truly the star of the show.

Fellow travelers and staff made every effort to ease Kathleen’s suffering and reunited her with her family before the bus was due to leave the lodge.   It takes a village – and this village had a great deal of empathy and ingenuity.  Kathleen was able to reconnect with her family and attend her sister’s funeral.  And although she was missed on that last day of the bus tour, we knew she was where she needed to be and she knew we all held her in our thoughts and prayers.

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Death is selfish.  And although it may be a part of life, so is love and compassion.

 

Losing their control of “control”

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“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” ~ Spock

~~~~~~~~~~~

I do not live, nor have I ever lived, in the United States so I am decidedly unqualified to comment on their gun laws.  I am, however, a member of the human race so that gives me as much right as anyone to voice an opinion on the senseless loss of lives in mass shootings.

 I have never attempted to purchase a gun.  And while I understand the unequivocable right afforded to U.S. citizens in the Second Amendment to the Constitution to ‘keep and bear arms’,  this amendment seems glaringly outdated and egregiously misused.

Perhaps using a quote from Star Trek may seem trite but the needs of the many human beings on this planet, innocent people being cut down by automatic weapons designed for mass casualties, must, in some realm of reality, outweigh the needs of the few making these weapons legal to purchase and own.

The world is crying out.  Its citizens are angry.  The right to bear arms is understandable when we keep in mind its original intent was self-defense.  The right to easily obtain a weapon meant to be a destructive killing machine seems to stretch the boundaries of that amendment to infinitesimal proportions.

How many more lives have to be unnaturally extinguished before someone says, “enough is enough”?   This is a new world, an angry world.  And the more we fuel that world with the means to spread hatred quickly and efficiently in a hail of bullets, the faster the human race will destroy itself and everything else in its path because they were allowed to buy legal armaments to make it happen.

We have already seen it too many times on our television and computer screens.  Hate is a powerful force.  And knowing that hate can simply walk in, go through the necessary channels and readily purchase an automatic weapon to spread its message scares the shit out of me.

In lieu of flowers

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It is with deep regret and great sadness that I announce the passing of the hamster who used to power the wheel of thoughts in my head.  Jack died peacefully on his wheel on Sunday, June 12th at 3:15 pm in his 36th year.

Jack loved all things related to language and words.  He excelled at creating just the right nuance in a sentence so it sounded interesting without being too wordy.  He spent many hours pouring over his thesaurus to make a phrase engaging, yet comprehensible.

Jack began gnawing on his writing chops at a young age.  He dabbled in poetry and short stories and had recently begun his foray into writing a novel.  His passion for words led him to blogging and he relished the forum that allowed him complete freedom for his creative compulsion.  He was a fanatic about grammatical correctness, loved to build a story from beginning to end and thrilled in plotting twists and turns that a reader may not have anticipated.

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Jack leaves behind an empty wheel, a collection of Dean Koontz novels and a battered Underwood typewriter on which he had hoped to use to type his way into becoming a prolific Canadian author.

Expressions of sympathy can be sent to the comments section of this blog.  R.I.P. Jack – we had a good thing going for a while.

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When the sun shines on June

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I have written many posts about my mom since she passed a little over two years ago.  Some of those stories have been light-hearted and as joyful as she was and some have been wrapped tightly in the veil of loss.

During the past two years, my mother has made it extremely clear that she has been doing her best to keep in touch.  While others may dismiss my belief in her presence, I know in my heart it is not fantasy.  It is not simply an extension of my overactive imagination.  It is not some arc angel named Jingobar trying to earn his wings.  It is my mother – I knew her well enough to know how she operates.

If I ever had any doubt, even one moment’s hesitation that she was working her magic from another realm, she made it perfectly clear last Wednesday night.  Without going into intricate detail, a great deal of my past culminated into a very emotional evening and, where I felt I had failed in the past, I encountered an overwhelming rush of emotion by feeling like I had finally made a difference.

After sharing a very touching conversation with a dear friend and wiping the remaining tears from my face, I walked back in to my living room.  The early evening sun was still streaming through my window as I sat down on my couch.  To my left, my grandfather’s writing desk was cast in half-shadow and half-sun.  When I took a moment to absorb the tableau in front of me, the tears returned.

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The candle on my desk, the one with my mother’s picture, was one of the few things bathed in the sunlight and that light, perhaps my mother’s light, projected a halo onto the wall behind it.  In the two years that her candle has sat innocently atop my desk, this anomaly has never occurred.  A brief twenty seconds later the image, and the sunlight, were gone.

My mom, June as we came to call after this story (click on the link), sent her message in her way and I got that message loud and clear.  There will never be a doubt that she is always with me when the sun shines on June.

 

I didn’t want to exhale

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I missed you a lot yesterday.

Some days are so much worse.

Lots of funny little memories

flooded back and overwhelmed me.

I thought I could smell your perfume,

Lily of the Valley,

and though it was faint,

even in the earliest days of spring,

with no blossoms to be seen anywhere,

I knew it was you,

and I didn’t want to exhale.

lily-of-the-valley

And when the smell of Spearmint gum

overwhelmed my senses,

sometime later in the afternoon,

it was like sneaking into your purse again,

to get a piece of that very gum,

and I didn’t want to exhale.

Those smells keep us connected,

like two worlds coming together

if only for a brief moment.

And no matter how far away you may seem,

those lingering scents make me know that you are here,

standing close to me,

always here when I need you,

and I don’t ever want to exhale.

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