I’m Still Here

A painting I did from a pic of my Dad

The day that my father went into a care facility several years ago, I remember trying to cheer myself up by saying, in spite of his change in circumstances, “He’s still here.”  It was a way to remind myself to be fully in the present, especially when I was with him, and to make the most of what time we had left together on this earth.

That became my mantra over the next few years through the many lows as his disease progressed.  Oh, there were highs too.  The highs were when we had an unexpectedly good conversation or when he made a joke (which he managed to do even near the end of his life), and when I was able to get him to answer his phone and tell him I loved him.  And one of the best highs for me was when he’d sing along to his old favourite tunes, with a sparkle in his eye and a little more of a spring in his step.  The greatest joy for me was that he always remembered who I was.

It’s been just almost seven months since my old Pop passed away, and this past Father’s Day was my first without him.  The year following someone’s passing is full of “firsts”.  How far have I come and what have I learned?

Take A Moment – it’s important every now and then to stop and ask yourself how you’re doing, kind of like an emotional, self-awareness scan.  People do that for you a lot in the beginning, just as your bereavement begins, but after a time they stop asking and you have to continue.  It’s not about feeling sorry for yourself, it’s about being aware of how much time you spend being sad.  By doing that, I am conscious of the fact that my grieving does become less and less, although it can hit me unexpectedly for odd reasons. It’s mostly important to realize that it is easing.

Let It Flow Then Let It Go – those unexpected moments when it hits you can be caused by the oddest things.  I saw an emotional scene in a TV show the other day, when a horse runs away from, and then decides to return to the man who released it.  It had nothing at all to do with death, but it was emotional.  And when I cried about the horse, it turned into crying about my Dad.  I just let it happen instead of feeling stupid at crying, which I am sometimes tempted to do.

Don’t Feel Guilty – this was certainly something I didn’t know I would experience, especially in the beginning. I would laugh at something, and then suddenly be hit with a sense of guilt, realizing that I’m alive and able to laugh but my Dad isn’t.  To get past it, I would have to talk myself through the feeling, reminding myself of what my Dad would most likely say to me;  that this is my life to live and I shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about his.  I let him speak to me that way sometimes, because I know what a pragmatic, down-to-earth person he was.  That helps a lot.

Take Comfort Wherever You Find It – I am not a religious person, but I have found comfort in certain thoughts and the occasional epiphany coming to me over the past few months.  One was the awareness that my father does, in fact, live on through me.  I have his genes, I have his words in my head, his stories and views of the world.  More and more his words and expressions, his jokes and stories come back to me, and I enjoy and appreciate them more than ever.  My daughter says that I sometimes move or say things in the manner of which my father did.  Sometimes I see my daughters do or say something that I or my husband would do too.  When we have children, they are an extension of ourselves and they are an expression of our drive to continue as a species.  For my father and my mother, I am that.

One of the most surprising initial reactions was my sudden and very real awareness of my own mortality.  One of my guitar students who is about the same age as me told me that recently his elderly mother, who is going through struggles of her own, pointed a finger at him and said “You’re next!” Well, my Dad would never thought to have done that to me, but when he left the earth, that’s what I was left feeling.  I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t have any blood siblings, but I have never been this acutely conscious of the fact that I’m going to die one day.  It is startling and sobering.  And frightening.

I read somewhere once that we spend most of our lives in denial of death.  I suppose that’s a pretty necessary thing to be in denial of, when you think of it.  I mean if you ran around fearing death at every corner, what kind of misery would that be?  In another blog post a few months ago, I described how my husband and I were sitting and watching a Hawai’ian sun set one evening when I was overcome by grief.  And suddenly out of nowhere, a school of fish simultaneously jumped out of the water to avoid hitting the rocks.  It was so startling that it jolted me out of my sadness.  And what it made me think was “This is life, Irene!  Live it!”

All those times I reminded myself “he’s still here” were a comfort to me back when my father was alive.  They brought me a sense of appreciation.  I looked deeply into his face and listened carefully to each word, and I hugged and kissed him and told him I loved him.  Sometimes we just sat quietly together, and that was good too.  I was absolutely and totally attuned to him.  Thank goodness I had the luxury of time and the wherewithal to experience that.

After reflecting on that little phrase and what it meant at the time, I have now pointed it towards myself. The sky is still blue and the sun still shines.  When I get up in the morning I hear the birds, not just at the back of my mind, but I really hear them.  I try to be in the moment, take a deep breath, smile at my family and friends and realize how much they mean to me.  Little problems in life are simply that:  little.

And I’m still here.

IJ

Congratulations!

 

It occurred to me on the drive home from my daughter’s college graduation ceremony the other day, that I had never been to a college graduation before.  I myself went straight from high school into a full time, good paying, unionised job at the Vancouver Public Library.  I could afford to live on my own, and moved out when I was not quite 19 years old.

When my daughters got to that same age, it was sobering to realize that unless they could walk into a job like I did, which was highly unlikely, they were going to have to get some kind of certification or higher education that would lead to a better paying job and/or career.

So it was with great excitement and admitted relief that our oldest daughter graduated from her college program, completed her practicum and immediately began a new job with the same company.  Her plan is to move out with her boyfriend in a few months, once they have found a place and saved up a bit of money.

It wasn’t easy getting her to this point.  She had a lot of major issues to overcome in her young life, both physically and emotionally, and we worried half-to-death about her many times, especially during her teenage years.  Even after she decided on the program she wanted to get into, there were a number of hurdles in front of her and it took a long time to overcome them.  But she finally did.  And once she started her studies, she did exceptionally well and knew without a doubt that she had chosen the right path.  What could be better than that?

We have one daughter remaining who is very reluctant to leave her minimum wage job because she doesn’t know what she wants to do and doesn’t yet have the self-confidence to make a move in any particular direction.  One of her arguments to me was that I never went to college, so why should she? If I had known that my lack of higher education would eventually become her excuse to not pursue it, I’d have re-thought my path.  And then again, maybe not.

Every generation is faced with a different set of circumstances when they head out into the world on their own.  Even though I’m dismayed that my kids are still at home in their 20’s, I realize that so much in the world is different for them today.  Rents are phenomenally high, for one thing.  The cost of living is so out of control that we’ve come up with a new phrase called “living wage” which no one in a minimum wage job gets anywhere close to.  Life wasn’t like that when I was in my 20’s.  There were good paying jobs to be had if you got off your butt and looked for them.  But the availability of those jobs for kids coming right out of high school is pretty much non-existent now.  When the owner of the fast food business my daughter works for was faced with a legislated raise in the minimum wage, what did he do?  He cut back his staff’s hours.

It’s not that I am entirely unsympathetic to business owners, I’m aware of their struggle too.  I know a few small business owners who do nothing but worry about money because their leases, rents, products, license fees and many other costs keep going up too.

But getting a college or university degree isn’t always the answer either.  Many kids are saddled with huge debt for many years, almost impossible to get out from under.  And then you wonder about some of these university degrees and what they’re good for on a practical level.  But I digress.

What struck me at my first and only college graduation ceremony the other day was the enthusiasm and positive attitude of all of those wonderful young (and a couple of older!) students as they paraded across the stage.  The room was filled with hope, with excitement for the future and a strong belief in so many possibilities.  Students were proud, their families were proud and so were their teachers. Education does something profound and permanent to you.  Struggling with, and then succeeding at something teaches you more about yourself than you’ll ever know.  I’m hoping that my younger child will get that some day.

In the meantime, my eldest daughter is finally and happily on her way to an independent life.  That’s all a parent could ever want for their child.  I’ve never been so proud of her, and more importantly, I know she’s never been more proud of herself.

Congratulations my darling daughter.  Love always, Mom xoxoxo

Has Brown Feathers, Says “Cluck”

 

Because it has recently become legal to do so, a few people in our neighbourhood have started backyard chicken coops in the past couple of years.  I see two or three coops when I’m out for my walk, and occasionally hear the feathered residents clucking away as I pass by. One morning, I watched as a small group of daycare toddlers were brought over to a wire fence by their adult caretakers to see the chickens for the first time.  It was endlessly fascinating for them.  What a cool thing for kids to see in their own neighbourhood, rather than having to go to an actual farm, farther away.

So I had to laugh the other day when on my walk I came across the sign above.  Lost cat and dog posters abound, but this is the first time I’d ever seen a lost chicken poster. It was stapled on a wood post near the coop the toddlers had visited, and I had to admit as I walked on that I kept my eyes open for the escape artist.  Where would a sneaky chicken hide?  How would it eat?  How long could it possibly last out there in the big, bad world?

What’s even more interesting is that not only is the date specified, but the actual time.  4pm.  The owner must have actually witnessed the escape.  Maybe a door was left open and the escape happened before the owner could do anything.  Did he or she actually chase the chicken?  How fast can a chicken run?  I Googled that question and the answer was anywhere between 9 and 15 mph.  If the chicken got a head start and disappeared in some bushes, I guess it would be easy enough to lose it.

Chickens can’t fly very well, but their ancestors could.  According to a vet expert on The Straight Dope: “The ancestor of modern chickens, the wild red jungle fowl (also a darn good name for a rock band), wasn’t a great flier, but he could get around when he had to. The entire poultry family (chickens, turkeys, guineas, ducks) are adapted to living on the ground. Their beaks are better adapted to pecking off the ground, their feet to walking instead of perching, and their wings are smaller than other birds their size.”  He goes on to say that we humans stepped in and started breeding them to grow larger pectoralis muscles (that’s the chicken breast), so it became even more difficult for them to fly.  I suppose if our sneaky chicken was desperate enough, she got those tiny wings flapping pretty good and it helped her get away.

In one way, I’m rooting for the chicken.  She was brazen, she was bold, and maybe she just wanted a bit of an adventure.  But I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t last too long out there on her own.  So keep your eyes open for her, would you?  She has brown feathers and says “cluck”.

IJ

Going The Extra Foot

 

Every year when my friends and I have our weekend getaway at the spa, a part of the ritual is that we all get pedicures. Outside of the sore gut from laughing so much all weekend, the pedicure is the only sign we have in the following weeks that we’ve been anywhere special.  It’s a little reminder when you get up in the morning and look at your feet;  ah yes, I was at the spa a couple of weeks ago.  Even if it already feels like a year ago.

For the most part, we put away our smart phones and kind of disconnect from the rest of the world, although I notice a couple of us sneaking the occasional peek at their Twitter feed or Facebook during the weekend. It’s a hard habit to break.  But much of the time we are caught up in the togetherness, the laughter and spirited conversation, the eating and drinking and “spa-ing”.

On our recent spa weekend, during the late afternoon on the Saturday, after our treatments, I took a peek at my phone and saw a text from my husband asking about the “feet pic”.  Every year, the five of us put one foot in to a circle and we take a picture of it.  My husband was expecting to see this year’s pic posted on Facebook.  I mentioned this to my friends, “…but honestly, I can never tell which year the picture comes from because it’s always the same!” I commented.  We had been eating home-made pizzas and downing some fine wine, and the conversation at the dinner table took an interesting turn.

How could we make this year’s picture different?  How might it “stand out” from the rest?  Someone suggested we find a man and have him put his foot in the picture along with ours.  Would anyone notice? And then came the bigger question:  How would we find a man?

We usually head out to the outdoor hot tub in the evening before bed, so after clearing the table we ran off to don our bathing suits and fluffy, white spa robes.  The conversation about finding a man continued and a lot of giggling ensued.  “You will be the one to find the man, Irene,” I was told.  Me?  I’m not sure how I was honoured (burdened) with this task, but I accepted, and out the door we went.

It was dark.  The only man we could see was a geeky, young maintenance guy, who surely would not have a “manly” foot.   We decided that if no other male was found, he would have to do.  So we trudged off to the hot tub, hoping against hope that there would be a male sitting in it.

And there was.

He was sitting with another woman, and along with a couple of others in the hot tub, they were enjoying a relaxing soak.  He had no idea what I was about to ask him and I had no idea how I was going to approach him, but approach him I did.  The others shyly stood back as I brazenly walked around the edge of the sunken hot tub to where he was sitting.

I felt for him, really.  He looked kind of quiet and unassuming, and I was about to put him on the spot.

“Excuse me,” I began.  “I was wondering if you might be up to taking a picture with myself and these other ladies?”  He looked up at me questioningly, so I tried to explain.  “We really only want to take a picture of your foot alongside ours,”  I continued.  Behind me, my friends helped me explain the annual foot pic, and he graciously agreed to join us.

It turned out that one of our group recognized him and his wife, which made the strange request a little less suspicious, I suppose.  Especially for his wife 🙂

And so he stepped out of the steamy pool and we managed to organize the photo shoot. Afterwards we all plopped back into the hot tub, enjoying a long, sizzling soak on a cool, cloudless night.  Later, on the short walk back to the complex, we started to muse at what the response to the picture might be.  We couldn’t help getting excited at the possible scandal the picture might inspire.  What would they (our Facebook friends and family) think?  What would they say?  And when someone hit the send button and the salacious shot was finally posted for the world to see, we waited.

And waited.

The wait began to get to us.  Perhaps people hadn’t seen it yet.  Maybe the foot wasn’t “manly” enough. Or could it be that people noticed the odd foot but were afraid to comment on it and insult somebody. Even worse, maybe nobody cared?

A larger, hairier foot might have stood out more.

Even the next morning as we packed up and loaded into the car for the drive home, there had been little response.  I finally became impatient enough to text my husband a small clue.  “Didn’t you notice?” When he finally did, and posted a leading comment on Facebook, we thought this would certainly put a fire under the scandal.

Nope.  Sigh.

I think we’re going to have to put something even more scandalous in the picture next year.  Any ideas?

IJ

A Leaf Legacy

 “If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.”

― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

About two weeks ago, I was walking along my usual route when I spotted an impression of a leaf in a fairly new section of a concrete side walk.  I kept walking and started thinking about that image and how it got there.  Did the leaf just fall onto the side walk at the perfect time and leave its mark? Did someone come along and deliberately press the leaf into the still-wet concrete?  The image here is not that leaf, by the way.

I thought about it and thought about it, and the very next day when I went on that walk again, I decided to take a picture of it.  But I couldn’t find it.  I looked and looked in the area where I thought the leaf was, and just couldn’t see it.  I wondered if I had imagined it?  But I really didn’t think so. Every day I walked in that area, I searched for that leaf impression, but it seemed to have disappeared.

The leaf in the picture above was one I found later on the web.  I think it’s too perfect to have been a natural occurrence, and was probably deliberately pressed into the concrete by somebody.

When I found the first leaf, however, it got me to thinking about the legacies we leave behind in life, intentionally or not.  When famous film stars die, they leave behind all of their work and we can watch them again and again as if they were still here.  The same is true for family members;  we can watch old videos or look at pictures of them, or we can read the words they left behind in the form of memoirs, like the ones my Dad and my Grandfather wrote.

Historical public figures are immortalized by the changes they made in the world or in their countries, the journeys they took, and the way they lived or died.  I’m reminded of one of the stories we heard when we were in Hawaii, about Captain Cook and his impact on the Hawaiian people.  First, they thought he was a god, then…not so much.  But a monument still sits in Kealakekua Bay to remind all of his visit and of his death there.  On the same voyage that he explored Hawaii, Captain Cook also explored the area where I live, Vancouver Island, so you’ll find signs of his being here too like the street I used to live on, Cook Street.

The rest of us who are less famous also like to mark the places where significant events happened.  For instance, you often see little memorials on the side of the road if someone was killed there, flowers and teddy bears, maybe a cross, and notes of sorrow.  Sometimes people are immortalized by having their name inscribed on a metal plate on a park bench.  Graffiti has been around since I was a kid and probably before that;  who doesn’t remember seeing “Grads of ’75”, or whatever year you graduated high school, spray painted on a bridge overpass somewhere?  Or maybe you carved your initials along with the initials of someone you had a crush on, inside a heart on a tree trunk to confess your undying love.

On that same trip to the Big Island of Hawaii, I noticed quite a few instances of what I call “White Rock Graffiti”, as in this picture:

People use white rocks, some of them coral, to “write” messages on the black lava beds, usually along the highway or other roadways;  a seemingly harmless thing to do.  But at the official parks on the Big Island this type of graffiti is discouraged because it’s considered disrespectful, and now there are community efforts to actually clean up these messages little by little.  As far as I can see, they’ve got a lot of work ahead of them! When I started to think about it more, the messages began to appear more self-serving than cute, and in fact became kind of ugly.

Many people talk about leaving a legacy behind, whether it’s their art, their writings or some kind of work they’ve done.  Sometimes people will imply that their only real legacy is the children they leave behind, or the money those children inherit, which, by the way, is the first definition of “legacy” 🙂

The internet brings a whole new dimension to legacies.  When I die, assuming that I continue to write here until that point, how long will this blog remain? What about my Facebook page?  It’s kind of eerie to see the Facebook page, still remaining, of someone I knew who passed away;  to see the words he typed and the pictures he posted. Facebook does give family members the option of removing the page, or “memorializing” it, whatever that means.  There is a kind of strangeness to it, but it is another form of a legacy.

Looking at that leaf, the first one I spotted, reminded me again of impermanence.  The only sign that the leaf once existed was the impression it left in the side walk.  And even that will one day disappear, either by wear and tear or when the side walk is removed or damaged in some other way.  The words I write here will become less and less relevant (not that they are that relevant to begin with!) and the only people who will care will be my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  I will become a face in a picture and a name attached to that face, and the essence of me will slowly disappear just like that concrete leaf impression.

I like to think, though, that rather than physically disappearing, I will simply go back to where I sprouted from, returning to the circle of life that will nurture those who come after me.  There’s no greater legacy than that.

“I had an inheritance from my father,
It was the moon and the sun.
And though I roam all over the world,
The spending of it’s never done.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

No Big Deal, Uncle Roy

 

My Uncle Roy was a gay man in Denmark during a time when being gay was pretty much a death sentence, and not because of AIDS.

I don’t know a lot about his story because, sadly, he committed suicide during World War II when the Nazis not only threw Jews into concentration camps, but homosexuals too.  The Jews were made to wear yellow Star of David armbands and the gays wore pink triangles as in the photo above.

I remember in the 80’s before I moved to Victoria, I saw a theatre production in Vancouver called “Bent”, which was all about a homosexual concentration camp like that.

It was pretty disturbing. Whether my Uncle Roy killed himself to avoid being thrown into a camp, or he was afraid of being found out or simply depressed, I don’t know. He must have come to the conclusion that he didn’t have any choice but to make his exit.

My Danish cousins loved my Uncle Roy, but they didn’t know he was gay until I told them a few years back. Their parents had never mentioned it to them, but my mother had revealed Uncle Roy’s secret to my father and to me many years before.  I know she loved her older brother very much, so his death must have been devastating to her.

When I was in high school, I found out that one of my best friends was gay.  I didn’t understand too much about what that meant at the time, so I told her she’d grow out of it.

Stupid, eh?  Well, what did I know?  The fact that she was gay didn’t really bother me very much, but it did bother members of my family, who told me they didn’t want me to spend any time with her, in case I “caught” something.

It sounds silly now, but at the time I think that sentiment ran high with a lot of people.  You certainly didn’t talk about that kind of thing in high school, so my friend didn’t come out to anyone other than those closest to her. I’m sure this was the case with other gay high schoolers at the time.

My friend attempted suicide too, a couple of times, although she didn’t succeed.  She did end up with an addiction to alcohol, however, and her life spiralled downward after that.

I told a story in this blog once about a security guard that I had a mad crush on, who turned out to be gay and who eventually died of AIDS. They used to say that one day everyone would know someone who died of AIDS, which turned out to be true for me.

These days AIDS is no longer an absolute death sentence, thank goodness.  There are fewer and fewer names being etched on to that memorial in Stanley Park that I was describing in the post linked above. It’s almost like nearing the end of a battle. But there still exist a war.

A part of me would like to think that things have improved and attitudes have changed since my Uncle Roy died, but of course societal change happens excruciatingly slow, especially with my generation and older.

So maybe it shouldn’t surprise me to hear that same-sex marriages finally became legal in the UK a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t realize it WASN’T legal there!

It horrified me to hear the stories about the anti-gay bill in Uganda which not only makes it illegal to be gay, but they can actually impose the death penalty.  And who can forget just before the Winter Olympics earlier this year when the Russian anti-gay bill was announced;  another sign that ignorance rules. Honest to pete, can we get over it now?

I suppose I should give credit where it is due;  at least the UK DID change their laws, as some states are doing in the U.S.  And the Pope SEEMS to be less worried about homosexuality than his predecessors. Not that I’m Catholic and have much to do with the Pope, but it’s something.

In the end, I believe that it’s my kids’ generation and younger who are the ones who are really going to change attitudes.  The local high school that my daughters attended had, according to them, lots of openly gay couples and no obvious problems because of it.  I’m sure there were those who didn’t like it, but that seemed to be the exception rather than the rule.

It just wasn’t a big deal.  And that’s what needs to happen.

It has to stop being such a big deal.

As frustrated as I am with how slow progress is, I do wish my Uncle Roy could have experienced the changes that have taken place so far.

And I especially would have loved to have met him. 

Skål, Oncle Roy.

IJ

Hummingbird Don’t Fly Away

 

The five of us were standing around the kitchen counter in our condo last Friday night, the first evening of our annual spa weekend, examining the bottles of wine we had brought for the occasion. The sun was pouring through the window and through the open door of the patio on that beautiful late afternoon, and we were in great spirits anticipating our weekend together, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, flying right past us and circling back towards the window.  I immediately knew what it was, and turned towards it as it flew up to the ceiling and towards a very high skylight in the condo.  A beautiful little hummingbird.

Right away I began to worry, knowing that the little bird was going to have a heck of a time figuring out how to get back outdoors.  The door to the patio was still wide open, but the bird was determined to find its way out through that darn skylight instead.  It tried and tried, occasionally resting by clinging to a very tiny ledge at the side of the skylight.  And then it tried and tried again.

We didn’t know what to do, but someone had the idea of making some sugar water in the hopes that she (I’ve decided it was a ‘she’ by the pictures I have researched since), would get hungry enough to come down and drink it.  But all she could do was to flap at that skylight again and again.

We had reservations for dinner at the restaurant in the complex at 7pm, and by 6:45pm, she was still trying.  All we could hope for was that she would eventually get tired and come down.  I couldn’t get her off my mind as we walked to the restaurant and got seated inside.

After we’d been sitting and chatting for awhile, we realized that we had forgotten something back at the condo so I volunteered to take the walk back and get it, still worried about the little bird and thinking maybe I would find her somewhere where I could catch her and help her get outside.  I didn’t really believe that it was possible to catch something so small and so fast, but I was still hopeful.  When I got back to the condo, however, I still found her batting away at the skylight, so I retrieved what I was looking for and reluctantly locked up and made my return to the restaurant.

It was getting dark by the time dinner was over and we headed back to the condo.  As we entered I listened for the sound of her fluttering wings, but it was very quiet.  Someone turned a light on and I walked quietly over to the skylight and looked up.  She wasn’t there.  I knew she was in the room somewhere, so I gingerly tiptoed around looking on the floor behind the chairs and along the windowsill.  Then I heard a rustling sound.

She had hidden herself in some fake leaves that were lying in a pot containing a fake tree.  Her head popped up just as I got there, and I guess she was a little startled so she flew up to one of the branches in the tree.  She was within my reach so I knew I had to catch her now before she flew off somewhere higher.  One of my friends took a book and held it above her, and then gently, very gently, I cupped my hands above and below her and caught her just before she managed to fly off again.

Her wing stuck out of my fingers at first, but she pulled it back in, and I held her delicately as I walked towards the patio door that one of my friends had hurried to open.  I walked outside and decided that I’d try and carefully place her on the patio table.  But instead of letting me put her down, she found her way to my forefinger, and there she was, perched quietly and looking at me. I was in awe.

I whispered to her, “So you don’t want to go just yet, you want to stay with me?” She seemed quite calm and content, either that or she was still very tired from her earlier attempts at escaping.  But there she sat.  I’ve never had a hummingbird on my finger before.  She was so tiny and so beautiful and I didn’t want her to go.  Have you ever had one of those moments so beautiful you find yourself holding your breath and wishing you could hold onto it for just a little longer?

From behind me, someone suggested I take her over to one of the bushes near the patio, so I began to walk towards it.  And that’s when she finally fluttered off, disappearing into the night.  Wow.

Hummingbird don’t fly away, fly away 
Hummingbird don’t fly away, fly away 
Haven’t you noticed the days 
Somehow keep getting longer? 
And the spirit voices whisper in us all
(from Hummingbird – Seals & Crofts)