Dad, where is the peace? Where is the joy? I’ve been watching you my whole life and I still don’t understand. Alan had watched eight decades come and go, and I only five – a pup next to the old fella. So really, what did I know? But he didn’t Read more…
In spite of her struggles, and perhaps because of them, Lois grew to be a warrior. She was not a gym rat or a marathon runner. She was not a university graduate or a political powerhouse. She was not a career oriented woman driven to break a glass ceiling. She Read more…
It is December 31st and Lois has not risen. It is late morning. It is the last day that she will taste the air in her own apartment, the last day that her near blind eyes will see light glinting on the hills, or pictures loved, the last day that Read more…
A thousand metaphors have sprung from the lips of those who know the joy of gliding through depths, splashing through waves, propelling themselves through that which infills us and that which surrounds us. I know that joy. I love to swim – now – but it was not always so. Read more…
The weight of her world is finally, achingly lifting one weary word at a time. Here, now, offered to me and to the ether are these ancient, cold roots dying to find warmth in the light. Every pebbled syllable is laden with pain, with years, even decades of secrecy, of Read more…
You’re dressed like a queen. Look at you! She grins. Of course I am! It is our last day. She knows. She is ready. Her queenly attire is a magnificent purple garment, replete with puffed sleeves. But like so many other things here, it is beauty that hides an underlying, Read more…
Do you know where the picture is? The one from above the fireplace in the sunroom? I think that it’s probably in storage. You and your sister didn’t throw it out did you? You threw out most of my life when I moved into town. No, Mom. I’m pretty sure Read more…
I am healing. I tell myself this. I tell myself this again and again. These three words rattle, bouncing like marbles on cold tile in the half-lit hallways of my once cloudless mind. They scurry, they scatter, they disappear without reason for hours and for days, but I am healing. Read more…
We shouldn’t have moved. It is not true but it is her truth, the one that resides deep in these gravel-laden fissures of her soul. It is her way of making sense of my little brother’s death, of his choice to leave the way he did. She believed that letting Read more…
It was waiting for me. The Poetry of Walt Whitman. Oddly enough, I had been thinking of Whitman during my distracted ramble through the bookshop, and there on a shelf lay pages of poems, as if placed just for me. A few books (only three or four) far to the Read more…
Already I am lonely, even though she is not yet gone. It is the loneliness of the future and oddly, of the now. There are days on which I imagine the undisturbed dust in my heat-turned-down house that remains far away. There are Mondays, Tuesdays, and other named days on Read more…
It happened slowly. It may have begun five or six years ago, well before Dad’s rattling breath slowed and then stopped beyond midnight. It may have ended not long ago – humbly – in and beside a hospice bed. And yet, in the mysterious way of these things, it will Read more…
How is it possible to have so many things, so many memories in a small, one bedroom apartment? How is it possible to have brought a collection spanning nearly 70 years to this final waypoint? And why? Because. Combat. Battle. Memories. Treasures. But it was never really about the things. Read more…
Even after it is finished, there is still that which remains unknown and undone. She is gone, and the room is silent except for the distant murmurs of people yet living: trays, wheels, snippets of words, soft soled shoes. And yet, somehow she is not gone. Lois lies in repose. Read more…
His name is Jeffrey. Oh. That’s nice. Any particular reason? No. Just Jeffrey. It came to me. Hmm. Jeffrey is the ten inch tall Christmas gnome I purchased to add a little more cheer. He resides on the pony wall between the galley kitchen and the tiny living room. He Read more…
We drive. We drive to experience the sun. We drive to pass the time. We drive so that Lois won’t sit all day. We drive to talk. We drive to while away the time in companionable silence, with no need of words to get in the way. We are on Read more…
She tries to sneak past me every day! It’s a game we play. One of the aids in Mom’s building smiles as she tells me. We are in Covid times and the staff do regular temperature checks of every member of their little community – staff, visitors and residents alike. Read more…
When I look out the window, I see it. It looms large across the creek. It raises an eyebrow. It bends an ear to listen and then to laugh at our surprise. In an irony that could only be conjured by the Heavens themselves, the rest of Mom’s earthly possessions Read more…
I am back on the Bluffs. As long as Mom remains relatively well, and before the snow brings sure, icy death to these sheer cliffs, this has become my place of refuge, much like my own private Narnia on the borderlands of Calgary. I am here because of John Keats: Read more…
She is bent to 90 degrees. She is standing over her walker, hovering, swaying slowly like an ancient willow fluttering by the water’s edge. It is as if she has forgotten where she is, forgotten that her walker has a seat on which she can rest. It is as if Read more…