May 7

You’ve been on my mind a lot lately.  As I drive around the little town that bears memories of you on every street corner I can’t help but remember you.  You spent almost your whole life in this slow-paced town and I see your face everywhere I go.  When I visit with the people who knew and loved you, when I walk past the places where we had “coffee” and the pioneer cemetery where you took us to wash our ancestors gravestones, when I remember walking to the post office to pick up your mail and spending an entire day making noodles in your garage on 3rd street or the church you attended or the hospital where you died I am overcome with a sense of gratefulness for the time I had to get to know you and sadness for the years that I wish we could still have had together.

I took my children to visit your grave today.  I needed to see where you are, even though I know that you aren’t really there.  I haven’t been there in quite a while and I wanted to feel close to you.  I wept sorrowful, hot tears as I watched my kids run around by your headstone.  I know that I have no right to feel this way, but I can’t help feeling as though my kids have missed out on something really special.  They have a wonderful relationship with my mother, their Oma.  But I so wish they could have known you.  I remember you well enough to know exactly how you would have interacted with them. You had a child-like spirit and children always loved you.  I know they would have loved you, too.  It makes me sad that they will only know you as a smiling, gray-haired lady in a picture.  But my daughter has finally grown big enough to wear the sweater you knit. One of the last ones.  It seems unfair that hundreds of children in this community have worn your sweaters and yet only one of my kids will get to wear one - even you would probably raise an eyebrow if I dressed my son in a pink sweater.

I think about you often and I miss you profoundly.  Not many people are natural teachers the way you were.  And not many people have as positive an outlook as you did or knew what it was to love as selflessly as you did.  Not many people had as much respect for people from all walks of life as you did.  I am trying to learn the lessons you taught.  I fear I will fail and disappoint you.  But I am trying to remind myself that you were one of the few people in my life who I rarely felt that I had disappointed. You always told me you were proud of me.  You taught me to hold my head high and to live with compassion for others and with hands open to the gifts this world has to offer.  You would laugh if you read this.  You would shake your head with your jowls quivering and point your bony, crooked finger at my and say “Ech! You’re a silly girl!”.  God, I really miss you.  But there’s something comforting about feeling your presence here in this small part of the world.

Love,
Your granddaughter

May 2

On Monday we officially said “Goodbye” to Saskatoon and all our loved ones there.  The moving van got packed up and we set off for our newest adventure.  Right now we’re hanging out at my parents’ place in Manitoba or, as we like to call it, “Saskatchatario”.  The humidity is already making my hair go all wilty which is making me grumpy. Which, of course, is only supposed to get worse as we get into London, which, I am told, is like living in a greenhouse.  If you know how whiny I get, even in dry, Saskatchewan summers, you can imagine how excited I am about that.

The hubby leaves tomorrow for London. I will be hanging out here in Saskatchatario until May 11.  Yahoo.  Some good hot tub lovin’!  I’m kind of grateful for this little break before I get thrown into a new life.  Here I’m not saying “goodbye” to everyone dear to me.  Here I can just relax and not have any real responsibility.  (Well, except my kids, but whatever.)  I needed the emotional break.  And hopefully by this time next week I will be starting to itch to get into our new place and get settled. That little excitement will get me motivated.  So, until then, things might be a little sparse around here. We’ll see how the week goes.

Jan 10

The kids are playing quietly together in the playroom. There are only a few short moments of this peace during the day.  I will try and enjoy it.  It is cold and miserable outside. The heavens opened up last night and covered us with snow.  I think I may stay home today just because it will be way too much work to get out with the kids.  I hate snowsuits.

I have spent the past several days working on a slideshow/video that I am making for some friends.  Friends who, when I was pregnant with Kieran, miscarried their seventh baby.  A baby who was big enough to make little one inch long footprints.  They had a memorial service for their children last June to create some closure and to celebrate the lives of the babies.  It was beautiful and poignant and I hope it was very healing for them.  I took a lot of pictures that day and I am putting the pictures into this slideshow as a way for them to remember the day.

Working on the video has brought some unexpected emotions.  I always thought I could empathise with these friends.  I haven’t lost a baby but I could imagine what it must feel like.  But as I put together the pictures, as I listened to the lyrics of a song about losing a baby, as I searched for images of tiny feet and hands online, I realized that I have no idea what they have gone through.  In the past few days the possibility of losing my children has gripped my soul with icy, heartwrenching sadness.  As I remembered the birth of my kids and imagined what it would be like to not hear them cry but to hold a limp and lifeless, tiny body and to will it to come back, my heart awakened to the pain that these parents must feel. Parents of seven beautiful babies, most of whom were big enough to be delivered when they died, but not big enough to survive.  Parents with empty arms and broken hearts.  Parents who went through the difficulty of a pregnancy and the pain of a deliver, but had no baby to cuddle afterwards.

I had no conception of this kind of pain.  I probably still don’t really understand and, perhaps, never will.  But the tears I have shed in the designing of this small token will be a memorial for seven little babies, two of which would be almost the exact same age as my own children.

*I found this image online but I altered the size until the footprints were the same size as the ones that my friends had from their second son after he was born. 



In loving memory of…

Michael Peter - May 10, 1998

Joseph Paul - July 5, 1999

“Peanut” - August 2000

Mabel Rose - May 30, 2002

Sarah Anne - March 2003
                                                                                                           
“Tim-Bit” - April 8, 2004

Josiah Timothy - November 8, 2005

Oct 7

Last night my husband’s grandfather passed away. I consider him my grandpa, too, because my last grandfather died when I was 14 and when I became part of my husband’s family Grandpa MacKinnon was one of the most welcoming and friendly people of the whole bunch. He never seemed to be in a bad mood. He was the single wittiest person I have ever known and he always had a well-timed wisecrack. He was a loving and caring father and grandfather and everyone around him loved and respected him. I didn’t have the opportunity to know him for very long but I admired his attitude and his fun-loving way of making everyone around him feel at ease.

Grandpa MacKinnon was not biologically related to any of his children or grandchildren because he married his wife after she already had 3 kids with a previous husband who died. He adopted the children as his own but he did not physically father any of them. One of the last times I saw Grandpa was at Grandma’s 90th birthday party. All the family was gathered together for the celebration and we saw some relatives we hadn’t seen in years. I was helping Grandpa walk to the area where we were arranging ourselves for a family photo and as we walked, Grandpa said “For a man who never fathered any children, I sure have a beautiful family, don’t I?” That should tell you what kind of a man he was. He took great pride in his family and was very humble about his contribution to the family. Well, Grandpa, I didn’t say it then, but this is what I was thinking: You were a father in every way that matters and we all loved you for it. You were a great example of what it is to face adversity with faith and courage and to live every moment with joy and a sense of humour and we will miss you very much. Rest in peace.

Sep 20

My brother-in-law died of cancer this past August. His personality always rubbed me the wrong way (I know, nice opener, right?). I tried to be open-minded but his manner was very aggressive and I always felt like he thought he had all the answers and if I (or anyone) disagreed with him then we were written off as “an idiot”.

In his last year, while undergoing cancer treatments and then, when he was no longer being treated because there was no hope of recovery, he was very sharp, impatient and downright nasty at times. For me it was a constant struggle between trying to have compassion for him and not wanting to let him get away with treating people like crap. I felt like someone needed to stand up to him and say “this is not ok”. Maybe it wasn’t the right approach but that was my response.

G was 25 when he died. He was born the same year as me. It is impossible for me to imagine the difficult road he had to walk. I certainly wouldn’t want to trade places with him. Cancer is a terrible way to die. In a lot of ways I feel like thinking about him will always evoke a sense of frustration, sadness and pity because so much of my interaction with him involved those emotions. It seemed like his maturation was stunted around age 14 because although he wanted to do things on his own and not need anyone for anything, whenever things were going poorly he played the victim, suffering injustice at the hands of others. He had such fiery anger and bitterness towards his mother which seemed to me to be misplaced. We have all been disappointed in some way, by how our parents raised us, but they do their best and sometimes they just don’t know the right way to demonstrate their love for us.

So G’s reactions to many people and situations frustrated me in a huge way. I don’t know all the reasons for his feelings and obviously there are going to be major gaps in what I can understand about a person that I only knew for 6 years, but these were my observations: G seemed to feel that he had not had a noteworthy life, that there were no stories about him worth telling or memories worth passing on. This attitude made me pity him more than anything. What a sad way to look back on his life, brief as it was. This also saddened my husband because much knowledge, information and history died with him.

I do not share this to leave a negative legacy about G, but simply to be honest about my feelings about him. I felt, particularly in this last year, that he resented my presence and had no respect for my opinions. Likely, this was largely my fault because I often reacted in the wrong way to his behaviour and words. I responded childishly to childish behaviour. I met his stubbornness with my own strong will. I pray that I can be forgiven me for my judgmentalism and harsh words. I choose not to live in regret, and I know G would agree with me on that point. There is no value in regretting the past. We can only resolve to make better choices in the future.

When he died there was a sense of relief, both that G’s suffering was over, and that the family was released from a sentence of service. Not that they would have had it any other way, but the burden of caring for someone who is dying is an extremely heavy one. I recall thinking that it was unfortunate that G’s final opinion of me was likely not a favorable one but I didn’t see many things that I could have done differently where he was concerned.

Recently I read the script of a video that G made for our daughter. It was just him on camera sharing some thoughts and ideas about the world for her to see when she is old enough to understand what happened to him. He made the recording after months of arguing with us about how he had nothing to say and how much he hated being on camera. We let the issue go and assumed that he wasn’t going to do it. We were visiting the family less than a month before G died and he told us that he was going to do it. We received a copy of the script via email after his funeral and I finally got a chance to sit down and read it.

I was totally shocked by what he had to say about me. His words to my daughter about me were these: “…learn from your mother. She has this strength about her that I hope you take after, a certain confidence and poise that is admirable.” Wow. While I didn’t expect him to say offensive things about me, I wouldn’t have been surprised to not be mentioned at all. It simply floored me. I was honored to be represented in that way and I was so glad that he did appreciate me in some way. I guess it just set my mind at ease a little bit. I’m not superstitious or obsessed with living in the past. I would like to believe that G now has a more complete understanding of his life and the way his actions affected other people. Surely a much more thorough understanding than I have. But it is good to know that his last thoughts of me weren’t all bad.

So my final goodbye to you, G, is this: You have taught me many things about myself. Perhaps the bad that I so easily perceived in you is what I most hated in myself. I will honor your memory and teach my daughter that her big bear of an uncle was one with a great capacity to learn and love, despite his shortcomings. She will know how you faced your final days with courage, despite the pain you experienced, both physically and emotionally. She will know that you were fierce in your opinions but even more so in your passion. I pray she inherits at least some of that ferocity. She will need it to face all that this world will bombard her with.

Rest in peace, my brother.