Lord, Help me Remember

“No one was there for me. She should just get her act together.”

I had called to ask for a loaf of bread for a woman with an infant son in trauma. The mother of the mother had called me because her daughter had feared the reprisal if she asked for help. As we talked I remembered. Two years ago, that had been me. It had been my child who was crying incessantly because of her own inner trauma. It was me struggling to go on that one more day when sleep was a thing of mystery and I couldn’t even lay my baby on the floor because something was wrong that caused me to fear leaving her alone.

I talked to the grandmother for a while brainstorming ways we could help and then began calling the women in the church. I started with the woman who baked and often shared her bread. Her response shocked me. I hadn’t known her when her children were small and her response of defensive blaming showed me the struggle she must have dealt with then. So I let her have her decision and simply told her mine.

I think because my mother is so good at forgetting, I made a choice somewhere in my life to remember. I also made a choice about what I wanted to do with that remembering.

“When my child was sick no one was there for me even when we were running back and forth for doctor’s appointments and staying in the hospital. No one helped me through the days when she cried and screamed. But I made a choice then. I chose to remember so that maybe someday that memory would help me be there for someone else who felt alone and overwhelmed. No one can go back and change what happened for me then. But I can choose to let it be something I hold in resentment or something to give me the empathy I need to help others. I am choosing empathy. I don’t want anyone else to have to feel as alone as I felt then.”

She made the woman a loaf of bread. Others in the church contributed meals to take one more stress off the young mother and babysat the eldest as she went to the appointments where she found out her infant had a constriction in the bowels that required medical intervention.

We need to remember. When a celebrity dies, there is a reason it gets attention. Our western society is not very welcoming to signs of grief. Unless we are lucky enough to be born in a culture that understands the healthiness of emotions, we are taught to limit our expressions and time frames for grief through subtle and sometimes not so subtle judgments. We are given lists of what is acceptable and not acceptable to express grief about in an open forum. We are “shamed” for grief by comparisons to other areas seen by many as more worthy of our attention.

So we turn to films and books to allow a release of what we hold so deeply inside. Robin gave us many of those memorable roles that helped us feel the balance of pathos and mirth. Now he is gone. The laughter he was able to bring to so many was not enough for him at the end. He knew the power of laughter. He brought it to Christopher Reeves in his hospital bed when life support systems and paralysis replaced his image as Superman. The humour and hope he brought us didn’t disappear because he died. It is a legacy he left behind.

But for those who like me have known depression to the point of entertaining and even acting on thoughts of suicide, and for those who are one the other side of suicide like I am with several key individuals in my life, there is another level of grief that is expressed at this time. We stand with his family as they struggle to hold the balance of his light as they grieve his loss. We grieve the constriction of hope that characterizes the darkest regions of the illness. But there is also another level to the public outpouring of thoughts.

For these moments, we are able to defy the social mores against talking about suicide. We are reawakened to our own aloneness at the times when darkness surrounded us. We are reminded of others we may have pushed away when they needed us. We remember those in our lives who we didn’t know how to help. We remember and our remembrance calls us to respond.

I am a person who began an attempt at suicide but survived. I have now lived almost as many years on this side of the attempt as the years that led to that place of dark hopelessness. I survived. More, I have grown so that I can now make the active choice for life that I could not make then.

In those moments of despair I was not actively thinking of ending my pain. For me, depression skewed the brain into the rationalization that I would be benefitting others by ending my own life. I even went so far as thinking that I would force God’s hand into rejecting me since I had come to believe my existence hurt his kingdom plans.

I can’t even credit myself with making an active choice to not take that action. Even when I heard the words of the song that ultimately reminded me that I wasn’t alone and that God’s love held me, I defiantly took that one more pill even though I was already at a level far beyond what was prescribed. I cleaned up any clues so no one would know to help me if things had turned out differently. And I went to bed saying to God, “Okay, God, it’s up to you. Either I wake up or I don’t”.

I woke up.

Since that time a part of my healing has been finding the forgiveness and compassion to accept the part of me that could make such a choice. That the me of that time thought in terms of finding a way to die that “would not hurt others”, that she believed it was the only way her kids could have the chance of getting a “good mom” didn’t lessen my judgment of myself.  In retrospect, a lessening of the irrationality of the thoughts in that time caused me to want to push that part of me away just as many judgments spouted at present seek to distance from compassion at this time of mourning.

As with the response to the young mother at the beginning of this post, remembering gives me a choice. I do remember the loneliness and judgments. I do remember the experiences in life that brought me to that point.

But in remembering, I have learned compassion. I have learned that not telling my story just perpetuates the loneliness that increases the risk of despair winning the day. I have learned that we all respond to grief in our own way but often don’t even realize how we bend to the cultural mores instead of listening to our own hearts. I have learned that we can’t decide for another how they will respond to our own choices. We can only act with the greatest empathy if we are willing to acknowledge our own pain.

In her post for Sojourners, Carmille Akande says,

 “Relationships are hard. Discipleship is messy. Love takes sacrifice. But I believe it is what Jesus has called for us to do! Jesus had compassion for others. He cared for those who were hurting. He spent time with people. One of my favorite healing stories in the Bible is in Mark 1:40-45. A leper, an outcast of society, came to Jesus for healing. I know because of his condition, no one had time for him. No one offered him a place of belonging. A place where he could feel loved and accepted. No one offered him a sacred place. But, when Jesus saw him, the Bible tells us that he was moved with compassion. Jesus reached out and touched him! He was willing to heal him.

The people we see every day may not have leprosy, but they may have some type of pain. They may be going through a difficult time and need someone to have compassion on them. A place to receive love. A place where someone will listen. A place where they don’t receive scriptural formulas, but a heart poured out for them. Can you be that person? Can you provide a place? Will you be that place?

We are all broken in some way. We all need encouragement from others. Let us all strive to be a sacred, healing presence for others. We will never have all the answers about suicide, but we can certainly start by making time for others — not to lecture them, but to provide a sacred place for pain.”

When events like this cause stirrings of memory or asks me to step out of the comforts of my carefully scripted beliefs, may I have the heart to respond.

Lord, help me remember, not only the pain, but the grace that got me through so that I can live grace into the lives of others.

Lord, help me remember.

 

Some of the blog posts and videos that played a part in informing my thinking:

“Suicide and Pain: What are We Missing?” by Carmille Arkande; blog: Sojourners: Faith in Action for Social Justice, God’s Politics by Jim Wallis and friends; http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/08/13/suicide-and-pain-what-are-we-missing

“Genie You’re Free” by Carol Vinton; blog: Upside Down Grace; http://www.upsidedowngrace.com/2014/08/genie-youre-free.html

“Our Weird Uncle Robin” by John C. O’Keefe; blog: john c. o’keefe; http://johncokeefe.com/2014/08/13/our-weird-uncle-robin/

“Thoughts on Depression, Suicide and Being a Christian” by Nish Weiseth, blog: Nish Weiseth; http://nishweiseth.com/blog/2014/8/thoughts-on-depression-suicide-and-being-a-christian
In which depression is NOT your fault” by Sarah Bessey; blog: Sarah Bessey; http://sarahbessey.com/depression-fault/ (Please note: Sarah is adding to this as she finds other blogs that speak with compassionate voices)

The-Lesson-Barbara-Walters-Learned-from-Christopher-Reeve-Video; http://www.oprah.com/own-master-class/The-Lesson-Barbara-Walters-Learned-from-Christopher-Reeve-Video?playlist_id=52420

What Robin Williams Did for Christopher Reeve That You’ll Never Forget; video from Oprah Winfrey show; http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Robin-Williams-Amazing-Gift-to-Christopher-Reeve-Video?playlist_id=52420

Ironically, I can’t locate the article that spurred this post by mentioning how emotions are shamed. Someone I knew shared it on Facebook. I just want to make sure credit for bringing that thought to my attention comes from elsewhere.

 

Let it Rain

The world sags under the weight of drenching rains. Bird song competes with the sloshing of tires speeding past on the road. The air is damp and tired. A chill permeates everything. It is not a day to be outdoors, especially when warmer jackets are packed away ready for the coming move. The last day of the long weekend, the beginning of camping for many.

There is a quiet around me as I sit in my home. Memories stirring are pleasant. The smell of wood fire. The slightly whipping crack of the tarp protecting us from the falling rain. My mind captures a moment past when we were just children on a family campout playing a game of cards while we waited for the rain to lift. The fighting and nattering of cousins together is silenced, quieted by the dampness in the air.

Matthew and I get into a game of Crazy Eights that seems to be without end. Back and forth we challenge each other, our earlier arguing forgotten. The curtain falls and the memory ends. This little window flows into other water memories as we forded the shallow stream to the pebbled beach of a small island splitting the stream in two. We imagined there that we were coming upon the place for the first time, natives to this world of rock and greenery, of the gurgling sound of the nearby stream, the gentle brushing of the leaves playing together.

In the spirit of mindfulness I don’t try to push the edges of the memories, nor do I try to untie the timelines. I feel the edges pressing in but I am quiet as I remember this place from childhood. The Duckabush is a place of family memories.

Almost three years ago, I sat with my father and my small computer looking at the pictures from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. My brother had moved to the area and reveled in the lush greenness. As my father sees the pictures he remember the Duckabush and camping trips there.

Andie: Have you all found the Duckabush? This reminds me of those narrow rapids we use to fish and swim in there.

Bill: Walking along the river trail also reminded me of the Duckabush which is about an hour from our house.…

Andie: Dad says “I’ll meet you at the old camping place on the Duckabush at 3:30 on November 11, 2012. Be sure to have a tent for me and fishing equipment and I’ll show you where the best fishing places are.” Dream! Dream! Dream!

There would be no meeting in November. As I typed my dad’s words onto the screen my brother and I both knew that his battle with cancer was nearing its end. More, dementia had scrambled the files of dad’s life so he did not always connect to reality. Yet for all the pain we felt when his dementia turned mean, it gifted him with the ability to remember mixed moments of life for most of his last weeks, surprised when he would see his skin hanging loose around his hungry bones. Those moments  with my brother’s pictures would be a calling card for the gentler side of my dad in the days ahead. He would find peace in remembering.

The weight of the rain hangs heavy in the air but inside the sounds of water bring memories to sit lightly in my heart, memories of a moment full of love, a rekindling from the past. Today, my mindful gift is the falling rain.

* The stream pictures were taken by my brother, Bill.

 

G – Dear Granny

 Dear Granny,

Thank you for the picture you sent me. I got it a bit over 45 years after you sent it, but I got it just when I needed to know it was there. On the back it said, “To Andie, so she can see her granny”.

The few memories of you that I have are gifts , those that held brightness and those that held confusion.

I remember an honesty that was painful to a child but later helped an adult find answers. You loved one of the sisters in my family best and it wasn’t me. I think I know why. Of us all, she was most like your son, our daddy. I think you knew what I would come to know that last day I saw him, only days before he died. But then, that truth only went to show another gift I got from you. It didn’t matter who you loved the best, I could love you just because I did.

I remember the records you gave us on one of our long treks back to Texas from the Northwest. Full size LP records of stories. Carol got Sleeping Beauty and I got William Tell. They came complete with background music from the orchestral scores of those pieces. Added to the Reader’s Digest set of LP’s mom and dad bought, your records helped me see the story in music, something I am able to share with my music student’s today. Carol grew out of her record but I never did. As long as I could keep them, they were a part of my memory of the best of childhood.

There is one other gift I remember from you. When I was 8 or 9, you came to visit us. I asked you to a picture of me or did you ask me? It doesn’t matter. I told you I wanted to be a bride in the picture. Your face only showed interest. A bride? But did I have a bride’s gown?

I had already learned something about color then. I had a light violet satiny dress in my dress-up box. And you had given me that soft pink sheer scarf that would make a perfect veil. Since the picture would be in black and white, that would do the trick. With no hesitation clear enough for a child to see you went along with my lofty plan. If this was my dream, you let it be my dream.

In my adult life I learned the stories of how your dreams fell apart. First a young husband dies. Then you married another who was violent when drinking. That last summer with dad,  I learned you wore scars through your life. The last day with dad I learned your husband beat my dad too.

I am so glad you had the nonconformity to choose separation over the violence back in the 30’s. It would be an act that would take all your determination. I know from dad’s one story and his hatred for the peanut butter and banana sandwiches that filled his lunch every day, sometimes your independence took a stubborn turn of not being willing to let others help you.

But you didn’t stop dad from getting work to finance his dream of being an opera singer someday. You were a divorced woman trying to raise a son without alienating him from the dad he wanted to visit as much as he could. You didn’t stop him when he gave up his dream to go into the Navy. Did you recognize the resentment that he wouldn’t realize was locked inside of him until that last day when he tried to tell the story to the nurse?

Thank you, Granny, for leaving me with the innocence of my dreams on that childhood day.

Now it is my turn. I am the Granny with a grandson who is 4 and a granddaughter who is 18 months old. It is my turn to listen to them. To find my way through my own preferences and wishes for them, my own fears from the past so that I can give them the same room to dream their own dreams and live their own lives. Both are already showing such distinct characteristics. It is my turn to learn to silence my own comparisons so that I can give them each what they need from me.

You showed me that model though. When I was small I heard your favoritism and saw you show it. But when I was in my elementary school, you sent that picture to me. Did you know how much I needed it? Did you know because of that letter daddy sent you?

Daddy gave me another letter spoken in words that day in August 2011. In that story he told the nurse, the meandering of his thoughts entwined my story with yours. The nurse afterwards confirmed what I had heard. My sister confirmed it further by telling me the words you said that first day I called on Skype during the beginning of his hospice care. Daddy said, “When I see you, I see my mother.”

I asked my cousins who had lived with you how they would describe you. They remember happy memories, but more, they remember your most distinct traits as non-conformity, determination and independence. When I look back on my life I see how those characteristics helped me.

When I got home from that farewell to my dad and looked at the pictures I had been given , your picture to me was among them. “To Andie,  So she can see her granny.” It sounds like you left a part of my granny in my life.

“When I see you, I see my mother.” I think that is one of the nicest compliments I have ever had.

Still and always loving you,

Andie

P.S. The night my daddy died I saw him with you in a dream. You were happy and laughing together.

Lillian’s Legacy, September 2011, in honor of my granny

 

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

 

 

The Dancing Place

No one knew how young they were when first they met in the dancing place. He entered from the east and she from the west. The trees arched above in cathedral splendor. The floor was the elegance of rustling leaves, hardy grasses and moss. He smiled, she smiled. They laughed and skipped in the leaves. Neither knew who first suggested the dance.

Over the years they would meet. The children changed with time, hair and clothes, features maturing. The trees and grasses made way for walls and parquet floor. No one quite knew how that particular place was chosen to be the dance hall. The years pass by in the swirl of the dance yet always when it ended he would leave to the east and she would leave to the west.

During the war she would enter alone. No one spoke, wondering what she would do. Turning her face to the east she raised her arms for the dance and swirled. His mates remember a particular night the artillery silenced inexplicably and he stood turning his face to the west. Holding up his arms he silently danced. No one talked about it, and for some strange reason, this act passed without the normal comrade banter.

When next they met on the dance floor, he entered in a wheelchair. His face held a sad hope, acknowledging his broken body and the years between. Wrapped around his shoulders was a red robe given him in memory of his heroism. When she entered she looked at him with the smile of welcome that broke the icy bitterness growing around his heart.

They danced through the years only on that one night, leaving each time through their separate doors. No one knew why or what their lives held, but they would meet for this one dance. That she would bend her stance to the wheel chair and later changed arm holds to accommodate crutches then cane would simply become a part of their ritual.

The last time he enters the hall he is old and wizened. His body curls up into itself and his trembling, age spotted hands can hardly hold up the red robe that drapes his shrunken figure. There is a sad certainty in his rhumy eyes. This time he would dance alone. Those who bring him wheel his chair into the center of the room and step away. He would still have this dance. He would dance to remember.

Suddenly a pale shadow of a woman appears before him. She is old like him and yet her skin is unwrinkled, her body tall and straight. “Did you think I wouldn’t come?” She asks him with the easy smile he has always known.

She walks to him and holds out her arms in the dancing embrace that had swirled through their lives. He can barely lift his arms so she gently lifts them in the flexibility that had always played a part in this moment. He closes his eyes and they begin the dance one last time.

The slow clumsy movement becomes a dance of glory, the wheelchair soon left behind as they dance. Their bodies grow backwards through the years until they are children again, dancing in the cathedral of trees.

This time when the dance ends, they do not part. Arm and arm they walk toward the door opening in the north line of trees and leave the dancing place together.

She or Me

“I wish you could help me understand.”

“Don’t even try,” my mother and sister were terse and clear that there would be no response to my father’s last request.

I stood a moment, looking at him and knew the words had been said that could be said.

In that moment I heard again the words of the woman who shared her story of grief over her own lost years. She would wait for heaven to “redeem the years the locust took.” I would wait as well.

A lifetime of memories filled those seconds of time. There would be no undoing any words said, any actions left undone or done. My father and I had lived the lives we lived. All that was shared and unshared was finished. Even this visit was unplanned.

That Saturday morning had begun with the sound of angry words. My mother’s tension mounted as the angry man within dad surfaced accusing her of her absence the night before. I would be leaving on Sunday early. My niece’s party would be that night so we had taken time on Friday evening to eat together and visit one of mom’s friends while my sisters stayed with dad. She hadn’t been there when he pain had begun to grow and he had waited for medication.

My mother had reached her limit and the mother who I feared in my life was in the room speaking to my dad. The carefully crafted exterior was cracking and the angry child was speaking in threatening tones I knew too well. I would do what dad had not been able to do for me for reasons I did not yet know.

“Stop, mom,” I commanded.

The anger in her face felt like a hammer pounding into me. “Go away!”

I touched my dad’s shoulders and my mom scoffed at me, “He can’t hear you.” And she turned to him, her voice escalating as she railed at him for his ingratitude.

“Stop, mom!” I commanded again. I knew her. She would feel guilt for what she was doing, until she forgot that it happened too. “I love you, mom, but I know your anger. You have to stop.”

My mother stomped out of the room and sat with my sister. In that conversation she told my sister her own despair. She had little left to give in my father’s hospice care.

The angry man, who I had come to believe was a specter of my grandfather, sat in the room with me spouting words of hell fire and damnation. Something intuitive in me knew that my father was still in there and so I slowly calmed him dismantling his demons with love. When he calmed down I spoke the words I had known I would need to say when I woke in the night.

Today I would be saying goodbye. I was the privileged person. I got to say goodbye to him. No one could talk with him to make peace with his death. I hear it said that no one regretted the money they didn’t make when they were dying but they regretted the relationships that were missed. My father’s dementia had taken that away from him and from the family who lived with the need for family secrets. He became a hoarder of business even running for the checkbook instead of worrying about mom on one occasion when she began choking.

My father had been a pastor all my life, caring for many of the unlovely in the world. My father had been one who young people loved to be around because of his warmth and laughter. That my relationship was tainted by an unknown did not change the man he was in the life of others. In the end, he was surrounded with scripture of death and hellfire’s threats. I refused to be a part of it and had read him John. That Saturday morning I called him back to the God of love he had taught me about. I told him about how that God of love, not the condemning one the angry man spouted, had been with me in the darkest places of my life. I shared with him the words of a song about God’s faithfulness and then I left him. There was nothing more to say.

He sat and looked at those words. Then later during the nurse’s visit he told her about how he had not stopped resenting his mother for leaving his dad when he was young. He said this even though he acknowledged his mother wore scars to the end of her life from his beatings and that his dad had beaten him too. He resented his mom so much that he went in the Navy to get away from her. He gave up his dream to become a singer because he could not forgive. Even salvation and a lifetime of giving had not revealed that to him until this day. And intermixed with the story in the twisted threads of dementia trying to speak clarity, he wove the story of me until, when leaving, the nurse told me privately that my sisters were like my mom but it sounded like I am like my granny. I had never known until that conversation.

Later when in pain my father thrashed against the very medication that would ease his pain he looked over the shoulders of those who were trying to hold him in place and catching my eyes screamed, “When are you going to leave?” I will never know who he was talking to – his mother or his daughter – in those moments.

Now the evening party was over. My heart still raw in the late evening hours, I snuck back to my parents house hoping to give his cheek one last kiss to say my last goodbye to him. He was not asleep but sitting between my older sister and my mom.

“I’ve always loved you,” he stumbled, clarifying, “I’ve always loved all my children. I just wish you could help me understand.”

“Don’t even try,” my mother and sister were terse and clear that there would be no response to my father’s last request.

I stood a moment, looking at him and knew the words had been said that could be said. Leaning toward him, I gave him a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I love you, dad,” I said.

Then I turned and walked out of the house to the hotel room where I would spend my last night in their town. I never looked back.

A Stranger’s Heart

I will always think of the summer of 2011 as my iconic journey home. You know the type, long estranged child comes home as an adult in some cataclysmic moment in the family history. Relationships are a mix of warm moments and anger flaring with some piece of revelation leaving you to wonder what will happen to the protagonist as you see him or her driving off into the sunset. Only, I drove off in the early morning hours from my hotel room where I stayed for my final night.

My father had been diagnosed with cancer in April. For more than I decade I had not seen any of my family due to their feelings about my divorce and some other family matters I will choose not to speak of. My father did not take my divorce well. Calling home was a confusion of moments of conversations and more moments when he would set down the phone without any greeting except to tell mom, “Your daughter is on the phone.” Needless to say, I was unsure about going home. I didn’t know if my being there would be a good or a bad thing in his recovery so I kept teaching, calling home and connecting as best I could through online networks.

In June, I got home from school one day to the message that I should call him for a final farewell. In some ways, I think that was the final time I talked to my dad. For the brief moments of that call he was clear and coherent, knowing that cancer was taking his life and thinking of what mom would need once he left. For those moments, he was my dad instead of the angry man that had been in conversations far too much in the past years.

My father made it through that crisis, physically, but something in that bout of illness pushed him into dementia. Most of the time he would seem normal to the family who had lived near him all those years but at others times, the times they called dementia, an angry man would come out. This angry man would be so judgmental and closed to anything anyone would say around him. What they described sounded much like the father I had come to know in the final years of his life. It wasn’t all he was though. The loved memories fought with the fear of rejection that had become my relationship with him. I didn’t understand the dichotomy of the feelings he expressed toward me.

A week and a half after his crisis, on a phone call via Skype, my father asked me to come home. Within two days, with pain warring with love inside, I made the decision to go.

I had to wait until school was out to leave because my passport had been allowed to lapse during the years that my family seemed to be just fine with going on without me there. The border and the new US regulations on entry since 9-11 gave some protection from the hurt I felt at their choices to distance after my divorce. There were brief moments of contact and mom and dad did give me some help at one rough space in those years, but the distance grew. Now, to go home, I first needed to make the 12+ hour trip to Calgary to apply for an emergency passport.

I had been told that it would be at least a couple of weeks until my passport was granted so I had plans to camp with one daughter’s family and attend another daughter’s play back in Manitoba. Because of this, I had only packed for a whirlwind trip. My emergency passport was in my hand within an hour of my arrival at the consulate. By the time I neared the camping spot where I was to meet my daughter and son-in-law, I knew I would not be staying. I arrived on Friday night, but we headed home on Saturday for a day of packing.

Monday morning, July 11, I was on the road south. There is almost a surrealism when I think of the sense of guidance I felt on that journey that summer. It is a story that would fill chapters of a book if I could ever really make sense of the chasm in memories and feelings that were a part of the experience. I would hear memories from my parents that I had never heard before. I would have moments when I felt the love of the father I knew in my younger years, I would experience the anger and distrust that he had shown in the later years and dare to shift the tentative relational balance with my family. On the final day, I would gain the revelation which could affect my future and feel that final break with a person I care about.

In the end, I would leave with no real goodbye. My father’s last words to me would be. “I just wish you could help me understand.” And mine to him would simply be, with a kiss on his cheek, “I love you, dad.” Then I would turn to go, knowing I would not see him again. I had gone home knowing that I was going to help him die. Now I was leaving knowing that I had to go for him to be able to let go and take that final rest. That my medical insurance, which I had needed to use, would lapse if I didn’t get to my province again by a certain time gave me the excuse for doing what I needed to do. That day, was mine to say goodbye.

On August 7, I began my journey to Calgary. August 10th I would turn in my emergency passport and start the final stretch of my journey back to Manitoba. My destination would be the north part of the province so I chose to take the afternoon to travel up to the Drumheller dinosaur museum in the badlands of Alberta. There was now nothing more I could do for my family. I would take a few hours to rest.

I enjoyed seeing the displays in the museum and was just about to go walking out into the fossil park when I got an urgent feeling that I should be on the road. It didn’t make sense. It was only around 4 and I could get to my destination for the evening even if I left at 6. I would have time to walk. No, the urgency wouldn’t go away. “Okay,” I acquiesced, “You have been right so far on this journey. I will trust you.”

Driving north from Drumheller took me off the beaten trail or the Yellowhead onto a parallel highway with no real shoulder and little but the regular grid of dirt roads to break the monotony. A few houses and even a hamlet or two lined the way. Every now and then a car would pass but, for the most part, it was a quiet drive until my cell phone rang.

It was my brother-in-law. “Is this something I need to know?” I asked, dreading what I already knew. When he said yes, I asked him to wait until I could find a place to turn off the road. I pulled over into a side road and listened as he told me my dad had died only moments before. It was shortly after 6 p.m.

After I stopped shaking I tried to keep driving. I was unprepared for the depth of the grief I felt and barely could pass a couple grid roads before I had to pull off again. I realized I couldn’t keep going like this, that I wasn’t going to make it to the town in Saskatchewan where I had planned to stay, not unless I could pull myself together. I had to find a place where I could pull off and deal with the overwhelming emotions but all I could find was miles of side roads and tiny houses. At any of these, no one was out and around so I drove on.

I think it was only about a half hour before I saw a sign to a little hamlet that looked like it had a few houses. Maybe they would have a café or something where I could just catch my breath. If I could just glimpse one person I could ask them. I turned off the main road. There to the side of the road, in front of the fire hall, a group of people were having what seemed to be a BBQ. I would stop and ask them where the nearest café was.

I pulled off to the side across the street, took a few breaths to calm myself and stepped out of my car. Only a few steps into the street my legs collapsed right from under me and I was sitting in the middle of the road crying. Some people ran over to me and sobbing, I told them I was just looking for a place to catch my breath and why. Though some backed away from me, one woman took me by the arm and led me to her house.

Her mother had been a funeral director and had taught her about grief. Though friends of hers called to caution her about letting a stranger into the house, she gave me something light to eat and listened while I told her the craziness of the summer and the mixed up relationship I had had with my father. She opened her heart and her home knowing nothing about me but that I was in mourning. She even gave me a bed to sleep in that night knowing that I could drive no further.

I will never forget that woman for what she did for me that day. No one should need to grieve alone but to be grieving miles away from anything you know is an experience I would wish on no one. Because I followed that voice within that knows so much more than my conscious self I just happened to be within a possible drive to a town where there just happened to be a woman who understood grief and had the grace to be able to open her home to a grieving stranger. I will always be grateful.

Day 14 – Comfort Food

COMFORT FOOD

When I got home today, I went digging for my jar of sauerkraut. The smell and taste of the tangy cabbage is comfort food for me, conjuring up images of another place and time.

 I would have been quite small when dad was working in an office at Lloyd Center mall in Portland, Oregon. I have images of returning there as an adult and not knowing my way around, but as a child, it seemed so clear to me. That is the power of a place you go often while holding on to a parent’s hand.

At the center of the mall was an ice skating rink. I was young enough at the time that I wasn’t put into skating lessons like my two older sisters. When my mom made their outfits she also made one for me – gold corduroy with something sparkling on the front – but my skates were only laced on to skate on my own. My memories of ice time is of falling and getting up, of sliding my feet a bit at a time and then barreling to grab the edge before I fell again. I didn’t show any talent on the ice but I can still feel my little girl’s determination to stay on my feet.

At Christmas season, skating time would be shared with visits to the seasonal petting zoo. Having moved a lot growing up, I am not sure if this zoo was really at that mall but in my memory it seems to be just down the way from the edges of the rink. I remember the structure as small enough that adults didn’t fit in well. It was one of the places I most longed to go for Christmas in my years living in that area. The year I went and it was closed was a sad one for me.

That is it – a skating rink and a petting zoo. If that seems like so little to make a place memorable in a child’s mind you would be right, if that was all it was.

The thing that made it special was that dad worked there and that he would sometimes let me go to work with him. And Laura was there – Laura, who let me stand holding her hands while she sang in the church choir, who let my sister and I stay overnight and took us to our first drive in movie. Laura, who knew how to make children feel special, as if each one of them was the favourite. Laura, who was the first person I remember losing in my life when a drunk driver was not able to stay on his side of the road.

 The thing I remember the most at Lloyd Center was a little bistro near the office. Dad and sometimes mom or my sisters or Laura would slid onto the smooth booth benches to share our special treat. All the adults agreed that this place did these better than anyone else so my child’s mind knew it was true. Pastrami, swiss and sauerkraut on rye bread with some kind of spicy sauce that was just right– a Reuben. The very name still fills me with a companionable warmth. Sitting there, feeling special in the presence of those who loved me, there was no greater sandwich in the world.

Two years ago, it was my father I said goodbye to, walking away knowing that I would not see him again in my life because I had gone to help him make peace before dying. He could eat so little that summer. Cancer was slowly taking away his life. While I was there, a day came when he stopped eating much at all. He slept through much of that day. Having been away from home for many years, I slept in the chair in his room that night.

 At midnight he woke and pointed to the door. “Is it time to go yet? He’s coming to get me. He’s going to get me something to eat.”

I told him the time and settled him back down. “Oh,” he said. “I thought it was time to go.” And he laid back mumbling, “Cookies. Cookies and candy and cake.”

“Whatcha thinking about daddy? I asked him.

“I’m thinking about the get together,” was his interesting reply.

“Do you think it will be a good one?”

“It seems so.” And he drifted back to sleep.

I sat in the chair and wrote down these words, the last I had expected to hear from him. He lived another 2 weeks, 4 days longer than I could stay there with them. He is the last of his brothers to leave this earth. So many people he loved have gone. If he sees them there, it will be quite a gathering. I wonder if Laura will be there with him as well?

“Hey, daddy. I hope they have a good reuben place in heaven. Will you meet me there when it is my time to come? Perhaps, in that place we can have the good memories to share.”

I place another bite of the tangy kraut into my mouth and remember.

****Since this tells of a memory before I was old enough to be given my first camera, only the pictures of my dad are my own photography. The one at the address 1303 could have been within a few years of the time he was working at Lloyd Center. The other was taken in the summer of 2011, within days of the story told here.