The Mighty Abyss

The mighty abyss. Waiting for us all. Two this week. One today. Long term friends. One a client, or maybe two, one asking for free tax assistance periodically. I was reviewing emails and had forgotten that. My sent folder was full of such requests along with affectionate exchanges over the years. The other, who died today, was a successful, long-term client. Friend would be a strong word for E, it was one of those connections in between client/acquaintance and not-quite-friend. Friends are those I invite to my home for kindred spirit communion. Not E.

You know how it is when someone close dies. You mull over the times. Revisit. And try not to speak ill of. E was a strange bird indeed. I don't think she allowed herself closeness or intimacy.

Twenty years ago, I remember flying to South Carolina with her for a retreat in the mountains near Asheville. A gorgeous spot. I'd had a huge argument with my man of the time in the morning. He had said he was going to drive me to the airport to meet E before boarding. In the morning he said he was too tired, go get a cab. And I went spare. He sullenly drove and I made the airport just in time for boarding. I remember not sharing what had transpired with E and faking normal. The trouble with people who don't share with me is that I usually feel like a crazy lunatic if I do share: the eyebrows, the long stare, the h'ms, as if such derangements were your peculiar dysfunction and certainly never happened to them.

I had all these gift certificates for a car rental, courtesy of another client. So we rented a car at the airport and E insisted on herself taking the first driving shift through the Blue Ridge Mountains. I didn't argue, though I was feeling slightly miffed as I had paid for the car, certificates notwithstanding. When I feel miffed I feel small, and ask myself why are you making a big deal out of this?

It was a long drive and after a coffee/pee break, she got back behind the wheel in spite of my friendly "my turn to drive now?" The weekend was great, I reconnected with some old friends and the workshops were powerful and memorable.

So we leave the retreat and E, who had not given up the key to the car, gets into the driver's seat. I say (very nicely) "It's my turn to drive."

"No," she says, firmly and clearly, "It's mine," and started the car.

I debated this. Get into a whine of: you drove ALL the way here, my turn, my turn!

But I let it go, I did. Because, surely, how important was it?

But truly, it was symptomatic of everything she did. She had to be in charge, in control, running things. I gave up having dinner with her on Wednesday nights in downtown Toronto, as I realized I'm not built for the kind of superficiality she represented. Her Blackberry, for instance, was constantly under the table sucking her attention. I let her go as a client about 4 years ago, mainly because of the stress she engendered in me by leaving everything to the last minute and not heeding my gentle/and or humorous reminders.

Her death was quick and unexpected. The vicious tentacles of an aggressive cancer which she kept hidden from most who knew her.

E was a good woman. That I know. Nobody is black and white as Hollywood likes to depict. We are all a mighty mix of oddity and occasional profundity with our inner demons bouncing around for attention.

E did her best as we all try to do. She was generous and kind in many areas. As long as she was in charge. But people like E leave us with many unanswered questions about the complexity of human nature.

And now I'm wondering who's next?

Downhill to the Barriers

My friend goes downhill rapidly. We talk. She wants me to come. So we can hold hands for a while. All expenses paid (she can afford it).

I didn't sleep last night. Tossing and turning. "I have to." "I can't." Nothing was clear. There are too many commitments here. Not least of which is to elder dog, Ansa, who is getting frailer by the day. The walk tonight was pitifully slow. She's gone a bit barky also because she's deaf and also "sees" danger in the shadows of trees. She will go down protecting me. I can't pass her over for care to anyone. For one, she can't jump into the car anymore plus she's too heavy to lift. And she's a real care now.

Next, I have a performance - advertised on teevee yet - this Saturday, sold out. Like, I don't show for this?

Then I have two separate PGs coming to stay next week.

I could go on, there's loads more but I'm boring myself to bits as it is. Someone reminded me of how sick I got the last time I was in Toronto and I positively dread the polluted air there. I have weak lungs (double pneumonia and pleurisy as a 9 year old)and last time was so bad I had to leave earlier than expected.

And guilt, we haven't talked guilt yet. I'd love to see her and there is such urgency to it as she tells me she's terrified her brain won't be there by the weekend even. I cry a lot of useless tears.

But, I can't surmount all these obstacles to get to her. And I'm old. Did I mention that? And, um, tired and not overly well myself. And still reeling from Helen's death. And Laura's death.

Apologies to faithful readers: I'll get around to reading your blogs one of these days. Promise.

Conversation

My friend is home.

First telephone conversation with me after all she's been through:

"I'm only on the phone with you because you're so worried. I'm not supposed to be on the phone at all. You're the first phone-call. Now. Relax. I am perfect."

"But the surgery? The recovery? The prognosis?"

"Listen to me, I am perfect. My doctors say that I am in such great physical shape I can have the chemotherapy at home and have six weeks of radiation in the hospital in conjunction."

"I can't believe how you're sounding."

Laughter.

"I'm eating like a pig again, all lovely foods, I'm being spoiled I tell you. They all run out of the house and get exactly what I want. Like a 5 star hotel."

"You had me in bits - and now listen to you."

"Listen: I went all through this before with the breast cancer and I had so many other stresses in my life, remember the trouble I had with Daughter at the same time?"

"Yes, you got through that and no flies on you."

"And right, this time is perfect. I am older and no worries and this is an absolute doddle compared with then."

"Well, not a doddle....."

"It's a perfect doddle. So stop all the fuss. I am perfect."

Yes, ma'am.

Memento Mori

What does one say?

The card lies flat on the table.  The pen poised above it.

Reflection.

A late in life marriage for him, when he retired, having spent many years travelling for an international company, she was twenty years younger. They were married eight years. He died yesterday, aged seventy. A long slow process of cancer, eating his blood, then a lung, his facial skin. This cancer ran in the family. It had a complicated name.

He had a life most of us can't even imagine. His father died suddenly at forty leaving five children and a mother with a nervous breakdown (Oh, this happened a lot. I know. I've seen it.) All the children put into care. Mount Cashel Orphanage  for the boys, Littledale for the girls. Horror stories abound about these places where children were so casually abused. I wrote about a Newfoundland orphanage victim here.

Glen (pseudonym) always maintained that he was treated like a prince in Mount Cashel. And insisted, almost violently at times, that he had never even seen abuse. One of his sisters suicided. Another has an extreme case of obsessive compulsive disorder - a frantically hygienic woman, twenty four hours a day. Exhausting to watch her. Another sister is alienated from the family and his brother, an artist,  reinvented the past so as to delete Mount Cashel completely.

Patricia, his wife, has her own issues revolving around food and semi-starvation. She is terrified of a complete meal and only likes tiny portions on those wee plates you'd see at afternoon tea at a grandmother's. She has no friends and tolerated Glen's. Barely.

I think about all these things as I stare at the card on the table and ponder on what to write. Words come easy to me. Normally. I find it easier to write all this down here than to write a few words on the card. I'm not one to ever trivialize a card with cliches. Never have. Never will. And I'll face the funeral home tonight. A card is de rigeur, especially for one who will not be buying a mass for the deceased parish committee president.

I lit a candle for him over the last few days and reflected on the parts of his life that he had shared with me. He loved poetry. He was an amateur astronomer and if he could have afforded it, would have played golf every day at dawn.

A horrible time for him was when his new wife had found an old diary of his and read it. And didn't speak to him or look at him for a week after. He told me he was so terrified he felt like a little child again. He burned all his diaries after that.

We were alone in his SUV when he told me this, driving for a good hour over the barrens. I let the silence float around us in the vehicle. Waiting.

But he never told me what was in that diary that was worth a week of freezeout.

A New Friend

The Historic Distillery District, Toronto

I met a woman in a writing group. We found it so very odd here in Toronto, Canada, that growing up we had lived a couple of miles from each other in Cork City, Ireland. And never crossed paths. We knew people in common, small cities will do that to you. One degree of separation.

And we like each other’s writing.

I invited her to my annual Ladies’ Brunch but we really didn’t get to know each other there, too many people. And now she invited me to dinner in her place. A lovely place down by the old Distillery District in Toronto. She lit a log fire and had made pasta and salad and apple crumble. My dog was invited too. And her dog and my dog had dinner together out of the same big bowl. My dog has never done that before. It was like something out of The Lady and the Tramp as my dog is rather glam in appearance and her dog is a wheaten terrier.

We talked ourselves silly for seven hours. Life stories: relationships, our adult children, our failed marriages, our evolution as women of independent thinking, as writers, as mothers, as entrepreneurs.

Somehow, when you hear your own life in your ears and can touch and smell and see it for someone new and you in turn embrace theirs, it becomes like a meditation. You think: holy crow, I did all of that? You think: I survived that? I, a woman raised to be a mother and a wife before all else accomplished so much more? On my own I forged a different path? Where on earth did I get the gumption? What a hell of a nerve I had. To think I would succeed. To think I could have it all.

And we sit back and look at each other at the end of the night. And we recite Padraic Colum's “The Old Woman of the Road” * to each other and say: “Now let’s take the dogs for a walk at midnight”. And we do.


*

O, To have a little house!
To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods upon the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!

To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!

I could be busy all the day
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!

I could be quiet there at night
Beside the fire and by myself,
Sure of a bed and loth to leave
The ticking clock and the shining delph!

Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house—a house of my own—
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

Mixed Signals?

I had a lovely dinner with R on Tuesday at his insistence. He was pacing the lobby of the restaurant when I arrived and rushed to hug and kiss me.

He was very insistent on a table rather than a booth and then to my astonishment sat beside me. The backstory to this is that when he was with me in NL I had talked of my last great love who had always sat beside me rather than opposite me in restaurants.

He said he had a huge apology to make to me at the outset and that was for the ignoring of my birthday when he was with me. All the way back to TO in the plane he had beaten himself up for this and many times since. I was gracious, of course, and acknowledged the depth of his remorse and also the fact I had forgotten it, which was true.

He could not keep his hands off me and apologised several times, telling me he had missed me so much. He told me had been seeing a woman who had since dropped him (and I was so pleased I had intuited this on the dry spell of e-mailing!) and also that he had an eye on another and didn't know what to do. I queried him on experience in the dating scene prior to his marriage. Just about zero. I said maybe he needed to lighten up and just date several women and not think everything was a huge commitment. This hadn't occurred to him. I'm not surprised at this as I miss the bleeding obvious so many times that I never condemn it in others.

I told him of my gentleman caller and how lovely it was to feel like a romanced woman again. As he was touching me (mainly arm stroking) I realized how much I miss that kind of intimacy, not so much the boinking but the touching. He seems to trigger that in me. I hesitated to tell him this - I've never dealt well with rejection - so didn't and in hindsight I'm glad.

We had a 3 hour dinner and at the end he hugged me many times, told me how much he appreciates me and how he felt so much better having had a chance to talk to me.

I should add he is an only child, always has been, parents now dead so no one in direct family to talk with. I think he sees me as a very loved sister. The women he is attracted to are age appropriate also which pleased me no end and of course makes him look more attractive to me.

But the thing is, I get a little worked up when I'm with him. It could be attraction, it could be a freshly woken kind of lust, or just the need of intimacy.

Oh, and he no longer wears a wedding ring and I did comment on this and he was delighted I noticed.

I keep thinking of that book ~





~ and just letting go of any romantic notions while still being his close friend. Easier said than done.

Thoughts for someone who is dying

A dear friend is dying.
There I wrote it.
I'm not saying he is sick anymore.
He has been given three months to live.
He is Scottish.
He sings Al Jolson as if he were channelling him.
His hair has never looked like it needed a haircut or a comb run through it.
He is a lifelong smoker.
He gets angry if you ever suggest he quit.
I haven't in about five years.
He hasn't had a drink in twenty two years. He used to have twenty two drinks a day.
He had a son when he was eighteen and he didn't love the mother of the boy so he left Scotland fifty years ago with the woman he did love and subsequently married.
The son connected with him ten years ago and B wanted to establish a relationship with the boy who was the spit of himself and the teenage grandson he never knew he had.
M, his wife, said absolutely no way. If he did, she was gone. He turned his back on his son and grandson. His heart was broken. But he loved M too much.
M couldn't give him a child and that was her heartbreak. She felt very threatened by the mini-me son. She said it wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't the head off B. But he was and she found the torture of this reminder too much to bear. This huge intrusion into their love.
B&M took care of their elderly mothers in their own home until they both died within five years of each other.
M was diagnosed with Parkinson's five years ago and dreaded dying before B.
B was very angry about his diagnosis but now he is more accepting of it. Blood transfusions and mild chemo are giving him some quality of life for these final three months.
I phone him and talk with him and joke with him.
I tell him I'd walk a million miles for one of his smiles.
And I made him one of my special cards and I sent it to him today.
He has always loved my special cards.
But now I say what is honestly and openly in my heart for this man who has done the best he could with what he had.
Like all of us.

The following is the poem I wrote for the card and the picture is one of the edge of my property.

Fences

Around the fields, around the shore.
Keeping you out and me in.
Around the heart and around the mind.
So no one can walk inside.
We bring the fences down,
You and I.
A board, a stake, a wire
At a time.
And laugh and cry in the
Wide open spaces of each other’s souls.