Random thoughts from an older perspective, writing, politics, spirituality, climate change, movies, knitting, writing, reading, acting, activism focussing on aging.
I MUST STAY DRUNK ON WRITING SO REALITY DOES NOT DESTROY ME.
Thank you all for your lovely words of support on my last post. I found this on line and it spoke to me so deeply I thought to share it with all of you who have suffered similarly.
On those days when you miss someone the most, as though your memories are sharp enough to slice through skin and bone, remember how they loved you. Remember how they loved you and do that, for yourself. In their name, in their honour. Love yourself, as they loved you. They would like that. On those days when you miss someone the most, love yourself harder.
Many of long time readers will know that I went through grief-counselling some years back when my physical health began to suffer and my doctor of the time referred me to this amazing grief therapist. I had lost 8 close friends in the space of 18 months and the symptoms of my grief were not what you'd imagine as in crying all the time or depression. No, I was wound tighter than a drum with my blood pressure soaring through the roof and my tricky kidneys beginning to fail.
I was with the therapist for a 6 months of weekly sessions and he was incredibly understanding. He passed on much wisdom to me. One was when you suffer a severe heart breaking loss it opens up all the other losses in your life once again. Yes.
Well reader, I am there. All the chickens, so to speak, are home to roost now. My missing daughter's birthday was last week and that compounded everything, all the losses.
I tried to track down Peter, my grief therapist today but failed. I will try again. He was, I think, older than I. My siblings appear to be all cheerful and getting on with things so I find I can't/won't attend the weekly Sibling Zooms. I can't handle cheer. A friend dropped off a poinsettia and a fresh caught salmon yesterday and I could barely thank her but cried like a baby after she left. Kindness does me in.
I light a candle for the last photo taken of my brother every day and talk to him, hoping I'm not going right off the ledge.
I have delayed reaction to loss and I am hoping with Grandgirl staying with me by the end of the week I will climb out of this pit as it is affecting my overall health. I'm constantly nauseous and exhausted and not fit as we say out here.
The fact I am writing all of this down is a good sign, n'est pas?
Many of you are familiar with my local beach, I visited it last week and it was completely deserted so I took advantage of some bitingly blue shots.
My 9 year old great niece was the only child performer in Stars on Ice at our vast arena. Not a bit of nerves on her and she brought the house down with her skill and triple axle moves.
Over the last few days there's been a lot of buzz on social media about the "olden days." Romanticized in extremis I should add. Christmases past particularly but more often than not about lovely smells in kitchens and 4 clotheslines and the lovely old wood stove used for everything from baking and boiling to hot water and heat.
Romantic for some, perhaps, but a drill down into those blissful times will reveal an overworked mother, often with multiple children - my sister-in-law is the youngest of 17 - you read that right - who baked all the family bread and did all the laundry by hand, mended her children's clothes - having made them - if lucky - on a treadle sewing machine with her tired legs after a labour-intensive day and if she had enough oil for the lamp to sew by.
She tended the kitchen garden and collected the eggs and made the butter and milked the one cow or many if it was a farm. She collected the wool from the sheep to spin it and knit her family's sweaters and socks and cut down the father's shabby clothes to fit her sons and used flour sacks - often dying them in different colours from dye harvested from flowers and vegetables to dress her daughters. She bottled and preserved all the fruit and vegetables, down to the excessive eggs for the winter season.
She never, ever stopped. Her husband had it comparatively easy. Escaping from the house to do his work in a factory. an office or a farm or as a general labourer. He came home at night and put his feet up and was served his supper and fresh clothes for the morning and read his newspaper if he was lucky enough to borrow or buy one. And the children were told not to bother Daddy after his hard day.
The woman's incredibly hard day was demeaned and dismissed, despite what she had sacrificed to be this unpaid slave breeder. By her husband, by his buddies, by her church - who also expected she would supply free labour to clean the church and wash and starch the altar linens and her sons' surplices if they were altar boys.
She had 3 choices - service to the church (nun or teacher or nurse - the church owned the convents, the schools and the hospitals and profited greatly), marriage, or a single life, mocked and condemned because she couldn't "get" a man.
She never could use her brain or get educated to a higher level beyond grade school. With rare exceptions from more enlightened parents.
I was born in 1943 and lived with my grandparents for a while and witnessed this lifestyle first hand even though all their children had gone, some to emigration. Granda still worked as a labourer and granny had no electricity and no running water and even with just me in the house, she worked non-stop from dawn to dusk. Financially and religiously trapped forever.
She passed on many words of wisdom to me, the top one being: "Get an education, colleen* and you'll avoid this."
Words I followed, never wanting the lifestyle of either her or of my mother.
So yes, I am enraged by all this memory washing. A lot of it by men. Who to this day don't ever understand (and don't want to) the workload and sacrifice of their mothers or sisters. Apparently they all "enjoyed it."
Just the back of his head, I can't bear that face or voice anymore. Fakery all the way down to the lifts in his shoes.
I imagine many of us are. About where THIS is all going. The wee tiny planet I mean. This earth we walk on.
I try and stay away from the news these days, Most unlike me as I'm a bit of a news junkie. The Guardian, Morning Joe until he and Mika snivelled off down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of Orange Jesus (OJ). Many of the US papers which I once respected are now gone sideways as well, kowtowing like cowards in advance to what is to come.
We are extremely nervous in Canada too as our conservative top dog is a Heritage Foundation graduate and a worshipper of the OJ and could be our next PM as Trudeau just ain't got it according to most electors, see polls.
We know what all this will bring. Christian Fascism. Extreme.
I mentioned I try and stay away from the news but I have to open one eye and check it out more often than I like. PBS, Irish Times. CBC - our national news has weirded out. No good insightful coverage anymore.
OJ proceeds with his appalling and terrifying cabinet appointments. One more evil than the next. I don't often use that word but evil and indecent and criminal comes to mind from all surrounding OJ. And the outrage, though unsurprising, about Joe Biden pardoning his son was laughable. He would never have pardoned him only that OJ promised to incarcerate him forever on a retribution tour of revenge on the "enemies within". And that list is terrifying. Military tribunals, etc. All for the offence of disloyalty. Baby Bush set the precedent for torture and OJ would relish that.
He WILL suspend future elections. He will encourage other countries to go far, far, right and suspend theirs. And plunder every treasury he can get those orange hands on. Women will live as in 1850 with no votes, no divorce, no health care and fair game for any predator - and there are many in the cabinet and elsewhere.
It shows the weakness in the whole farcical structure of government in the US when OJ can infest the Supreme Court and other judicial bodies with his briberies or blackmail and turn the whole shaky edifice on its head into an unrestrained oligarchy/autocracy.
I am chillingly reminded of when Nazi Germany tried to "export" all the Jews and when that failed, resorted to prison camps, followed by death camps.
Wait and see as all these countries he asked to house them are now rejecting OJ's attempts to export his millions of emigrants. He is already talking of numbering them. Carefully following in the steps of his hero Hitler and Project 2025.
I so want to be wrong in all of the above. But alas and alack I don't think I am.
My heart is with my American friends. Just about breaking for them.
Come to Newfoundland, you would be welcome on this isolated rock that everyone seems to forget about. You'd love it here.
It took me days to put up and decorate my tree but I'm so proud of the finished result.
Went shopping in my favourite thrift stores for 3 pairs of desperately needed PJ bottoms (I always wear men's coz POCKETS). The rest of the world was at malls as it was Black Friday, hardly anyone in the thrift. It's vast, I'm only showing about 1/3 of it. Full of treasures.
Some of my favourite cheeses, I'm a divil for the fancy cheeses.
Two connected things on a theme which I love
A friend dropped by with this gorgeous Christmas cactus and 2 pots of her homemade jam.
And lastly, Grandgirl, who lives in Paris, gifts me with things tres francais. A set of these napkins with French herbs printed on them.
Health Sciences Centre, St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador.
I slept off and on for a few hours. Daughter went to my place and stayed and gathered up items of need. Niece came to meet her at the hospital with more essentials, including a book of poetry. I heard all the noises around me. Triage is a very noisy place but what struck me most was the comradery of the staff. Often raucous and humorous but also so extraordinarily helpful with each other, shouting "you want help with that, here, let me do that, let me lift her head, let me bandage that head for you." I found it extraordinarily moving. Around me were the unconscious, the moaners, the injured, the dying. I looked at my tubes and my wires and my vitals on screen and someone spotted me and came over and said, beaming, "everything is improving". Blood and urine had been taken every hour or so and the kidneys were ticking back up.
Around 6 a.m. I was moved to a kind of holding station with 2 other beds. It soon became evident that the man across from me was dying, his family came in and a priest. the last rites were performed. The woman next to me was youngish, 60 or so, but had post-covid dementia, something not written about much but appallingly evident in ER now, as one of the nurses told me. She wanted to play with the contents of the linen cupboard: incontinence pads, kleenex and wipes and laid them all on her bed and moved them around like a chessboard. She was non-verbal. Her 30-ish daughter was with her, crying, trying to calm her but the nurse stopped her, the playing kept her mother happy and quiet.
I got my first meal halfway through the day. the man across had died and was moved and I cried inconsolably, realizing that his last moments should have been private and were public enough for me to hear it all, the grieving and the prayers. My innards were still in turmoil from the infection. But I managed to get the bland meal down me. I could not manage the next meal. It was revolting. Daughter went away and got me a sandwich which I devoured. This was going well.
Later that night I was moved to a ward in the "real" part of the hospital with a real bed. But when I left the holding station I passed the nursing station where the four staff on duty applauded and cheered me on my way out on the gurney. Which moved me no end. I imagine not many leave there alive and alert. I waved back like a queen. Crying again in gratitude.
The real bed felt like paradise. The large room not so much. Across from me a woman dying. A year older than me according to the hushed conversation of her family. Her granddaughter and the rest of her adult children came in the following morning. Again, tears, overhearing her granddaughter telling her she had good marks in school. The loving words of one son asking his mother if she wanted to go out for one more cigarette - which told me, perhaps, what she was dying from. But I cried once more, pretty inconsolable in Daughter's arms when she arrived. She cried too.
Kitty corner all night was a man raving in dementia. Begging for his mother, then for a nurse, then for his mother. Attendants trying to soothe him, always kind, always calling him mister. It was disturbing how loud he was. Not much sleep.
Next to me, in the morning, a team consulted with the man in the bed next to me, I had a glimpse of him and he looked familiar, a man I might have seen on TV or a film, perhaps. The team were telling him that his liver, kidneys and other organs showed masses, they needed to get into his bowels now and see where else it had spread. He was fighting it, and repeated over and over, "are you sure? are you sure?" Later, I presumed it was his wife who flew by the bottom of my bed and landed at the bottom of his. All the curtains were pulled but sometimes they were dragged open accidentally to give me a glimpse of the real world. I am blessed with good hearing and a voracious curiosity, so could hear their conversation. He eventually asked her "Are you still going to leave me?" And she responded, coldly "Does this change things?" "You'd leave me to die alone?" "How long do you have?" "Maybe three months." "Would I have to take care of you?" "We had thirty years together, what's three months? For God's sake, Rita!" "I'll have to think about it." And with that, she upped and left.
At that moment, another team of medics dropped by me. The chief, who turned out to be a prof at the university, internal medicine, asked me if I minded she had some students in tow I was quite thrilled to see her seven students were all male with her in charge. Quite a reversal of roles. They answered all my questions and she was cautious when she said, if you are still doing well, we will release you later on tomorrow pending the readings and your vitals.
Later a trainee doctor came by and I asked her a ton of extra questions as to what exactly happened to me. She had the time to sit down and explained exactly what had happened. The norovirus had invaded my stomach and my bowls causing constant nausea, diarrhea, eventually dehydrating the body, releasing enzymes in an effort to keep the kidneys going which were shutting down and then in turn shutting down the heart and the oxygen levels. My inherent kidney disease accelerated all of this plus my aging body which had no resistance to infection.
My terminal brother, who was also in a hospital in Cork, was communicating through much of all this through WhatsApp we were so worried about each other. Our last communication was when I said to him :"We're a right pair of langers* aren't we, lying about in our beds, being waited on hand and foot." And he cracked up. I loved cracking him up through our times of misery. "A right pair of langers alright," he responded, "you nailed it."
Later the following day Daughter and I left the hospital. Breathing that air outside, looking at the trees in disbelief, watching the birds, I cried again. Knowing how fortunate I was, how free, how privileged. The parking lot was packed. I was aware, as never before, of how much pain and sorrow awaited all those car drivers and passengers in the hospital behind me. And yet, here was I, leaving the experiences I will never forget.
One of the lucky ones. Dodging death. In awe of the heroes and heroines in the emergency rooms, saving lives, comforting the dying, healing the wounds, finding spaces for the homeless, the doomed and demented, cheering each other on through the countless tragedies. Overhearing the last moments of so many. The real champions of our world in the real Olympics are our health care workers. I'd hang a gold medal on every single one of them any day of the week.
*langers: Cork slang. langer (plural langers) (slang, Ireland, derogatory) Fool; idiot; annoying or contemptible person, langers can also mean drunk.
Here's a Cork song about langers. Some of it is in Irish, in case you're confused.
I play it for my dear brother who died a few short days after I left the hospital while he remained.
In case there is any confusion on the timeline of all this, it happened a month ago and only now, because of the trauma and ensuing grief, I can only write about it, thanks to a dear fellow-writer who encouraged me to do this to release some of the pain and loss that felt so bottled up inside me. A huge namaste and thanks to all you wonderful readers who shine their light of warmth and healing my way via comments and emails.
I would ask why are ambulances so incredibly uncomfortable? They seem to reverberate with each pebble the tires hit and speedbumps are bone rattling. But we make it to the hospital and I am transferred to another gurney and vitals are unhooked and rehooked and to my surprise my (I view them as my own special) paramedics stay with me in the hallway. I ask them about this and they tell me I am conscious and they want to keep me that way so they show me baby pics on their phones and ask me about myself and I ask them their names and then ask them about themselves. All very gossippy and chatty.
One of my biggest fears has always been: An emergency hallway in a vast impersonal hospital, all alone, lying on a gurney forgotten, others freewheeling around me, ignoring me. Well, here I was. I can't get hold of Daughter, finally I get hold of Niece, turns out Daughter was out of cell range in her crack of dawn early morning walk. She now heads into town. Nearly 2 hours away. My two paramedic buddies keep me company. There is so much activity around me. Most of it horrific.
Drug addicts, knife wounds, one naked young woman rushed by me, pregnant. Minutes later there is screaming as a middle aged woman rushes by following the woman. I have never heard such keening in my life as the pain of that woman crying over her dead daughter, the victim of a car accident, her baby inside her. A woman in a side corridor shouting for pain meds, overhearing her, my paramedics saying she goes to every hospital around trying to get a fix. Judy, they all knew her name. A man behind me in the hall raving like a lunatic. Tied to his gurney. Dementia, my medics tell me. Not enough facilities to handle 'em all. So they wind up in emerg. Not to mention the homeless, they pile in here too, not enough shelters. The unknown underbelly of the ERs. Probably everywhere.
Daughter texts: she has arrived but they won't let her into this section of the hospital, it's forbidden unless I'm dead and she wishes to say goodbye. Our dark humour always saves the day. She has to wait until I'm assessed in triage.
Finally, finally, I'm transferred onto yet another stretcher and wheeled into triage. I am assessed. Things are getting blurry. There's so much activity all around me and beside me. They're asking me about my meds, they are concerned my kidneys are failing, my heart is failing. Suddenly, Daughter is beside me, holding my hand crying. I start to cry. A team of doctors come by and ask me about DNR (do not resuscitate). As I stare blankly at all of them in turn they proceed to tell me in graphic detail what happens if they attempt to resuscitate me. Broken ribs, brain damage, possible stroke. Vegetative state. I look at Daughter, she looks at me. I say clearly: Definitely DNR.
In the middle of the night I come to an abrupt halt. My breathing is ragged, my heart rate is beating at an extremely slow place. I feel it. I do not look at my FitBit as I know I could go into panic mode. I struggle to breathe lying down. I call 811, a health care line. I can barely talk. A kind of insanity has taken over my brain. 811 would have an answer for me if I tell them I have been sick for at least two weeks and my internist, whom I had seen on a regularly scheduled visit, had said I had a virus and it would take 6-8 weeks to recover as he had had it himself. No worries, it just takes time.
811 had no answers but the nurse on duty said very slowly, several times, "Call 911, emergency" "Call 911, emergency". I remember thinking I didn't want to bother them with my trivial emergency. But feeling desperate, I do so.
Within 5 minutes a fire truck shows up and two young cheerful fire fighters bang and clatter into my apartment, wiring me up to their equipment assuring me they are trying to locate an ambulance - many aspects of our health care system here, with a doctor as premier of the province! - is a complete and utter disaster. Finally an ambulance shows up and I am carted downstairs. Our elevator, in a seniors' building, is too small to handle a stretcher.
I spend an inordinate amount of time in the ambulance in the parking lot getting hooked up to all sorts of machines while paramedics telegraph my vitals ahead to the hospital. It doesn't sound good. I look at myself remotely from overhead. I tend to do this when stressed and confused. I find a woman in a pair of men's pjs, partially covered by a 1000 year old hoodie which she uses as a robe, now opened to accommodate the wires plastering her body, and on her feet a pair of worn brown slippers. She clutches her cellphone and her wallet in one fist. No one has told her to pack a bag, locate her purse. She might as well be naked, or a laughing stock.
Its 5 o'clock in the morning now as evidenced by a clock in the ambulance. Too early to call anyone. And what would I say? "I made a mistake? Get me off this ambulance?"
I think of the book I have half read. The Netflix series I am half way through. I think of my bestie Helen who left a book half read before she succumbed to the glioblastoma that squeezed the life out of her.
So this is how I die, I thought. Ridiculously, in an ambulance in a parking lot, in my old pjs, in my shabby old comfie LLBean hoodie 3 sizes too big for me, old weary slippers on my feet, desperately needing a haircut and someone to hold her hand.
First of all. thanks for all the lovely and welcome and comforting messages of support I received from you all, my faithful readers, on my last post. Humbly grateful.
Joining others in this Sunday Selection mix of photo-dumps.
Another friend took me out for dinner at our local diner which has solid hearty meals, nothing close to gourmet, but lawdie what a feed. We each took boxes of leftovers home.
I spent a wedge of time at the ocean yesterday which I always find settling and grounding. Just birds and me and the odd shell/stone picker at the beach. I'm not crying as much so healing is happening from the trauma of the past few weeks. The sun was setting and it was a bit hazy which matched my mood.
Hospital grub. Need I say more?
I took this shot sometime in mid October as I was fascinated with the birds feeding on the grass at this park by Mundy Pond (a large lake) which I would run around on better days along with my beloved final dog, Ansa, the best border collie in the whole wide world.
I've put an unimaginable week behind me and I will post about all of it very soon. Sometimes it takes me a while to process traumatic life events. Suffice to say is I almost lost my life in hospital after an emergency situation and then a few days later my beloved brother died from a brutal effing cancer.
Here is a tribute I wrote for his funeral service tomorrow.
Hand-painted with real wild flowers silk scarf from Daughter made by her.
I can't imagine ever, ever having 2" plastic nails glued on to my own nails. I couldn't get closer to photo without being intrusive. But seriously?
View from my window today, such a sparkling day.
Picture from the 1890s in Newfoundland from the book below. These women designed these water carriers for the buckets.
This is the book with fascinating photos from across Canada from the 1890s early 1900s by Edith S Watson. They were only recently found, literally, in an attic.
Grandgirl sends me postcards with lovely letters written on the back. This one arrived this week from Normandy. She hiked these cliffs. She's an incredible climber in her spare time, of which she has very little.
I am wondering at myself for the past few months there. Wondering why I was not picking up the phone when a friend rang or responding when they texted requesting a lunch date, sometimes white-lying a text back saying I was "too busy," sometimes white-lying further and inventing something.
Lying down for a nap today the phone rings from a friend who's supposed to be on a 3 month cruise, I don't pick up and I lay there and thought, what the hell is going on with my non-answering such calls.
And then the bells went off and I realized that 99% of all recent friend contact made to me out here on The Rock is someone requesting something. With the exception of family and friends from the good old days.
I wasn't mistaken today. Cruise friend had left a message saying she was leaving on October 1st and there was a new urgency in her life regarding the book I had been helping her with (a memoir) . Apparently she had shared the contents with a friend and the friend had gone ahead and written her own memoir on the same theme and now maybe I could edit the remaining chapters while she was gone and then fire it off to a publisher forthwith as there was a rush now.
Note there is no offer of payment even though a 3 month cruise must cost a fortune.
I should add she's not alone in these types of requests. I get request for all kinds of free help, writing, editing, accounting, financial and taxation advice. Usually prefaced with "You're so good at this and it will only take you a few minutes." Note upon requesting the free work they also devalue it.
I took a long hard look at myself after playing this message and thought why am I attracting these kinds of people into my life?
Obviously I'm a people pleaser. But when most of my relationships are transactional in some hidden way it makes me stop and reevaluate all of them. A lunch is cheap when you're looking for hundreds of dollars worth of free work.
My energy is compromised as I have ongoing health issues but I note I am rarely if ever asked how my health is. Most commonly I am told "you don't look sick" or " you look full of beans to me." Why thank you, when did you get your doctorate?" I think.
This morning there was an email from someone who wanted a "bit of training" as she was now a treasurer of a group and had no experience with spreadsheets. I responded, of course before the bells went off in the afternoon.
I feel remarkably stupid for not seeing all this before.
I am currently doing paid work for a writer who respects me and pays me well. So there's the upside.
I need to spend more time with friends who want nothing from me, though they are often distant from me geographically.
The Irish language stalks me at times. More so perhaps now that I'm older. Even in disuse. as it has to be out here on The Edge, I sometimes grasp for the English. When I sympathize with someone, when I'm searching for the words to express my sorrow, I will throw up "Ta bronach orm" which expresses my feelings far more deeply than the English does. Translated - that's "the sorrow is on me." Similarly when I am happy "Ta athas orm" - the happiness is on me. Recognizing in a deep way that these feelings are temporary, on loan as you will.
A fair part of my education in Ireland was bilingual but in teenage years became quinquelingual - well not fluently but passably. Irish, English, Latin, French and Italian. Even in English classics teaching, Irish was thrown at us now and again to express frustration "is amadan tu!" which translated is "You're an idiot!" Latin has always served me well being the foundation of so many English words. The Irish language has been passed down here in many words which often delight me when emerging from Newfoundlanders. "I have no meas in that". Being one. Meas is the Irish for value. "What a slebheen!" Sleveen - to pronounce it - means a no good, a layabout.
"Uisce" means water in Irish. Pronounced "ishka." The word whiskey is derived from Uisce Beatha (ishka baha) literally the water of life. Take that as you will.
Some of the old songs I can sing to myself are in Irish, some wonderful poetry too which also does not translate well as it captures the sounds of the sea and the winds and the emotions.
"I heard the banshees* last night," my Granny would say in passing as she made breakfast. And sure enough, down the road would come a neighbour bearing news of a death in the village.
Sure I've heard the banshee myself. When Granny died. And I was far, far away.
*banshee, (“woman of the fairies”) supernatural being in Irish and other Celtic folklore whose mournful “keening,” or wailing screaming or lamentation, at night was believed to foretell the death of a member of the family of the person who heard the spirit.
