Loss

Losses are painful and all part of living. At times it's the small things that hit the hardest. I check my emails every morning and the one I looked forward to the most is missing. And will be forever. And fresh tears leak. I know that too, will diminish in time. I tracked down this post I made when another died. It helped then and it helps me now. For all those who miss her and those who have suffered more than their share in the past year. I'm thinking also of my dear brother who died last November and I think of, especially, Andrew and Kylie

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.

Author : Donna Ashworth

 

Everything, everywhere, but not all at once.

 Checking in with you, my dear blogmates.

I'm dealing with a lot of exhaustion, though my last two specialist check-ins were good for my age and overall condition, i.e. just north of falling apart completely.

My days are unpredictable and sometimes the little battles that used to be a breeze overwhelm me.

(1) A breakdown between the provincial overseer of senior drug benefits and my clinical pharmacist and my regular pharmacist and me in the middle flailing around without my suddenly uncovered pain drug. Unconscionable, but sorted. Finally. Bout seriously? I didn't need the stress.

(2) My car hit a pothole and is doing that weird noise thing under the passenger side. I finally booked an appointment with the mechanic and will deal with the logistics of leaving her there all day and finding my own staggery way home. 

(3) The stress of the election I felt in my very bones. Squeaker. Truly. Carney meets with Cheeto today. Fingers crossed. Haven't watched it yet.

(4) Trying to plan an itinerary for my siblings who are ALL coming to visit me this month. Realizing my wee Toyoto won't fit them all and I'm too old to rent a larger vehicle. You read that right. Over eighties are deemed ga-ga and unable to navigate traffic. I have an accident free licence for 65 years (another you read that right). Millions of kilometres driven. Cheapest auto insurance on the planet.

Such things plunge me into a kind of paralysis. An unusual feeling for me. 

I say to myself: what am I missing that is making me feel so helpless. Looking for my mother to take care of me? To manage it all like an adult.? Decided I need to work with the Spotify sub my daughter gave me and load on all my stuff from the Ipod that has been my good friend for years and years. So I started and am delighted at how Spotify is set up. It has all my weird stuff on board. Delightful. It's like listening to my playlists it all over again for the first time as I listen to Ella and Beethoven and the Irish Kings and Oscar Peterson (eclectic I am). And oh yes a new artist I saw on PBS Sierra Hull, if you're a fan of mandolin - she's first class bluegrass.

So some pics from today when I went up to my deserted ocean and enjoyed the birds and the ever-rolling sea which always grounds me.

I'll catch up with you all now.

Missing

We had a LOT of snow and I was captivated by the melting centre of the window, itself shaped like a tree.

Andrew wrote about the losses of those we love a few days ago. I had been thinking about that on and off for the last few months having brushed close to the grim reaper myself - and this was not the first time either.

Lately the loneliness has struck me, all the close friends gone, the interesting, lengthy conversations, the extended stays in my house, the pick up of conversations started some time ago as if there were no break. Ideas tossed back and forth, meals cooked together, trips taken, scrabble games, books mailed and read and emailed on. Art reviewed, knitted items made and gifted, tribulations of life shared, sometimes on a daily basis, broken hearts nurtured and healed. Memories relived over and over. New adventures shared. "Remember whens?" relived and fresh little details offered up like Christmas gifts, old friends brought back to life by those outliving them.

And on it goes.  New friends are not the same, the shared history is shorter, the not knowing them in comparative youth and energy. I find it hard to imagine the youth in those elderly faces I see, the romances or the prettiness or handsomeness. And I imagine they only see the old in me too.

I miss them all, the shared confidences of times past, the remembrances of battles fought and won (or lost). But most of all the laughter and the trust and unwavering support for each other, reminders of life back then, of loves back then, of successes back then, of movies and theatre and operas and symphonies.

My orchids never fail to enchant me.

Don't get me wrong, please. I don't spend that much time thumping my chest and bemoaning the past. This is just something I haven't seen written about much. The absolute loneliness of old age when you outlive most of your friends and outliving a beloved partner would also be the same, I would think.

I would point out that making new friends is difficult with the limited capacity of being old, especially with physical challenges. Having uncertain days, joining a new book club or getting season theatre or concert tickets would involve commitment which my health challenges would not allow. Especially in winter. I am always aware of descending into constant "organ recitals" and I have to apply those brakes to myself when I find I can't wait to plunge into a conversation about all my ailments. I mentally slap myself in time. Usually.

What Fresh Horrors are Portended?

Or the failure of the Great American Experiment.

Does anyone else out there keep shaking their heads lately and wishing they could wake up to Kamala as president and an all is well feeling in the chest?

Me too. I find most don't even want to talk about all that is happening in this world right now and He still hasn't been sworn in. I see His idiot son grinning like a maniac as he lands in Greenland planting a virtual flag like Hillary on the peak of Everest. "This is ours now, Daddy, right?" And He grins in response and tells the press in a rambling incoherent mess of an "interview," "We'll no longer call it the Gulf of Mexico, it will now be the Gulf of America."

I only read Him now, I can't look at His great melon face or listen to that awful drawn out whiny voice. 

I threw my X account to the curb and restored my sanity on BlueSky and yes, I have cut my news intake by at least 50%. If you need any good soothing series to stream, just let me know and I will share my fixes. For now, BlueSky is a decent place with kindred spirits. I need to know I am not alone in my horror and grief for the world that is now gone. He promises to bomb the tar out of the Middle East as soon as He ascends the throne. Along with controlling Canada and Panama and sending the military into Mexico.

And his tech-bro buddies will now suspend fact-checking on all the platforms.

We are on our own now. 

But humour is saving a lot of us from despair. We need to laugh more.  And like someone said recently, empathy is the missing factor in all these monsters. We all need more empathy for the pain and suffering so many are suffering. 

Will goodness prevail in the long run?

.

Grief

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?

Any shared stories of grief would be appreciated. 

I feel massively alone.

Childhood Trauma.

The hospital of 1949 horror still standing, 3rd window from left, 2nd floor.

Indulge me, please, if you would. This is long but heartfelt.

My #2 brother (I have 4) is going through an extremely rough time at the moment on a gurney in a hospital corridor exposed to lights, noise and the comings and goings of strangers. He's only allowed one visitor at a time. If you could call that interrupted and overheard time a "visit". He is very ill with a cancer that has gone crazy in his body and was moved (via taxi!) to hospital yesterday as he had developed clots in his left leg. Public health care in my home country is drastically underfunded and he told me last night that when he asked for a pillow there was none forthcoming as there were no funds for that kind of health care. To call me upset would be understating the whole situation as I imagine myself where he is and would want to die. A 'kill me now' scenario.

I'm in flashback mode Daughter reminded me today.

I'll give you the scene:

A six year old girl (me) in hospital with eye infections after an operation on them, plus a removal of adenoids and tonsils. Blood. Lots. In an adult ward as there were no children's hospitals back then, 74 years ago. Terrified. The adult patients around me "teased" me constantly. In those days child abuse was called "teasing" They told me my parents had forgotten about me, told me I was going blind. You get the picture.

Missing my mother who had two younger boys at home. My bandages were taken off one day and I was told to go into the corner to a baby's cot. Inside that cot was brother #2 with something pouring out of his ears. He was bawling his head off clutching his ears. I remember shutting down completely, holding his little hand. He was only a year old. He still had no words but "mama." 

I worked everything out inside my head. My parents were abandoning us, one by one. But they had missed brother #1 so they must be keeping him. Maybe he was a better child, maybe we were bad children like I was told by the priest at school. All born bad. Only when I had my First Confession would I be cleaned of my  original sin. Maybe I had infected my brother with my sin. As I had already  been told I had infected him with the measles that had put me and him in the hospital. 

Mum arrived that night. She and dad took turns each night. I wouldn't let her go, I screamed and cried and followed her down the stairs hanging on to her and I saw I had made her cry and that made me worse, shouting at her even more to take me and my brother out of there.

The nurses pried me off her and told me how awful I was upsetting her like that and threw me on my bed telling the ward not to speak to me as I was a very bad girl upsetting my mother like that.

My father arrived the following night in a towering rage. He dragged me over to my brother's cot and said I was upsetting everyone, the whole hospital, with my naughtiness and whinging and rudeness, look at my brother crying all the time on account of me.

If I ever did this again, my mother would never visit me. Never. Put that in my pipe and smoke it. Never. And that would mean she wouldn't see my brother either.

And I shut up. I shut up on situations when I shouldn't have shut up. I recognized at a very early age that my feelings didn't count, my voice was of no value. And I could be abandoned at the drop of a hat.

I learned to speak up through therapy and support, not to take things lying down, to call out evil and abuse. To help where I could, to scream and shout at authorities, to advocate for the homeless and seniors in poverty. To see and call out government ineptitude. To write and petition and not ever people-please to make my own life easier and never worry about what "others" might think. My true friends would love me as I love them.

I spoke up today, to my family to do more. To help my little brother more. To get him out of an intolerable situation if at all possible. To fight for him, for that little guy in the cot in the corner, crying himself to sleep. Exhausted.

 

Small Stuff

I'd like to post more here but a dearth of any kind of originality discourages me. I struggle with the acceptance of aging and not being able to do all the things I did. Spontaneity is missing. I have to weigh my energy carefully and limit myself to what my energy allows me.

Fitbit update: I find tracking my sleep is helpful as I am then prepared for what I can do in a day and not beat myself up because EVERYTHING. Everything doesn't happen anymore. Iffy health plays a part in this too and I try and focus on gratitude for all I can do, not what I can't. Most of the elder blogs I followed are now RIP. I looked down the list the other day and was shocked at how all those dear ones have now returned to stardust. 

A friend in my building dropped off these roses the other day and they made my day.

I'm not into knitting big projects at the moment so contented myself with knitting a little pile of these dish/face cloths which I give away individually as gifts in a little gauze bag with a small soap and a magnet. Let me know if any of you out there would like one.

We've had an ongoing blizzard here and I took this photo from my living room window at midnight last night after the snow plow had been. I love the effects of the lights.

In my more active days I took a series of photos and named them #40shadesofblue and this one popped up in my memories today from five years ago. I love this shot.

And finally a picture of something that is affecting us all, especially those of us on a fixed income.

Dreams

 Tuesday, I sat on the cliff at the ocean and watched the wild waves and mused.

I find dreams enormously revealing. In fact I am quite good at analyzing the dreams of others, and a blog friend, sadly missed - who has gone into the vast stardust - and I exchanged our dreams at times as she also had the gift of dream insight.

Now, I'm on my own with my sometimes baffling dreams.

Recently, two nights in a row, in sleep, I lost my car and the pursuit of my car was fraught with difficulties and challenges. One night I could see it at the top of a cliff and tried to climb up but kept falling backwards. I had a huge Newfoundland dog and endeavoured to have her help me by towing me up the cliff to no avail as she kept falling too. I woke in despair, carless.

The next night I was in a familiar small town in Ireland which had a parking lot for shoppers and when I went back to the lot, my car was missing. I was told by a cop that I had the wrong parking lot, there were more parking lots, I had to check them. So I did, I kept wandering around, exhausted knowing I would never find it as I knew this town had only the one parking lot.

Dreams are utterly symbolic and tap into our subconscious deeply. I wrote about this dream in my journal as I knew it was powerful and I didn't want to forget all the details.

And then it all fell into place.

Recently I resigned from two pretty intense projects for many reasons. And now I am noticing I have lost bits of myself. I was changed in a way I couldn't define.

And then it hit me. I have lost the drive, the force, that has always informed me, made me, ME.

I need to find it and this is my challenge at the moment. I need purpose. 

I need to find my drive - my car.

A photo from 9 years ago in the town I loved so well.

Macassar

Note: blog name change as I embrace 80 and french kiss it to the ground. I meant to do it when I turned 70 but I was damn busy then, mayor of a town, host in my wee inn, running a business consulting service and building an off the grid cabin.

"You're a baby," said a fellow tenant to me today in the laundry room as we introduced ourselves. She's 85. It was a luscious feeling if only for a second when my knees, back and wrist reminded me you are no baby, lady.

Anyway to draw your attention back to the title of today's entry.

I saw this word in a book I just finished and I knew what it was but here for your edification is the definition:

Ma·cas·sar

noun

1. 1.

   a kind of oil formerly used, especially by men, to make one's hair shine and lie flat.
2. 2.

   variant spelling of Makassar.

So male readers, if you're missing out on that desired shine, you know what to get.

 

So I thought of my mother and grandmother washing the antimacassars back in the day and hanging them on the line. 

And I haven't heard that word in years, though it was used a lot as the antimacassars had to be washed, starched and ironed quite frequently.

You are puzzled.

Here's the definition:

an·ti·ma·cas·sar

noun

1. a piece of cloth put over the back of a chair to protect it from grease and dirt or as an ornament.

But also note the grease and dirt belonged to men's heads, their easy chairs, the rarity of washing their hair. I often speculated as a youngster that their hair was glued to their heads by all that oil. You could use their heads as a mirror and see yourself when you looked down on it, as I did frequently, sitting on the arms of their armchairs, one of those kids that wanted to share the newspapers, books or crosswords.

But, I am really, really happy the antimacassar days are over. Along with those filthy hankies men used often in great trumpeting nose-blowings that women had to boil, blue and dry and then iron into perfect folds for Da Man.

The hidden and unacknowledged work of women. 

Never ending.

Pinned in The 'Peg (Part 4 - final)

See Part 1 here

See Part 2 here

See Part 3 here 

I'm taking them to dinner in their favourite place but we find it closed. She should have called, he says, why didn’t she, everyone calls. They have one of their interminable conversations in the front seat. Her alternative suggestions are squelched quickly. I'm not consulted even though I'll be footing the bill.

Schezuan, he decides, finally. I touch lightly on a few carefully thought out topics over dinner. I say I like the excellent tempura pickerel. Who said it was tempura? He turns on me, he didn't know what it was but it wasn't tempura. I ask the server, wondering why on earth I'm bothering. She's surprised I ask, “tempura pickerel,” she responds. Ah, he says darkly, they don't know tempura! The last part of the meal is rushed, there's another sports event waiting for him at home.

I sit in the kitchen with her and knit while watching an episode of "Foyle’s War" on one of the six televisions scattered throughout the house. From the den, he regularly calls out orders for tea, water, let Dingo out or in, all of which she obeys without question. When he comes out to the kitchen for yogurt (he announces she'd bring him the wrong one) he turns off the TV as he walks by. She turns it back on without comment or surprise once he leaves the kitchen. She stacks up more albums of knitting patterns for later enjoyment. I bail abruptly. He emerges from the den and tells her she's not coming to the airport in the morning as he's going directly to the gym afterwards. She's crestfallen, close to tears; I make my escape to my room, complete with dog butt.

Drifts of eternal one-sided arguments reach my ears from downstairs as I pull the covers over my head. No, no, no, that was 1951 not 1949, how could she be so mixed up?

I wonder if I'm permanently brain-damaged.

In the morning, I sit beside him as he drives to the airport.

You don’t say very much, he remarks, are you always this quiet? It’s not a good way of getting on in the world.

I look at him, take a deep breath. Measure my words.

You’d never be interested in what I have to say, I say slowly, thinking how insulting my words are.

Without missing a beat, he responds, delighted: Correct! He nods his head as we pull into the sidewalk below the departures sign at the airport, you women have nothing interesting to say!

I get out of the car, haul my suitcase from the back seat and slam the car door without another word.

I cry with relief as I board the plane.

Unbelievably, I hear from them a few more times via email telling me they are visiting Toronto and would love to see me.

I never respond and block him on his request to befriend me on Facebook.

They walk among us.

With no warning signs.

The Busy Business of Old Age

Being old is a full time job. It takes up a huge amount of head space, time bargaining, spoon counting, and energy. Add to that mobility issues and transit challenges and inflation and you have quite a storm.

(1) have a large quantity of pills in my day. I have them delivered. But nothing is automatic. I do a weekly pill sort every Sunday into these compartmentalized gizmos. And phone my doctor when getting low. He faxes (you read that right) my requirements to the pharmacy. But every single time, they forget, he forgets, one of the pills, so I have to phone the pharmacy and ascertain the status of the missing pills. My specialists don't/can't access my list of medications but proceed to tweak some but neglect to tell my GP. I have to then go to my GP and show him the *manual* changes the specialist has made to these meds. GP is informed by LETTER a week or so later of the changes. My province's health care system's data base is 30 years old and even though every year they budget some millions for updating it, it never happens. So digital management of my medical needs is absent. I should NOT have to run around organizing my own medications. Everything should be on line - the pharmacy, the specialists, my GP, me, all interacting on the ether.

(2) My GP is leaving to move to Nova Scotia as his spouse works there. I am seriously heartbroken. Our health care system here is in crisis and finding another GP is a huge challenge as there's an unconscionable shortfall in doctors. My existing GP is trying to find me a doctor due to the ongoing management (weekly) of my health issues. He's an incredibly involved compassionate and caring doctor and one of the best I have ever had. But he leaves in November. 

(3)I have fairly decent days and fairly awful days of pain, breathing, movement, take your pick. It's hard to plan. But I find if I have a "busy" day I need to rest the following day. Today is a rest day as yesterday was a family dinner out in Petty Harbour, a lovely spot, see pic below that I took in the later evening. Today, everyone is going off to have a meal at a place I love but I knew the car-ride of a few hours along with socializing with a pile of people and the car-ride back would do my head and my body in.

(4)Accessibility planning. Lately I found that those we were meeting were at the most distant table in the restaurant, already seated. Great view but what felt like two miles from the door. Last night was even worse. They get to places early and were there when we got there. I had to traverse the main floor, up a terribly rickety staircase and then traverse the second floor to their distant table - and dear gawd, they chose one of those dreadful high tables with stools. Luckily I had my cane, George, with me so I could clamber on and off the stool. I find they were remarkably insensitive to the needs of a visibly mobility challenged person but chose not to say anything as one of them is, tragically, terminally ill.

(5)Bathrooms. I always need to plan and clock the presence of. Need I say more?

(6)Tests, xrays, scans, this could be almost full time. And each one takes a day. Organizing a helper and possibly a driver as the main hospital is a nightmare of parking and accessibility with endless corridors to navigate, thus necessitating a wheelchair volunteer. No candy stripers of old here to help out. Often Daughter has to take the day off work to help out and I feel so bad about this as it eats into her vacation time. Another stress factor for the old. Leaning on our children for assistance and trying so very hard not to feel guilty about it. 

(7) Multiple other issues but this blog post is too long as it is. Inflation. Food prices. Budgeting. Medical expenses not covered by health care (in home lab work, physiotherapy, dental, hearing, podiatry, pandemics (yeah, plural). And more I am forgetting about. Fear of "The Home". Lack of home assistance for those who wish to stay independently living.

How are you all finding the busy-ness of aging?

Mad Writer

 I'm in Mad Writer mode lately. Churning out a lot of my own memoir about my first year in Toronto. A year in which so very much happened, much of it kept hidden and secret. For very good reasons. Held in a locked closet in my mind for fifty six years. I'm very glad I have such a memory for detail and notice, through the Sibling Zooms every Sunday that we all share that ability.

Along with that I have the online writing workshops I'm facilitating. We are all missing the live ones, and these real enthusiasts are producing wonderful work. Which I am critiquing. Which takes oodles of time as well.

I've missed writing here which I will try and rectify but sometimes I just want to throw the keyboard against the wall and do something utterly different.

I love the goings on in Ireland at the moment with the Russian navy off the coast of West Cork.

Daughter sent me this earlier on.  I sometimes forget how the country of my birth has such marvelous humour.

Listening to Irish radio this morning they had a CNN reporter who was on location in West Cork. The reporter was a Kerryman who is based in America. At the end of the discussion about the fisherman taking ownership of standing down Russia (ha) the host of the show then said something like.."C'mere to me now. You're among your own here so I'm gonna ask you what everyone in Ireland really wants to know....did you get paid to come home and visit your Mammy?"

Melange a Trois

 (1) Thought I'd show you my Wall. Note caps. This was a blank wall facing a bookcase in my hall. I send cards, I get cards. Some of them arty or old or meaningful and I like them to hang around for a while. I had a roundy thing with slots which would hold about 20, all cramped together. It teetered. I had a few lovely framed corkboards in my office/bedroom and pinned some up. Then I thought wee pegs and a kind of double clothesline. And this seems to be working. I get to walk by them all, and can change them at whim.

(2)I had tea shipped in from Tipperary at Solstice as a gift for Niece to share over the festivities. With a teapot and inbuilt strainer. To me, tea should never, ever be in teabags. It needs to be loose-leaf and full of aroma and taste. This was a huge hit so I sourced more of this magnificent tea in Canada at half the price and got bags for Niece, Daughter and myself. This is the tea I was reared on. Blended by a Master Blender in Cork by the name of Dennis Daley.

(3) I'm preparing for a CBC radio interview tomorrow on how seniors have been managing themselves in the Time of the Plague. I believe that schoolchildren and seniors are suffering the most throughout this time. And there will be a ripple effect for generations to come once we move beyond (?) it. Let's face it, we are not too far off from death in the normal state of affairs, but it is much, much, harder missing physical contact with family and friends. Along with other challenges, far too many to get into here.

I realize I am luckier than most in that there is never enough hours in my day to satisfy me. I get up early and even if I sleep in for an hour I feel ripped off.

 Daughter visited me yesterday and brought me a grid notebook (genuine antique with leaves of carbon paper at the back!) and 24 brand new colouring pencils. I felt like 6 years old again, can't wait to experiment with these babies.

The Books of 2021

Gosh the reading was way down. Granted I was quite ill for most of 2021 and well, all of 2020. I try and reach a 100 books a year but fail usually. 2021 saw me reading barely 50.  Here's the list, 5 stars were a super read for me. BC is book club. DNF - did not finish, the agony of terrible writing exploding my brain.

For previous years see 

(1) Unravelling Oliver - Liz Nugent ****

(2) Lying in Wait - Liz Nugent ****

(3) The Abolutist - John Boyne ***

(4) The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett - Annie Lyons ****

(5) Slow Horses - Nicke Heron ***

(6) The Guest Book - Sarah Baker *****

(7) Five Days Gone - Laura Cummings *****

(8) The City of Shadows - Michael Russell *****

(9) Purple Hibiscus - Chimande Ngozi Adiche *****

(10)The Searcher - Tana French **

(11)Eugelia's Daughters - Gerd Brantenberg ***1/2

(12)The Glass Hotel - Emily St.John *****

(13)The Arrangement - Robyn Harding 0

(14)Cruel Acts - Jane Casey ***

(15)Sins of the Mother - Irene Kelly ****

(16)The City in Darkness - Michael Russell ****

(17)The City of Strangers - Michael Russell *****

(18)The Dutch House - Ann Patchett *****

(19)The Old Drift - Nanwel Serpel DNF

(20)A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan DNF

(21)The Night Fire - Michael Connolly ****

(22)The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read for style) *****

(34)A Ghost in the Throat - Doireann Ni Ghriofa *****

(25)The Last Thing he Told me - Laura Dave ***

(26)The City of Lies - Michael Russell ***1/2

(27)The Midnight Library - Matt Haig **

(28)Moon of the Crusted Snow - Waubgeshig Rice ****

(29)Son of a Trickster - Eden Robinson **

(30)Our Darkest Night - Jennifer Robson ***

(31)God is not Great - Christopher Hitchen *****

(32)Local Woman Missing - Mary Kubica *****

(33)The City in Flames - Michael Russell ****

(34)Working the Rock - Frances Rooney *****

(35)The Best Kind of People - Zoe Whittall *****

(36)Memories of a Catholic Childhood - Mary McCarthy re-read *****

(37) The Springs of Affection - Maeve Brennan - *****

(38)Fight Night - Miriam Toews *****

(39)The Last Bookshop in London - Madeline Martin *

(40)Open-hearted - Ann Ingle *****

(41)The Longwinded Lady - Maeve Brennan *****

(42)Being Mortal - Atul Gavande *****

(43)Hostage - Clare Mackintosh ***

(44)Becoming - Michelle Obama {BC} ****

(45)Wintering - Katherine May *****

(46)Anxious People - Fredrick Backman  ***

(47)Born A Crime - Trevor Noah {BC} DNF

(48)Pluck - Donna Morrissey ***

(49)We Don't know Ourselves - Fintan O'Toole (1/2 way through, massive book)*****

(50)The Push - Ashley Audrain - just started.

This Day

This day rocks and slides around every year. The day in 1969 I gave birth to my second child. The day she was placed in an incubator beside me, I couldn't touch her immediately as her skin was too delicate. In those days there was a long post- natal recuperation in hospital (8-9days) so she was laid out at the end of the nursery beside a huge window, stark naked, below the weak December sun so the Vitamin D could embrace her. Which it did. I read many books and smoked many cigarettes as I recovered. (Smoking in a maternity room sounds impossible now, but yeah, us funky daredevil hippie mothers all did.)

I got to hold her when the sun went down in the first couple of days as I healed and then could go to the nursery and be with her as she sunbathed. It worked. Her skin cleared up.

She was a bright and curious child and when she was in kindergarten she sat me and her father down and asked us seriously if there was a night school she could go to as her days were far too busy for day school. She ran with boys mainly as she found girls far too wishy-washy to her liking as she climbed trees and built a small tree house with the assistance of her far more "proper" older sister. Her seventh birthday, which took place at the Ponderosa Steak House (her choice) had only boys, her gang, in attendance apart from her sister. A cowboy outfit we bought her was worn to shreds on her. She wore her socks with one matching her sweater and one matching her pants or skirt. That made total sense to her. And to me.

She was unique and different and extraordinarily bright with illuminating insights on how the world worked. There was a patch of enormous trouble with her at fourteen when she found drugs and ran with an alarming bunch of teenagers. I didn't deal with it well at the time, I had my own demons. But through Tough Love, a support group for parents which was absolutely fantastically helpful, I began laying down tough rules and curfews and she ran away from home for a few weeks. It was a hellish time, but she did come back (long story), bedraggled and subdued and got back in school and off the drugs, shining in scholarly achievement after the first semester. 

She lived with me, just about, until she was twenty-eight. And subsequently back- emigrated to Ireland.

She is currently in the UK. And about twenty years ago now, cut off her entire blood family and her friends here.

So there is this huge chunk of wandering love chopped right out of all of our lives. I understand that not being a mother herself she has no idea of the pain of loss I and her father suffer. Or her sister and niece. 

It's like missing a limb. And the phantom pains never leave. 

Day 17

All is well.

I found this to be one of the most delightful and funny obituaries I have ever read. So thought to share it with you all. 

1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1--1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Published: January 22, 2021

Margaret Marilyn DeAdder of Moncton, Nova Scotia - Obituary. 

Margaret Marilyn DeAdder, professional clipper of coupons, baker of cookies, terror behind the wheel, champion of the underdog, ruthless card player, and self-described Queen Bitch, died on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. Marilyn, the oldest of four siblings, was born Marilyn Joyce in 1942, to parents Hannah and Edgar Joyce, in New Glasgow. She grew up in a modest home, which still stands on the top of a hill where the Westville Road forks to the Town of Westville in one direction and the old drive-in in the other. Growing up with very little taught her how to turn a dime into a dollar, a skill at which she'd excel her whole life. 

Marilyn loved all children who weren't her own and loved her own children relative to how clean-shaven they were. She excelled at giving the finger, taking no shit and laughing at jokes, preferably in the shade of blue. She did not excel at suffering fools, hiding her disdain, and putting her car in reverse. A voracious reader, she loved true crime, romance novels and the odd political book. Trained as a hairdresser before she was married, she was always doing somebody's hair in her kitchen, so much so her kitchen smelled of baking and perm solution. Marilyn had a busy life, but no matter what she was doing she always made time to run her kids' lives as well. Her lifelong hobbies included painting, quilting, baking, gardening, hiking and arson. Marilyn loved tea and toast. The one thing she loved more than tea and toast was reheated tea and toast. She reheated tea by simply turning on the burner often forgetting about it. She burned many a teapot and caused smoke damage countless times, leaving her kids with the impression that fanning the smoke alarm was a step in brewing tea.

Marilyn liked to volunteer and give back to the community. She was a lifelong volunteer at the Capital Theatre in downtown Moncton, which her sons suspected was her way of seeing all the shows for free. For all of Marilyn's success in life, her crowning achievement occurred in the mid-to-late eighties, when, left with mounting debt, no job, no car, and no driver's license, she turned it all around to the point in the early nineties that she had paid down her house, paid cash for all her cars, and got her three boys through university.

Marilyn is survived by her three ungrateful sons, Michael (Gail), Paul and David (Trudy), whose names she never got completely right, and whose jokes she didn't completely understand. She loved them very much, even though at least one of them would ruin Christmas every year by coming home with facial hair, and never forgot that one disastrous Christmas in which all three sons showed up with beards. Everything she did, she did for her sons.

Marilyn is survived by her three granddaughters, Meaghan (19), Bridget (16) and Madelyn (5). While her sons committed unspeakable crimes against humanity, her granddaughters could do no wrong. While her sons grew up on root vegetables and powdered milk (funneled directly into the bag to hide the fact that it was powdered, fooling nobody), her granddaughters were fed mountains of sugary snacks as far as the eye could see, including her world-famous cookies and cinnamon rolls. Her love for them was unmatched.

Marilyn is survived by her sisters, Melda and Linda, and her brother, Lloyd, who still owes her $600* (*inside family joke - sorry, Lloyd). Marilyn is also survived by an incredible number of close friends, who cannot be named for fear of missing somebody.

Marilyn, ever the penny-pincher, decided to leave this world on the day Moncton went into red-alert, her sons believe, to avoid paying for a funeral. But, on the other hand, she always said that she didn't want a funeral, she wanted an Irish wake. She didn't want everybody moping around, she wanted a party. Marilyn will get her Celebration of Life when COVID-19 is over. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you do something nice for somebody else unexpectedly, and without explanation. We love you, mom, a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.

A Tough Ol' Year

For all of us.

Not that we hadn't been warned way ahead of time. For years. A virus would get us in the end, they said, something invisible. With a breathtaking virulence and multiple mutations. That's something out of sci-fi, we thought, sneering. With all our medical knowledge we would slay it within weeks, look what we did to all the old diseases, diptheria, whooping cough, measles, polio. We are smarter than any virus. Yet here we go stumbling into 2021 and the virus is mutating and outsmarting us all right behind us.

And look what's happened. Millions dead. And still more will be dead from the after-effects. Not to mention the suicides and debilitating depressions and the undiagnosed non-Covid illnesses like cancer, heart disease, with people too afraid of hospitals to go for tests and diagnostics.

So yeah, it was tough, as we limp into 2021, still uncertain of what the future holds.

As to me? I read a lot. I wrote a lot. I streamed a lot. Didn't knit as much as I wanted to.

The gifts of Covid, not in any particular order:

(1) Zoom meetings every Sunday afternoon with my five siblings, we are scattered througout the world but we all show up faithfully week after week.

(2) Seeing clearly what's important and what isn't in life.

(3) Missing really ordinary bits and pieces I took for granted like sitting in cafes with friends mulling over the state of the world. Never realizing that that was a something I took for grantd pre-Plague. Live theatre, live music.

(4) Zoom Meetings with long time friends in Ontario whom I miss so much.

(5) Seeing how local friends misbehaved in not following the protocols, never realizing how truly selfish they were in not protecting others by wearing a mask.

(6) Forcing myself to fix computer and tablet issues when challenged. It hurt the ancient brain but I managed. And felt inordinately proud when successful (hello new bluetooth connection which took an inordinate amount of time.)

(7) Precious travelling trip to the Great Northern Peninsula with Grandgirl and Daughter. Grandgirl had to self-isolate for 2 weeks when she got here before we all set off and I am so grateful for her concern and caring of her old grandma.

(8) Enjoying cheap flowers like never before, here's a picture of the irises I bought yesterday:

Here's a pic of Grandgirl and me at the Viking Settlement, I wish I had the picture handy of me pushing her in her jogging stroller 25 years before as we I ran in a Toronto road race! It would have been one of those perfect circle of life treasures. I'll never forget her lisping over and over "Go, grandma, go!" Now it was my turn to urge her on through the trails!

And here's a bunch of Irish wishes for all of you out there as we bravely face this brand new year.

Letter to Jeff Bezos (Followup on previous post.)

I'm pasting this letter to JB in its entirety, written by Michael Brownstein here.

Hey Jeff, Michael here. This is important, so listen up. You hit a monster home run with Amazon, there's no denying that, you're worth more than anyone else on the planet.

But there's one place you're impoverished, Jeff—your heart. You're keen to spend billions of dollars landing tourists on the moon instead of performing real service here on Earth. Like helping those humans living degraded lives under the boot heel of predatory capitalism.

It's time to stop skinflinting your Amazon workers while installing cameras to make sure they don't take too many minutes going to the bathroom. And firing them for speaking out about putting themselves in harm's way from Covid-19 by working in your warehouses without adequate protection.

That's bad enough, but something even bigger is missing in your life. Everything is not product, Jeff. I mean, it's great what you did with Amazon. We love the convenience but we do not love your robber-baron persona. Because without a connection to healing spirit you're sick no matter how much money you have.

Look in the mirror and you'll see someone preoccupied with shooting phallic rockets into the frigid reaches of space while your own world is burning up. It's time to give back, Jeff.

How should I do that, you ask. Good question! I'll tell you how. Turn Amazon into a co-op, let the workers own it. But above all, give back to the sacred rain forest in South America, the Amazon whose name you stole—just grab the name and run, right?

But there's more to life than scoring, Jeff. It's time for you to fly to the Amazon, get down on your knees and thank the rainforest for its gifts, its generation of endless life forms, sacred in nature, which puts to shame the sterile proliferation of items in Amazon's warehouses. It's time to drink jungle medicine and open your heart, wake up from your high-powered fantasies.

Understand that mass extinction of plants and animals is accelerating out of control. You have to work to rid us of the capitalist nightmare based on mindless greed which is raping the Earth.

It's time to help heal the lungs of the Earth that are being scorched. The Amazon is on fire, Jeff. The lungs of the Earth are saying "I can't breathe," just like George Floyd, just like the people dying from Covid-19.

It's time to swear you'll protect the indigenous people who've taken good care of the Amazon for thousands of years only to be murdered for the shortest of short term gains. You took that name without asking, Jeff. It's time to give back before it's too late.

Time to swear you'll protect the indigenous people who've taken good care of the Amazon for thousands of years only to be murdered for the shortest of short term gains. You took that name without asking, Jeff. It's time to give back before it's too late.

Yes, before it's too late and the only people left to watch your rockets zoom off into the ether will be a few fellow billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, your megalomaniacal competitors racing to see who can spoil the heavens sooner by launching low orbit satellites beaming down 5G radiation from above.

Elon has a head start, he's already put thousands of bright, large, reflective, radio-interfering satellites in orbit with hundreds more to follow every month. But you're planning to catch up to him by adding thousands of your own. If you and Elon and Bill have your way, looking through a pair of binoculars in 2030 will reveal more satellites than stars.

But it's not only our view of the night sky that will be ruined. Check out what EMF experts have to say about the health risks of 5G radiation. Switzerland has restricted 5G deployment in response to a nationwide call for real-world testing. Other countries and cities are having second thoughts too, despite the telecom industry pushing to install 5G everywhere as soon as possible, no questions asked.

Can't you see what you're doing by forging ahead regardless of the consequences of your actions, Jeff? Like the Amazon rain forest, the night sky belongs to all of humanity, not simply to operators like you hypnotized by the "business impact" of your actions.

Instead of sending up satellites to track us for a coming surveillance state, why don't you play your part as a citizen of the world and send up just one satellite to track global deforestation?

It's time to drop your daydream of being a very important explorer of the galaxy and work to save where you actually eat and sleep and make your moves. Time to help turn the global climate crisis around. Because unless you do, before long there will be no companies left for you to play with. Spend your billions saving the sacred Amazon. Spend them while there's still time.