The Fine Art of Dying

I will come back and write a followup on my post "Ruminations" shortly. And please, can we all be civil? If you knew me you'd know how tolerant and loving I am and I know that my readers are the same. I like to believe that no one is hating on anyone, particularly on the marginalized in our society of which there are far too many.

Meanwhile one of my stories is up at As Time Goes By and for those long term readers: you will recognize the protagonist from previous posts (2014). She is still beloved. And she still makes me smile when I think of her, especially when I walk by a framed needlepoint she gave me many years ago which hangs in my kitchen but it breeches my anonymity so I can't post a pic.

Those are some of my birthday flowers above. My friends and wee family are treasures. Treasures I tell ya! More on that fabulous surprise party later.

True Story.

So I was a wee bit sad, a lovely old lady died a week after celebrating her 90th birthday. A blast of a party in the local golf club was that event, band, food, hundreds of guests, full page announcement in the newspaper.

Dying at 90 has an air of jollity about it. Imagine living that long, dying in your own home, a widow for yonks, raising 4 boys just about alone (often slaving over long steel tables gutting fish in a fishplant, feet sloshing around salt water floors) and they're all lawyers and judges. Important fellahs. Job well done, missus.

So I write up my card and fire off my donation to my favourite local charity. I don't believe in BigCorpoCharity. Not one bit. Even if you tell me on the obit to donate to Cancer/Kidney Foundation/MS/Diabetes. I disobey. I will not line the pockets of those CEOs and those marketing fool-tools.

But I digress, for this is a story about how I adjust reality to suit me. Fatal flaw or comic genius? You tell me after you read onwards.

I get to the wake. We have a grandish wake room as an offshoot to the church. It would pass the litmus test of non-sectarian space if it weren't for the Holy Marys crowding the walls and the statue of Saint Joseph doing a bit of carpentry.

So I drop off the card in the little carousel set on a table for this purpsoe and face the corpse. And I think, Mein Gott, she has changed substantially in the week I last saw her. Shrunken, cheeks fallen in, a tinge of yellow on her. Death can wring your neck.

And I sit down next to some friends. And share this. And they tell me she's now 68 lbs, an awful change. And my brain fires off and I think, she must have lost 40lbs in a week, they must have syphoned it out of her and why for gawd's sake?

Marguerite was my next door neighbour for about 10 years until she moved, offers Thomas.

I shake my head and say: I never knew she had another name, I always called her Anne.

Oh, really? says Ruth, baffled, maybe when she moved to your outport she went to her middle name?

Duh, obviously, I think.

Have you met all the family? says Don.

Yeah, I know all four boys, I say, preening slightly. Anne/Marguerite had made a point of introducing me to her 4 sons when they were in town, they are scattered across the country in the judicial systems of various provinces. All good-looking runners too.

That's odd, says Thomas, she has 3 girls and 2 boys.

I can be slow but when I can shove my own reality out of the way in exchange for someone else's I show surprising quick-wittedness.

That is Anne Bishop in the casket? I say, very softly in case anyone's eavesdropping.

Ah no, no. That's Marguerite Ryan, says Thomas, looking at me funny, Anne Bishop's in the church next door.

I reflect: Life was more understandable when I was drinking. Now I have to get up, fish the card off the carousel if I can find it amongst the 100 already there and then, red-faced, walk down this aisle and into the church.

And these poor innocent people, gawd help them, voted me into public office.

Taking Down the Scaffolding Part 2

See Part 1 here.

By scaffolding I mean memories. Pieces of the memory banks no longer shared with the participants. And my friend Allen held a chunk of joint memories.

I met him and his family through his sister, Judy, a dear friend. But I'll back up even further on the lives of the Butons (last name changed to protect their anonymity).

They were staunch Quebecers. And in that gifted way of most Quebecers spoke both English and French fluently.

The first tragedy in their family befell them when Judy was 13, Allen was 15 and their baby brother, Michel, was 3. Their father went off to hunt in the woods one Saturday morning and killed himself in their cabin with his own shotgun. No note. No reason. Just a legacy of puzzlement and grief and anger and despair.

Their mother, Cecile, had to go outside the home and find work just about immediately as Papa had left them virtually bankrupt.

Allen worked part-time to help the family and also attended college for a business degree and then started up his own small company.

He then married his high school sweetheart who had sustained him during the crisis of his father's death.

There was an economic meltdown in Quebec in the eighties (most Quebec based English businesses and head offices moved to Ontario during that period due to the enforcement of the French language by the language police).

It broke the Butons' hearts to leave their birth province but they did. The impact of so many corporations abandoning Quebec for Ontario put Allen's own small business (an import/export) in jeopardy so they "jumped ship". Successfully as it turned out.

To be continued.

A Story to Dine Out On.

My brother tells this true story. Every time I think of it I burst out laughing. Now, you might have to be Irish to get the humour in it but I'll take my chances as the story truly deserves the light of a bigger audience.

Bro is an engineer and would travel a lot up and down Ireland. You might think being an engineer would be an awful bore of an old job. But no. It had its moments.

He was up in the backside of Mayo one day and was running out of petrol and he found this old shop off the beaten track with a petrol pump outside and pulled in. An oul fellah came out, a dirty, greasy oul fellah and filled up the car.

"Where would I get a bite to eat?" sez Bro, noting it was well past his lunch time and he was starving.

"Ah, sure, I can take care of yez," sez Yer Man.

So Bro follows Yer Man into the shop which reflected the condition of Yer Man himself. It hadn't seen a duster or a wipe down since God was an altar boy.

"I'll be fixing yez up so, a good thick sammich," sez Yer Man, hauling out a big round of brown soda bread and slapping it on the filthy counter. Next, he retrieves a huge slab of ham from somewhere and Bro notes it is crawling with bluebottles (big flies). Yer Man then goes into a drawer and selects a rusty, dusty carving knife and with a flourish pulls out a filthy rag from his back pocket and proceeds to wipe down the knife.

It's at this point in the proceedings that he catches the appalled look on Bro's face. Completely misinterpreting the look as approval for how well he's conducting his lunch preparation, he says proudly:

"Arragh I'm a hoor for the hygiene."

The Lonely Engineer - Part 2

See Part 1 Here

Before the feast began, Denis would sit in the front room and talk to us older children. I still, to this day, remain enchanted with the vast range of general knowledge he had, his intimacy with landscapes and buildings everywhere, his unending political knowledge, his encyclopaedic musical abilities, his unerring certainty (he was a diviner) of where precious metals lay, where long dead forests were located, even the depth of the water table under our house and the placement of the skeletons of long dead farm animals - for our house was built over farmland, the original suburbia of the fifties.

Lying in bed, I would often imagine all that lay beneath our house, layers of history, maybe even human skeletons. Denis would often wield pencil and paper and draw things, spell out long words for me, tell me what they meant, what language was the source, and how it compared to other languages.

I said to my father once: "He's a genius, right?" I'd never met a genius, I'd read about them but here was one in the actual flesh in our home, so to speak. "But of course," Daddy responded in a matter of fact way.

We would try to avert our eyes when Denis ate, as Mummy had told us not to be rude and stare. It was very difficult and not from a judgement point of view, but from an absolute fascination with the gargantuan quantities of food he would down: a dozen eggs, ditto bacon, ditto sausages, three or four chops, a bowl of Mum's home cut chips and then half an apple tart with cream followed by an enormous wedge of Mum's delicious fruit cake.

One time, one of my brothers who was about 4 at the time, circled Denis as he sat in our sturdiest chair and with his eyes just about popping out of his head said in amazement: "Oh my-my-my Daddy, what a tummy!"

You see, Denis was about 32 stone in weight - nearly 400 lbs. Daddy told me once his car, a Ford Prefect, had to have special bracing to hold his weight. Lorry suspension, Daddy called it.

He lived by himself in a flat on a main-floor somewhere and his landlady cooked for him. No family, Daddy had said when I asked one time, only a dead sister. He could no longer travel abroad because of his size.

I imagine our family was the only family he would ever feel a part of. I remember clearly the look on his face when my little brother made his awestruck comment on his size. A flash of bleakness, something unbearable. I had to look away.

Denis lost both his legs to diabetes eventually.

Before he died, and he wasn't too old, Daddy would always visit him once a week in the care home where he resided. And bring him Mummy's baking and the really tough crosswords out of the English papers.

Daddy told me once in later years as we travelled around the U.S. together that he still missed "the magnificence of Denis' mind."

Me too.

The Lonely Engineer - Part 1

The Sentimentalist - Johanna Skibsrud
P.87

"...a sadness that would make you, when you saw it, want to pull the edges of your own life up around you, and stay there, very carefully, inside."

I hadn't thought about him in years. Until I read the above quote in the book I'm enjoying at the moment. He was a great friend to my father. I imagine he was about 20 years older. And I believe, today, that there was an unspoken debt (of gratitude?)for something Denis had done for Daddy. They were originally from the same small town and Denis had achieved some prominence as a gifted engineer in the government offices where my father worked. Some strings were pulled, I would imagine.

Denis, a lifelong bachelor, would visit our family about twice a year. And my mother would get into a hive of preparation: baking, cleaning, even painting. I was given to understand that Denis was highly important and a very good friend indeed to Daddy.

A measure of visitor importance in my family back then was when both the 'front' room and the dining room had both fires lit and banked high. Growing up, we were banned from the front room as were many children then. The too many children of the typical suburban semi-detached would spoil the furniture, wear out the carpet, crush the ornaments, destroy the curtains, fingerprint the walls and damage the piano. But when Denis came for his afternoon and evening with us, all those rules were tossed and we could enter the front room at will.

Denis would arrive with many suitcases (yes, heavy leather suitcases)stuffed with food. Boxes of chocolates and sweets, tins of biscuits, acres of sausages and bacon, black puddings, white puddings, assorted luscious 'chops', even eggs. He would never insult my mother by bringing any baked goodies. Our eyes would all light up in the anticipation of it all and we would help him lug in the contents of the packed boot (trunk) of his car, my eldest brother and me jointly handling one of the suitcases at a time they were so heavy.

Part 1 of 2

See Part 2 here

Mr. Stan and the Brass Stick

The old man leaves his cabin twice a day and walks up to the shop, about 1/2 km away. He wields a fancy walking stick. Brass. I wonder if it belonged to his father. You don't see much brass around anymore. Sometimes the dog and I trail the punch-holes that the stick leaves on the sandy shoulders of the road and I get a sense of his rhythm.

He had a long life and four children with his dead wife. He nursed her through her lingering fatal illness. He then moved on, after a decent interval, with her best friend who had been widowed many years before. And that didn't last long, only five years, before she succumbed to her cancer and he nursed her too. And then, he couldn't believe it, he was eighty-five and felt he should leave the family home to his son who was back from Alberta and move into independent living in one of the small cabins up the road from me. He has his independence, he drives a well maintained saloon type car. But he's been very depressed and I'll tell you why.

Within a few months of his arrival I'd see Annie dropping in on him, bringing him cooked meals and baked offerings. It was extraordinarily odd as Annie, a first place winner in the World Class Hoarders' Championship, never bothered with cooking or cleaning before. But all of a sudden she's "doing" for Mr. Stan. Annie was the one I told you about a while back. When she went off to Toronto to visit one of her children, she came back here to a house cleaned out by her siblings and set finally to rights. Zen. Polished. Decluttered and sanitized. She ordered her brother's truck up to the dump and retrieved all they had cast aside so carelessly. Materials from circa 1942. Her dead husband's (1988)clothes, tools and gadgets, her vast stone and shell collections, 5 unworkable teevees and several trashed microwaves along with more dishes than the army needed in 1941 and every box she had ever been given. She restored her house to order with the overflow spilling down the deck and on to the sideyard. Where it proudly hangs out with her dead husband's 1964 rusted out truck.

Next thing, Annie is riding around in Mr. Stan's car like a missus. And having sleepovers at his place (nobody's been inside her place except for the siblings intervention since her last child left home in 1990). They are an item. Her daughter, who is forty and posts incessantly about her dead father on FB, was now calling Mr. Stan "Dad". I should add daughter is partnered with her own love for over 20 years. But had this papa-hole that is now filled. All is well. But oh noes!

There are huge ructions and yelling one night outside Mr. Stan's cabin. Mr. Stan is thundering-lord-jesusing. For such an old mild-voiced gentleman he has a powerful voice when he gets riled up. It certainly got my attention and I live quite a ways downhill. It seems like Annie had been two-timing him with Mr. Lenny, who is younger and has many bottles of rum stashed all over his cabin which is six removed from Mr. Stan's. Annie loves her rum. Rum doesn't love Annie. It sends her mouth into orbit and winds her up so she starts spewing venom. Which she did.

Annie, who is 70 if she's a day, told Mr. Stan that he couldn't satisfy a woman such as herself, but Mr. Lenny could. And if he could satisfy a lusty woman such as herself then she wouldn't have to run to Mr. Lenny's now, would she. So basically it was all his (Mr. Stan's) fault if he couldn't man up.

Needless to mention gossip of Mr. Stan's shortfall overrode the two-timing crimes of Annie. Actually Annie's two-timing incurred quite a bit of envy, including my own. I mean, at her age? I think I'd be bragging up and down Main Street if we had one. If I was that fortunate to snag two old men living six cabins apart and have the energy to bounce around from one t'other.

But my heart does go out to Mr. Stan, taken in by the bakin' and cleanin' Annie and treating her like a missus and hoping for a Hollywood ending. Like the rest of us.

And now he's alone, kind of bitter, and who's to blame him, taking his brass stick out for walks as if his life depended on it.

A Day in the Life

Timeout at Coutts today. Click to enbiggen

It was a packed day. I went to visit the owners of the inn and they booked me for 3 sessions of the new persona, The Seanchaí. Sometimes I think I've one hell of a nerve. Seriously. Nerve. I practised a sample on them and they were delighted and said you have to do all three dinner sittings, yes, you do! and by the way it's completely sold out. Be still my heart.

And then we moved on to other stuff. You know the way of it. Life stories, local interest, life by the ocean waves (they are CFAs too),Newfoundland people and how they enfold you into their hearts and are so unconsciously generous.

And then I went off to do some monthly pro-bono work. And then I took a little timeout with Ansa and went to a place where there are only sea birds (see above) and a rutted boreen of a road that we walked for quite a while. And I remembered the camera this time. The other day there were huge grey seals sunning themselves on the beach stones, watching us upside down, really funny creatures, flapping their flippers. And no camera. And we were two miles from home. Boy, was I mad.

Then it was dinner at a friend's, she made a marvellous stew with paste* and had saved a bone for Ansa who was over the moon at this largesse.

Then after this I headed off to drop in on more friends for an hour or so and then headed home. Grateful for the starlit sky, the magnificent weather we've been having, and so very excited about The Seanchaí's debut.

*This is peculiar to rural Newfoundland it is as if pastry and a dumpling had a child.

Someday

You get to an age when the somedays are all behind you. Do it now or not at all is my new mantra.

My recent (well the last few years') desire is to be a Seanchaí. One of those old Irish story tellers at events. You know, engaging with the audience, taking on a role or two within the context of the old story. Using no notes. Au naturel, unlike my previous foray into a one woman performance thingie.

My first gig as a Seanchaí is in a month's time at a dinner theatre. I will be telling a story from my life, well my aunt's life, previously featured in Time Goes By a while back. The venue is an old convent converted to an inn so I thought it would be conducive to a story about my aunt's nunnish aspirations.

I've been commissioned to write another play, another musical drama, and that is completely over the top exciting. Auditions will take place soon and the first table reading will be at the end of May. I am hoping for it to be an inter-generational theme, depending on cast.

I was at a concert complete with afternoon tea on Saturday. It was a wonderful event, great music and the tea was deluxe, lashings of beautiful food, flowers and china. A few of my friends are in the choral group. They perform mainly jazz interspersed with folk songs from the sixties and seventies, along with Andrews Sisters' numbers. One came up to me during the intermission and put her head on my shoulder, nearly in tears.

"Oh, WWW," she said sadly,"Can you believe it? My life is nearly over! I'm getting so old. I'll be fifty next week!"

Somedays, I wanted to say as I comforted her. You still have somedays!

But she wouldn't have understood.

Follow-up to Betrayal Story

Here is a link to a true story I wrote about the betrayal of a friend. It is in two parts with a continuation at the bottom of part 1.

There is nought as queer as folks, yeah?

A week ago, I received a friend request on Facebook from the one who betrayed me:

OMG. I don't believe it! I had no idea where you were. I only joined facebook last month -actually one of my friends got so fed up she created my account and told me to get on with it. How are you doing? Knew it was you when I saw your facebook page. Ted showed up on people you might know on Carrie's and from that you showed up. Nfld??? Remember my cousin Meghan - used to be married to my cousin David (cop)? Her sister Doris has been living there since 1988....enough.. hope you are not too busy to keep in touch. Ilona

I ignored it. What greater rebuff can there be?

Then today I received this:

I have not had a reply to my message so I don't know if you are busy or don't want to keep in touch. I am living in Lxxxx now (since 1988) and don't bother going to Toronto much. I miss the Bxxxxx from time to time but not much else. I am now in my own place and setting up my art studio. It feels good to be finally doing what I want to do - it only took 40 years. If you are interested I have posted some of my art work on my facebook and I have been creating the posters, etc. for the Pxxxxx Theatre here. Some of the posters are also on my facebook. I was going to ask about the girls then realized that they are not girls anymore!! Bit of a shock that. I don't feel any older apart from a few creaks and that the gray hair is just making me more blonde...I don't ask opinions on that I will be happy to live in denial a while longer. Let me know how you are and take care. Ilona.

Names are redacted to protect the guilty.

"Keep in touch?"

What do you think?

Tell Me a Story

Englee (but throw a few extra syllables at it) where Myrtle lived all her life


I'll write it down before it leaves me, and you can read it too. So my thoughts are a little richer tonight. And maybe yours might be.

I was companion to an elder today. A woman whose body is falling apart, her legs at odd angles to each other, her elbows support her along the walls. You'd be right nervous looking at her negotiate down the hall and she'd shrug you off with a shoulder if you came near enough to help.

She tells me she didn't bring her walker with her as she lives in Labrador and had to fly down and the walker "got on her nerves". She is staying with her daughter in my village over the holidays.

She has early onset Alzheimer's. I shifted and played with my words so we could engage in a meaningful conversation. It took a while as she had a massive resentment that her daughter "had the sauce" to engage me for the day while she, the daughter, "off and gallivanted in that annoying way she has." I got her back into her life, age 19.

Here in her words:

I was post mistress at Englee, ran the whole post office all by myself. Daddy was good with the numbers, he was quartermaster in the First World War so he taught me numbers and he built me all those shelves for the sorting. Oh my, there was so much mail! I had to sort them out for the boats in the summer and put them in big canvas bags with cardboard labels. They would take them away, up and down the coast to all the little outports, there was a bag for each one. And they's pick up the outgoing mail and drop it off at my post office for me to sort and send off to the city. I'd write letters too, there's some that never learned. I never would charge for that though I heard some did. Now that was the summers.

The winter was another story. There were all these dog sleds in the winter when it was too rough for the boats. Coming in from everywhere and I'd load up the sleds with the bags. Mail was the only communication then, there was no phone or electricity so it was so important I kept on top of it all. It's how I met my husband and he just back from the Second World War. He was a post office inspector! Imagine that!

And here she laughs and laughs, punching me in the arm, to make sure I got the joke.

And I did.

An Unlove Story Part 3 of 3

See Part 1 here
See Part 2 here

 

 

Busy, she paid no attention to any of his doings for a couple of years until at odds with herself and the world one night, she stalked Connie on Facebook and, shocked, found a wall-post that stated that she and her love were moving to Newfoundland shortly.

No, she thought, Newfoundland is far too small for the both of us. Well, actually, three of us. She would trip over this man. She just knew she would.  The thought appalled her. And try as she might, she had difficulty placing the Jack she knew in Newfoundland. He and Newfoundland would be as two mismatched socks.

Connie posted frequent updates on the projected move. But something was off. She used 'I' a lot, not 'we'? H'm? She posted she'd been to Newfoundland in June and had fallen in love hopelessly and forever. She mused that she and Connie were kindred spirits, based on their shared feelings for Newfoundland. Connie announced that she'd upped and sold her house in Ontario in preparation for her move in September.

Then last week Connie celebrated her leaving of Ontario with an announcement of a champagne brunch attended by Bill and all her 'supportive' friends. Bill? A hitherto unmentioned son? A nephew? Why no mention of Jack?

Connie arrived in Newfoundland on Monday and posted on her wall for her friends and dearly loved 'supporters' in Ontario:

“Got rid of the cheater, the liar, the stealer, the thief and the fraud, the deceiver.” 

and

“I'm now with my new love Bill, and loving my Newfoundland life.”

And all the pieces crashed into place. Every single last one. Her sense of relief was overwhelming. She felt fortunate she hadn't been similarly afflicted and abused. And that Connie had escaped so quickly.

 

She lit a candle in thanks to one who was long dead:

For her grandmother, who had imparted many truisms to her over her formative years, had once bestowed on her the best advice ever:

           "Never give your money to a man. For you will lose both your money and the man.”

An Unlove Story - Part 2 of 3

Sorry if I wasn't clear in the last post - this is a 3 part story. Part 1 is here.

And then. When she called him that last time it was to tell him she couldn't cope with his darkness. A darkness he was unprepared to do anything about. It was affecting her life, her business. His anger flared. She heard the sharpness of his breathing. He said she didn't understand the depths of his despair over his financial situation, he was going to have to sell everything. She was unsympathetic, pragmatic. Well, of course he did, she responded. She had reviewed all his documents. Yes, sell, of course. His response was to yell that this was all he had ever worked for. Hard. And now he was losing it all, and she didn't care.

 

After that, there was a long silence, where she felt hot tears spring to her eyes. She knew there was no more to be said. But she waited for him to retreat from this moment, this outburst, to fix it with a sorry, but he didn't. And finally he was the one who hung up and she held the phone to her ear until the automated ladyvoice came on telling her to hang up now.

That's the thing though. In this social networking age, isn't it? Does anyone really pull the plug? She didn't. Maybe it was the writer in her, she had to know what happened next. Of course she did. Plus she'd always had difficulty letting go of people who held importance in her life. Even abusers. Serious difficulty. The hope of change in those who hurt her. Of their one startling moment of awareness which would slide them back into the shared envelope of love. Foolish and infantile, she knew.

So they would email each other the odd time. Updates on life. And then the announcement of his re-marriage three years ago. To someone who understood him. He had “searched the world” for such as she. Had travelled from Hawaii to Singapore and then to Vancouver where he found her. Connie was his true soulmate.

Connie was easy to find on Facebook, linked as Jack's friend. Their wedding was on a yacht. A pretty woman in a lovely wedding dress. Her daughter as bridesmaid. Her passion for him was evident. “Darling”, “sweet”, “special”, were frequent adjectives used in the photo captions.

She congratulated Jack. And meant it. And she closed the door. But sometimes she wondered idly why her romance had foundered while theirs thrived. As one does. As she did. But it was truly over now and she moved on. Fiercely. Firmly.

An Unlove Story – Part 1 of 3

OK, I've retracted my exploded lobes with regard to the climate change  blog-harumphs I've had in the last few days and am back to doing what I probably do best which is story-telling. OK? I'm anonymous here for a reason. I tell true stories. And this is one. I'm glad I'm anonymous. I could get into a lot of trouble, couldn't I?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The ending had been abrupt. Their relationship had been worth more, surely, than that last cruel phone-call, followed by her hurriedly packing up the boxes of ex-lover debris, the bathroom detritus, the changes of clothes, the zircons (she would've kept diamonds, if there had been any) that outrageous red lingerie, the books, the letters, the cards, the framed pictures, the silver-plated (plate? pshaw!) hair gear, the tiny emerald earrings, the golden chains.

She had felt bad when it came to the bonsai garden, even though it had seemed rather too precious sitting on its own table in the curved corner of the living room. But still. It was perhaps the only element alive of what had once been an incredible passion. It came complete with water ponds and tiny lily-pads which had died when she had forgotten to fill the water tank at the back. But the miniature oak held firm and green. She wondered how it all would fare in the box on the post office truck to his house and couldn't stop the guffaw, yes, it was an uncontrollable guffaw, thinking of all that earth spilling over his black underwear. He wore only black jockeys. Clue number one to the fallacy of a man who declared himself adventurous and fancy free.

But there was a missing element to the break-up. And she couldn't nail it. Something didn't sit right. What the hell was it?

He had been very depressed. Had actually forbidden her to be happy as it was making his depression worse. He went on and on about his financial situation. He was way over extended in the financing of his real estate portfolio. Lines of credit, expensive mortgages, utility and tax bills. Along with an upcoming finalization of the asset split between himself and his ex-wife (his second). His son had severed a business relationship with him. He was at odds with his grandsons, couldn't tolerate their ill manners, the long hair hiding their downcast faces as they thumbed their electronic devices. Who were these creatures with no respect for the old?

She had suggested therapy. She had given him financial counselling (not a small thing, it was her living, after all). She had continually asked if there was anything she could do, anything to help. He would respond he would wind up on the streets begging for quarters from strangers He didn't deserve her. She thought he might snap out of it. He was beginning to sound like a peevish querulous old geezer, someone from another generation.

He was far from the man she had fallen in love with. His new criticisms of everyone and everything associated with her had given her this unvoiced anger which rippled across her life and tainted even the small victory of a morning run. He had begun to hate her leaving him when they were together even for such a mundane event as a dog-walk. His refusal to walk came by way of his mother who had lived to ninety-five with no exercise. For an intelligent man with many degrees he could be quite obtuse.

All in all, the break-up wasn't a bad thing. She knew that. Logically. But what did emotions have to do with logic?

And still the thoughts of the pre-depressed Jack kept intruding. The light-hearted Jack. The supportive Jack. The Jack who would sit in the bathroom as she showered at the end of a long working day and would say: “Tell me all about your day.” The Jack who would travel hundreds of miles for an art exhibit. The Jack who would book outrageously luxurious hotel rooms for no reason in Niagara Falls and Kingston and London. The Jack who would sing publicly walking along a Toronto street and tell anyone who would listen of his love for her. There had been two years of this lightness, this fun. And then.

 

Tonight on the Beach.

Hello, I say to the tiny woman wandering the beach in front of my house, a large bag slung over her shoulder. An older man and a younger man stand off from her, as if biding time. Her son, home from Moncton and his companion, she later tells me.

Well, hello my darling, she responds, she reminds me of a little robin redbreast, the kind that bounces over the lawn looking for worms. Her face is tan, her eyes bright as blueberries.

We exchange bits of information.

She's out collecting “mermaid's tears” - known as beach glass to the rest of us. Hence the bag. She makes birdhouses covered in beach glass.

All kinds all colours, her garden is fair full of them, she tells me.

My husband died fifteen years ago, she says, and he's been doin' all the sleeping for the rest of us. None of us have time for sleep. Life is too rich, too wonderful, too much to see and do. I've no time for that television business, no time at all.

Me too! I exclaim, it's been over twenty years now without television for me!

Life is out on these beaches, isn't it, she picks up a rock, I wouldn't trade my life for anyone else's if it took me away from any one of those stones you see here. I just love this place. She says it with such fervour, I laugh outright.

She has five children, she says, but really six as she raised a grandson when her daughter got “caught” when she was sixteen.

And my dear, isn't he the best of them all. He's a doctor with a practice up in Cornerbrook, and you'd never know it but he's saved my life three times now. She clutches her chest, bit of a bad ticker and he's a heart specialist. A wonderful boy.

I'm seventy-five and my friends are telling me to move into a home! Imagine that! I might as well hang up me boots and lie down and play dead if that happens and she points to the stout rubber boots on her tiny feet. Her beach boots.

I show her my house across from us.

Oh my darling, that's a house I love, every time we drive by I want to just sit up on that porch and look at the water and the loveliness of it all. Oh my dear, I've always loved that house!

We watch the sunset in silence together.

Well Marge, I say as Ansa and I move off, next time you pass, you'll just have to come for a play date. Please visit!

Yes, my dear, you can count on that!

Mr. Geoffrey – a Love Story. Part 6 of 6

See Part 1 Here
See Part 2 Here
See Part 3 Here
See Part 4 Here
See Part 5 Here

I read him Irish poems in the Irish language. He told me Jewish ones in Yiddish from memory. We would slowly translate the words to each other. And sometimes back again, verbally fondling those that had a commonality between the Gaeilge (Irish language) and the Yiddish.

On our very last afternoon together I read him Lady Gregory's marvellous translation of Donal Og.

Donal Og
It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday
and myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother has said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

In my memory, that poem filled up our entire session and spread out over all the afternoons we had shared. I took my time in reading it. My voice felt strange and thick and lonely to my ears. As if there should have been foghorns in the background. Every line felt heavy in my mouth. I had to wrench it out of myself.

His eyes never left my face. Now and again he took his thick glasses off and swept a finger beneath his eyes without closing them. More times than I could count. Catching the tears before they fell, I like to think.

I hesitated when I stood up to leave him. I felt awkward, ungainly in my last week of pregnancy, awkward in the emotions that threatened to overflow into tears or into awkward, inadequate words that would diminish all we had given each other.

Silence can say far more. Silence can bathe everything in golden amber, preserved forever. Taken out of the mind's secret drawer every now and again and admired afresh from every angle.

I turned and I left, closing the door without looking at him.

I never saw him again.

Mr. Geoffrey – a Love Story. Part 5 of 6

See Part 1 Here
See Part 2 Here
See Part 3 Here
See Part 4 Here

Jokes were made in the general office about arranging for my OB/GYN to come to the office as this project of data conversion was so massive – one of the first in Toronto - that they couldn't afford for me to take time off.

My sanctuary was the afternoon time with Mr. Geoffrey and our conversation and by now minimal reading. He talked more of his own childhood in Berlin. About his non-Jewish mother, his orthodox father, his beautiful older sister who had a gift for the piano. His uncles and aunts, his cousins, his grandmother. I understood, without words, they were all dead.

He read to me, or pretended to – I believe most of them were memorized - from some old letters of his mother's sent to her cousin in Toronto, fortunately kept by her and left to him when she died. She wrote of days of happiness in Berlin, days of sunshine and laziness in a farm in France in the summers. Days of privilege. Days of pride in him and his sister, her delight in their doings, her love for her husband, the history professor and writer, her joy in her own watercolours.

“You know,” he said, “I can talk to you like no one else. Your people were persecuted. You Irish know all about persecution. You know of lost tribes and hiding and fear, simply for being in the way of others' ambitions and greed.”

In the way of. I never forgot that. For all countries, all peoples are in the way of a more powerful predator – most recently we have Iraq being in the way of countries acquiring cheap oil.

One Hundred Years

He thinks: A hundred years. One. Hundred. Years.

That's how long the old store has been smack dab in the middle of the village. Selling everything way back in the day from anchors to sausages and still doing so. Used to be they'd take lumber and fish in trade. He'd heard rumblings of long ago - grudges passed down through the generations. Of unfair pricing. Of rejecting the wood if it wasn't up to par. And then going back in the middle of the night and taking it anyway, free. Of one of the store's boats being sunk in revenge for this.

But he'd tried. To be fair and honest that is. Well almost honest. If he added up the bills for some of his more trusted customers to settle at the end of the month, he'd always round the pennies up. He'd make a few dollars that way and call it interest. Sure wasn't he entitled?

First it was the gas. Over ninety years they'd run a single pump of it outside the front door. And now that was gone. A flimsy excuse from the oil company, they couldn't come down around the corner in their new big rig. He pretended that was true. He knew it was a losing financial proposition to send out a truck from town to fill up his little one pump underground tank.

Then it was the tickets. He wasn't selling enough to justify stocking him up every week. Plus he'd never had a winner even though there were some that bought fifty dollars worth a day. All hoping for the big win. A tax on the poor, he thought privately. All giving up their welfare checks in the hope of winning a few million dollars while their children scraped by on bread and cereal.

Ten years ago he buried the wife. She suffered a lot. And then his lady friend followed the wife, exact same type of cancer and suffering, four years after that. So he decided to fly solo. Spent all his days and most of the evening in the shop.

And now, well now, he was going to cut back on all those lonesome hours at the shop. Walk around a bit, look at the sea. Hustle up his memories of when the kids were small and Patsy was alive and think about the time they took an extra one in because he wasn't being treated right by his mother. There were a lot of mouths to feed then but a lot of laughter coming out of those very same mouths too. Yes, surround himself with those kind of thoughts and not think about how sick he was feeling lately. As if his own cancer had come back and was now stretching its muscles and playing the waiting game. A shame that their eldest, Marcie, was never right in the head. Stayed stuck at nine years old. And now she was nearly fifty. A right care she'd been, Patsy was good with her but he had had to keep her sedated so she was more docile. Otherwise her rage would eat her up from the inside. He couldn't bear to think of who would soon care for her. His guess was no family member would step up to the plate and he couldn't ask any of them now could he, so it would be a facility for sure, but he shoved that thought quickly out of his head. All the rest of his children were in Alberta making staggering amounts of money off the oil sands. Along with a hundred thousand other Newfoundlanders.

The shop would close soon. Of that there was no doubt. Inside his head, he apologizes to his father, to his grandfather and his great-grandfather. Soon it was going to be time to see them and explain himself.

He was ready.

The Story of Burt - Part 4 of 4

See Part 1 Here

See Part 2 Here

See Part 3 Here

He would take the time and effort, ever after, to carry pockets full of loonies and quarters and give them to any street person who asked, always with compassion and an ear if one of the unfortunates wanted to talk. .

One thing I always noticed about Burt was how clean he always smelled and how he had an endless supply of pale blue t-shirts that matched his eyes. His favourite mode of dressing was in jeans, with a checked shirt over one of the t-shirts. He told me he showered twice a day. And he had 24 of those blue t-shirts. He managed a shipping company when I met him. He started off loading the docks and within a couple of years was promoted through the ranks.


I'll tell you how Burt saved my life. We became good friends in spite of the fact that he had never befriended a woman before and he told me this at the start. But over the years it just happened. We would look out for each other. I prepared his tax returns and arranged for his pension payments and gave him a freezer I didn't need and we would cook for each other. And then tramp the country together and fish. Two people more distinctly at odds both in background and education and interests you would be hard pressed to meet. He taught me how to live in the bush on the berries and fungi and even edible tree bark. He would shove envelopes with cards and a $5 bill into my mail box with always the same notation on the card: “Somebody loves ya!”

One night I was feeling sick. A bad flu bug. Burt had called me and was concerned. He said if I wasn't well the following day he would take me to the doctor. I told him he was making a big deal out of a flu bug. The following morning after a sleepless night I was feeling worse. He showed up at my door leaving me no choice but to go to the doctor. Who could find nothing wrong. See? I said to him I told you so, now let me go home and go to bed.

Burt kept insisting there was something seriously wrong with me so the doctor sent me off for X rays. Still nothing wrong. Burt insisted again so she sent us to the emergency department of the local hospital where they ran blood tests and my white blood cell count was through the roof. I don't remember much about all of this except lying on a gurney and Burt telling me they were going to operate immediately, my doctor was on her way over to assist the surgeon as my appendix had ruptured and I had advanced peritonitis. I don't know how long the surgery lasted. My family were at the hospital when I awoke, along with Burt who told me I had technically died a few times throughout the long night. His old Indian tracker instincts had been bang on the money.

Over the lengthy recovery process Burt was there first thing in the morning when he would leave after an hour or so and reappear again last thing at night. I've never forgotten it. I had a really terrifying experience in a hospital as a small child and Burt wiped that particular slate clean. I've never felt that purity of love and caring before or since – either given or received. A safety and a certainty of feeling that were unshakeable. Not that we didn't have our differences, we did. And they were many. But they were never insurmountable and the thread of our love for each other was woven into the very fabric of our friendship.

Burt's end was quick. He had a 24 hour form of leukaemia closely related to pneumonia. If he'd chosen his death, that would have been it. Fast and painless. I had never heard of such a disease until his doctor enlightened me. Apparently one of the more famous people who died of it was Jim Henson of Muppet fame.

I was able to be there for Burt's end as he was there for my second life. I was shocked at the number of people who overflowed the church for his funeral, he had touched many lives. I finally met his siblings. His mother had died the year before, a few weeks after his last fishing expedition with her. Fishing set Burt's life to rights. Fishing with his brothers, his mother, with me. It was something he and his father had done, you see, and he said he always felt his father beside him when he fished, coaching him on casting, on tying the flies, on gutting the catch.

I put his fishing rod in the casket beside him. So he'd be ready.

Edgar Benoit, still alive in a care home back in New Brunswick, sent a cheque to cover the costs of the funeral.

Some people leave footprints on your spirit that never leave. I think of him often, think of how he would have loved where I live now with the fishing all around and the simplicity of existence.

He would approve.

Somebody loves ya!

The Story of Burt - Part 3

See Part 1 Here

See Part 2 Here

The series of foster homes Burt was in remained a blur to him. All he remembered was getting angrier and angrier until it was like a huge ball of pain within him and then he discovered that booze and drugs would give him a short respite, that is when he managed to get his hands on them. He recalled his mother visiting a few times but he couldn't meet her eyes when she told him to be a good boy, that Mr. Benoit had his reasons for the breakup of her family and they lay between himself and God. She had no choice. He had no clue where his siblings were.

I always found it extraordinary that Burt never ever blamed his mother for her decision to put her four children into child care services and then on to foster care. I brought it up with him several times. Of course Edgar Benoit was a monster but his mother was complicit, no? Burt would become enraged, the only time I had ever seen him angry telling me never, ever spit on his sainted mother's name like that. Never. She did what she had to do, she had no choice. Door closed.


Mr. Benoit and their mother had moved into a small bungalow by a stream, far away from the town, where in later years her adult children would come and stay for a few days and fish in the nearby stream with her, circling Edgar warily, barely polite, not that he encouraged any kind of conversation, even at table.

One of his brothers joined the US army and rose to the rank of colonel during Vietnam. The other brother ran a garage in Ontario. The sister met an American friend of her brother's and moved to New York with him.

None of them ever referred to that night again or blamed their mother for condoning the disintegration of her family. Edgar became the focus of their rage and despair and hatred even though in later years he became completely blind and totally dependent on their mother and softened somewhat. They refused to speak to him. They spoke of killing him as if it were like taking him out for a beer. They invented plots where they all got their hands dirty and covered for each other. The elaborate plans for his death became pretty much their only topic of conversation when they got together over the years. Which was rarely. None of them had children, Burt by choice, and he was sure the others had made the same decision. He couldn't really tell you why if you asked him.

Burt had many years of pain and turmoil once he escaped to the vast anonymous city of Toronto. He couldn't hold down a job even though his charm and innate intelligence landed him a few good positions. The alcohol would win out every time, sending him teetering by turn from apartments to rooming houses to shelters all the way to park benches and bottles of rubbing alcohol. At times his pain consumed him, it should have killed him, he admits but for his rage at Edgar giving him a life force, a purpose. Revenge.

He recalled, one time, that in a fog, he managed to hitch all the way to New Brunswick and showed up at his mother's home, in rags, reeking of alcohol, many of his teeth rotted out of his head. His mother took him in and gave him some money and a rosary beads and bought him clothes and nursed him back to health after she insisted he go to the local parish priest and take the pledge and swear off the drink. His thanks was to rob all the valuables out of the house and find a hidden stash of cash in Edgar's tool shed and skip out of town without a goodbye.

As such men do, he found a simple loving wife to take care of him for a while, she worked hard and he spent most of her money on booze until they were forced, financially, to live with her mother. A miserable experience for Burt as his wife paid more attention to her mother's instructions as to how to run their married life and consequently withheld money from him for the first time. Which forced him to find a job yet again until the cycle started once more.

This time he was turfed out of his mother-in-law's house and there was no in-between residence in apartments and rooming houses and shelters. He hit skid row directly. Bridges and bottles, he said to me. His life was delineated by bridges and bottles. With maybe the odd blanket to keep him warm as he lay on a sleeping bag on some cardboard boxes. It was one of those charity workers that he despised who woke him up one night. These workers would come around and drop off muffins and sandwiches and hot cups of cocoa and coffee and blankets. Do-gooders. He hated them. The worker squatted beside him and said to him: “I was under a bridge a year ago, just like you, and I've not had a drink in a year and I got my life back.”

Burt told him in no uncertain terms to eff off and rolled over. The worker leaned over and put a business card in front of his face. “Now if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired give me a call and I'll be there.” And with that he got up and walked off. In spite of himself, Burt put the card into a pocket and a week later, after he fell down and bashed his nose in and lay all night in his own blood, he found a call box and put in the dime that would save his life and get him sober.