Well, for a while at least. My writing life is catching up with me both my own and my workshop's. And there's only so much energy in this elder's life and how I use it is becoming more and more relevant. What do I want to do for the wee remainder of my one wild and precious life?
I'm sharing suggestions that have helped me in the past week of despair.
Daughter had read a nugget somewhere and shared it with me.
Every morning before contemplating the day, take a look around me and focus on how hard it would be to live without something. Not for long. Just enough to recognize its loss if it happened.
So I've been doing this and am astonished at all I take for granted in my life and don't really see. Gratitude lists are grand but less meaningful when one lumps stuff together.
I mentioned this to a friend I met with during the week as she had been full of angst and depression herself. So we agreed to share our item of acknowledgement in text first thing in the morning before the day got a hold of us.
My first day was independent living, thinking of my dear friend Lana in her assisted living life. I looked around my apartment and felt this rush of appreciation.
My second day was books. I am a voracious reader and would find it just about impossible to live without them.
My third day was my doctor, who has been an incredible support in the past two years when I needed medical attention and care the most. He goes beyond the call of care and concern. He has a gift of intuition, endless time, and humour. For instance - I have shaky underperforming kidneys and yesterday, without prompting, he assured me yet again that I would not need dialysis in my lifetime as age, for once, was in my favour. So I said to him my obit should read - "it was not her kidneys that killed her?" And we laughed. I don't know what I'd do without him.
So there you have it. A tiny tool that seems to work for navigating these days of worry and stress and helplessness and anxiety. And a looming war as the icing on the cake.
Thank you all for the wonderful words of support and kinship on my last post. I savoured every single comment many times.
No longer alone.
I believe there's a fine line between sanity and insanity. I'm writing today as I feel quite massively overwhelmed by the last two years. See, I'm understating it terrifically. For who wants to read a depressing blog post about the State of The Union? The Union of the body parts, the brain, the physical well being, the social interactions, emotional and mental intelligence.
The last few days I don't feel I'm functioning as I should. Living alone is an enormous challenge in this Time of the Plague. No one to monitor me on a daily basis. No one to see how well I'm coping, no one to share with.
I feel everything is catching up with me. The isolation, the risk of emerging out of my cocoon into the virus infected world. The deaths of two very close friends, all the health challenges I've had.
I count out and sort all my pills every Sunday. I say all. I mean all. Over 30 every day. Stringing my beating heart and blood pressure and pain into acceptable numbers. I read them out to my doctor, usually once a week and we talk about my blood lab results.
This morning hopelessness set in. On March 14th here, all restrictions are removed. But seniors are dying in unprecedented numbers in this province. Vaccinated, unvaccinated? We haven't a clue. Those stats are deemed private. Expendable senior philosophy, economy comes first.
There are three in my bubble, Daughter, Niece and a close friend who has her own tiny bubble.
This is not a whine. Just throwing it out there. I feel quite anti-social as I feel I have nothing to talk about of any interest and my creativity and my equanimity are in extremely short supply.
I honestly feel like I am just marking time, waiting to die. My dreams are full of death, dead friends, Ansa, my lost daughter.
My friend Lana, in her assisted living luxury environment said on our phone call this week that she had put up a big sign in her room saying:
"THIS IS NOT ASSISTED LIVING, THIS IS ASSISTED DYING."
It caught the attention of the management in a big way so she's marching the halls again and dictating to the kitchen staff about healthy meals.
I don't share this stuff with family. Because it would distress them. Everybody has issues around this falling apart planet we're on. I can't add to their burdens.
Another "buck up, it could be worse" would have me screaming in a corner.
So there, I'm just not fit. I've lost the run of myself.
Truth in blogging.
Painting by Picasso, 1902
She lived downstairs in my apartment building. She dressed like a lady. By that I mean as if she was caught in a time warp of 1956. Pressed slacks with a matching cardigan and a coordinating blouse. She was younger than me by about seven or eight years. Her hair was carefully blonded and feathered. Always low Cuban heels. Never sneakers or teetering stilettoes. She came to some of the senior advocacy meetings I held. Never saying much but totally lady-like in her demeanor amongst all the jeans and t-shirts.
The rumour mill fired up, as they do. She had a drinking problem. She was selling all her "stuff" her jewelry, her crystal, her china and her designer clothes. Her husband, a doctor, had divorced her years before but had left her with an expensive house in a good part of town and alimony until her Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security kicked in.
Within ten years she had sold the house and managed to deplete the investment account by buying herself a new car every year and taking extravagant trips. She moved into my building about five years ago, her savings close to zero, carless.
One of my close friends in the building had visited her and found her in dire straits in her bedroom surrounded by bottles and no food in the fridge or elsewhere in the kitchen. Just a horrific mess and a bucket beside the bed for her waste. She notified the management who informed her family. They came to visit from great distances. She cleaned up her act and stopped drinking.
As soon as they left, she resumed. She managed to get "loans" from various tenants who took pity on her. ("Enabling" more like it.)
The breaking point came when she tried to wash fecal encrusted cushions in the laundry.
She was evicted about six months ago but she kept returning here, in cabs, buzzing different tenants from the lobby to pay her cab fare so she could wander the halls, banging on doors, looking for loans from her soft touches, the enablers, who were worn down by the begging. I had never given her my telephone number, though she asked many times. She drunk-called all the numbers she had late at night rambling on about her wealth and status and privilege and how she was in a far better class of people than those in her circle.
She died, drunk, yesterday. I didn't know her though I had met her several times. Nobody knew her.
She took a drink and then the drink took her, removing her humanity, her personality, her very life at the end. Her only pal alcohol, fierce and relentless in its hunger to consume her, inch by inch, emotion by emotion, relationship by relationship.
Her only legacy is a reminder to us lucky few sober ones, of how voracious an appetite alcohol has, if left unchecked.
It consumes those addicted to it down to a husk.
*Not her real name
So yeah, this intricate knitting style called intarsia is back in my life again as I desperately wanted to create a puffin for a young man in my life who is absolutely crazy about puffins.
I found these incredible Irish dancers recently. The Gardiner Brothers. They'll dance to anything. Here they are with Abba.
Can one write about nothing at all?
I can write about a poem I wrote this morning, still moved by what my eldest brother said to me on the weekly Sibling Zoom yesterday. Empathy, understanding, comfort.
I can write about a planned coffee-meet up with a friend today after a million years of alert levels.
I can write about end of life discussions, wills, wishes. The complexity of some. The sadness of countries that forbids Death with Dignity. How's yours faring in that regard?
I can write about a graph paper study I did for a knitting pattern which lies there, staring at me, ready to get my act and needles and bodkins together. Bodkins, now there's a word.
I can write about my weekly Monday night call to Lana. She showed a deterioration (paranoia) last week but still knows my voice instantly. I am kinda, sorta dreading tonight's call.
I can write about the ennui (there's another word) that I'm feeling for well over a week now. Caution Exhaustion I'm thinking. Too much time alone. Too much yawning time left to my own devices, and they are wearing a bit thin.
And yes, there's this: my Leo finally succumbed to his vicious cancer early yesterday. Before dawn.
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?"
(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.
Of all the many pictures (with resulting cards and prints) I have taken over the years this one has been the most popular. I had repeat orders of hundreds of cards printed. And it was also featured in a calendar. The reason I am writing about this is because of Lana, my dear friend who has dementia/ Alzheimer's.
I sent her one of these cards a few weeks ago. I had sent one to her before when it was first published but of course there is no memory of that. Every day is fresh to her.
She was upset she was in lockdown when I called her on Monday night. She is confused in that she thinks she has Covid and hates her meals being delivered and misses her walks. She's in a luxury building and paces her room. Fifty feet long, she tells me. She counts the steps. Having seen pictures of the interior or her residence, I believe her. Enormous rooms.
"But," she said, "You sent me this card. And I put it under a small lamp beside my bed. And every night I stare at this picture after I've read the poem you had printed on the back and it puts me to sleep with a smile on my face."
Some Day on Clothes
The blues
Dance through
His shirt
My skirt
Flit Lift
Snap Spin
And I couldn't stop crying when I got off the phone.
One of Ernestine's photos.
A dear old blog friend died the other day. She lived to a good age - 87 - but had many trials and tribulations with her health over the years.
I learned much about aging from her. I also learned much about acceptance and making the best of one's days. And simple recipes and saying hello to mornings. Each one a gift. She loved her truck (she was a tiny woman) and her thrift shopping and worked hard on her beautiful garden and found inner peace.
Her photography was gorgeous, she lived on the edge of a farm with her dog, Callie, and resisted (my how she resisted!) being packed off to an assisted living facility. But her poor body finally gave in. She went quiet for a while but her youngest daughter kept us all abreast of her condition and outlook.
We exchanged wee gifts and books over the years. I particularly loved the handmade soap she sent me.
Thank you Ernestine, as you soar with the stars.
You left footprints on my heart.
The first was to a dear friend of over forty years duration whose mother had died just shy of her hundredth birthday. A difficult one to write as she and her mother were not deeply connected. My friend is very honourable and was incredibly dutiful to her mother in her last residence in a home for retired military. I liked her mum, British to the backbone, sharp-tongued and judgy, careless with money. And quite selfish. As someone else's mum can be to our great amusement, but not our own. Heaven forbid. She never took the time to get to know her numerous grandchildren and great-grandchilden. So I wrote about the great old Irish expression when the last parent dies :"Now the roof is off your life," which has great depth if you ponder on it.
The second was to a friend of some fifteen years whose daughter died when an ambulance was delayed. She had a problem with her leg (blood clot? - it would be intrusive to ask). She was in her early forties and leaves three children, the youngest is ten. This couple lost their eldest a few years back, he was a non-verbal autistic and died from a seizure. I can't imagine their grief. She was his favourite child, full of vim and vigor and they would run together and raise funds for autism. I've written about the death of one's child a few times. It is unspeakable.
The third was particularly hard as I wrote about this multi-talented man here. I can't re-read it without bursting into tears. We spent more time with him this past summer and cooked for him and his partner in our rental up in the Great Northern Peninsula. He knew his gig was up for a while and opted for death with dignity. Effing cancer. Effing cancer. So I wrote to his partner citing his wonderful attributes and that magical night we spent when he played for us.
And it was the last time.
I look at the headlines today and heave a huge sigh, of despair, of hopelessness. Is anyone paying attention to (along with everything else) our end of days climate change? Anyone with power? And yes I'm aware there's nothing individuals can do. And I keep thinking about the film "Don't Look Up" and thinking how prescient it is as we roll our way to species extinction.
I am surrounded by prayerful people here who throw "thoughts and prayers" at any crisis, global, local, familial without a shred of irony.
Well good for them, they must feel better. They have a direct pipeline to the Invisible Cosmic Housekeeper (ICH for short).
Thing is, when thoughts and prayers are ignored, it is ICH's will, which for us lesser mortals, is only understood by ICH who seems contrary and brutal. Given that little kids get cancer and suffer and die in spite of the pleas. It's all ICH's plan of gathering billions of child-angels home. For what? Oh we're not privy to that. R-right.
When thoughts and prayers are attended to, say for a really sick friend or relative, it is the glory of ICH that is acknowledged profusely and those who prayed to ICH. Not the medical team, the paramedics, the brilliant surgeon, the radiation technicians. Not science. No sirree bob.
Such mental jigging and juggling. Such pride and smugness in the successful prayers when all becomes well and the storm is over. The inference being for those not so lucky, ICH was displeased with their prayers. There was a right way and a wrong way to pray and some had access to the ear of ICH and others were just doing it wrong.
It does my head in. I need to tune it all out.
The stuff we take for granted when we are in good health never fails to astound me now. I am so conscious that it can all be taken away in a heartbeat.
I had around two years of debilitating health deterioration, to the point where I had to buy those eggy frozen pre-mades for breakfast as I couldn't stand long enough at the stove to make my favourite porridge and cook my egg. Also because of the chronic anemia, I could only eat tiny amounts or I would go briefly blind as my blood was so bad. Literally. Frightening. I really never thought any kind of health and mobility could be restored. I'm still not too steady on the old pins but I can stand and do stuff now, hang pictures, wash the dishes, haul in groceries. Cook.
But enough of all that, I've written much about it here in the fervent hope that others don't need to carry their health challenges alone as the mental and emotional toll of that can be enormous.
So tonight I baked a spinach quiche. All by my little old self. And it tasted so good. Very simple old recipe - bits of bacon or ham, (4 eggs, 1/4 cup of real cream or less - mix these thoroughly), carmelized onions, mushrooms, chopped if you have them, 1 cup of finely chopped spinach or kale. Pour into a smallish pastry pie shell Top with a good cheese, grated or small lumps. Serves 4. Salad or coleslaw on the side. Omit meat if vegetarian.
A storm has been blowing all day, lining the windows with lacy clouds and ridges.
Picture shown to cool down my Australian readers and others upside down from me in the warmer summer climes.
Ah winter. I persisted far too long with the scarf shown, I wanted to surprise my grandboy-in-law, I loved the colour combos and the design. But boy after about 16 hours I realized it was a massive mistake and it needs to be ripped out and gauge checked this time. It could just about stand up on its own and walk out the door.
So even experienced knitters make errors, but the thing is we are stubborn and often persist far too long hoping the piece will fix itself (magical thinking).
I like that they scream at me if I leave my building on my way to the car when I don't have any food for them that particular day. I have no idea how they sense it's me in my brief hike of ten steps from the door to the handicapped spot as I unlock the car door. But they assemble, waiting. Patient. A little frightening. No wonder their collective noun is a murder of crows. They sound as if they could like to murder me. Above me, they gossip in their language. Chastising, berating. Reminding me to buy the bag of peanuts. When I do distribute their preferred food choice they (I like to think) drop a fir cone near my car. A gift, an encouragement. An odd white feather (a murdered gull?) another day.
I have a few crow stories.
And yes, I love them, their intelligence, their fearless behaviour on streets and parking lots, eyeing cars, dodging them, their massive assembly at night before they take off to various rookeries. The way they quickly learned to imitate the gulls in front of my house by catching oysters and mussels and dropping them from great heights onto the rocks to break them open.
In women's circles we talked about this. In the book (The Push by Ashley Audrain) which I'm reading currently, she opens with this:
"It is often said that the first sound we hear in the womb is our mother's heartbeat.. Actually the first sound to vibrate our newly developed hearing apparatus is the pulse of our mother's blood through her veins and arteries. We vibrate to that primordial rhythm even before we have ears to hear. Before we were conceived, we existed in part in our mother's ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old-foetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother's womb and she in turn formed within the womb of her own grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother's blood before she herself is born......
Layne Redmond: When the Drummers were Women.
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.
(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.
Well, lo and behold, when she arrived later on she rolled in with a brand new shopping cart. And casually mentioned the lineup at Canadian Tire for its purchase was over an hour which is what made her late. We are both adverse to any kind of shopping so this was a magnificent act of love.
I am rich in books this season, all carefully selected and beautifully wrapped as we honour the Icelandic tradition of a book exchange, called Jolabokaflod That's a piece of knitting I'm working on on top of it and a gorgeous candle sent by my next door neighbour. The book gifts keep giving and giving and we also wrap ours in tea towels rather than the waste of decorative paper.
I managed two.
This is of the kids' table which has my mother's embroidered table cloth on it. Before she died she managed to embroider a tablecloth for each one of her six children. They are treasured. Niece now has her dad's.
Every Christmas Day, for yonks, I play this album. It's playing now on my old fashioned Ipod hosting 6,000 of my favourite songs and bits and pieces, resisting the urge of all to convert to Spotify. Not yet.
Here's the album in case you'd like to enjoy The Chieftains too. "Rebel Jesus" is one of my favourite tracks. How on earth did the Christian world manage to pervert his message?
We have a lovely day planned with many of my family here to celebrate. With utmost caution as The Plague is manifesting itself here, so much so, that the testing lineups were miles long yesterday, Christmas Eve. Alarming so many thinking they need testing in our quiet backwater on The Edge.
Wherever you are, whatever you're doing: Stay safe and warm in the cooler climes like here, and cool in the hotter climes of this world.
See you at the other side.
