bogeyandruby

• Last night someone in our household was farting the Lone Ranger theme song. Either that or it was me humming the William Tell Overture to a galloping rhythm. 

• Here’s an oxymoron for you: rushing through a new book on meditation so that I can start meditating as soon as possible. Apparently meditation is the new sexy.

• It’s a good thing I did a quick meditation before discovering I had run out of chocolate chips in the middle of baking magic batrs. Rather than shout for Ian, who wasn’t home anyway, I turned off the oven, replaced inside yoga pants (jammies) for outside yoga pants, backed over the garbage can lid in the driveway, stopped at Starbucks for a latte (since I was out anyway), remained calm as I counted the cart contents of all the other people in the 8 items or less line at the grocery store, and made it home in time to answer the phone. It was Ian asking if I needed anything from Costco. 

• There’s this gorgeous welcome mat at the local grocery store that reads “Bonjour” though it’s not so much the message I like but rather its fresh, grass green colour. Ian, knowing me well, suggested I may do better off with a mat that says “Au Revoir”.

My sister-in-law visited my mother in hospital this evening and found her tied in a wheelchair. Chantal described it as a gentle restraint, “a padded, open-faced underwear that goes over your clothes”. My mother’s version was that she had been arrested for doing something wrong but she didn’t understand what it was.

According to her nurse, the reason for the house arrest was that she was forgetting to use the walker that had been plonked in front of her and therefore was at risk of falls. I say plonked because up until now, eight days into her hospitalization, nobody with the necessary expertise has come to asses her gait and balance, never mind her cognitive status. Whoever said that forgetting to use a walker was a crime anyway?

One could argue that I have the necessary expertise to assess this, at least the physical part, and that may be true. But she’s my mother and all I can think of right now is there are worse things in life than falling.

Here is a list of things that will guarantee you a spot in my bad books:

1. Insist I must be pregnant when I tell you I’m not. 
2. Ask me to guess your age immediately after you mistake my muffin top for the third trimester of pregnancy in an effort to distract me.
3. Ask me where I’m from then proceed to tell me how much you hate curry.
4. Complain about your East Indian neighbours stinking up the neighbourhood with their cooking smells.
5. Practice your fake East Indian accent on me and think it is in any way charming.
6. Tell me how much you hate curries using a fake East Indian accent.
7. Refer to all East Indians as “Hindus” because you don’t know any better.
8. Tell me I’m lucky I don’t look Indian.

My father came home this week after spending six out of the past eight weeks hospitalized. The good news is his heart, after one hell of a tune-up, has the potential to recondition itself, to a fixed frequency of 80 beats per minute, thanks to a new pacemaker.

Some things though, will never be the same. Feet swollen to a point of no return, the flattened soles/(soul) of a failing heart, are now clad in medical-gauge, velcro slippers, worn indoors and out, that make him trudge with the weight of them rather than roll heel-toe.

Then there’s the peripheral neuropathy that burns through the night. There’s no cure for that kind of nerve damage and little to no relief from the meds. He’s had it longer than the heart failure and about a year ago, I suggested he ask his doctor if he could try pot. Dad was keen but the doc was not, at least for now. You see, long ago in Pakistan, a prankster offered my father a hashish-stuffed pakora and what he remembers the most is that he felt no pain when his mother slapped him hard across the cheek for doing drugs.

Since early April, my father’s looming death has felt like a long and painful goodbye. I lived on bagels, neglected my son and distracted myself by reading best-selling thrillers instead of the usual “book club” fare.

I rehearsed the words I wanted to say to him over and over in my head. The kind of speech you hear in the movies, when somebody is dying. But the night before his surgery, he couldn’t breathe and his heart rate was dipping below 35 and my mother was too distraught. So I said nothing except, “See you on the other side, Dad.” And as it turns out, I did.

I was reading through some unfinished blog entries and decided to group them by subject in an effort to salvage something worth posting. 

I had three significant bird encounters today, apart from the usual morning flurry around the backyard feeder. The first was a trio of goslings crossing Sources Boulevard near the Rideau Memorial funeral home as I headed South. Their parents were gathered around the adjacent, obligatory cemetery pond, oblivious to the great escape that was underway. They waddled across safely but I worried about them making their way back to the pond once their neighbourhood adventure was over. Were they even old enough to fly over?

The second sighting was coming back from a home visit on l’Ile Bizard. A male Cardinal darted out from some trees and shot like an arrow in front of my car, at exactly eye level. As it flew, it followed a straight line that was directly perpendicular to the road I was on and I was struck by the geometric perfection of its path. There is nothing more lively than a splash of red, albeit fleeting, on a drab stretch of pavement.

The third sighting was the best, an unexpected bucket list item: a peregrine falcon perched high on a branch, in regal contemplation, as we walked the dogs through the woods earlier. Apparently there are two adults and three babies sharing a nest, their high-pitched screeches to one another almost sounding like cats mewling. If it hadn’t been for the mosquitos feasting upon us, the dogs panting from the oppressive heat, and life’s preoccupations at home, I would have suspended that magical moment forever, or at least until the sun dropped from the sky, perhaps through the night as well. It is impossible to be anything other than wholly present when such a wondrous gift appears, a reminder of nature’s incredible power to strike awe and its ability to make us forget about, at least for a while, the incessant need to update our plugged-in devices at home.

Namasté 👏

When you reach middle-age, you think about death a little more. Having lived more than half the average life span, the pressure is on to live more fully. We tick off our bucket list items and attempt to declutter both our physical space and spiritual space.

Internally, our authentic self, still in its chrysalis stage, simmers beneath the surface. Unlike the butterfly, however, there is no guarantee that metamorphosis will occur in us because let’s face it, it’s hard to change who we are on the inside, even as our shell wrinkles and softens.

When my maternal grandmother died, my mother, having already lost two siblings tragically, shed few tears in front of us. I was fourteen at the time and inconsolable. I remember being surprised by her stoicism and asking her about it. Her explanation was that life makes you hard, and though I believed her then, I’m not so sure I do any more.

In my twenties and thirties, I read a lot about death and grief, attended palliative care conferences, and learned through trial and error how to comfort others. Admittedly, it was easier to manage grief back then, being further removed from death as imminent. I lost grandparents overseas, far away aunts and uncles, beloved pets and coped. Later on, I survived lost loves, and the end of a marriage, mainly because I managed to keep those who are dear to me in my life. My inner circle remains intact.

I find middle-age to be a paradox. So many aspects are liberating, yet it is also a slow and painful letting go. We say goodbye to parts of us we have lost and the way we used to be, to dreams we may have abandoned. There is an acute awareness of our own mortality and the fact that some of the people we love dearly are closer to dying than we are.

Is there still time to save the world?

Ian hates it when I say, “One person always leaves first.”, but I want to be prepared for the inevitable farewell. I want to face it head on.

Today he was looking through some files and came across a poem that his mother had written on her birthday, the first without her beloved husband, David. He read out loud to me and its beauty, the longing and wistfulness of it, made me weep.

Ian gave me permission to post it here. It was written by Jean Hanchet on August 27th, 2002. (Ian’s dad had died earlier that year on March 17th.) The picture features Ian and not his dad. Apparently his mum often mistook him for his dad as her Alzheimer’s progressed. Until she noticed the long hair that is.

     all joy receive.

— Jean Hanchet (August 27th, 2002)