“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”  Dale Carnegie

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”  John Steinbeck

“The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep.”  Woody Allen

“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”  W. C. Fields

According to an article on sleep by Dr. Mercola, it suggests that our bodies recharge between 11pm and 1am every night.  Without this, our adrenal glands become strained, and stress is put on our entire system.  I am reaching desperate levels of needing rest.  I want the cure for insomnia, and I want it, I need it, now.

At the beginning of this week I tried to re-set my body.  I used to get sleepy around 10pm, and would drift off peacefully as my head floated onto my pillow.  Then, I started writing.  Writing was therapeutic, but, as Maya Angelou says, “You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have.”  With every post I have proved this is true.  Writing emptied my mind of the thoughts I had, but that only made room for new ideas, material, or thoughts I needed to work out, and work out I did.  I wrestled with my thoughts, I ran them around in my head, I carried them out of my mind and onto lined paper, but still more remained. The more thoughts I had, the less I slept.  The less I slept, the smaller my capacity was to hold them.

Sunday night I fell asleep after 2am, and woke up early for a 9am appointment.

Monday I went to bed close to 3am, only to be woken up by my 8am alarm I had forgotten to turn off from the day before.  I prayed my little miss down the hall didn’t hear it, but as I plopped my weary body on my bed, there was her well rested voice.  “Morning Mom.  Are you ready to go downstairs?”

I was exhausted throughout the day.  By 6:30pm I put my daughter, and myself, to bed.  That was wonderful, for the two hours it lasted!  I was mortified to wake up and see the clock had only moved to 8:30pm.  What am I going to do for the rest of the night?  Full of energy, I wrote, talked to friends, watched a show, until after 2am when I was finally tired enough for bed.

By Wednesday morning, I could barely move.  In fact, I literally kept one eye open to watch my daughter, because the other eyelid was frankly too weak to do the work.  My sister came for a visit (thank goodness for her!) and then a friend invited my daughter for a sleepover.  Great timing!  Yes, yes, and yes.  Have fun.

I got so much writing done, and it was done early.  I cleaned the house, turned off the computer, and read from a good book.  I got all my do-er compulsions out early, and by 11pm I was asleep, until the glorious time of 8:30am!

Like a good daughter, I listened to my mother the night before, went to bed early, didn’t eat after 7:30pm, and downloaded the Sleep Cycle app so I could better understand my sleep patterns.

I’d like to say the next night went just as well, but it seems I did a good job at convincing my body I am now nocturnal, like a cat, a bat, or an owl.  If only I slept 18 hours during the day like a cat, that life would work out just fine.  Since such is not the case, re-setting to the human diurnal standard of being awake, rising with the sun and setting with it too, are highly favourable at this point in time.

Since I don’t like insomnia very much, I’d better find a way to take a good dose of W.C. Field’s cure…sleep.

If you have any suggestions for what has helped you re-set, and fall asleep at a decent hour, please leave me a comment.

My cousin Sarah joined my family’s trip to Barbados this past January.  She was a welcomed addition, and quickly became the best friend, play mate, and most sought after individual in the house, by my daughter.

Some of the first words out of my daughter’s mouth every morning were, “Where’s Sarah?”

“She’s sleeping honey.  Let the poor girl sleep.”

Throughout the day, when Alexis wanted to play hide and seek, watch a movie, or go to the beach, she would ask, “Sarah, do you want to come with me?  Yah?  Do you want to come?”

Unpretentious, Sarah fit in anywhere.  She was my kid’s best friend, and also someone who was capable of having a well thought out conversation.  She took equal interest in playing dominoes with the ladies two generations above ours, as she did to building sandcastles with my toddler, or hanging out on the verandah with me.  She was able to be social, or find herself just as happy (perhaps a little more so) delving into a good book.

Sarah was perhaps best known to me for being a Narnianist, and a clay figurine sculptor.  Now, I know her as a Narnianist, a sculptist, a reader, a well moderated thinker, a theatrical artist, an inventor of umbrella tents, a mutual eater of mangoes, and her admitted indecisiveness but ability to go with the flow, made her all the more endearing to me.  Above all, Sarah is someone who engaged in opportunities to connect with others on varying levels, to be present, and participate in the moment that will never come again.

My daughter Alexis, and I, were so happy to have had a two week holiday with cousin Sarah, in Barbados.  I predict an increased number of trips to her neck of the woods over the up-coming year.

Once upon a time lived the Knights.  These particular Knights lived just up the hill from me, their backyard diagonally adjacent to mine.

One day, a couple months after my husband died, the Knights invited Alexis and I to their home for dinner.  They made a scrumptious spread, shared their delicious home made wine, and then came dessert.  It wasn’t just any dessert.  It was a well-thought-out dessert that made me want to cry.

In my eulogy for my husband I talked about how, near the end of his life, he had started taking our daughter on dates.  He would buy himself coffee, and our daughter would get her favourite treat; yoghurt, berries and granola.  What did the Knights bring out for dessert?  You guessed it.  Yoghurt, berries and granola.

The second thing they did, which was even more heart warming, was they told me they had contacted the city about planting a tree in Neil’s honour.  The Knights live right next to a public pathway, so their idea was that if they planted a tree there, then anyone from the neighbourhood could visit the tree, and Alexis and I would have a memorial for Neil where we could enjoy picnics under its shade, in the years to come.  They had a plaque made up, organized a neighbourhood tree dedication, and prepared a BBQ feast on the week of Neil’s birthday in June.

The kids brought rocks to lay at the base…

…and drew pictures of our family and the tree.

I chose cremation and scattering, so there is no existing monument for my husband.  The birch tree up the hill, and the special plaque that lies above the soil at its base, are my husband’s memorials.  Every time we walk past it Alexis chimes, “Daddy’s tree!”  She talks to the plaque and tells it things she would want to tell her living daddy.  Every time I see the tree I recognize my husband was a man who meant something to our community, and our neighbours are the type of thoughtful, loving, considerate individuals who mean the world to me.

Sarah, my neighbour up the hill, invited Alexis and I for dinner with her three little girls.  “Is there anything you don’t want to eat?” she asked me that morning.

“Nope.  We’re up for anything, Sarah.”

The meal started in true Sarah form.  The dinner table was decorated with martini glasses, adorned with white and blue swirl straws.  Soon, they were filled with apple cider for the kids.  A sprinkled, chocolate covered marshmallow on a stick sat patiently on everybody’s plate.  Alluring pheromones whispered, “You know you want me” and the marshmallow was right.

Then came the big bowl of rabbit meat pasta.  I looked behind me and noticed a sticker on one of the picture frames that read, “Try something new today.”

It’s not the first time I’ve eaten rabbit.  I went to school for Food and Beverage Management at George Brown College.  In the second year of that program, the students ran the fine dining restaurant on campus.  One of the meals we prepared was rabbit.  I remember that because the meat was muscular, it had to cook in oil for hours to tenderize it.  I asked Sarah how long it took her to cook foo foo.  “Twelve hours” she said.

This might seem cruel to some, but I’ve got to say, it was good.  It took on the taste of the sauce, so the rabbit itself was not overpowering.  Best of all, was my peace of mind that rabbit had not yet been industrialized like chicken or beef.  That gave me hope that perhaps there were less chemicals and hormones in the rabbit on my plate, than in the status quo choices that could have been its replacement.

The night went on with funny faces, dress up and dancing, and ended with dessert and story time.

Best of all was the one on one conversation I got to enjoy with my friend.  My friend who has given us almost every thread of clothing Alexis has ever worn.  My friend whose creativity astounds, and inspires me.  My friend, who also happens to be a professional massage therapist, and I can vouch first hand, she is amazing at her profession.

I am in love with the neighbourhood in which I live.  For friends who are like family, for new experiences, and great memories, here’s to rabbit pasta, and a great night out with the girls!

“He had a terminal illness and he didn’t tell you what his wishes were?  How is that possible?”

I was shocked to learn, speaking to other individuals whose spouses died of terminal illnesses, that not all of them had had those last important conversations, or finalized their Wills.  Denial is a powerful drug for someone to be lying in palliative care and completely avoid the must have conversations.  Here’s the thing though.  We are all going to die.  Someone can have brain cancer, recover miraculously, then walk out of the hospital and get hit by a car.  Fit people die, fat people die, young and old alike, die.  So please, for the love of your spouse, your parents, your kid(s), get a Will, get a living-Will, tell your family or close friends your wishes, and try to make decisions you can live, and die with.

In April of 2010, my sister-in-law died suddenly in her sleep.  She was only 29.  By that time, my husband and I had a baby, property, and a business my husband co-owned.  It cost us $750 to have both of our Wills done, and we mutually agreed our peace of mind was worth the investment.

With our lawyer we set up contingency care for our daughter, discussed and documented our living-Will wishes, named our Power of Attorney(s), and listed our Executor(s) in the event of our death.  So often we focused on our material things.  Who should get this?  Who should get that?  Our lawyer zeroed in on what our living-Will wishes were in the event that one of us was unable to communicate.  It’s not a fluffy topic to think about.  I get that.  But worse than not thinking about it now, is being the person left to make decisions on another’s behalf, and feeling the brunt of those choices, always wondering if they were the right ones, for the rest of their lives.  In a moment like that, it does not matter who gets the couch.

My husband and I finalized our Wills in October of 2010.  Five months later, he died.  He did not have a terminal illness.

What did this mean for me in the days that followed?  Every arduous bank, lawyer, and government appointment I had to attend, went easier, was less time consuming, and was less of an emotional nightmare not being subjected to more paperwork, loose ends, and litigation.  By being named Executor on our Will, I was able to attend to any of my husband’s business with the same authority as my husband himself.

As I sat in a bank consultant’s office transferring funds, and closing accounts, she explained to me that without the documents I had, what we were accomplishing in one day could otherwise take years, and a great deal more stress, to complete.  In the face of a long line of tasks I was left alone to navigate, I felt gratitude that my husband initiated the process of obtaining legal Wills.  With our lawyer, and alone, we had important conversations about life, and death.  I was not left wondering, unprepared, and overcome with more obstacles then already lay before me.

There is one conversation we did not have, and it fuddles my mind every time I think of it.  The weight of its loose ends clamp down on my shoulders.  It was the conversation about his business.  My husband had an on-line car parts company called AutoPartsInc.com .  He ran the entire front end, and had no apprentice to take it over.  He had offered to teach me about a year before he died, but I was not motivated by the technical side of it, and I excused his foresight with the mindset that we have time for that.  We’ll get to the training another day.  I have enough work on my plate already.  Now that he is gone, this company that has the potential to shine like a rainbow, hangs over my head like a black cloud.

Even if it is likely you may be alive for the next 50 years, please, have the conversations with your loved ones.  No one knows what tomorrow brings.  I am not suggesting that anyone dwell on the subject of death, but I am saying, speaking from the other side of loss, my husband did me a tremendous favour the day we finalized our Wills.  You, and your family’s peace of mind are worth it.

To me, that is an abundantly jaw dropping thought.  The breath I breathe, the spirit within me, is it all on loan from God?  Is the soul mine, but the spirit is His, filling up my body like a helium balloon, one day to be let out and given back to the one who gave it?

As I said, I take God for granted all the time.  I am not planning on entering the debate on heaven and hell here.  What I will say is that my version of the worst hell I can imagine, is defined in my mind as total separation from God.  Like the absence of a friend, a lover, a husband, I feel His void when I do not walk with Him, and there is nothing more lonely, depressing or desperate to me than being away from that type of relationship now that I have known it once.  Like-wise, there is nothing more freeing, exhilarating, and completing than when I stand in awe and connect with another being, and even more so when I feel a connection to my Creator.

Dogs are great.  I may have a slight fear (for good reason I might add, having been bitten by a guard dog when I was a child) but I see the value.  In fact there are countless wonders in the world I would count as awe-inspiring, mouth dropping, phenomenal, or simply comforting aspects of life.  But, when I stop and actually focus on what gives me peace, what brings me joy, what is the number one thing I would miss even if everything else were at my finger tips?  I’m not just assuming this feeling now.  I have been there.  It would be a connection to God.

So, my happy thought in this moment of intentional focus and soul-searching, is undoubtedly, unquestionably, those moments when I know there is a God, and that God is as close as my next breath.

I was recording Happy Thought #24 while my daughter listened in.  When I was done she said, “Happy thought #2.  I love you, Mom!”

So, I responded, “Happy thought #3.  I love you, Alexis.”  Back and forth we went.

“Happy thought #14.  I love you Mom.”

“Happy thought #20.  You’re beautiful Alexis.”

“Happy thought #24.  I love you Diego.”

“Happy thought #16.  Colouring with you is fun.”

“Happy thought #4.  I love the letter C.”

It seems happy thoughts are contagious.  My true Happy Thought #25 is that all this positive thinking seems to be rubbing off on my daughter.

You are part wisdom and will, love and beauty, fault and redemption, and I hear the song of your bangles chime throughout time.

When I was young I would crawl into bed with you and rest my little head on the nook of your outstretched arm.  Then something horrible happened.  I believe it was puberty.  My body changed and I felt awkward.  I stopped cuddling, and worked my independence out through every hair colour I could think of.  Green, blue, purple, black.  I put a stud in my nose, and thought it was the most beautiful thing on my face.  I wore second hand dresses I thought were cool.  I tweaked my wardrobe a little when you mentioned one time I looked like a french maid, and refused to take me out.

When I turned 13 you bought me a bangle, because that was our Caribbean family tradition.  When I was 17 I lost the bangle in the mud some time during a contact game of football.  I was guilt ridden for months, and swore I’d never let myself wear one again.  Then we flew to Barbados and you replaced my lost bangle with two!  You said they were a lesson in self forgiveness.  I wore them every day.  At first I wore one on each hand, until I put my arms together behind my back on my first day at a new job.  The two bangles locked together handcuffing me until a colleague set me free.  I put both on one wrist and that’s when it began, that I joined your song, and our bangles chimed together throughout time.

I grew up a little and made bigger mistakes.  Your reminder of self forgiveness dangled always from my wrist.  I got married, and two years later a baby was on its way.  You, the woman who could faint at the sight of a loose tooth, stayed in the hospital room with me, braiding my hair, keeping my husband calm, surviving your daughter’s pain while I lay crying on the bed.  All angst about the human body went out the window that day.  All innocence of it was redeemed as my lovely baby girl was born.  We marveled at the miracle of life and nursing.  You taught me how to change a diaper, and took my angel at night so I could sleep.  The cycle of cuddles began again.  As I lifted my new born out of her crib my bangles chimed.  I smiled knowing that the sound of these bracelets would be the sound of her mother, as your bangles had played the tune of mine.

My husband died two years later, and you moved in for two weeks.  You held us together as you so often do.  We celebrated my daughter’s second birthday while I wrote out a eulogy, and you formatted memorial bookmarks.

You left and I was lonely, but in the darkness of those nights, as I pulled the covers up to my chin, there was the echo of your song in the tinkling of my bangles, and I felt less alone as I cried myself to sleep.

Hope broke through the darkness, and I felt gratitude more than pain.  We became survivors, and thrivers, and saw the sun poke through the rain.

You had nursed me, changed me, held my hand, then let me go.  You disciplined me and loved me, and gave me room to grow.  You taught me, laughed with me, and shared my pain when I cried.  Then you set me free again to see the wings you gave me fly.

You are mother, you are wisdom, you mean the world to my babe.  And the bangles that you gave me chirp the love song that you gave.

Every flick of my wrist, and  throw of my hand, sings the song of your chime, as my bangles of forgiveness play your song throughout our time.

If you want to learn more about my best life coach, who is now a coach to others around the world, please visit her website at www.PercyEmtage.com

I am NOT promoting credit cards.  I have seen these plastic vampires destroy lives.  BUT, in my case, where I have never charged more than I could pay off when it’s due, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoy going to the grocery store and getting free groceries, like the $80 worth of free food I received from points today.

I remember that Neil and I used to take our points and buy grocery cards to give out to a couple we became friends with, who were living on the streets.  Our friends are now off the streets, have their own rented apartment, and at least one of them is working a full time job.  Grocery cards meant they could grab a healthy meal, and assured us no money would be spent on other things.  It was all the more fun being able to help someone else, when the groceries were free to us.

So, today I have lots of reasons to be happy for free groceries!

The place: Barbados. The destination: Earthworks Pottery. The timeline: mid-vacation.

My late-husband’s ashes rested in my black leather bag.  Every morning I walked on the beach, and in the height of the afternoon sun I swam in the sea.  I barely thought about my husband’s remains.

I have a lot of family who live in Barbados.  On my last trip to this beautiful island, my husband was with me.  We had stayed in the beach house next door to where I am staying now.  Strangely, there are few reminders, few intervals of our trip to paradise that connected with my return trip at present.  Although we stayed right next door, no room in this new beach house holds memories of my previous trip with him.  For that reason, there are no triggers.  No reason for me to dwell on his absence.  Everything on this trip is new.

Then, my mother suggests we visit Earthworks pottery.  Earthworks is a place my husband and I had visited together.  Our visit had meant something significant for me because it represented an outlet we enjoyed together.  We took mutual pleasure in the art of Earthworks pottery.

On my previous trip, Neil had picked out a delicate hand-made clay bowl that had been decorated as uniquely as Neil was unique.  It was one of a kind, rare, like him, and he was proud to participate in my family’s passion for the unparalleled local art.

Until this moment, I had no desire to scatter Neil’s ashes anywhere, but as soon as I pictured the Earthworks studio up high on the hills of Saint Thomas, Barbados, I know this is where I want part of him to be.

***********

It is now the next day.  I lift the mason jar containing my husband’s ashes, out from my black leather bag.  I move the jar to my every-day bag and run out to the car where the others are waiting.  I, like the rest of my family, love visiting the Earthworks studio, but no one knows what else I have in mind; what is truly propelling me off the sandy beach, and into the hills of Saint Thomas.

I have yet to learn how to drive in Barbados, an island of narrow, unmarked roads, where the vehicles drive on the opposite side of the road than how I am used to driving in Canada.  My mother navigates us past coloured chattel houses and sugarcane fields, until we reach the hills and I spot the studio on high.

While the others are distracted inside, I lead my daughter by the hand, beneath the shade of tropical trees.  I have no idea how to explain to her what we are doing, so I tell her we’re going to do a very special secret, which keeps her voice hushed.  We kneel below the green canopy on a place where no one walks, and I am at peace laying his ashes here.

I open the mason jar and remove the baggie that holds the grey flecks of dust.  I open the bag and release half the ashes to the ground below.  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is the famous quote from The Book of Common Prayer, that comes to mind.  This moment is perfection.  I would not change a single thing.  I know Neil is not in his ashes, but I realize that this process is still a step in releasing him, honouring him, and embracing freedom through my personal expression of how I will love him, and celebrate his life through his death.

As soon as I start I want to go on.  I feel a need to scatter more, but not here.  There is a spot on a different part of the island, Barclay Park, a beach in Cattlewash on the East Coast of Barbados.  My family and I had stayed in the cottages above the beach many times.  After my engagement to Neil he flew to England, and I to Barbados where I stayed at a blue and white cottage called Bit by Bit.  We talked on the phone every day, and I always imagined I would show him this place.  That opportunity was gone, but I can at least scatter him here, and that is meaningful to me.

Onward bound to Cattlewash we drive.  We stop at a side-road convenience store to buy snacks and drinks so the others can have a picnic, and scout for shells on the beach, while I go off like the dog Marley, from the movie Marley and Me, to confront the subject of death.

I look to my left and see my daughter crouched down on the sand picking sea shells with her cousin.  My mother walks beyond them towards Chalky Mount.  I remember that Neil and I had taken a tour of the island two years earlier, and stood on the side of the road at Cherry Tree Hill.  High above Barclay Park we overlooked a spectacular view of Cattlewash, which I stood at the bottom of now.  How I thought then I would one day show him the view from the ground up.

The raging white caps of the Atlantic Ocean remind me of the white unicorns from the 1982 cartoon film, The Last Unicorn.  I could picture the army of unicorns creating the white foam upon the fierce waves at the ending of the movie.

I look to my right, and see Bit by Bit, and Round Rock.  Well past the others, I pick up a hand full of sand and mix it into the bag of ashes, as though I am enabling my husband’s feet to touch the sand of Barclay Park.  The tide is high and the unicorns lunge towards my ankles, drenching the bottom of my long red dress.  I scatter half of the ash/sand mix at the base of Round Rock, an iconic figure of my time at Cattlewash.  I wish I could show Neil the bench perched on top of Round Rock by Rastas, as though a fantasy bus is going to pull up at any moment to whisk imaginary passengers away.

As I turn back towards Chalky Mount, I release the rest of Neil’s ashes from the bag onto the sand, and watch as they are washed into the Atlantic by the waves.

Now that I have begun the process of scattering I am absolutely confident that cremation was the best decision I could have made for myself.  Cremation allows me to come to terms with the death of my husband, and the releasing of him, in my own time, in my own unique way.  I find tremendous freedom in the expression of scattering, and the creativity I can imbue into the process.  Then I think, what if I not only release Neil’s ashes in meaningful places?  What if I release them during significant moments in time?  I had heard enough stories from widowed parents and orphans alike, telling me how the children can feel the void of their missing parent, especially during milestone events such as a graduation, or a wedding.  I imagine how lovely it could be to honour Neil, and his place as the father of my daughter, by including this ritual during poignant moments in time.  My daughter is almost three years old, and too young to understand what is happening, but the thought of scattering through a timeline as opposed to a geographical map, reassures me that perhaps she might find some comfort in the years to come knowing that, if there is a time when she would wish for nothing more than to have her daddy present, we still have access to a small, but meaningful way, to include him.

I join the others on the beach where we continue to pick sea shells while entertained by ghost crabs playing peek-a-boo out of their burrowed holes.  I sit next to my daughter drawing pictures in the sand, and reminisce in an incredible moment just past, where everything that has just happened feels entirely good.

If you have an idea, or a scattering story, please leave a comment.  I’d love to hear any suggestions, ideas, or comments in general.

I lugged my over-sized blue suitcase up the stairs from the basement.  I’m pretty sure everything I need I can fit into hand luggage.

• Passport?  Check.
• Swimsuit?  Check.
• Camera?  Check.
• Ashes?  Debate.

The day I collected my late-husband’s ashes from the funeral home, the Director handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?” I inquired.

“If you choose to scatter your husband’s ashes, this letter will allow you to take them on the plane.”

I hadn’t thought about taking his ashes abroad.  The only places I had considered for scattering where places close to home.  Even then, any time I thought about leaving the grey flecks of Neil’s abandoned, cremated shell behind, I felt hollow about it.  My husband was not in his ashes.  There was no soul in them, no spirit.  I feared scattering his ashes would feel like casting emptiness into the wind.

In uncomfortable or intense situations, I tend to think strange and funny thoughts.  I have no intention of being disrespectful.  It is the way my mind copse.  Jokes off-set heaviness.  Humour maintains equilibrium.  As I thought about packing I imagined trying to lug the heavy, industrial, black container that held my husband’s ashes, through security.  What if security thinks I am smuggling drugs?  Next, thoughts about my husband getting a free ride on the plane made me laugh.  Then, I pictured him strapped into the seat next to mine, the container labeled with a Brother P name-tag sticker.  Hello.  My name is Neil.  I imagined the airline steward telling me to put the box in the overhead bin.  What would I say?  How could I put my late-husband up there?  Maybe I could carry the ashes in my handbag, or disguise them in gift wrapping so passengers wouldn’t suspect my morbidity.

About six months ago I stumbled upon a movie called Bonneville, starring Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, and Joan Allen.  The movie was about a widow (Lange) who promised to return her late-husband’s ashes to his daughter (her step-daughter.)  She embarks on a road trip with two of her closest friends.  Along the way they detour to destinations that hold fond memories of places she and her husband had visited.  At each spot she finds herself inspired to scatter her husband’s remains.

The idea of scattering in locations of significance was idyllic to me, romantic even, but the perfection of the idea remained only in my head.  What moved any individual, in any movie I had ever seen that depicted the ritual of scattering, was a connection to the departed, even in their ashes.  That was a connection I just didn’t have.  I didn’t think of his ashes as sacred.  They were not my husband.  They were only ash.

Plus, I was going on vacation.  I planned to leave all reminders of my messy year behind me.  I would step off the plane into a new and sunny holiday.

But, what if?  What if I got to Barbados and changed my mind?  What if I suddenly had the urge to scatter his remains?  What if I regretted the decision to leave the ashes at home when I could, in this moment, choose to bring them with me just in case?

I don’t often ask what if when looking back.  That past is behind me.  History is written.  It can not be undone.  But the future is open, and full of opportunities and intriguing possibilities.

I open the black ashes container, and pour some of them into a zip lock bag.  No, that doesn’t look like it’s enough, I think.  I pour out some more.  That should do it.  What if the baggie opens?  I find a mason jar.  I put the baggie inside and screw the cap on tight.  I think about mod podging the jar with tissue paper to make it look more…festive? special?  The peeling spaghetti label doesn’t seem appropriate, but there is no time to fix the jar now.  I will soon be heading out the door.

I pack the remains in my carry on luggage, while the phrase family vacation runs through my head.

I review my packing list.  Ashes?  Check.

Onward bound to Barbados we go.

To be continued…

Part of the sheer pleasure of eating this fish cutter was where we ate it; at a little green food hut, hidden down a side street between the Yacht club and the Hilton Hotel.  There is no name on the hut, but everyone in my family called it “Cuz.”  It was like finding a local hidden treasure that the main stream tourists haven’t yet caught on to.  It’s my little secret…that is until now.

Cuz’ fish cutter

Fried flying fish with Bajan hot sauce

Gorging on the feast of Mains’ depicted coconut trees, tropical flowers, and regatta sail boats, was delightful.  I love art, and art shows.  Especially ones full of life and vibrancy, like this one.

Heather Percy (my Mom), and the artist, Susan Mains.

The first night in Barbados I heard many sounds.  Crickets, whistle frogs, the sound of the sea.  All natural sounds that would normally pacify me to bed.  Then, I heard a new sound.  An industrial noise like the sound of a generator.  The only thing I could fathom was that someone must be running a generator to work on one of the boats at sea.  It wasn’t until the next groggy morning, my mother said, “It must be coming from a kite.”

“There is no way that sound is coming from a kite, Mom” I argued.  I should have listened to the local.  She walked outside and spotted the kite anchored to a neighbouring house, flying over head, humming powerfully down at me.  I hum-bugged back, “You have got to be kidding me.”

I have now learned there is a special way the Islanders make kites, which produces a noise-maker called a “mad bull.”  After a little research on-line I found I wasn’t the only one desperate for a pair of scissors to cut the mad bull down.

Between the indy race car noise flying over head, the bad karaoke hollering out towards another weekend night, and the spot lights around the beach house that can not be turned off, potential for sleep is not on my side.

But, finally, after two weeks of bull, I’m either going mad myself, or finally growing accustomed to the sound.  Now, I just have to find a solution to the intruding lights.  Then, I remembered my hat.  My thick, dark, floppy brown hat.  I wore it to bed last night, its flaps covering my eyes.  Lights out!  For the first time in weeks I slept like a baby.

As it nears bedtime again, I am beyond happy at the thought of my brown floppy hat, and the dreamy hope that another sound, dark, sleep awaits me.

The single, called The Cure for Pain, begins this way, “…I’m not sure why it always flows downhill.  Why broken cisterns never could stay filled.  I’ve spent ten years singing gravity away, but the water keeps on falling from the sky.  And here tonight while the stars are blacking out, with every hope and dream I’ve ever had in doubt, I’ve spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away, but the water keeps on falling from my eyes.”

The verse flows into the chorus, beckoning, “…heaven knows, I tried to find a cure for the pain.  Oh my Lord! To suffer like you do, it would be a lie to run away.”

The tone is one of acknowledging the brokenness, the fallibleness, of life.  Foreman faces the gravitational reality of pain that exists, that will always be lingering, waiting to interrupt what is lovely and seemingly whole.  Like any one with a fixer mentality, he admits he’s tried to change that reality, to “find a cure for this pain.”  Who, after all, would choose to be subjected to it?

I can not cure the problem of pain any more than Foreman can.  “Oh my Lord!  To suffer like you do, it would be a lie to run away” is a pivotal line.  For me, to turn away from the only One who can cure this pain, is to live believing the facade that I can keep the broken cistern full.  But the Messiah suffered all so that I could rise above the gravitation law of sin.

I listen to this song on repeat because I connect with Foreman’s sentiments.  I relate to the notion of wanting to maintain a level of perfection, or completion, but it’s futile.  The rhythm of life is not set to a metronome.  It is not predictable like that.  It is a rhapsody, maintained by a free-style drum.  The beat changes, new patterns emerge and old ones fade away.  New life songs begin in the middle of the symphony of life already in play, as masterpieces are silenced and forgotten.

When a new song enters my life, literally, and metaphorically like meeting someone new, or rekindling an old friendship, I like to see where the new songs will go.  When I fall in love with the tune, how my chemistry works with another’s, how it connects, sometimes causes me to get locked in, making me want to leave the song on repeat.   After singing the same song for a while I learn what to expect, how to move, how to mime the lyrics, or belt them out loud.  Then suddenly the track shifts, and I’m annoyed because I don’t want it to change when I’m finally finding my groove.

My daughter has become the same way.  Like any child, she thrives off of repetition, and routine.  If she is used to seeing Grandma once every two weeks, and then it’s been three, she notices.  She knows when someone has skipped a beat.  She gets ansy and restless.  She doesn’t want the song to change, but at two she already knows it can.  Her and I are the same in this way.  We don’t just think water might fall from the sky, as Foreman puts it.  We know it will, because we’ve already been drenched by one downpour.

Now, any variation from the norm leaves us holding our breath.  Is this it?  Are we transitioning to the chorus, or switching to a completely new song?  Perhaps my focus should be less on one melody, and more on the album’s overall compilation.  The coming and going of people in my life is like the introduction of a new instrument.  Sometimes a new instrument comes in while others continue to play.  Sometimes the instrument leads a solo, while all others fade away.

Often, if I play The Cure for Pain, I will follow it up with another Jon Foreman song called, Learning how to die.   On my playlist the two make up one extended musical piece.

Foreman’s Learning how to Die, begins,

“I’m gonna miss you.  I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone.  She says, ‘I love you.  I’m gonna miss hearing your songs’

And I said, ‘Please, don’t talk about the end.  Don’t talk about how every living thing goes away’

She said, ‘Friend, all along I thought I was learning how to take, how to bend not how to break, how to live not how to cry.  But really I’ve been learning how to die.’”

When my husband died it became clear to me there are few things that last.  Our bodies return to dust, all material possessions are left behind.  Even my life’s work might change course when I am no longer there to direct it.  As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes 5:15 says, “As he came from his mother’s womb, naked shall he return, to go as he came; and he shall take nothing from his labor, which he may carry away in his hand.”  In short, naked we come, and naked we go, so what are we living, and dying for?

Since I will take nothing with me, learning how to die has become a journey of learning how to let go.

My three-piece Foreman playlist ends with my friend’s initial recommendation, House of God, Forever.  This song is based on the 23rd Psalm from the Bible.

“God is my shepherd.  I won’t be wanting, I won’t be wanting.  He makes me rest, in fields of green, with quite streams.  Even though I walk through the valley of death and dying, I will not fear, ’cause you are with me.  You are with me.”

I used to be terrified of dying.  I still struggle with any change in tempo, or the ending of my favourite song, but that is how life is.  It is full of endings, and new beginnings.  My fear came from the unknown, and feeling that I would never be ready for that final act.  Please don’t take me now! I would plead with God as I drove down an icy road, or felt turbulence while flying in the air.

I didn’t understand the mentality of individuals who desired to be on the other side of this life more than their desire to be here.  Now I look at that journey with a famished curiosity.

I want to let the song move where it might, to enjoy melodies from each exposition, before releasing them.

For one can only truly hold on to that which lasts beyond death.  It is not about latching on to the cello, or the horn.  It is about enjoying the instruments, finding harmony in the part I get to play, and ultimately focusing on the Conductor who will lead me in a solo through the final act, through the valley of death and dying, and into the house of God, forever.

I lay on an orange, striped veranda couch and listen.  I feel as though I am resting one ear on a man’s chest, drifting into slumber as the sound of his heartbeat lulls me to sleep.

It seems I was air lifted out of one reality, away from any triggers associated with my husband’s death.  Five hours later I am gently ushered into paradise.  The heat and the shushing of the salty, turquoise waves cause my eyes to grow heavy.  My writing reflects the transition in my thought process, as the ratio between grief articles and happy thought posts, have begun to lean heavily on the lighter side of life.

The sun lifts my spirits and the breeze carries my cares away across the surface of the sea.  It is the first time in months my mind has quieted its thoughts.  I can hold conversations without the compulsion to empty information from my mind in order to make room for more.

Responsibility lags behind me.  Even the threat of insomnia is not so daunting knowing, while I’m away, a house full of women are parenting with me.  Even if I wake up at 6am after falling asleep at only 3, I will awake to the sun, sand, and surf, and a day of little thought or worry.

All bills, chores, and reminders have been left behind at home.

Alexis and I have lovely coconuts too.  Five to be exact.  They surround my computer and I can’t think of a better way to write.

Alexis has been hooked on coconuts ever since our trip to Cuba, in 2010.  Tetra packs of coconut water are stocked in our pantry at home.  Here, in Barbados, we buy the freshest kind, green coconuts right off a palm tree.  Each morning I cut open a hole in the top of a green coconut.  We insert a straw, and hydrate.  After we’ve had our fill of the good stuff, I scoop out the coconut jelly for an extra treat.

Back home in Canada we buy the small, brown, hard coconuts.  I put one in a plastic back, tie a knot, and Alexis and I take turns slinging the coconut on the frozen floor of our garage.  Smash!  We hurl the bag until we can feel the coconut has cracked into little pieces.  These serve as our snacks for the remainder of the week.

Coconut water not only tastes great, it has a ton of health benefits too.  I love bringing my daughter up on coconut water instead of sugary drinks, and she loves it too.

Here’s to coconuts!  Eat, drink, and be merry.

I could take stock of some of my favourite life moments in mangoes.

Take high school for instance.  This is the stage I realized someone else could love me through mangoes.  My mother came home from work one day and told me to get dressed up.  We were going to the theater.  Once dressed we stepped into the elevator of her condo.  She told me to meet her in the lobby, and she would bring the car up from the underground.  I went to the lobby and there was my friend, waiting at the buzzer for the front door.  I opened it for him and told him I couldn’t go out, I was on my way out to the theater with my Mom.  I turned around and there was my mother, standing behind me.  “You’re going with him”, she said.

I’m feeling hard pressed to think of a better date I’ve been on.  He took me to a restaurant, read me a poem and gave me a hand-made flower (hand-made by him), and the night ended with us eating juicy mangoes in his car, and us washing our hands in puddles of rain water.

Fast forward to 2006.  I’m in the desert of Northern Sudan, 200 kms northeast of Khartoum.  I am with three new friends; a girl and two men.  One of the men is a local, and the other, a European photographer.  We are going to visit ancient pyramids that are older than the famous ones in Egypt.  I am standing inside an ancient structure, dumbfounded by the hieroglyphic I am not only staring at.  I am touching it.  It’s the real thing, only it’s not in a museum which is the only place I’ve ever seen one.  There I am in the middle of the desert, sounded by nothing other than history and a sand storm swirling outside the open entrance.

We walk back to our car from the pyramids and two men with machine guns ask to see our passports.  We seem to have the right ones.  They let us through and I let out a breath of relief.

We spend the night in a little town on our way back to Khartoum.  The next day we take a small boat across the Nile and go exploring.  We meet a goat herder and our local friend begins a conversation.  The goat herder leads us to a mango tree and starts depositing mangoes into a basket.  He puts the basket before us and tells us we can eat as many as we like.  They are the best mangoes I have ever had before, or since.  They are ripe, and full of juice.  I eat five, because I don’t want to seem piggish or anything.

2012, I’m here in Barbados.  Three days of patience, waiting to eat mangoes that tease me every time I walk by.  My cousin tells me to wrap them in newspapers to help them ripen.  I wrap them and let them be overnight.  Finally, the next morning, they are ripe enough to eat.

The paring knife cuts them easily.  I slice chunks off the seed and cube the mango flesh.  My daughter and I enjoy a juicy mango feast that does not disappoint.  They are worth the wait.

I thoroughly enjoy my life in mangoes.  Wherever mangoes seem to be found with me, a great memory is also sure to be.

Each one passed within a foot of where we knelt.  They sauntered down our driveway, to a neighbouring yard, where we got to enjoy a long show while they feasted on a tropical brunch.

Monkeys are SO cute. To watch a video of some monkey business, click here.

High up on the hill tops of St. Thomas parish, sits Earthworks pottery house, overlooking a spectacular view of the landscape of Barbados.  Parked on a steep hill I look up at an artist’s paradise.

The outdoor staircase, decorated with broken glazed clay pieces, is only the first step towards where the wonder begins.

On every Barbados visit, which is about once every two years, Earthworks is a must-visit-again-and-again-and again, destination.  If one were to visit my home in Canada, my mother’s home, and my sister’s home, they can expect to find Earthworks pottery on our walls, in our cupboards, or both.

Adding to my collection of pottery is only part the reason why I visit on every trip.  In truth, collection is a secondary reason as to why I go.  My desire to support the craft, and this particular business venture, are high up on my list, but there is a more compelling reason I am drawn to visit time and time again.

It is the place itself that inspires me.  It is what they have done with all the broken pottery pieces that fills me with wonder, and hope.

I walk up the staircase that leads to the open doors of the Earthworks pottery studio.

I take Alexis on a tour, a free tour where we are encouraged to walk ourselves through.  Staff, humble, but proud of what they do, fill us in on the details of their craft as we journey along our self-guided tour.

First, the clay is molded.

Next, it is decorated with coloured glaze.

Finally, it is put into kilns to be fired.  The kilns at Earthworks are the largest I have ever seen!

Once fired, the brilliant colours appear on the pottery, beneath a gloss-like surface.

Following our tour, the founder’s son, David, gives Alexis red clay to shape with her own hands.

“Is it Play-doh?” she asked, excited.

“It’s clay-doh!” I exclaimed.  “Play away.”

I LOVE the expression of pottery.  A prominent analogy used in the Bible is one of God being the Potter, and we being the clay.  But what happens if the original piece of pottery is broken?

Like broken shards of coloured glass re-worked into a stained-glass window, it mesmerizes me what an artist can do with broken pieces of anything.  At Earthworks, their artists have decorated the outdoor staircase, the parking lot wall, and the entire Earthworks building with broken, or forgotten, pieces of fired-clay.

I find tremendous hope in the thought that the shattered, and even neglected pieces of my life have the potential to be reinvented, and that they could be as beautiful, inspiring, and spectacular as this.

Each of the damaged pieces of pottery were, at some point, on their way to becoming something else.  Something practical.  When formed, their intended purpose was completely different then ending up on the Earthworks’ wall.  Once broken, their initial purpose destroyed, someone could have easily thrown them away.  But in hands that saw potential, these broken pieces are now, in my opinion, the glory of Earthworks, Barbados.  They are no longer practical.  They are inspirational.

I stare at the decorated wall and I hope, I pray, that the shattered pieces of my life, when placed in the hands of THE Master Artist, will be transformed like this wall; that my potential may be revealed, and out of my brokenness, may inspired beauty be formed.

One might assume from my loss-resume that I would know how to respond to another when they experience loss.  Perhaps I should.  Or perhaps there can not be a rule of thumb per se.  Each person is an individual, and their reaction to loss and change will be individualistic as well.

This week, when I was given the somber news that a friend of mine lost her step-daughter in the multi-car pile up on highway 402, near Sarnia, Ontario, I immediately thought, What do I say?  How do I comfort this woman who has been so good to me, who could be feeling any range of emotions?

I thought back to the phrases individuals said to me while I was in my initial mourning stage, after my husband had died.  “My heart breaks for you”  “I am thinking of you”  “I am praying for you”  “I can only imagine.”  These were all sentiments I could appreciate and accept.

Phrases I struggled with were assumption statements, such as, “I know how you feel.”  No one could ever know how I felt, just as I can not know how another feels fully, even in light of my personal grief experience.

When my husband died I was sad.  By that evening I was relieved.  In the following days, after my relief came loneliness, then anger, which was eventually interrupted by sorrow.  Three months after his death I chased any happy moment I could find.  I thrived off of laughter, and felt no guilt for it.  Six months later I was a “loose cannon.”  I made poor choices and felt abundantly wreck-less.

Spackles of anger and gratitude dotted my grief timeline.  Finally, overwhelmed, I shut off from everything that took focus away from working through my grief.

My emotions changed day to day, sometimes moment by moment.  How could anyone have known what to say to comfort me?  How could anyone have known how I felt at any given point in time?  How could I ever assume to know the same?

There were three expressions of comfort that I did, and continue to, find helpful throughout my grieving process.

1) General statements – “My heart breaks for you”, tells me I am not alone.  In some way, someone feels a piece of my pain.  “I am thinking of you”, lets me know, even in the late, lonely hours, I am not alone.  “I am praying for you”, helps me feel supported through action, and brings my focus towards a Higher Power.  “I can only imagine”, is an accurate statement.  Another individual can only ever imagine the range of emotions I, or anyone else dealing with grief, feels.

2) Permission to be real – “I don’t feel anything”, I said to a friend on the second day after my husband died.  “You feel what you feel, and that’s okay”, he reassured me.  That was a powerful statement for me.  It gave me permission to experience my range of emotions, one by one, as they came, without the added, unproductive, burden of guilt.  Thankfully, I had studied, and even trained groups of people, on the natural grief cycle according to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.  Knowing this information enabled me to accept what I felt as a natural response to loss, instead of something I should feel ashamed of, and try to shove down or hide away.

3) If you don’t know, ask.  – We are not a society that tends to pry.  For myself, I have chosen to be public about my grief journey, but others prefer to be private.  Either choice is personal and, I feel, should be respected.  I have found that being public has enabled others to understand where I’m at, and what I would find helpful.  It has inevitably helped others help me.  However, not everyone is comfortable sharing their journey this way, and may, or may not, want to talk about it.  Even though I always appreciate being asked by sincere individuals how I am doing, I still find myself shying away from asking other mourners the same.  What if they get angry?  What if it upsets them more?  I don’t want to cause them pain if they don’t want to talk about it.

But what if they are longing to talk about it?  Longing to be asked as I sometimes am.  What if they’re reserved, or afraid to speak out?

Then I remember how some people would ask how I was doing, and then say, “But if you don’t want to talk about it…”, or, “Do you feel comfortable talking about this?”  Those added questions gave me the freedom to move forward with the conversation, or politely back out.

When my husband died I was also told, “People will ask you how you are for the first year, and then they will stop.”  Through other mourner’s stories I have come to know that the loss of any individual is something the griever carries with them, always.  In some cases, real grieving doesn’t begin until the close of the first year when the auto-pilot shuts off, and the swirl of chaos begins to settle.  Then reality sets in, and it’s important for friends to keep checking in too.

My extensive resume of loss, and the intense experience of losing my husband, will never fully put me in another person’s shoes, but I do feel these experiences can bring me closer to understanding what may, or may not be helpful when responding to someone else’s loss.  Considering that death is a circumstance no one can ever fully be prepared for, as the griever, and the one who comforts, I would value hearing from you.

If you have experienced loss, or have responded to someone else’s loss in a way that seemed to resonate with them, I would invite you to share your stories here.  Please enter your thoughts in the comment box below, or email me by clicking here so together we can help ourselves help others.

For that reason, I rarely allow my daughter to eat sugary treats.  In fact, I use every sugar coated opportunity to teach her the sour facts about not eating well.

Now that she is accustomed to my refusal of permission towards junk food, imagine her surprise when we were at a friend’s house this week, and I handed her a bowl of ice cream.

At first, she gasped, then she screamed, and finally, hands over mouth, she stood next to her bowl in unbelief, too bewildered to eat her melting ice cream.  Her reaction alone was dessert enough for me.

After the shock wore off she dug in, savouring every delicious scoop, knowing this moment would not quickly come again.

I write, I clean, I organize.  I’ve reached a new plateau.  It took me weeks, actually months, to organize some bills.  I couldn’t see how to process the piles of papers.  For the first time in over a month my accomplishment was more than writing.

I’ve done a lot today.  More than I’ve been able to do in weeks, but I’m unsatisfied.

It must be my connection with God.  I feel it is lacking.  I’m trying to figure things out.  Maybe I haven’t sought God enough.  Maybe that’s the void that I feel.

I pick up my Bible and carry it to bed.  It’s late but I’m not tired…again.  I read, and I learn.  I am satisfied with this, but I am still unsatisfied, with something.

I go back downstairs and collect another book.  Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright.  I take a drop of my homeopathic remedy, “Emotional shock.”  When I remember to take it, which is almost every night, I have the most amazing sleeps.  They are deep and all consuming.

I head back to my bed and begin to read.  My eyes grow heavy.  There it is.  The remedy is kicking in.  It shouldn’t be long now before I drift off to sleep.

I close the book and lay my head on my pillow.  I pull the duvet up to my chin.  I think about how the next Happy Thought I should write, will be about the warmth of my covers on a cold winter day.

I lie still, nestled like a chick under its mother’s down.  Only the sound of the heat can be heard pushing through the vents of my house.

I feel it again.  The feeling of being unsatisfied.  Only this time I know what it is.  I lie in bed, all warm and cozy, and alone.

I forgot the homeopathic remedy does not just give me sound sleeps.  It peels back layers to reveal what’s underneath.  Layers I can’t always seem to peel away on my own.

I feel the empty spot in front of me on our bed, and think back to the first few days after you died.  I could almost feel you still there.  I roll over and try to get more comfortable.  Instead I imagine your hand on my hip while my back meets your chest.

This feeling surprises me.  You had moved out before you died.  It’s not like I lost all of you at once.  I had lost you in little pieces over time.  Still, I miss you.  You were my confidant.  You were my friend.  Now I have conversations with the air as though you can hear, or write you letters I know you will never read.

It is a very specific piece of you I tend to miss.  I miss my friend.  I miss my companion.  I miss that you would laugh at my silly football dances when I felt victorious over some silly small thing, or how I could tell you the details about my day.  I miss that even though we fought, I told you everything.  Our conversations were all encompassing, and you loved me for it, even though my honesty came at a cost.

The truth is I’m lonely.  Like old-lady-with-ten-cats kind of lonely.  But I don’t want just anyone.  In fact I know no one else will do.  Like any best friend who has ever moved away, there will only ever be one of you.  When someone else comes and goes, I will be saddened by their void too, because each loss leaves a gap that no one else can fill.  Tonight, I feel the gap of you.

I move my bed to the couch.  The queen sized bed in our room feels too big.  I prefer the bathtub-sized couch that fits my body of one.  I laugh thinking what a hard time I would give you when you slept on the couch by choice.  I think it’s time to downsize, get a roommate, or a cat.

I stay up until 2am, restless and unsettled.  It is going to be a double fist-ed coffee morning.  One cup in each hand.

In the house where I am staying, I hear a man snoring through the wall.  I used to jab you in the side when you would snore, but tonight the sound makes me feel less alone, and finally I drift off to sleep.

Watch the VIDEO recording of Happy Thought #14 by Shawna & Alexis, recorded from Barbados

My day started out like this.  My daughter crawled in bed with me, and with a sweet little smile she quietly whispered, “You are so special.”

Oh, that every day could begin like this.

Then she said, “I am so happy.”  I asked her, “What makes you so happy?”, and she answered, “Sarah”, her twenty-something cousin who has been showering her with love and attention throughout our vacation in Barbados.

As we emerge from the terrible twos, I see a glimmer of hope.  My nearly-three-year-old has began to make the connection between cause and effect, the result of which is slightly more cooperation.  She also participates in random acts of kindness.  Sometimes she spontaneously quips, “I love you, Mom!”, or the other night at dinner, she turned to her Grandma and said with a big grin, “You’re awesome.”

Edification from the mouth of babes.  As Martha Stewart says, “It’s a good thing.”

Need I say more?

My happy thought today is how blessed I am to live in a land of resources, and that even if I didn’t, simple things, like a clementine crate, can be turned into a park scene, or a galaxy far, far, away.  Just recycle, add paint, and a pinch of wonder.

For more photos, and to read my step-by-step instructions on how to make your own clementine crate scene, click here to check out my featured post on Pardon My Poppet.com

My feet sink under the wet sand, between the shore and the surf.  They are fully buried.  My daughter pours water over them to make them “grow” out of the sand like a flower.  “Look.  There they are” I encourage her.  “You made my feet grow out of the sand.”

I don’t need to think about how I will engage this moment.   I am a participator of it, but lately I have been more of an observer of life.  The gift of this moment causes me to consider the value of both.

With family roots in Barbados, visiting this Caribbean island has always been like coming home.

We drive to a beach house from the airport, and I feel that Barbados is somehow more beautiful than it has ever been.  Maybe it was the bright sunshine compared to the grey weather I had flown in from.  Perhaps it was the expression of culture that sang out from every brightly painted house.  Maybe it was my feeling of gratitude after we all survived a turbulent plane ride, or in general for surviving the past year and finding myself in this wonderful, stress-free moment.  This perfect moment, where everything that is happening, and all the characters in it, made it complete.

This moment on the ocean, this time I have with family, is a gift.  Then I think, I could be living this same moment in a different scene; a scene back home where I would be wrapped up in routine, or busyness, and might not notice how rare and precious this moment still is.  In the routine of every day life I often forget how inestimable each moment is, and what an opportunity it is to be present, spend time with the ones I love, and participate in life instead of just observing it.

It’s strange how sometimes it takes a moment like this, a vacation, a new friend, or a life changing event like a birth or a death, to interrupt my ordinary, and remind me it’s extraordinary.

No two days will ever be the same.  No moment in time will ever come again.  Each day is a gift that will never be offered again.

As the American Cartoonist, Bil Keane, said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”

I wonder what I will unwrap tomorrow…

I used to be a vegetarian for nearly 10 years.  I might have eaten a little chicken or fish if someone else were to cook it.  If I ever saw it raw though, forget it.  My appetite would be turned right off.

When my husband was alive he was a big meat eater.  He cooked all the meat in the house.  If he knew a carnivore was coming for dinner, he’d enthusiastically prepare ribs, or fry up steak, or throw some chicken wings in the oven.  He loved meat.

When he died I thought, if my daughter is going to get the nutrients from meat that I think she needs for her growing development, I have to cook it.

It’s amazing the things I’ve found I can do when there’s no alternative left.  Instead of avoiding the meat section of the grocery store, I found myself salivating over organic chicken and bright red lamb.  As my good friend said, “If God didn’t want us to eat meat, He wouldn’t have made it taste so good!”

If only my late husband could see me now!

This whole scenario reached a new level when a neighbour gave away a pair of tiger print boots.  I eagerly snatched them up.  A few days later I headed out to dinner at a friends’ house.  They knew I used to be a vegetarian, so they warned me they were thinking of having chicken that night.

“No problem” I said.  “I’ll be there with my tiger boots on!”

I don’t know where my sweet, innocent vegetarian side has disappeared to, but as my late husband used to say, “How do you like me now?!”

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today, the third Monday in January, is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the US.  It is “…the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service – a “day on, not a day off.”", according to the Corporation for National and Community Service.

A leader of the civil rights movement in the US, he was assassinated in 1968.  Dr. King was most famously known for his speech titled, I have a dream, a speech that moved the nation.  There is a less known work by Dr. King however that I have gone back to, studied, and read over and over again, that moves my personal humanity to action.  It is called, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.”  I first found a copy of this speech in a text book from college called, Foundations: Society, Challenge and Change, a compilation of varying essays put together by Editor James V. Rudnick.

I focus on this piece today because, if I am to acknowledge death, I must also acknowledge that my time of living is limited.  That drives me to ask myself what I want my life to be about.  Even more so since my husband died.  Settling for nothing less than seeking what I was created to do, and be, is one of the characteristics that was magnified in me, after the death of my husband.  Dr. King’s life showed the impact one individual can have when they choose nothing less than fully engaging in their life’s purpose.

The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life examines the length, breadth, and height of life.  Dr. King based this sermon on the 21st chapter of the book of Revelations, when the apostle John, who was in captivity, had a vision of the future city of God.

Dr. King observes, “…the new city of God, this city of ideal humanity, is not an unbalanced entity but it is complete on all sides.”

Keith Green, the musician, was only 28 when he died.  Christ, the Messiah was 33.  Martin Luther King Jr. was just shy of 40.  Perhaps I will live to see 100.  Perhaps I won’t.  Whatever the case, I want to make my life count, and losses like these help me focus on the value of the limited time I have in this world.

Dr. King summarizes his interpretation of the three dimensions this way, “The length of life as we shall think of it here is not its duration or its longevity, but it is the push of a life forward to achieve its personal ends and ambitions.  It is the inward concern for one’s own welfare.  The breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others.  The height of life is the upward reach for God.  These are the three dimensions of life, and without the three being correlated, working harmoniously together, life is incomplete.”

He describes life as a triangle, with the individual on one end, others on another, and God at the top.

Today I am going to focus most on the length of life.  If I look at my past I see that I had put a strong emphasis on the height of life, reaching for God, and then the breadth of life, reaching out to others.  The time I have been granted over the past year has enabled me to focus on the length of life, reaching inward, to discover what I was created for, so I can bring all three dimensions together to best serve humanity, and God, while fulfilling my own life’s purpose.

The following is a section of Dr. King’s sermon that I have highlighted in my book, and revisited many times over the years.

“…every individual has a responsibility to be concerned about himself enough to discover what he is made for.  After he discovers his calling he should set out to do it with all of the strength and power in his being.  He should do it as if God Almighty called him at this particular moment in history to do it.  He should seek to do his job so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn could not do it better.  No matter how small one thinks his life’s work is in terms of the norms of the world and the so-called big jobs, he must realize that it has cosmic significance if he is serving humanity and doing the will of God.

To carry this to one extreme, if it falls your lot to be a street-sweeper, sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michelangelo carved marble, sweep streets as Beethoven composed music, sweep streets as Shakespeare wrote poetry.  Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street-sweeper who swept his job well.”  In the words of Douglas Mallock:

If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail:

If you can’t be the sun, be a star.

For it isn’t by size that you win or you fail-

Be the best of whatever you are.”

A few years ago, my late-husband Neil and I, went to a conference called True Cities in Hamilton, Ontario.  Neil had significant gifts.  One of them was how incredibly self-aware he was.  One of his greatest adversities was living with mental illness, and the day we visited True Cities I had the honour of witnessing him combine his adversity with his gift, to serve others.

A number of seminars were going on and we had to pick three.  One seminar focused on how to reach out to individuals in the city who were struggling with mental illness.  Neil was often silent about his struggles because he was fearful he would be judged.  That day he sat quietly amoung the participants and listened to them talk.  What he heard was a group of individuals who had a genuine motive to understand the needs of people struggling with mental illness, and a deep desire to connect, and help.  The heart of that group created a safe place.

Then the most beautiful thing happened.  Neil stood up.  “I have a mental illness.”, he said, and he began to talk about his experience with it.  He told stories about his fears, and what he found helpful from others while he was experiencing an episode, and also how individuals could help someone like him during everyday life.

To me, what he did that day was a completion of the triangle Dr. King refers to.  His gift was being self-aware, and Neil used that gift in that moment to serve himself, serve others, and honour God.

But safe places are not always present.  Opposition may abound.  The history books confirm this.  Consider how Martin Luther King Jr’s life ended.  His immense love, passion for peace, and dream of harmony, resulted in his assassination. Such was also the case for John Lennon, John F. Kennedy, and of course, the Son of God.

Each of these were visionaries.  Each of these were dreamers.  Is living a complete life that may end so abruptly, worth it?

Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff shepherded the first Martin Luther King Jr day in Jerusalem in 1984.  During the ceremony he quoted a verse from the story of Joseph, in the Bible.  As his brothers watched him coming toward them they said,  “Behold the dreamer comes; let us slay him and throw him into the pit, and see what becomes of his dreams.”

Resnicoff then said, “From time immemorial, there have been those who thought they could kill the dream by slaying the dreamer, but – as the example of Dr. King’s life shows – such people are always wrong.”

Today I remember Martin Luther King Jr and the complete life he led, his dreams that in death live on, and the complete life he has challenged each one of us to capture.  May we dream big, may we serve God, humanity, and ourselves well.  May we seek the life we were created to live so “…all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street-sweeper.”

Certainly artistic herself, she offered a project to any willing student of the class who opted to paint a famous piece of art on the walls of our history classroom, in lieu of writing an essay.

I was the first to raise my hand.

I picked a painting by the eighth member of the renowned Canadian Group of Seven, Emily Carr.

I fell in love with the vibrancy of her painted West Coast totem poles, and the massive Pacific Red Cedar trees she depicted with life and movement.

Using a projector that reflected a slide of a Carr totem pole painting, I spent the next week painting a 4′ x 2 1/2′ replica, attempting to capture the essence of her masterpiece using acrylic paint on a glossy, cement, classroom wall.

To complete my history project I wore and old fashioned dress, stood in front of the class, and spoke as though I were Emily Carr, reincarnate.

It was a great moment in history…class, for me.  That teacher’s creativity left an impression on me, as I hope my reproduced art did as it looked out amoung countless students over the next few years.

The sheet music of the composer has traveled with me from place to place.  It is so ratty and tattered.  I love how worn it has become.  It shows how well used it has been throughout all these years.

The book of music holds the notes to renditions I had heard my whole life.  They are the songs I knew best from an artist I thought I knew well.

The sound of trumpets, piano, and harmonious voices filled my childhood home.  Friends proudly played the anthem of my childhood, called You are the One, by Keith Green.  But it was the song my mother played when everyone else was gone, the song my sister and I practiced, imitating her talent, that stood the test of time.  The song was The Lord is my Shepherd, also by Keith Green.

If there is one piece of music that has been played again, and again by any of us over the years, there is no doubt it has been this song.

A little girl, I watched my mother’s delicate fingers sweep swiftly over the well used keys of her Weber piano.  I listened, and then practiced.  I could never fully play by sight, nor could I fully play by ear.  Instead I called on both.  For the parts of the sheet music that were difficult to read, I copied the melody I had recorded in my memory.

A few weeks ago I met a friend who is a Keith Green fan.  He asked me if I had ever heard of him.

“Of course.  I grew up playing his music on our piano.”

Later in the week my friend sent me a playlist.  It’s unfathomable to me now, but in 33 years of my life, it never occurred to me that I could hear Keith Green himself singing, and playing his own composed music.  I had never heard the artist sing his own songs, or tell the stories that were behind them.  Then there were songs I had heard growing up.  Songs that were not in our Songs for the Shepherd music book.  Songs that I never realized were his.

I listened intently to the playlist.  That’s what he sounds like., I thought to myself.  Oh, that’s how the piano in this piece is supposed to be played.  I paid attention to the tempo, the pitch, the weight he placed on each key.

My friend had also sent me The Keith Green Story.  Again, I thought I knew him.  What I knew was he was fiercely talented, he loved God, and he died in a plane crash when he was 28.  But of course someone can not be fully known just by the highlights of their life, or even a movie that attempts to fill in the blanks.

I see parallels between this awakening, and my relationship with God.  If God is the melody, the very essence of the music of life, I had played His song with an out of tuned instrument that thought it was right on key.

I had read His sheet music cover to cover.  I thought I knew so much I could speak on His behalf, and I did.

Then I realized my rendition of his melody will always be only an interpretation until I hear the real thing.

The sudden impact of losing someone so close to me, caused me to think of how I approached the song of life.  I took my hands off the piano.  I ended the music.  Full stop.  I had come to view God like my keyboard, in terms of black and white.  But there was a lot of unseen colour in-between.

I went from one extreme to a cautious in-between.  Then one day my unpracticed fingers found themselves upon dusty keys, wanting to play again, wanting to be closer to the song and its Composer.  God is the melody of my life.  To stop playing is to lose the very essence of the song.  But I had made so many mistakes.  I became attuned to being out of tune.

My fingers rested on the keys, not yet pressing down.

Then I considered, perhaps perfection was not the point, and neither was withdrawal.  Perhaps the point was to reach for the melody, explore the hymn and with it find the harmonizing balance between the known, and the unknown, and to practice that standard until the day when I hear the Composer’s true song.

To hear me play a Keith Green song, click on the YouTube video below.

Within the first minute of entering the butterfly zone, a white butterfly with black dots, landed on my bright pink floral-print shirt.  What a treat!

It was cold outside, and the ground was snow dusted, but one would never know it from the heart of their tropical indoors.  Any time I want to feel a little closer to the equator and can’t afford to get away, I think I’ll be heading back here.  Just hand me a fresh green coconut, and you’ll find me vacationing by the indoor waterfall, enjoying the flight of my fluttery friends.

I wrestled for one full year.  Then I quit.  Wrestling was not like any other sport I had ever played.  The wins were exhilarating, and the losses, devastating.

When I played soccer or rugby, any team game, we won as a team, and we lost as a team.  Swimming was a solitary sport, but I was good at that.  I was a strong swimmer and I won many meets.

Then entered my life, wrestling.

I’ll try just about anything once.  So when the opportunity presented itself for girls, the first time ever, to wrestle at my high school, I was game.  I believe in life long learning, a motive that moved this enterprise up on my determined high school bucket list.

I fell in love with the sport itself.  The idea of it.  The strategy required.  The mental preparation.  The rules of engagement.  But when it came right down to it, the stamina of my mind was weak for what the game required.

Within the wrestling circle were my opponent and I.  Win or lose, I was on my own.  There was no team on the mat.  Only a coach yelling tips from the side lines.

My performance weighed heavy on my shoulders.  I came to know the taste of defeat more than once.  Defeat was a hard pill to swallow.

As I think of parenting on my own, I reflect on my wrestling year.  When my husband died I became not only a single parent, but an only-parent.  A journey much harder than I ever expected it to be.  There was no shared custody, no joint decision making.  Parenting transitioned from something I had come to do as a team, to something that landed entirely in my court.  Every decision, good or bad, every parenting discipline choice, every rise and fall was mine to own.  In some ways there was freedom in this.  I no longer needed to check with anyone else when deciding what I wanted to do, or be responsible to anyone else for how I chose to parent.  With the freedom however, came greater pressure, greater responsibility and accountability.  If my parenting choices failed, ultimately, there was no one else to blame, and no partner to share the load.

I look back on the lessons I learned from wrestling, and ponder how they apply to my life today, my life as an only-parent.

Lesson #1) Enlist the support of a good coach.

While I was writing this post, in the small town of Elgin, Ontario, I just so happened to meet Canadian Senior Wrestling champion, Jamie Macari.

After his retirement from wrestling at a young age, he went on to work as a wrestling coach.

When asked what his best advice for wrestling was, he said, “Passion!”

In the words of Nelson Mandela, “There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

If I am going to be a good parent, a great parent, I need to be passionate about this role.  I need to pour into it all I am capable of giving.

Lesson #2)  Use my opponent’s weight against them.

Fifteen years ago there were a lack of competing female, high school wrestlers.  Typically, the rules of wrestling required competitors to be segmented into weight categories.  With too few female wrestlers, any competitor, light or heavy, could be found on the mat with me.

My focus became not only maneuvers, but using a heavier competitor’s weight against them.  If they lunged forward, the best thing I could do was move out of their way.  Their own body weight and momentum could take them to the ground.

I don’t wrestle my two year old daughter of course.  She is only a quarter my size.  But I can apply this lesson to her angry outbursts that seem larger than life.  Our daughter was easy going until her father died.  Then arose a hostility in her that was larger than herself.  It was her grief.

When I showed her pictures of her Dad, or told her stories, she was hungry to hear more.  That pang was quickly followed by outbursts of rage and tantrums.  It was like the deep hunger void within her lashed out, appalled that I could only feed her cardboard crackers instead of real food.  She wanted her living daddy back.  Not just stories and pictures.

Since the definition of a tantrum is the loss of all control, there was no reasoning with it.  I would put her in her own room to sort her aggression out, to exhaust herself, until the coals of her anger cooled and she could be reasoned with again.

Lesson #3) Pick your moves.

I could pour a lot of energy into aggressively charging my opponent, hoping my will would knock them down.  While in competition, or even training, it was this frame of mind where I felt defeated most.  I didn’t understand why.  I was not losing for lack of trying.  Why then, did I lose? Aggression meant I spent a lot of energy with little positive return for my efforts.

The coach I secured for the sport of only-parenting, was an effective child psychologist.  One of the best pieces of advice he gave me was that aggression breeds aggression.  If my goal was to calm my daughter, to train her in the way she should go, my aggression served only to counteract my efforts.

I continued to default to my initial way of reacting, until my own flame burnt out and I had nothing left in me but to speak with low energy.  Instead of fighting her head on, I picked a technique and calmly followed through. Lo and behold, my daughter calmed too.

It went to show I could be given solid advice from my “coach”, but, to my own detriment, I didn’t always put it into practice.

As Macari advised, “Commitment and autonomy are key. No great musician is that way for being a great reciter, but a growing learner, with passion; success in wrestling and life are like that too-taking responsibility for our own development.”

To succeed, I am learning, I must commit to consistent, passionate, assertive (not aggressive) behaviours.  I must always be a learner, and participator, in the unraveling story line of my life as an only-parent, to succeed.

***

There was a moment in my short lived wrestling experience.  It was one of those inspiring, defining moments of life, for me.

I was on the mat.  My competitor faced me.  She was tall and lanky.  There was enough of her to wrap all the way around me, and then some.  I ducked down low and went in for a double leg take-down.  She bent over my back, arms wrapped around my waist, and pulled me to one side.  I was tired.  It was easy to succumb.  I could have drifted to her whim.  Then I had a flash of competitive curiosity.

What if I just stood up right now?

She was bigger than me, taller than me, and had me where she wanted me.  But I had a renewed, passionate state of mind.

Stand up.  I repeated in my head.  Just stand up.  I believed I could, and then, to my opponents irritated surprise, I did.

It was one of the few matches I won that year, and it had a lot to do with my state of mind.  Passion, and a hunger to overcome, where what got me to me feet.

As Macari alluded, a good coach could tell me what to do, but only I could make it happen.

As I  wrestle myself in the circle of life, in the challenge of single parenting as an only-parent, I will try to remember it is only me I have to overcome.

It’s time for something light.  Salad perhaps, for a more balanced diet.

When Neil died I made a movie of memories that was played at his memorial service.  It’s full of fun photos, great memories, and a video of him dancing with his happy baby girl.  If you never met him this is a great way to get to know his lighter side.  If you did know him perhaps these photos, and story line will trigger some personal memories of your own.  Either way, this will help the viewer get to know us better.

So I invite you to enjoy snapshots of my life with Neil before he said his final goodbye.

CLICK HERE to watch our video on YouTube now.