oh the weather outside is frightful

After all, it's not like we have any choice. So, let it snow.

Besides, it's beautiful. It lightens the dark November days, we can make snowballs with it, and it makes everything seem more like Christmas. (Which, like all dates this year, is flying towards us with heart-stopping speed. Fifteen more days! What the !?!?)

Soon, soon, I'll be getting on a train to Montreal. I'll be spending Christmas with some dear French-Canadian family. It's funny how life works: four years ago, I was dating a guy who lived in Montreal. We were happily making plans for me to spend Christmas with him in the city, but then life happened and we ended up breaking up. Four years later - after life sent me down other paths - I'm getting my Christmas in Montreal.

What is it about Christmas in a city that gets us going? At least, a city with old buildings and snow, a sense of history and a sense of fabulous interiors. I think it has something to do with our imaginations, with picturesque scenes in our heads of snowy streets and big Christmas trees in squares. I'll go and see, and report back, shall I?

*******

In other news, a family friend died suddenly on Tuesday. Jeremy Frith was a farmer, a poet, a father, a husband, a friend. He was larger than life and certainly a good candidate, as Bill said the other day, to live forever. I kind of thought he was going to.

The news has been shocking. How could someone like that just be gone?

Just like that, I guess. And we're left to make sense of it, or at least to make sense of our feelings, which are stormy in the wake.

To read more about Jeremy, go to Susan Zettell's blog.

just enough is plenty, part two

So.

Last Sunday, May 3rd, was the day of Emily's memorial. The weather cooperated, and we had a lovely day for it, sunny with some clouds, and mildly warm. I went out to Uisge Ban Falls Provincial Park early, around 1, and started setting up. On a picnic table I arranged a vase of daffodils, a guestbook to be signed and sent to her family, and an old peanut-butter bucket modified to take the Free-Will Offering. (Meaning, I cleaned it, labelled it, and cut a hole in the top.) The money collected will be donated to the Every Woman's Center in Sydney.

People began to gather, although there were also plenty of people coming out to hike in the park, so I was never sure if a car rolling in contained people there for the ceremony, or not. However, by the time 2:30 came around, a crowd of fifty-two people milled about, talking to one another. Some sat at the picnic table and wrote in the guestbook. I went around with the seed packets (see above photo) and the programs, greeting people and telling them I was glad to see them there.

2:40: I cleared my throat and spoke up above everyone. "May I have your attention please?" Then I directed everyone to a little clearing just off the parking area, and asked them to arrange themselves in a circle. I joined them and had a split-second of waiting for it to start, before remembering that, hey, it's ME who starts this one! It's ME who welcomes everyone and gets things going. So, I did.

Reverend Lloyd Murdock was up first. He was dressed in dark-blue robes, with a long shawl in a blue and green tartan, and a heavy silver Celtic cross around his neck. He read some parts of scripture, including the piece from Ecclesiastes, "To everything there is a season," and led us in a Christian prayer.

Then two singers from the local ecumenical choir sang a hymn, "Here I Am Lord." Then myself and another woman read out three pieces which Emily's family had written in her memory. (Her family lives on the West Coast and wasn't able to be here at this service.) Annie, her mother, had written about Emily's birth and toddler-hood. Rick and Betty, Emily's father and stepmother, wrote a poem where the recurring line was "We can't cry hard enough." Juniper, Emily's half-sister, wrote a little letter to Emily, saying how much she missed her.

Then we opened up the circle to anyone who wanted to speak, to share memories. One person spoke, then another, then another. There were six in all who braved it. The rest listened respectfully. One man of Mi'kmaq heritage sang two healing songs of his tradition. Another man, a blues musician, pulled a harmonica from his pocket and played an impromptu lament. All who spoke talked of Emily's beautiful smile, and of her even-more-beautiful soul. She was a nurturer, a gardener, who nurtured others and was just beginning to nurture herself.

We planted the trees last. Mike, a dear friend of Emily's and now of mine, silently and determinedly dug a small hole, thenwe planted the bare-root white pine sapling. I had brought some compost mix to fertilize it, so we tucked some of that around it, packed down the earth and watered the tree. The man who had sung the Mi'kmaq songs blessed the tree with tobacco, and laid some rocks around it. Others brought little polished stones or shells. Then we got out the dibble and planted the twenty-five spruce seedlings.

Eventually it was just me and Mum and a few others left. I sat at the picnic table and let out a long sigh. Now, I could relax, and I could let it all sink in. And to be honest, it is still sinking in. I am so grateful that I was able to do this, and that everyone took part, and that Emily touched our lives even as briefly as she did. But I think I'm still too close to it to really know what it means for me.

However, I do know that it turned out, as I knew it would, that "just enough" WAS plenty. Fancy that.

Below: Emily's white pine tree.

just enough is plenty

How do you memorialize a person? Especially someone you didn't know well?

This is the question I'm pondering these days. It has been at the back of my mind for several months now, as I've been planning a memorial service for Emily Cardwell, but it's really coming to the fore now.

The memorial is this Sunday, at 2:30 PM, at the Uisge Ban Falls trailhead and parking lot. In some ways the Memorial has really planned itself, as people have given willingly of time and ideas, and luckily what to do at a memorial for a girl who was a gardener is nice and easy, and lovely as well: plant some trees. Give away some seeds. Be outside in nature.

All the same, I wrestle with this. I want to do five million wonderful things in this person's memory, which isn't actually possible! So I need to keep reminding myself to keep it simple. We honor her memory by simply gathering, by saying the words we will say. It doesn't have to be an over-the-top spectacle to be sufficient. In fact, maybe I'll make this my motto: "Just enough is plenty." (It's the title of a book my family loved when I was a child.)

I'll definitely write an update next week about how the memorial went. In the meantime, if you'd like to leave a comment, I'd love to know about a memorial service you went to that really touched you, or about some neat idea you've had to memorialize someone.

"fall on your knees": a true story

Dec. 6th, Saturday afternoon

Charlie, a man in his seventies, and I are walking around his orchard. It's a cold afternoon, the temperature hovering around zero, and my bare hands operating my camera are getting that dry, red look to them, and are starting to get a cold cramp. We're talking apple trees, grafts, varieties. It's pleasant, and the sun is shining.

I hear someone calling a dog, insistently. Then I realize that a woman is calling the old man's name, and it's his neighbour, whose house is on the other side of a thin band of small trees. We walk over to her, and he asks what she's after. At first she asks about another man, who owns property near Charlie's, out in Big Baddeck. It comes out that what she's after is information about a young woman, Emily, who also lives in Big Baddeck. Emily's been in a bad car accident, and the RCMP need to find her next of kin. Emily's from a Western province, and though she's been living here for two years, no-one really knows much about her family out west.

"Emily Cardwell?" I ask. I met Emily earlier this year, at the IT Center in Baddeck. I was talking about organic vegetables with a friend one cubicle over, and Emily joined in. We had an instant connection, two young women who want to make our lives in Cape Breton, dealing with the earth.

In the fall, after a busy summer where we didn't see each other, I saw her walking down the street, and we had another conversation, our second. I told her about the writers' group I was starting, and asked if she wanted to join. She said she was going back to school to complete her GED, and she might take part in the group, to get feedback about her essay-writing. I emailed her several times with group information but never heard back. This last month I'd been thinking about her, thinking I would try and get in touch again, see how she was doing.

Now here I am, standing in the sunny cold, talking to the old man and his neighbour about Emily, about where she worked, about the times we all saw her. She was in a bad car accident, she's still alive, they've taken her to Halifax, she's unconscious. The facts are rattled off and we all shake our heads. "Poor little thing," says the neighbour, whose husband used to fix Emily's car.

The car accident, in turns out, was after Emily's own car had broken down and she accepted a ride from friends, three young men. The men had been drinking, and the car crashed. The men are fine, but Emily's in bad shape.

I tell the neighbour what I know about Emily's friends and contacts, about who might know more about her family. The neighbour turns and goes back inside to make more phone calls, and Charlie and I turn back to the apples. I feel stunned, and it takes me a few minutes to get back on track.


Dec. 7th, Sunday night

After a blustery, wet, warm day, it's turned into a blustery night. (Thank you, Milne - and Winnie the Pooh.) Mum, Monty and I head out to Big Baddeck to a choir concert to be held in an old church. I'm thinking about Emily, as is half the town. The news of her crash is buzzing between people, in conversation at the library on Saturday evening, in the coffee shop on Sunday morning, and now over the pews of the church as we sit waiting for the concert to begin. It seems everyone's connected to her in some way - they might have been served by her at the coffee shop where she worked, or they might know any of the people involved. Each person shakes their head when they hear the news, and says something along the lines of "Poor dear, hope she makes it". Since I heard the news I've been sending silent prayers to God, a kind of monologue of "Please, please, please, God, keep her safe, let her recover, please, please, please, please..."

The men's choir puts on a wonderful concert. Their voices swell to the rafters of the church, and even though there isn't as much swaying and verve as I might like, as you might find in an African American choir, there is spirit and soul. They sing "O Holy Night", my favorite carol.

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Til He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.

When they get to the chorus, I can't help but sing along. It is my favorite part of the song, and my whole life long, no matter what the state of my faith, these soaring lines have spoken to me of surrendering to rapture. To fall on your knees is to be utterly affected, to devote yourself to the experience. O night divine, O night divine.

Fall on your knees! O, hear the angels' voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.

The minister, a woman, asks us to bow our heads in prayer. I do, and close my eyes, sending up my inner monologue to God. "Please, please, please, send all the love in this church to Emily, please God, please..."


Dec. 11th, Thursday night

It's been a long, rough week. It seems it doesn't rain but it pours, both literally and figuratively! We've had yo-yo weather, going from snow to freezing rain to wet rain, back to freezing rain again, the temperature going from minus five to plus ten, over and over. Other emotional matters rear their heads. I hear somewhere in there that Emily is doing well, that there was surgery to relieve the swelling on her brain, that although her neck and pelvis are both broken, she has feeling in her hands and feet. She is still unconscious, the doctors are intentionally keeping her under to prolong stillness, and healing.

Thursday night I'm making cookie dough, for more Christmas baking. I don't have to do Christmas baking, but I like it, and I'm mixing butter, cream cheese, flour and icing sugar together with my hands. Mum calls a friend who is connected to the person Emily was house-sitting for, and I hear her saying, "Oh, no..."

"What, what?" I say, turning, my hands covered in dough. Mum closes her eyes, puts her hand up and shakes her head, which is what she does when she's trying to listen to a phone conversation and I'm bothering her.

I turn back to my dough. I hate hearing that there's something wrong but not knowing what it is. I work the dough, and I wait, hearing more murmurs of sympathy. Finally Mum gets off the phone. She's crying, tears wetting her cheeks. Even though Mum never met Emily, this ordeal has affected her a lot.

"They've taken her off life support," she says. "About twenty minutes ago." Anger rushes through me, and I'm surprised at it. Why am I angry? It comes to me: the last news of Emily I had sounded so positive, it sounded like she might even make it, despite huge odds. She had feeling in her hands! She deserved a huge chance, and now they're just taking her off life support? What do they know? God! We prayed, we prayed and prayed, and now they're just going to let her die?!? While Mum cries, I can't. I work the dough, over and over. My jaw is set.

But I haven't been in the hospital these past three days, like her family has been, like the doctors have been. I really don't know anything about what has been going on down in Halifax. I want Emily to live, yes. I want her to live and come back to Cape Breton, and garden again, and eat arugula, because she once told me she loves arugula. I want her to live her dream. And now, that's not going to happen.

"Do we have a baseball bat?" I ask Mum. "I really want to HIT something with a baseball bat!"

I go out to the porch and find, in the firewood, a chunk of alder that has a small piece sticking out of it like a handle. I get on my gumboots and go out into the warm, wet and windy night, and walk to where I know there are some tall, dying spruce trees. I don't want to hit a live tree, I don't want to do damage to something living. I feel bad even hitting a dead tree, knowing there is still some life in it, but I do it. I stand back, brace my legs and swing. The first thwack is louder than I thought it would be. I swing again, and again and again. I try yelling as I do it, but that feels strange, naked. Even though there's really no-one within hearing distance, I keep my shouts inside.

After a good number of swings, I stop, panting. The tears start, and don't stop. The words that come out of me seem so cliche, as they are words I've read in books or seen in movies but never, not until this moment, truly understood. "It's not FAIR!" I say, as I sob. "It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair..."


Dec. 17th, Wednesday night, a week later

It's snowing, white gently falling and filling the scenery. There has been rain and snow, both, since last Thursday. The week that has passed feels like an entire month, no kidding!

Last Friday, I was listening to the CBC, when the news announcer read that a 26-year-old woman died after complications following a car accident. "Emily Grace Cardwell," he read. It was official. Her body died.

Her family allowed her organs to be donated, so there are some people out there who have new life because of this. But that's not enough to assuage the anger, for those of us who cared about her. The trite phrase, "It was meant to be," makes me want to hit something, again! Luckily I haven't been hearing it very often.

In the time that has passed since last week, I've talked to several people about her, about her life and her death, and about holding a memorial for her, come springtime. We'll wait until we can plant something, in her spirit. I might plant some arugula! There's also been talk about making a donation in her name to a woman's shelter, based on some unfortunate events of her life.

It continues to feel unreal, like maybe reality is playing a sick joke on us all. I keep thinking, "Well, we can just go back in time and change it," and then realize that no, we can't go back in time, no, this really happened. Yes, this young woman really died, yes, all our lives are forever changed, and we have no choice about it. That's how time works.

Meanwhile, it's coming onto Christmas, and we move forward, for better and for worse. We bake treats, we send Christmas cards. We sing carols. I still love "O Holy Night", but I will sing it with sadness this year. I'll sing it for Emily.

remembering

Remembrance Day when I was growing up meant assemblies in the school Gym with tinny recordings of the Last Post, and a lot of boring speeches. I've always been pro-peace and anti-war, and I saw the ceremonies then as glorifying what had been just-plain-awful, muddy trench battles. As well, I felt that that we, the Western victors, were free to talk about how these wars had been waged to maintain our way of life, but that it would likely be a different kind of ceremony on the other side of the Atlantic.

I left High School and didn't have to go to assemblies anymore. I traveled and for two years Remembrance Day didn't show up on my radar.

Then I went to university. In my first year, two friends asked if I wanted to go with them down to the cenotaph ceremony, in Fredericton. It was kind of like someone asking me to go to church with them - I respected their doing it, but I didn't do it myself. But I said yes.

So we went - on a windy, overcast November day, three young women wearing our poppies, and we stood with the crowd and watched the soldiers march in. We listened to the recital of "In Flanders Fields" and watched the wreaths being lain. We stood and thought our separate thoughts during the two minutes of silence. Afterward, we found a small pub and had pints and "Montreal" style sandwiches, which are made up of three inches of sliced meat and some token bread. It felt very British, very "working-girl", and I liked it.

The next year we went again, going for lunch again afterward. For the next two years there were valid reasons, which I can't remember now, why I didn't attend a ceremony. But then this year came around and I read about the service my village was planning, down at the cenotaph beside the Royal Canadian Legion Hall. I called some neighbours to see if they were going, and if I could go too.

So today found me standing in the crowd, wearing my poppy pin, and bracing myself against the cold wind that came up off the lake. Yes, the wreath-laying took far too long and was far too disorganized. And yes, the Last Post came out of a little stereo that someone had hooked up to a big speaker. But its simple, lonely, repetitive melody, and the crowd standing in silence, gave me goosebumps just like every other time.

I go to the ceremonies now as a grown-up, not a bored and restless schoolgirl. I go to pay my respects for the thousands of soldiers who I will never know, whose life story got caught up in war, who went and fought and saw atrocities I am lucky to know nothing about. I still don't believe war is necessary, I still think there are so many other ways to get things accomplished, and my feelings are still murky when it comes to "fighting for democracy".

But I do think we all need to remember. Remember history in general, remember that the fallen soldiers were people, like you and I, with lives and families and lovers and secrets and favorite foods, remember that war can happen so easily, and yet destroy so much. Remember, and teach children to remember.

On a bumper sticker I saw yesterday:

"War is expensive... Peace is priceless."

who ya gonna call?

Well, it's November again!

And that exclamation point is about all the excitement I can muster.

I have to admit I am suffering from a bad case of "bad news": a dear professor of mine from St. Thomas was killed just before the weekend. There is a link at the bottom of this post to a CBC article detailing what the police have released about the case, and which also talks about Professor John McKendy's life as a worker for peace. It's a terrible tragedy all around.

Compounding my sadness is a general exhaustion due to a busy weekend, which, although wonderful, brought more emotional strain. Suffice it to say: I'm beat. I need retreat.

However, there are still good things. There is a new dart board in my life - and let's face it, what every woman needs is a good dart board. Mum brought home some half-price cheese and chocolate from a local deli that closes every winter. Also, as well as plenty of crying, I've been doing lots of laughing. There's something about doing lots of crying that also loosens my "humour muscles", and so I get silly.

Which is why, when I woke up this morning and changed my calender to November, I saw the drawing and immediately decided on captions for it. Once I'd made them, it was only a matter of photographing it (because there's very little that happens in the run of a day that I do NOT photograph, haha), and sharing it with you.

(Incidentally, this photo also provides a great example of a script typeface, and I don't mean my own handwriting. Yes, that's right, I'm still mad for fonts!)

To Grandmaman, from whom this calender was a gift, many years ago: I hope you don't mind my defacing the illustration. It was for my sanity.

I hope you are all well. And if you're going through something rough, may you deface a calender, and enjoy it.


***


For more details about John McKendy's life and death, see the following article:

"RCMP close case in Fredericton professor's slaying."

Isabel Noble 1923—2008

A few years ago I asked my readers to list their five favorite things, with an emphasis on these being simple things, the kinds of things that are so small as to be almost overlooked.

My grandmother, Isabel, wrote these:

1. The smell of Coffee in the morning.
2. A piece of toast with blackberry jam to go with the coffee.
3. Your dear husband of 59 years sitting across the breakfast table [my grandpa].
4. Looking out the window at the spring blooms or the fall colors or a newly fresh snow.
5. Being fortunate to have lived 82 years and to have enjoyed so many pleasures.

My Granny loved the simple things in life, the little things, and this list came as no surprise to me at the time. After all, these were things about which she often wrote to me, and I to her. We would both exclaim about how wonderful the smell of Autumn was, and how the snow looked so pretty, and how uplifting it was to see the signs of spring, at last. But now, looking at her list of five things, it is like talking with her again. It is a comfort to think of her drinking coffee, eating toast with blackberry jam, sitting with my Grandpa in their New Jersey apartment. And these five simple things again take on new meaning as they are now a fragment of my Granny, now that she's gone.


*


My Granny passed away last week, last Saturday, after spending a month in and out of hospital fighting respiratory failure. She had smoked during her whole life, pretty much, and even though she quit in her 80's, the smoke caught up with her. The last few years found her never far from her oxygen machine or her nebulizer, and she was finding it hard to breathe and needing to sleep more and more. But even though things were rough, Granny always seemed to see the positive, urging her grandchildren to live "one day at a time", and finding joy in visits with loved ones, as well as watching old musicals from her youth, keeping up with entertainment news, doing the crossword on Sundays, and of course writing emails.

I must admit that writing this is quite odd. It has been a week since she was alive, and to me, her death hasn't really become reality yet. To write about someone in past tense when your brain still believes them to be as alive as they were a month ago, well, it's an odd sensation. I feel like I could still send her an email and she would receive it, and write back with her gracious, yet peppy style.

It's like my aunt said: "We're all feeling a real void in our lives now."


*


My Granny, to those of you who have read this blog over the years, was a familiar name in the comments box. She was computer savvy and loved reading my blog, and writing comments. Although she took umbrage with some of the swear words we "young people" use, she still kept reading, and encouraging me to write. When I came home last year to take some time off, she called me up one day, and said,

"Now that you have all this time, you should start writing a novel!" Although I knew that writing a novel was one of the last things I needed to do right then, I smiled and said, "Yes, maybe, Granny!" And no doubt I tempered it by saying, "Well, if I do write a novel one day, I'm definitely going to dedicate it to you!" This was an exchange we had more than once over the years.

The next day she called back. "You know, I was thinking, and I don't want you to feel pressured to write a novel, just because I said to."

"Oh, well, thanks, Granny... I didn't really feel pressure, but... thanks for thinking about me!"

"Well, I just thought, you're home to rest, you should do whatever makes you happy, you know? No pressure."

Both Granny and Grandpa have been such wonderful patrons of mine over the years, telling me with grandparental pride how much my writing impressed them, and how certain they were that I will one day be a published author. And who knows? Perhaps one day I will be. When I am, I know to whom I'll be dedicating my first book!

"To Isabel Noble, who always said I should write this novel."

*

Granny, I'm going to miss you so much. Huminbean won't be the same without you—thank you for being part of it.