hello/goodbye
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Book Update!
The below post is linked from the new blog I have been keeping since I have put all of these cannons to sleep.
The first part will not be news to anyone who loved my dad and followed the events that lead to the saddest of all sadness. But the last part, I hope, will be happy, welcome news of interest and joy to anyone who loved him as much as we do.
Oceans of love and happiness to you all.
Xo
The last 12 months have undoubtedly been some of the most challenging for me.
On November 26th 2013 my dad was in a car accident. He survived and fought like the champion that he is. But 1 month and 17 days later he passed away, paralyzed from the neck down, due to complications from a broken neck. His humour, strength and calm never left him throughout a time that was devoid of excess hilarity, assuredness and comfort. Pieces of our hearts splintered and shattered on every single one of those difficult days. But we stayed together and we stayed strong. That time was the most difficult and cementing for our family. Never doubt that love can grow stronger, because it always does when you need it the most. I know this as an unequivocal truth.
The life glitches continued to add up even after we said our final goodbye and tried to pick up the pieces of our new and suddenly so different lives.
Over the following months the sudden losses of more close family and friends, scheduling of another open-heart surgery and most recently having the rug of stability pulled from under me in losing my job, has slammed me over and over with the realization that the ‘right’ time is nowhere else but right now.
I am a writer and writers should write books.
I am officially using the gripping power of guilt, in the knowledge that sharing something publicly can envelop you in.
I am starting off with a nibble in preparation for the bigger life bites.
A complete, published, illustrated children’s book about the adventures of Jim Craig, will be available for Christmas this year.
Stay tuned for details of the when, why and how.
Holy shyte I said it.
Now to make it real.
*Breathes deeply into paper bag*
Celebrations & Sunshine
We all travelled to the UK in July to extend and continue the celebration of life, with all of my Dads wonderful friends and family there. Without celebration, then perhaps it’s not a life being truly lived.
I know these cannons have indeed fallen so Continue reading
Update 86 [ jellyfish and snow ]
Having everyone here for the last week was a daub of absolute magic. I love my family to the edge of the universe and back, and perhaps even further. (But not Trudy, because she is dumb, ok maybe her too.) Mum, Trudy and the boys visited and we pocketed sadness and let the dazzling bonfires of togetherness roam free. Bliss. Old friends were met and new ones made, the cycle of cycles persists. Despite the obnoxiously cold temperatures here, in this unrelenting Canadian month of March, we managed to Continue reading
Update 85 [my ma]
Some benefits of a country currently thrashing about in a Carnival time frenzy, are cheap, empty north bound flights. Mum, Trudy and the boys arrived in Toronto this weekend. The air is titivating around an unwelcoming -27 with windchill, Continue reading
Update 84 [the inter-webs]
The expansiveness of the internet never fails to baffle me. It competes only with the vastness of the universe, for sheer incomprehensible volume. My brain hurts trying to consider it all. I first remember hearing about “the information super highway” on a news program in the early 90’s, perhaps I was just slow on the uptake, or too busy begin a kid. But they made this new ‘interweb of information’ sound almost sinister, and I pictured miles upon miles of ‘fibre optic cables’ entwining their way over, under and through absolutely everything like high-tension power Continue reading
Update 83 [Dog Yoga]
I have a Dog Yoga calendar hanging on my wall at work, it has been a tradition for many consecutive years. Sometimes it’s Puppy Yoga, one year was Cat and Kitten Yoga, basically an entire plethora of animals getting their zen on. Adorable animals Photoshopped into elaborate yoga poses…because, well, why not.
Here we see ‘Sunny’ the dog, who is apparently doing a triangle pose variation. Because, Sunny is mad for yoga, clearly.
Update 82 [chocolate hearts]
I have so many amazing people in my life. The love is all around. My friend, Isabel makes chocolates, they are exquisite and devastatingly good. If I could put them all in my mouth, I would. She messaged last night to send me this picture of her latest chocolate hearts – to radiate love and help heal mine. So much love we could start a factory.
I’ve been struck throughout these new unchartered times, with the realization that, the genuine feeling and guttural reaction behind the words “I am so sorry” comes from a very humanly deep-seated want to snuff out suffering, Continue reading
Update 81 [Guest Post: Trudy]
This post is from Trudy, from her heart to the page. I hope we all find a little more peace everyday. This human process of grief is so universal, and the catharsis of letting it go makes the poison a little less bitter. My sister has always been my hero.
My words do not run from my mind to my typing fingers with the speed or eloquence of my sisters, so there’s no need to feel sorry for me ….. I am aware!! However, this is retribution therapy for me, and I know by now (though you wont say it to her face,) you are all totally bored of Tracy’s writing (plus I am the less tattooed, most loved daughter!)
From all accounts, loss of a loved one, the grief, the gut wrenching sorrow and overwhelming sadness ease in time. I’ve been gardening, caring for what feels like thousands of Orchids and fish, doing errands, paperwork and keeping very busy, I guess trying to fill this emptiness left by no Jim. But the emptiness is everywhere on this hill and the time endless. Day to day life will never be the same without the growling noises coming from next door, the hunched outline that would appear on my porch most afternoons, wine in hand or the name to call when ANYTHING needs to be fixed.
Today I drove past the hardware where dad used to order almost everything and this monster reaction started from below my belly button. I realize now my eyes don’t leak incessantly like Tracy’s, instead my body heaves and I can’t breathe. According to mum it hits her when she’s alone, usually driving or on the toilet…..Very inconvenient.
Every moment of those 6 weeks watching dad endure something you cannot even begin to imagine, was incredibly hard. But he was given the grace to endure and I was given the grace for each step and subsequent decision. God (or the universe) is good all the time and for that I am truly grateful.
I am however, still waiting on my memories to leave St Clair and journey with me out of the sad, frozen memories and into the good. I want to remember the incredibly talented hands working the lathe, the huge heart (and feet), the loud mouth shouting “Kareen Kareen” for no apparent reason, the bent back he ignored, the food he cooked, the lame jokes and laughter, the amazing man, whole, not broken, not just a head on a pillow.
Time, time, time.
Nothing can prepare you for this journey.
My home is the same, but not. My boys are the same, but not. Our lives will never be the same, but they will go on. It will get easier, the darkness lighter.
I threatened Tracy numerous times to write a post on her blog, in keeping with our fun sisterly banter, but today’s words have come from a very different place. Hopefully one of healing for me.
Update 80 [human condition]
Trudy and I talk almost everyday, not because we are sisters and we adore each other, but more so that I can get a daily opportunity to check in and ascertain that she is in-fact, still very stupid. Once I can confirm this everyday, all is good in the world. For the past few months the little green bubble, announcing a new message or caller display from Trudy, filled me with dread and foreboding. I could not fathom the next serving of bad news or any more ugly unknowns. I think we both felt robbed of our fun sisterly chats, because in that time every happy we tried to make, was inevitably drowning somewhere in sad. We could not pretend to be whole, while he was not. Our family is not great at being serious, we get that from our dad. The green bubble on my phone this morning was Trudy, suggesting that I write a post, so that she could have something to read tonight. I expect she might potentially reconsider this request in the future.
I am in the process of collecting stories from some of Jim’s amazing friends, bottling glimpses of who he was before I existed. I only hope I can string those words together in a way that does his story a flicker of justice. I knew him for almost 36 of his 69 years and it’s a funny thing to consider the lives and experiences your parents had before you were born. I guess it is easy for ego to map out the timelines for us. I feel like I am seeing pictures of, and hearing stores about a man who, would have certainly been one of my best friends – my best, most unusual, most fascinating, most…weird friend. I still get caught daily, by all the things that I want to ask him and the realization stings my eyes and stabs my throat, every time.
The clarity of perspective offered, after we can no longer have access to something is astounding to me. What I would not give to sit and hear these stories, directly from him again. I would listen, this time, with all of my soul and heart and head and not just my ears. I miss him so much. I know it will get easier with everyday that passes, but I feel certain that no day will ever go by that I will not think about him. Why can’t we have this sort of clarity when the person is still around? When you can talk to them and ask all the questions in the world. To ask them all the every things that you never even knew you wanted to know. The human condition is so cruel. Like trying to blame someone else when you bite your own lip and make it bleed. Our rude, proud, presumptuousness that there will always be tomorrow.
I have never put my conscious, memory forming eyes, on my dads beard-free face. I just simply have no recollection of him, ever not having a beard. It was his thing, like Santa or Abe Lincoln. His friend Don, has awarded me with the most mystifying gift of seeing a much younger man, slimmer, clean-shaven man, who was only just at the very beginning of a condition that clawed his back into a painful contortion; that he spent a lifetime defying the odds against. I wonder what questions he had then, and did they get answered in a way that I know only he can answer mine?
I look at my nephews and try to think of myself back at that age, when everything is a possibility, and the future is as open as the sky. I suppose it serves a great purpose for children to not focus and dwell on sorrow the way adults do. They have an uncanny way of pulverizing it all and laughing away the sadness – that our heavy adult hearts seem to be so endlessly ready to hold onto. Perhaps the more size and weight we collect in life, the easier it is for us to retain and attach to pain, like a fast drying glue. Children are so rubbery when it comes to these things; I need to be more rubbery and be less gluey-sticky-heavy. In the video of us all spreading the ashes, Callum – the youngest and most likely to grow up to be a monster truck driver or alligator wrestler – is running wild and laughing, he is able to heal at a pace that I find most enviable. But perhaps being able to heal that fast involves forgetting, and I never want to forget anything, ever again.