One Year

Tuesday is the one year anniversary of my Mom's breast cancer diagnosis. I am so proud of the year she's had. We had lost nearly all hope in September and October, only to see her bounce back so fast we were left breathless with awe. I am grateful for all the compassionate doctors and nurses, and my dearest friend, a talented physiotherapist, who helped Mom steal back her mobility and energy.

All our carefully carved out schedules were thrown out the window and instead became (by choice) consumed in the journey of this year. Which meds? How much metastases? Is the oxygen tube pinched? Every visit is precious even when kids are wild. The kids remain partially oblivious to the darkness that was gnawing at her bones, which, oddly, showed up as blinding brightness on scans. As the light fades to pinpoints on scans, the darkness retreats from her bones. Hope for more months. Hope for more years. Hope that the baby who was a newborn this time last year will get to visit and laugh and remember his Grammie too.

So here we are. Twelve months so far of snatching moments with her, struggling to create memories for the smallest ones, and working always to push down the burning, aching feeling that threatens to steal the joy we are squeezing out of each day. We have shared birthdays (some of which she was too sick to remember), witnessed my parents renew with poignant truth their vows of nearly 40 years (in sickness and in health...), and even watched her walk down the aisle with my oldest brother at his wedding in PEI. We have attended plays at the local theatre (whose closing anthem still carries us out the door with smiles on sun filled days), shared stories about bees, attended Mass for Christmas morning (after they said she'd never see another Christmas), saw my eldest daughter read at Mass twice, relaxed on a bench while the kids played in the yard and kept watch on a blooming blueberry bush.

I don't know where we will find ourselves this time next year. That's for God to take care of. What I do know is that He and my Mom will keep surprising all of us. I know that this journey is one worth walking because the company is great. I know that in the years to come when things get harder again, we will look back and see the incredible miracle that every moment has been since August 19, 2013. We will be grateful that God is gentle with our hearts and plans the manner and means of all things. Most of all, we will cry out that He is good, He is our one defense and righteousness, and bless His Holy Name.

A Long Year

It's hard to believe it, but my baby is going to have his first birthday at the end of the month. It has been a joyful, wild, and at times difficult year. He has been a source of constant delight to our whole family. The darling of his brothers and sisters, he is full of smiles at almost all times. He seems days away from starting to walk, although I suspect like his older brother he will wait as long as possible to actually take his steps without a walker. My baby, if I can still call him that, spends most of his day getting into mischief and tearing around the main level with the help of a variety of walking devices and anything he can stand upright with and push for a distance. Just the other day he stood up and pushed the kids' little table clear across the room. We're constantly having to pull things up out of his long reach. A delightful conundrum to see him so mobile and curious.

During the first year of his sweet life, the greater life of our family has been turned on its ear. Our usual routine has changed dramatically and certain things, like our housework, have fallen completely apart. Our once moderately untidy home seems almost beyond reprieve. We're still co-sleeping (a first for us for this length of time) so his nursery has become the de facto storage room (that and every other closet, empty corner and flat surface). Our project will be to re-claim that, hopefully before his first birthday. Already this week we've re-organized the girls' room, adding back in the dressers we left out when we moved into our townhouse. We did that primarily to keep the kids from tossing all their clothes on the floor. With their bunk bed and newer laminate flooring their room looks brand new. All it needs is a coat of paint and baseboards to complete the effect. Next on our list is to re-organize baby boy's room so we can slowly get him in his crib. We want him used to sleeping in the crib before we move it down the hall to his brothers' room. That'll happen once we lay the new laminate in there and set up their bunk bed. Another year of big changes ahead.

Not to say that all the changes are due to our wee baby boy. Although his birth caused the usually fog of exhaustion, that wore off somewhere around the 4 month mark. While we were dealing with new baby love, my husband has been doing battle with his chronic illnesses (diabetes and gastroparesis). Of late he's been fighting the most persistent and long lasting case of cellulitis in his leg. Poor man works so blessed hard for us, and despite all the setbacks his health causes, he can't be kept down. God continues to bless us and we're fighting hard to keep our joy. The other reason for our topsy turvy year has been my Mom's terminal cancer diagnosis. She is daily doing battle for her health and despite an early prognosis of only a few months, she has been steadily improving her health and her prognosis. It has reminded our little family how precious every day is with our loved ones. We have been trying to spend two or more days a week visiting her, providing as much entertainment as exhaustion I suspect. The bonus has been of course more time with my Dad and brother (beloved and doting Uncle). The kids are being blessed with lots of fond memories they can treasure for their whole life.

What should have brought our family down has been a season of miracles, both big and small. God only knows what the second year of our baby's life will bring, but I trust in His mercy. He is good, and while circumstances may not always seem bright, I feel His loving care surrounds our family, protecting us.

The Drama

We all have some of this in our lives. Drama. Sometimes it's ours. Sometimes we get swept up in someone else's drama. Somebody's fighting with someone else. Someone's sick. Someone's nauseated and can barely function (ahem). All flavours and varieties of drama swirl all around us. It's up to us how deeply we engage in the drama, and how we deal with it.

My folks and in particular my Mom's family are experiencing a very special brand of drama. Last year my grandfather passed away. A year later, they're still working hard to settle his estate. We've each had a tough time trying to let go of the material things left behind. Every few weeks I get a call from my Mom telling me about some new she's found tucked away amongst decades of possessions. A box full of letters between my grandparents, baby clothes from when I was little, tools from his shop, and the list goes on. As she clears out the house basically alone (her sister lives a province away), she's facing the daily battle of pleasing everyone and giving away what is left over. After a year, they've finally found a buyer for his house, so now she's been forced to clear things out more rapidly than I think she's ready. I find myself fielding more calls than I have in a while, and I'm happy I can be there for her. My job in all of this is to be a sympathetic ear while reminding her she's doing an amazing job. I don't look forward to the day when I find myself in the same position 100 years from now.

I wasn't terribly close to my grandfather. I loved him. I still love him. But I found him incredibly frustrating. There are days when I see my Mom struggling so hard to make things work that I get so angry. He couldn't even make his passing easy on the family. I have to take a step back and remind myself that he wasn't really prepared to die. His will wasn't up to date. When he passed, his new wife lived in his house for a few weeks before she moved out. When I came with my mother to help in the initial clean-up, the house looked like he had walked out to go to the store and simply never come back. I'm not sure what I expected, but when I saw one of his coats hanging in the closet my heart sank into my stomach.

While I'm home with the kids I have no problem extricating myself from all the drama, even when my Mom calls me in need of some sort of anchor in what feels like an out of control place. I have moments where I find myself lost in it. I give in to those moments deeply because they are necessary. For example, I got a pair of beautiful end tables from his house this past week, and my Mom hadn't had the chance to clear out the contents. In the drawer that would have been facing the wall, I found a stack of anniversary cards from my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. The stack was so huge it had to be crammed in the little drawer. Underneath all the cards was a handful of pictures of the two of them, by the look of them probably from their 25th anniversary (Grampie still had hair, that says a lot). I was overwhelmed by the surprise. He had gone to such lengths to erase most traces of my grandmother from his house when he remarried. But there, tucked away safely, was a communal memory from the year 2000. The year before my grandmother's Alzheimer's started completely taking over. The last year she was herself. He saved one last personal memory of her when she still was making memories, and tucked them away safely. I couldn't keep my emotions separate in that moment.

I can take the drama. I live with toddler drama. Nothing compares to that. But sometimes, when the kids are in bed, I need to take a moment to embrace the drama and emotion so that I can then let it go. Once I'm a little stronger after coming through the anger, tears, joy, and acceptance, I can be a better support to those who don't have the liberty to just walk away when things get too tough. 

Long Way Home

This weekend we finally did it. We went for the "big" road trip down to the country to see my grandfather's house. My Grampie passed away 6 months ago, and I haven't set foot in his house for several years. He and I had what I can only call a complex relationship. I was his only granddaughter, and despite the fact that he had two daughters of his own he often seemed unsure as to how to deal with me. My Grammie would take me to the kitchen and bake with me for hours, finding little tasks for me to "help". I find myself doing the same with my kids these days. While I was in their old home I found the toddler sized apron I used to wear while I helped her still tied up in the same spot in her kitchen where I left it when I outgrew 20 years ago. Through all my turbulent times with the family, I have a core of sweet memories with my Grammie I can turn to.

My Grampie and I, on the other hand, had a more complex relationship. I remember as a child I wanted so badly to be his shadow. I tried rabbit trapping (horrifying memory here involving a not quite dead rabbit being skinned. We had it for supper that night. Ew.), fishing (my fish were often thrown back, in retrospect probably because he did a lot of catch and release), woodworking (this turned into me splitting wood unattended for their fire place at the age of... 9???) and water sports on the lake (I was just lousy at this. Hands down spazz). I felt so often that I wasn't of much interest to him. My brothers and cousins were more exciting, interesting, and at the very least far less squeamish about all his favourite activities. They had no problem baiting their own hook, understood sports, and had no qualms with hunting and trapping.

As the years went on and we didn't visit their house as often, my memories turn to he and my Grammie dropping by our house when they came to town, usually with small gifts and some sweets. I would do my best to be polite, but would do my best to flee the scene. After my Grammie passed away it was even worse. He would come to town with his new wife, a very sweet lady, and want to talk to me for as long as he could grab my attention. Part of me felt guilty. I knew I should treasure my time with him. I'd already lost 3 three grandparents, never having time to really ask all the questions and hear all the stories I know they had to tell. The other part of me saw him as a sort of anachronism. There he was, exactly the same as I remembered him as a kid (he aged very well), but not in his familiar setting. He hadn't changed, but I had changed immensely. We were worlds apart.

On the long drive (with 4 kids, ninety minutes in a confined space is a long time) to the old family home, I sat in the passenger seat trying to cobble together my memories to make some sense of the man. At his funeral, droves of people had sang, cried and laughed, soaking in their memories of this man. He was a prankster, a father figure, a dedicated volunteer in his community, and the life of any party. Stories of his various mishaps and stunts made the rounds, both during the eulogy and around the over-full tables at the reception. Family and friends co-mingled, impossible to distinguish at his funeral just as they had been in his life. His funeral had been a glimpse at the man I wanted to know, but had found unreachable. The mistakes he'd made with me, and other members of my family, clouded my desire to take the steps to peel away his rough exterior to find this diamond of a man everyone else saw.

As we came in sight of the old house I'd spent every summer at for over a dozen years, the backdrop of so many memories, I felt a lump in my throat when I realised Grammie wasn't spying us from the kitchen, yelling for Grampie to come help us bring in our bags. We weren't coming to stay, we were coming to take one last look. As we walked through their oddly empty house, littered with the legacy of their lives, I stumbled over memories and possibilities. Here were the measuring cups my Grammie used to let me fill for our little baking projects. There was Grampie's collection of tools old and new, still as he left them the last time he'd been healthy enough to go in his shop. As we glanced through the old upstairs bedrooms, we found a stack of letters, tied together with a faded yellow bow. After noting that they were addressed to my Grammie (by her maiden name), I absently tucked them in our bag, along with my old childhood apron and a few oddments we collected from around the house.

When we got home and got the kids to bed, exhausted from their long drive and overfull of snacks provided by my Mum, their Grammie, I settled down to take a look at the thick stack of faded letters, mostly written on White Rose Oil Company stationary. Glancing through it became clear very quickly these were the love letters my Grampie wrote to my Grammie over 60 years ago, before they were married. They were living in different towns because of his work, and would get together every weekend. These letters, from about a 6 month period, were written once and sometimes twice a day. I feel a little guilty reading them, but then I can't resist. He wrote exactly the same way he talked, with all the funny little tics and expressions I can hear slipping off his tongue in his old, familiar voice. In these letters I hear the man, while reading the words of his love, devotion, and humour mixed together seamlessly. Old stories I would have loved to hear, I get to read in his familiar style.

When I thought I no longer had time, I at last have found him. Here in this carefully saved stack of letters I am reading the soul of the man. His hopes for the future, his devotion to the woman he loved until death parted them (and beyond), all mixed in with the kind of humourous banalities he was know to ramble on about in his later life. For example, more than one mentions getting his pants hemmed or his hair cut (less of a concern as he got older and swiftly lost all his hair).  Somehow, after all these years of struggling to find a sweet memory to focus on, I have in my hands a way to keep the best parts of him, the parts I loved and mourned at his funeral. Any time that I miss him, I can take out one of his letters and hear his voice in my mind, wooing his sweetheart and dreaming of a life well lived.