Friday 1 April 2005
6:54 p.m.

It was a sleepy day. First Trinket arrived, weepy and pale, around seven. Then my neck thing wouldn’t go away till three or four o’clock, so she spent the day watching cartoons and playing on the floor beside me while I let the drugs not solve my problem very well.

Went over to Dad’s to give him a break so he could go do a few things this afternoon. Mom is confused and sleepy — too much methadone, we hope, and are cutting it back.

Joan and Trinket just arrived for pizza and movies, so I’m off upstairs.

xoxo
etc

email:

Wednesday 30 March 2005
9:46 p.m.

Had this in an email from Emil and Everett’s dad today:

“They’re both becoming quite self-sufficient. Making their own breakfast. Cleaning up after themselves. Even Ev cleans up around the house. We go grocery shopping and they’re picking out fruit and veggies. They’ve hardly touched their Easter stuff. Went to the mall yesterday and Ev was complaining. He hates that shopping stuff. I told him to turn around and look at Emil and see how happy he is, struttin' down the mall. After that he didn’t mind being there.
Whatever you’re doing keep it up.”

Also heard from Doug in response to yesterday’s photos of Mom:

“She is such a doll in her picture with the angel food cake.”

He’s sure got that right. She is a doll. A very tired one, since her birthday. Has been sleeping a lot more than usual. She thinks she might have just done more than she ought to, being excited about sewing projects and such. Her home/palliative care nurses say it may be the progression of the disease. We hope it is only that her dose of painkilling methadone, upped 15 ml a day last week, has slowly kicked in and it is a bit too much for her. Doctor Don will cut the increase back a bit and watch what happens.

Joan and I went to Cats last night and were so bored (and shocked at being bored) that we left at the intermission. Before the long-anticipated show, we went out for a delicious meal. It will be more memorable in our future than Andrew Lloyd Webber’s long-running musical. OOF. I’m blaming it on the seating, for when I saw Bob Dylan and B.B. King from too far away, I did not enjoy their concerts much. Mind you, I was not a big fan of their music to start with.

We were supposed to have pretty decent seats, and it turned out they were crappy because the stage was not set up where the ticket clerk thought it would be. We were too far away to get drawn into the performance, even if we’d liked the music. We did not.

Joan doesn’t think visual proximity would have helped matters. She was quite a ways from Sting and Annie Lennox and David Bowie when they did concerts in BC, and liked their music so much that it didn’t matter.

email:

~ Mom as Happy Birthday was being sung to
her. It looks like she could not help joining in ~

Tuesday 29 March 2005

Dad had bought an angel food cake at Mom’s request, and so I dug out two bags of frozen saskatoons picked along our driveway on the farm, and three bags of strawberries from the garden, to take with me. Then I drove to within a block of their condo before realizing I’d left the berries on the kitchen counter, and turned around and went back. It only takes six minutes, and it gave me a chance to listen to the cassette The Ugly Sisters made, with Steve and Carol, for Mom.

Yes, it’s done! Not that Steve is happy with it yet; he wants to do something more with it. Mom said it wasn’t long enough before she’d even listened to it, as we only filled half of the A side. “Don’t you know how annoying it is to be listening to a tape and have it quit in the middle?” she said.

“Quit yer complaining!” said I. “Once you’ve heard it, you might be glad it’s short.”

We need to find songs that Joan and Karen can sing lead on, and record those too. In this tape you hardly hear them. Our sister voices blend so that it often sounds like one voice when it is three. They both have ethereally sweet voices, and Mom would enjoy them just as much.

“Thanks for the tape,” she told me from her afternoon snooze, as I was leaving. “I’ll have a lot of fun with it.” This was during her third play-through. Isn’t that sweet. When she received a phone call from Mary Jo, she held the receiver up to the tape deck so MJ could hear.

Then there were the comments from the peanut gallery.

“I’m glad I didn’t go over there with you last night, if you were singing that kind of stuff,” our brother said. He’d declined my invitation to join us.
“Don’t quit your day jobs!” my brother-in-law said.

Cameron had to head for the airport right after lunch, so he’d come over and hugged Mom goodbye, and she sat and watched him go out the door.

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~ Baby Sis working on her quilt ~
 
Monday 28 March 2005
10:13 a.m.

Nothing like leaving things to the last minute. I’m still only on my second coffee, since I slept in this morning after crooning till almost midnight at the home of new friends (landlords) last night, then coming home to talk on the phone with S for an hour. I have yet to get out of these pyjamas and get over to Mom’s by 11. It’s her birthday, and —

— another conversation with S, and no time to write more, gotta bolt. He was calling from his parents' place and I could hear voices in the background that made me picture the house and the farm and sky ... oh dear, slightly homesick

— and the cable company. God I am tired of dealing with these service companies that don't give you what you order, overcharge you, screw up on your billing, and then you have to spend long minutes on the phone trying to get things corrected and they don't "make things right" with you for your inconvenience. I've just cancelled my TV cable completely because of it, threatened to look for a new internet provider as well, and requested that the customer service person on the phone make a note of my dissatisfaction. Had enough.

email:

~ willow angels at mom and dad's ~

Friday 25 March 2005
9:36 a.m.

It was shortly after midnight when I set down A Moment's Liberty, The Shorter Diary by Virginia Woolf, and turned out the bedside lamp. And yet I awoke at 6 a.m. for no reason whatsoever. That is not like me; I don't usually open an eye for at least eight hours unless I have to make a reluctant trip to the bathroom. I made myself doze for another hour and then, unable to get back to sleep, thought I might as well get up.

In the fall I bought an organic turkey to cook at Christmas, and then Dad requested we not have turkey for dinner, as it makes him sleepy. Could we have something else instead? So the turkey has remained in the deep freeze all this time. Last night I took it out to thaw and announced that I'm roasting it tomorrow. Ida, if you are taking time out of your vacation to check out this page, you and Wayne are invited! Dad's going to try to reach you on your cellphone.

So today, what to do today? Brother Cameron arrived this morning from Edmonton. Sister Joan is going to Mom's to use the sewing machine. I need to return The Saddest Music in the World, a movie by Winnipeg's Guy Maddin, which I wanted to love, looked forward to renting, and then did not even watch to the halfway point although Scott and I tried to, twice, over the past week. And I need to go buy a few groceries. And work, of course, always work. I sat up till 11 last night, working, after being at Mom's all day. Dad fed me supper. I started sewing (it would make a rare picture of me) my quilt top together. It looks pretty good - rich blues and reds that are much more impressive as a solid block than tiny single ones.

Mom and Dad were at the doc's this week and Dad said, as we sat in the living room while Mom and Joan fought with the sewing machine shortly before I left, "The doctor said she is doing remarkably well." Heh! Heh Heh Heh! Remarkably.

I meant to relate Mom's growing awareness of angels. Of course we think of celestial beings when we hear that word, but Mom is calling the people in her life "my angels."

Last time she was in the hospital, a woman she'd met only once, at a quilting meeting, sent via a friend one of those willow angels. With it she sent a card and the note inside it said "I needed you to have this, Grace."

Mom told me that she herself would never have thought of doing that - taking the time, or buying an ornament she considers not inexpensive - for someone she hardly knows. It was an eye-opener for her who, although kindhearted and generous towards friends and family, is not actively altruistic toward simple acquaintances. She would be too busy with her own life and not thinking of nice things to do for people she hardly knows, she said.

She went on to talk again about having a craving for raspberries, and then a friend appearing at her door with a basketful. Or wishing for MacIntosh apples and then her cousin arriving with a box of them. "I only have to think of something I'd like, and it falls in my lap," she says, pleased and puzzled.

"And the thoughtfulness of my friends," she tells me again. "A day doesn't go by that I don't receive a card, letter, gift or phone call from Joanne. She must spend all her time thinking of nice things to do for me!" (Yesterday I was sleeping off a migraine on Dad's bed when he came into the condo with the mail, and I heard Mom say something like "There goes that Joanne again!" in a happily heightened i've got mail! voice. Who doesn't love mail.)

And Mary Jo, who lives in Salmon Arm, calls almost every day and never appears without either some baking or something she's sewn or quilted. Both of these friends have had health problems of their own for some time, and Mom is wondering "What did I ever do for them?" She is noticing people's outstanding thoughtfulness and generosity to her, and isn't sure she has earned it. Therefore they are her angels, as is each person who does her a kindness.

The extent of caring kindnesses has been such that she cannot help but be shocked by it, and has been deeply touched. Yet she scratches her head over it. I say "Well, if you seem to have angels, maybe there is a message in it. Maybe the message is that there are angels all around you; it almost seems obvious, doesn't it?"

When she lays down she sees a green or a purple light near her bed, and feels it pour in through her forehead, healing and soothing. She thinks of these as "my purple angel" or "my green angel."

I told her about my friend's account of seeing her brother's hospital room filled with angels when he died. "Oh, wouldn't that be wonderful," Mom said, hopefully.

"If Laura says it happened," I insisted, "then it happened. We can believe it."

email:

~ Queen Grace with friends Billi, left, and Mary Jo ~

Thursday 24 March 2005
9:09 a.m.

It was my first night alone in this house, and as silly as I knew it to be, I was just a wee bit spooked.

Excuse me while I get this lovebird off my shoulder. He’s squawking in my ear, and it makes them ring. Or he’s nibbling too hard on my earlobe, or my neck. He wants me to pet and snuggle with him, while I want him to sit quietly and observe. He’s actually not bad company in that he’s willing to interact; but constantly, so it’s distracting.

There, he’s quieted down, maybe I can carry on without caging him again.

The house has an alarm system so I knew there was no one getting in — oh now the bird’s on my knee, which is bent up in front of my chest — but it was so still and so empty that when I burrowed under the blankets on the bed I had to turn on the TV for some human comfort. The history channel had a show about — now he’s pecking at the keyboard and my fingers — I give up, it’s my attention he wants and he’s not about to give up, it seems. Some cuddling is in order.

The history channel has endless interesting stuff; so does the Knowledge Network. Between those two I could watch a lot of TV if I got into the habit.

I’ve managed to interest Birdy in some papers so he won’t be shitting in the keyboard — oh no, he’s back again — now I've set a tin box in front of the monitor for him to perch on — it won’t do either, he isn’t called a lovebird for nothing I guess. Onto my shoulder he goes, and there he sits, preening. I get a break.

Yesterday I finished cutting out the last pieces for my quilt. The other day at Mom’s we went through her fabric for cloth to make her next project, and I saw where my own love of fabric comes from. She’d pick up a certain piece and hold it to her breast, stroking the cloth and saying “I love this one!” Some she loves so much she’s kept, rather than make anything, because she gives most everything away and doesn’t want to part with it.

I’ve been this way, but with pictures and graphics either cut out of magazines or found on greeting cards and boxes, or paper. These visual treasures were hoarded for 20 years and finally displayed on a long wall, where I can admire them every time I pass by. How to do that with fabric I’m not sure.

Mom has been up and around a lot since the hypnotherapist was over, and while the session didn’t have the total effect I was hoping for, Mom is satisfied. There is actually much improvement, and whether that is because the radiation side effects are finally gone, or because the doctor upped her dose of methodone a little bit, or because of hypnotic suggestion, we of course don’t know. Most likely it’s all three. At any rate, there is now no pain, just a tightness around the chest that the doctor attibutes to anxiety.

Oh dear, he’s chewed on the edge of the mousepad. That can’t be healthy for a bird. Back in the cage he must go.

email:

10:10 a.m., Monday, March 21, 2005

It's hailing and snowing while Scott prepares to travel back to Saskatchewan tomorrow. I managed to convince him to stay this extra day rather than pack late into last night and drive tired today. While I was down here catching up on my email this morning, he has been busy transferring frozen packages from our deep freeze into the fridges in the house. He is organizing everything in his usual efficient way and reporting where he's put stuff and how much of it and why, while making a second batch of salsa so the garden tomatoes from two seasons ago will be used up and he will have lots to take home with him.

I will be clinging to his leg when he goes to leave bright and early tomorrow. As much as neither of us want him to go, there is business back there to take care of and it can't be put off any longer.

There's the breakfast call. I am being spoiled.

email:

~my beautiful intoxicated sisters, Karen and Joan~

Saturday, March 19, 2005
10:55 a.m.

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day (and Gary's promotion) on Thursday, we joined my sisters, brother-in-law, and some of his pals from work downtown at Kelly O'Brien's Irish pub. The music was too loud — Irish Rovers or no! — but we managed to sit there for several hours, yelling at each other across the table, until our backs got stiff.

Last night we spent the evening with Mayte and Andries and the twins at their place, for a farewell supper since Emil and Everett are flying to their dad's today and won't be back for two weeks. By that time M and A will be moved to the Vancouver area, where they hope A's paintings will find a better market than they've had here.
Our sharing of a house from September to January has netted us a lovely new friendship; one day we may fly down to Mexico to visit them, if they move back.

We laugh at Mayte's cute expressions of benevolent surprise regarding how much we love the sun here (because it is not something we enjoy every day, as they apparently do in Aguascalientes), and her shocked cluckings at how cold the spring days are, when everyone here is wearing shorts and T-shirts.

The hypnotherapy on Thursday was interesting; Mom was satisfied, she said, and she was moved by a strong message she received from her unconscious mind. It was one that made clear sense to her as she looked back on her life and her attempts to be perfect.

"That's exactly how I am," she admitted, "even now I want to have a perfect death, to die with dignity, instead of accepting myself the way I am, and my life the way it is, and my children the way they are, and my death the way it will be." It was an emotional breakthrough of some importance.

She's been saying "I want you girls to go shopping for me, for some new clothes for summer," so yesterday I stopped in at a store she likes and picked up eight tops and two blouses to surprise her with. She was thrilled. "That was just the lift I needed," she said after admiring the rainbow of colours and trying them on.

Afterward I walked her through a self-hypnosis session similar to what the hypnotherapist had done the day before, and then helped Joan and Karen make perogies so Mom and Dad will have a supply in their deep freeze for a while. They are getting two sets of company this weekend and Dad frets (he's relatively new at mealmaking) about what to prepare for meals, so we thought this would give him something quick that wouldn't require much planning.

The vacuum cleaner is grinding away behind me as Everett does his weekend chore. He's waiting for laundry to come out of the dryer so he can pack, and he's putting off his trip to the shower. Why he does that I don't know, because when he's in the shower or bath he sings, so it's obvious he isn't suffering.

Emil is still coughing like an overworked skilsaw so we took him to the doc again yesterday to make sure (for a second time) that there is no fluid in the lungs or a sinus infection. The coughing has gone on for well over a month so we are watching closely. Doc recommended a chest x-ray. We complied, but don't have the results yet. What we do have is a codeine-containing prescription cough syrup that I doubt helps at all.

Well, there's an hour and a half before we have to leave for the airport, so I'll get going — need to shower and dress, myself, and oversee the boys' packing. Everett has never flown before and Emil, though he did once when he was about six years old, seems to be excited about this trip. It will not be easy to relinquish them to the care of the Westjet staff, certain as I am that my children will be carefully looked after. What if they are scared when the plane takes off? What if their ears hurt when it lands? And I am not there? Oh dear.Typical motherish concerns, in spite of knowing they will be fine.

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Wed., March 9, 2005
7 p.m.

Venturing out was rewarded by warmth and sweet smells, so I toured the yard and got some pictures of our shack.

The hot tub is behind the tall hedge, but we haven't got it up and running. Might not, either. It's noisy out there — the sound must bounce against the rock and magnify the traffic snarl — so that I can't imagine sitting out there and enjoying it much. Hot tub or no. And it sounds like I will soon be the lone adult in the house, so it would get even less use than otherwise.

What you're seeing here is the house as it looks from the street, except that the attached garage is not in the picture. Top floor windows, l-r: kitchen table, sink, living room. Middle floor (bottom not shown), far right: where my office is, but across the room.

It was a nice day to be out and around. We shopped for printer ink and groceries for ourselves, for pens and cards for Mom. Stopped in at their place for a quick visit before coming home to unpack the goods and get to work — I at the computer, S at a wine rack he's preparing to install. Mom was in bed but Dad said she was up all morning and feeling better than yesterday. A new medication schedule has been drawn up ever so neatly by Doctor Don (what Mom and I call him) and magneted to the fridge. Dad went over it with me to be sure I understand, because methodone is not a drug you make mistakes with. It's toxic. I'll be spending a good chunk of the next two days with Mom so Dad can go golfing. Look out, quilty things! I should make some headway there.

* / * / * / * / *

Yield and overcome
Bend and be straight
Empty and be full

~ copied from a book ~

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~ some appliqués I've been embroidering for my quilt ~
~ i need to do 64 of these squares ~

Monday, March 7, 2005
2:10 p.m.

Just sitting down to work at the computer after a morning spent cleaning the kitchen (baked till suppertime yesterday and then was too lazy to clean properly), doing yoga, and reading.

One thing I read was an email from a friend (of longer than 25 years) who has never met my mom but always checks here to see how she's doing. It's made me think I should report in more often.

I called over there to see if Mom would like some company for a cup of tea this afternoon. She is in bed — "it's the most comfortable place" — doing crossword puzzles and listening to the radio. There is the usual pain (I am coming to hate that word) as well as a discomfort below her right ribcage. She is feeling drowsy right now so instead I will go over tomorrow and spend the morning there while Dad goes to the golf course.

Not long ago I was either picking up or parking a shopping cart at the grocery store, when it occurred to me — like a burst of sunshine — that of course the work I'm doing on Mom's feet, and the healing meditations, and the prayers everyone is making — of course these things are making a difference. Efforts such as these are not futile, even though their results may be invisible, intangible.

I had been feeling as if nothing anyone did mattered to the outcome. And maybe our efforts won't affect the outcome, but they have an effect now and maybe they will help Mom live longer or better than she would otherwise.

On Thursday when Dad went back to the doctor's office (after leaving it to take Mom home because she was in too much pain to sit in the waiting room), Doc told him that Mom is doing surprisingly well considering that she has nine cancerous tumours in her, and bone mets, and that he has seen people like her live up to five years.

These comments, according to Mom, have given Dad a little lift.