Saturday, March 5, 2003
10 a.m.

The Assassin's Cloak is "an anthology of the world's greatest diarists." Its preface may well be as interesting as the wide variety of diary excerpts that follow it. For instance, it states that the most common question asked by and to diarists is "Why do you do it?" And here are two more comments that struck me:

"A diary is the most flexible and intimate of literary forms."

"Without the commonplace and the trivial the best diaries would be bereft of much that makes them compelling and enduringly fascinating."

The following excerpt, taken from the diary of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, is one that has installed itself in my heart.

"My dear [sister] Beth died at three this morning, after two years of patient pain. Last week she put her work away, saying the needle was 'too heavy,' and having given us her few possessions, made ready for the parting in her own simple, quiet way. For two days she suffered much, begging for ether, though its effect was gone. Tuesday she lay in Father's arms, and called us round her, smiling contentedly as she said, 'All here!' I think she bid us goodby then, as she held our hands and kissed us tenderly. Saturday she slept, and at midnight became unconscious, quietly breathing her life away till three, then, with one last look of the beautiful eyes, she was gone.

A curious thing happened, and I will tell it here, for Dr. G. said it was a fact. A few moments after the last breath came, as Mother and I sat silently watching the shadow fall on the dear little face, I saw a light mist rise from the body and float up and vanish in the air. Mother's eyes followed mine, and when I said, 'What did you see?' she described the same light mist. Dr. G. said it was the life departing visibly.

For the last time we dressed her in her usual cap and gown, and laid her on her bed, — at rest at last. What she had suffered was seen in her face, for at twenty-three she looked like a woman of forty, so worn was she, and all her pretty hair gone.

On Monday Dr. Huntington read the Chapel service, and we sang her favorite hymn. Mr. Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Sanborn, and John Pratt, carried her out of the old home to the new one at Sleepy Hollow chosen by herself. So, the first break comes, and I know what death means, — a liberator for her, a teacher for us."

9:53 a.m., Wednesday
March 2, 2005

Some cannot understand why I do not do my work in the morning so that it is over and done with. I don't try to explain. It is simply that there are other things I prefer to do in the hours after waking up.

I like to start the day with some reading — this morning it was a collection of letters from Vita Sackville-West to her lover and friend Virginia Woolf — and a few words in my paper journal, where I write down my dreams and record remembered events and thoughts about them.

I like to relax while sipping on my black coffee, two cups of it. Lately I've been eating breakfast. And for the past week or two I've been doing yoga after being out of bed for about an hour, rather than waiting till the end of the day. Now that is something I feel good about getting done early, as it is more important — has more profound effects — on my entire day and my life in general.

This morning I laid in bed feeling fortunate, listening to the voices of the three males in the household as they spoke from various rooms in the house. It is Emil's first day back at school because he's had a raucous cough and stuffed nose; I had my doubts about letting him go even after keeping him home for the entire past week, but he was so excited I didn't have the heart to insist he stay again.

Everett came running and bouncing onto the bed with the biggest, most beautiful smile on his face. "Why so happy?" I asked. "I'm not!" he insisted. Could've fooled me.

Scott's not yet back from his trip to Emil's bus and Everett's school, so I imagine he's gone shopping for some material. He is making a wine rack and goblet holder — or modifying some — for the people whose house we are living in.

We've been over to their place three times in the past week, practising and then recording songs for Mom at her request. On Monday night we laid down the last tracks, so soon she'll have her tape in hand.

After the first recording session Steve wanted me to listen and see what I thought. I didn't want to hear it, because I am so accustomed to being embarrassed and turned off by the sound of my own voice when I sing. I've always cringed at its "syrupy" effect and, though I love to sing, never liked to hear it played back. But he insisted, so I listened, and guess what? My voice sounds nothing like I've been hearing it recorded in the past. It's fine. I don't have one thing to be ashamed of and from now on when compliments are given, I can believe that they are not offered out of kindness but out of genuine appreciation. Oh what a difference a good quality recording can make.

My brother was here over the weekend and shocked me by requesting my bread recipe. What? Yes, after eating it toasted this weekend, he's realized how much he missed it over the years since he lived with me, and wants to try making it himself. Holy Hanna! I said when he comes at Easter I'll give him a lesson. Meanwhile I sent a loaf back to Edmonton with him.

Mom's doing okay. I mean, she was doing okay yesterday. The day before that she was over here and had so much pain she could hardly stand it. Then yesterday, 100 per cent improvement. Who knows what today will bring.

How do you like the pig up there? It hangs on the wall above the pool table. Ugly thing. No, I don't want it for the collection. Where in sam hill would I put it? Guaranteed it would never find a place on a wall in my home.

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Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005
8:30 a.m.

When you step out in the back yard here, you are overwhelmed by a huge wall of rock that blocks out the sky, just feet from where you are standing. It gives Everett the weebie-jeebies, and me too ... especially since Scott pointed out the small pieces of it that lay all over the lawn and patio. Should that thing ever come down, well that would be it for this house. Done-zo.

Within the little grove of trees in this picture is where the deer hang out. Haven't noticed them there for a while, but then, have hardly looked either.

We are enjoying blue skies and sunshine again after long months of grey gloom. It's still cool outside though, and this morning there is frost on the roofs below us, and on the cover of the hot tub that the neighbour has slid back onto it after an early morning dip.

Last night we had a little party, since both my brother and my nephew are in town. There was much happy munching on cheesies and a nut combination with chocolate, and there was some pool playing, but I didn't have the good sense to get the camera out. I'm regretting that this morning, remembering how, after the small crowd arrived and gathered around the munchies on the kitchen island, Emil went to stand by his 22-year-old cousin Marc and announced that the two of them look alike.

"By cracky, you do too!" we all agreed, leaning sideways to take a look.

With luck and a bit of planning we'll get to see Marc and his girlfriend again this week. Emil would be devastated if we didn't.

I was looking at Marc last night, "all growed up," and remembering him as a baby and toddler. He was my first recognizable experience of loving a kid, my first inkling that yeah, maybe I'd like to have some of my own one day. I used to shock and awe him with a loud musical yodelling; he'd sit in his high chair and stare at me while I belted out the tune, and then he'd break up into giggling. Last night I wondered how he'd react if I repeated my performance as he sat beside his girlfriend, on the couch. Didn't subject him to it.

Yesterday after breakfast I drove my brother Cameron over to Mom and Dad's and had a lesson in appliquéing and embroidering for the quilt Mom is helping me make. She is determined that someone is going to inherit her love of quilting, and has all three of her daughters working on our own blankets now.

She is unable to walk across the room without fairly severe backache and bone pain, but my uncle Bruce remarked that she was less hunched over yesterday than the day before. We hope she is on the mend, that the radiation treatments worked this time. Dad conked out on the loveseat in the TV room for about an hour and Mom commented about how tired he is, now that she's home from the hospital and he is having to look after her again. "It's a big job; he's constantly jumping up to get me pills or water or food or something. He's worn out."

He has put his three daughters on notice that golf season is about to begin and we must organize ourselves to stay with Mom so he can get out on the course. Mom thinks that will be great, because then we'll be over there more often and "get those quilts done."

11:11 a.m., Feb. 19, 2005

Mom wouldn't let me take a picture of her, but did permit me to snap a photo of the flowers her aunt and godmother sent several days ago.

I sat with her over three hours yesterday but we hardly talked. She read a Reader's Digest and tried to sleep. This is what she does to distract herself from discomfort. Her torso feels tight, she says. She had had such a sharp and intense pain first thing in the morning that she was afraid to move for the rest of the day.

I read, too, sitting next to her bed. Once when she was snoring lightly I went down to the gift shop and bought her a new crossword book and two kinds of fudge. "You're spoiling me," she said, unwrapping the candy, "but why not, eh?"

***

The two little boychiks are gone with their dad and my van this weekend, and our big boychik arrived from Calgary yesterday morning and will be here all week. I walked into the living room around 8 o'clock last night and this is what I saw:

I had to chuckle at the two sleepyheads. Neither of them noticed, of course, so I went to get the camera.

***

Today we're cooking up an elk roast and having company for supper, and I'll be going down to see Mom for a while. Dad rented a TV so she can watch the curling, which means she won't have much to say to me anyway, even if she is physically comfortable. But I'll still go check in.

***
2:45 p.m. update

Mom is no longer in pain, but has only an ache. That is an improvement and I'm notifying you immediately so that you readers who are friends and relatives of Mom's can stop worrying. If all goes well, she'll go home Monday after her fifth radiation treatment.

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~ phony kitty beloved by all ~

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2005
9:22 a.m.

Grandpa's birthday today. Wonder if Mom will think of that. She probably doesn't know the actual date. I'll remind her when I go to the hospital this morning.

I am past the point of fearing that each time Mom goes into the hospital it is the end, but still stuck smack-dab in the middle of the angst that is but they said they could keep her comfortable, so why aren't they doing it?

Yesterday I sat by her bed as she tried to distract herself from the pain by listening on headphones to talk radio, and doing her crossword puzzles. Sometimes she'd take off the headphones and lay the book down on her chest and try to drop off to sleep. But I'd see her grimace or hear a sharp intake of breath or notice her press her lips tightly together. Sometimes tears come. "She breaks down pretty easy," Dad told me. "That's how I know she is having a hard time."

There is construction going on above her head. They are adding a fifth floor to the hospital. It is so noisy I can't imagine it's possible for anyone to relax and rest in there. She doesn't mind it, she says. I mind it on her behalf.

At one point she said "It's nice of you to sit here, but maybe you shouldn't. It's hard on you, too."

Perhaps she thinks when I walk out of the hospital I forget about her and what she is going through. But no. I feel freeze-dried on the outside, and as if a sharp knife is turning on the inside.

When I'm with her I take deep breaths and try to remain calm. I send her green light, I call on angels and spirits and God, it doesn't work, she still hurts. She reaches for my hand. When I rub hers, it hurts. She hasn't let me work on her feet for two days.

"Just don't touch the bed," she begs.

Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005
9 a.m.

Those of you who have written with some concern that the mystery lady was casing the joint will be glad to hear that she came back to our house after dark so we know she was not a potential burglar. She had been wandering around all day and was lost, confused, cold and incontinent, and we warmed her up and called the police to come and get her. She didn't know where home was; I'm thinking Alzheimers because she had some difficulty saying "steering wheel" and kept trying to say weering steel instead.

I will follow up by calling the police to find out what happened to her and perhaps get a contact with more information, because she said she had been lost a week earlier and it is possible she could turn up at our door again. I want to find out whether it is safe to let her in -- whether she has any history of violence. I suspect not, but don't want to take a chance, especially if Scott happens not to be home. At the same time, I don't want to leave her standing out on the doorstep when she needs help.

***

My sister Karen came across a barbershop quartette (oh forgive me, my own sex, but I'd rather listen to a barbershop quartette than the Sweet Adelines any day!) for hire, and engaged them to go sing three songs to Mom on Valentine's Day. So yesterday they tripped up to the hospital in the mid afternoon, all dudied up in tuxes and bowties, and broke into Let Me Call You Sweetheart.

Dad was here afterward and described what happened.

"They had to sing an extra song because Mom cried all the way through the first one. Karen was sitting there crying too. Shit, I damn near cried! She loved it. That really made her day."

She also got the results of her bone scan so now we know that there are no new cancer metastases. It appears that the radiation didn't "get it all" last time so they will radiate again this week at the same points cancer was found before. This was considered good news; we did not want to hear that the cancer is spreading.

When I went in there yesterday morning she was in so much pain that she wouldn't let me touch her feet. They had been giving her much higher doses of painkillers and it was making no difference. One doctor examined her, made her roll over and lift her legs and stuff, and it hurt enough to make her cry.

I will have to write one day about Mom's incredulous dawning awareness that there are such a thing as angels. But for now I must get to work.

Feb. 13, 2005
Sunday, 5 p.m.

Mom went into the hospital on Friday for pain management and will be there till tomorrow, when they do another bone scan to find out what is causing the current discomfort, and possibly all week if they do radiation and if they need her there while they tweak her medications. As of today the drugs are still not handling the pain "as well as I would like," she pronounces from her bed. She doesn't complain, she talks and smiles as usual, but if she is asked, she tells.

Scott went with me this morning to visit her. We left the boys here in the house, doors locked, for less than two hours. When we returned they informed us that "Wendy" had knocked on the front door, asked to use the bathroom, done so, sat at the kitchen table and chatted with them for a few moments, then left.

"Hm," I said wonderingly, "that's weird." Wendy is our landlady, but she and her husband insist they'll phone before they come over, in spite of my invitation to drop in unannounced if they happen to be in the neighbourhood.

"Oh it wasn't that Wendy," Everett said. It was a woman they had never seen before, and we have no idea who she was. And they let her in! After all the times they have been told not to answer the door when they are here by themselves.

It put a scare into us, and we in turn put a scare into them. From now on if we're out and the doorbell rings, they'll be locking themselves in the bathroom with the phone, poised to dial 911 if they hear a noise!

But I'll be afraid to leave them alone for a while now, I bet. Just in case that woman was up to something besides an emergency void in the home of a stranger while she was out for a walk.

Sunday, Feb. 6, 2005
4:34 p.m.

There are deer that come down from the park reserve up above this house, and hang out in our back yard. This one was spotted the other day and not long afterward she was joined by another three in a little grove behind the house. They are not terribly shy — not as jumpy as the wilder ones we encounter back home — so these you actually get to see standing still rather than looking at their white asses as they leap and bound away from you.

It's been a busy week but as usual I do not know where the time goes. I've worked my minimum of four hours a day at the computer, and have been over to Mom and Dad's a time or two; spent three hours dusting over there the other day and have yet to go back and do the bedrooms.

Mom's been over here a couple times too. Life seems so normal these days, with her taking an interest in her usual pasttimes again. She has got all three of her daughters — myself, Karen, and Joan — making quilts now. So she was here helping me prepare, showing me how to cut out squares and so on and so forth. I find that part of it tediously nitpicky, and look forward to when I can actually sit and hand-stitch. That, I like.

I invited Mom and Dad over for brunch today but Mom wasn't feeling well enough to come over. She is having more back pain, I think she said, so Dad has been giving her some extra medication in hope of vanquishing the discomfort. I just called again to say I was putting a batch of bread into the oven, thinking if she was feeling at all better that might entice them to come for supper, but she is not venturing out. Karen and my niece are going over, and it's snowing, too. Probably winter's last stand here in the Okanagan Valley.

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005
2:49 p.m.

~ My Adorable Boy ~

As you can see, we are happy!

From where I sit, on my knees in front of the computer, I can look through a sliding glass door and see much of the city and a wide swath of Lake Okanagan. After dark there's an artificial-light show. As a matter of fact, the first night we were here, there was a display of fireworks down near the yacht club. One could take it as a welcome meant specifically for us, and so we did.

The first thing we had to get accustomed to was the alarm system. This is a large home with an empty inlaw suite on the ground floor, and the owners have a security system operated from either the master bedroom or the garage entry. They demonstrated how to use it, so just before I went to bed on Friday I set the alarm for the bottom floor.

After a while, I heard Scott descend to the second floor and thought I'd better get up and warn him that I'd set the security system in case he decided to ramble down there during his travels. I called down the stairs, "Scott, the alarm is on" and then went back to bed.

The next thing I know, the alarm is beeping and I am bounding out of bed to phone the security company, wondering why the silly bugger went down there right after I'd said the alarm was on! And there you go. His manful self thought I'd meant the alarm was on, as in going off, and had gone to see who was down there, in case the boys and I needed protecting.

It's no wonder we have communication misfires some times. We don't speak the same language!

(Wondering why someone would go downstairs if there was an intruder instead of waiting on the safe side of the door for help to arrive? After all, that's what a security system is all about, right? Well, my sweetie has as much courage as wit, and fears only me!)

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Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005
12:44 p.m.

My sister will be hornswoggled when I tell her that today, our little Trinket did not wait to be laid down for a nap, but crawled under the blanket all by herself.

Joan says, “What IS this? How come everybody but me can get that kid to sleep?” She and Gary are going through the kid-won’t-stay-in-bed times that most parents suffer sooner or later with their little ones.

I’m working, best get back to it before Karen gets here after one, when she is going to do some housecleaning for us and I am going to make her some lunch. My other half has gone out to scout for cardboard boxes to use in our packing, which will start in earnest tomorrow.

Later,
Kate