Karen and I went for a long walk this morning while Joan went for a run and the rest of the family sat around the living room and kitchen drinking coffee and eating toast.

Karen finds it very beautiful here; so do Joan and my parents. Obviously many people do, as they seem to be flocking here from all over Canada. The amount of building construction going on around here is incredible. Our walk took us through residential and grape-orchard areas above Lake Okanagan, so we could look down over the valley and see the sparkling water of the lake. Karen was enraptured by the view.

I wish I could be as impressed, but all I find heady out here are the delicious aromas of blooming flowers. I don't like being in cities for long, but aside from that, I prefer to see more sky and less hill and mountain.

Mom and Dad have picked up some mild sleeping pills and have been sharing them with me since we got here. I take half a pill and sleep through the night rather than waking up feeling sick and afraid, hence am not exhausted and tearful the next day; I feel better able to cope.

Our brother showed up yesterday from Edmonton, so the whole famdamily is close by for another day or two. But he, Karen and I will head back to Salmon Arm in a couple hours. Joan returns to her work at the hospital at midnight and the rest of us will spend the next day pacing the floors at Mom and Dad's. Karen might bake; Cameron will go golfing with Dad; maybe some of us will go shopping. Visiting is hard work.

The shower is free, so I can have a turn.

This is an old house near our place on the farm in Saskatchewan. These empty old houses fascinate me. I always wonder who lived in them, what happened there, where the people ended up. Things I'll never know.

I'm at my sister's in Westbank, British Columbia, taking a few moments "out" of the action upstairs. Mom and Dad came from Salmon Arm today with my aunt from Phoenix and my grandmother, who flew out here with my other sister and I on Wednesday morning. Dad and Mom picked us up at the airport and we drove straight to their condo an hour-and-a-half away.

It has taken me this long -- three days -- to feel rested. Mom thinks it could be the change in altitude or humidity that's had me so sucked out. Maybe. I've been waking up during the nights though, which is unusual for me, and maybe it's showing. I think it's some sort of grief, myself.

It's a huge relief to be here and see Mom is her usual self, thinking about quilting and songs more than anything. Or so it appears. All that seems different is that the phone rings more than usual with friends calling, and "you're in our thoughts" cards on every surface in their home. And Mom has scheduled herself a two-hour nap from noon till two each day. You'd think we have nothing to worry about at all.

Either she's putting on a very brave and matter-of-fact face for us, or she really is the most serene and accepting person I have ever known. We are all pretty amazed at her attitude of "what will be will be" and no self-pity or anxiety apparent, but just life as usual.

Dad's had a talk with both Karen and I since we got here, but ... other than that and the odd few words about various alternative therapies Mom might consider after she sees the oncologist on the 7th and finds out if there is anything the mainstream medical establishment can do for her, you'd think our family life is going to go on forever as it always has.

Mom's upstairs giving my two-year-old niece a bath now, and playing with her. Dad's gone golfing with my brother-in-law. Grandma and Aunt Reta are chatting in the livingroom. Sisters Joan and Karen have gone to meet someone for a short appointment over in Kelowna.

I am at a loss for something to do with myself. Yesterday I pulled weeds from Joan and Gary's flowerbed out front for an hour or two, leaving just the poppies that happened to come in with the soil they bought.

As usual with a visit, doesn't matter who with or where, I am restless as soon as I am rested.

Things seem normal, so that it's difficult to imagine anything being otherwise. Which is a good thing; maybe it's a healing balm. Really, as I look around me at the moment, I can't help feeling I have been caught up in some sort of silly melodrama for the past two weeks.

We are not a demonstrative family, and we are not public wailers, and today I feel more myself, and it's about time.

12:47 p.m.

For the second day, I am relatively calm. The facial swelling has subsided and the itchy arms have improved, although the hives have spread to my legs now. Has my body settled down because I got calmer, or have I gotten calmer because my body has settled down? I don’t know why, but what a relief it is.

Perhaps it’s because I’ll be seeing Mom and Dad tomorrow morning. Or maybe the best wishes sent my way and the candles lit by friends are having an effect. Or maybe it just takes a week to get over a shock like this. Perhaps it’s because I have said a few prayers myself. Or I feel some acceptance and hope mixed in with the dread. Maybe it’s a little bit of all these things.

We are off to Saskatoon in a few hours, to spend the night at Aunt Jean’s and take a cab to the airport at 5 a.m. I’m packed and ready to go, except for a bit of work I have to get done and sent, and some granola I’d like to get made so Emil and Scott will have quick and easy breakfasts. Everett won’t eat granola, of course. He’s a storebought-cereal boy, and we don’t have much of that around here. He fills up on my bread, toasted.

The mother cat went missing with one of her kittens over the weekend, and the remaining four were taken into the other house and have been fed and cared for by Scott’s teenage niece. School’s in again today, so she brought the kittens here in a cardboard box so Everett can take the day shift. It will be good for him to have that to keep him occupied while I’m away.

The flowers I planted out all froze during the night. Scott covered them at 3 a.m. but they already had a layer of frost on them. I don’t care. They’re the least of my concerns these days.

It snowed heavily this morning, so much so that I feared a storm and not getting to the city, much less out of the airport in the morning. It’s still grey and cold; Kelowna and Salmon Arm will be tropical in comparison.

Here are two of the three sweethearts I'm leaving behind for a week:

Better get my ass in gear if I'm going to be ready when Karen and Grandma arrive to pick me up.

7:11 a.m.

I can’t think very straight it seems, can’t think of what to make for supper or get myself organized. Figured just DO something so made a marinated macaroni salad — my attempt at doing something for someone else rather than walking around like a zombie, which is what I did yesterday — I thought I’d make this so Scott would have something to eat for supper. Then we went and bought a take-out pizza anyway, and sat in front of the TV to eat it and swill rootbeer while watching Mambo Italiano, which I found quite funny.

Movies are good, they take my mind off things. Scott had made a bed on the livingroom floor the night before, where we fell asleep easily. Last night I had to take one of the mild sedatives the doc gave me, because though I was tired, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept feeling that empty fear you feel when you think about how we’re all destined to die in possibly some horrible way, and to lose people we care about in horrible ways, and for the moment that knowledge obliterates all the beauty and love there is in our lives. They seem to be only pretty pictures to help us forget about the ugly reality.

I have been observing the thoughts I am having that make me cry. They are almost inevitably the ones where I am imagining some scene that has never happened, that I think could happen. Being picked up at the Kelowna airport and taking Dad’s hand, for instance — it probably won’t happen, but I cry to think of it. Myself watching Coronation Street, a show Mom turned me onto and watches faithfully, knowing that Mom is not watching it too, some day. Imagining Mom weighing 90 pounds and unable to get out of bed, or calling out in pain. These things are not happening now, and may or may not happen, but thoughts like them sink me into turmoil.

This is pain I am putting myself through for naught. It is caused by the kind of thinking I am trying to get under control — thinking about events and moments of an imagined future, rather than the reality of here and now. I know better than to do this, but I do it anyway. It's unnecessary, self-inflicted suffering.

Then there is the incredulity that this can be happening to our sweet Mom and hence to our family. It is as if it is our first tragedy. We’ve lost grandparents, and that hurt like hell, but there was at least a sense to it because of their ages. It was easier to accept and they didn’t suffer long illnesses. Except for Grandma Johnson, of course, who died unexpectedly from heart failure at age 47 and shocked the whole town. I was only six or so, so I escaped that pain. Now though, there is a sense of impending doom and irreparable loss.

My face and arms seem to be mending. My eyes are still buried in the centre of brown wrinkly holes and my forearms are still blistered, but effects aren’t as severe. I can recognize my face in the mirror this morning.

Have to drive back to Saskatoon to pick up the boys at noon.

I have my mother’s hands and my mother’s voice.

I will cope with this, but I sure as hell don’t know how. I am looking around me at the wide variety of pretty songbirds flitting around the yard, at the bright green leaves that have come out on the trees over the past few days, at the playfully innocent newborn calves in the barnyard ... so much lush beauty that is the visual background for my aching sorrow, and the two are connected and yet somehow not.

The last thing I remember before falling asleep last night was reciting the Lord’s Prayer in my head and tears flowing onto my pillow.

It has taken me a couple days to start writing about it, but yesterday at suppertime I sat down and wrote, and it helped. I spent last evening calm and tearless, and slept all night. This I attribute to the writing, rightly or wrongly.

Not that the tears are not back this morning, before I even opened my eyes. My heart is flailing about wildly, and I don't want to be here. I want to be with my mom and dad, right frigging now.

Next Wednesday I will be, for one week. Perhaps I'll be settled down enough by then to be something besides a sad, scared child in their presence.

I love and need my mom, and am and have been well loved by her, more than I deserve, and right now I can not imagine a more horrible thing than this. There is no comfort, none at all, except that right now she is feeling so good that it is hard to believe she has a terminal illness. And she is brave and strong and beautiful and setting an incredible example to all of us. Damn straight I'm going to do everything I can to be there for her and Dad and my sisters and brother, if they need me.

Everywhere I look are the signs of my Mom's kindness and generosity. On my kitchen counter, on the walls, on the beds, everywhere. Those are my comforts right now. Lord knows there's little of that to be found anywhere.

See how tiny that one laying across the backs of its siblings is?

9:37 a.m.

Three deer came down the garden path beyond our kitchen window yesterday. Everett hollered, “Mom, Mom! A moose!”

“A moose!” I jumped up.

“No no, I mean deer!”

This photo was taken through the glass.

***

This morning on CBC Radio there will be a segment about online journals and I’d like to listen to it, so I am afraid to go far or start anything for fear of forgetting all about it. Last night I intended to listen to The Arts Today at 10:00 because James Kudelka, the dancer and choregrapher, was to be interviewed and this relates to my freelance work and can be educational for me. I wrote it down on the calendar next to my desk here, and highlighted it, and then what did I do? Why the usual, of course -- forgot all about it while watching the national news on TV instead. I do this all the time... mark things down carefully, then forget to go check the calendar.

***

A young man, who works in the Alberta oilpatch in winter and farms near Wynyard in summer, came and got Jester yesterday morning. Tied for safety into the back of his new owner’s truck, the dog looked at me with sad eyes when I walked away, and I felt a little sorry to say goodbye to him, but he’ll have a much better life now, off that frigging chain.

I called Mom yesterday morning to see if she’d heard from her doctor. She is set up to see a specialist on Monday, so things are not moving as quickly as she expected.

8:20 a.m.

“It’s not very good news,” she said, matter of factly. “You know that ultrasound I had done? They found a mass growing on my right kidney, and they want to take the kidney out right away.”

“Fuck OFF,” I said to my own mother.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “It's a bit extreme.”

“What else do they say?”

“Well, there isn’t much else to know, yet. It’s a common operation nowadays, not risky really. The main thing is to get the kidney out quickly.”

“Are you getting a second opinion?”

“No. I trust my doctor, and there’s no time.”

“Holy.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“I suppose your dad and you kids and Mom will worry about this more than I will,” she said. “All I have to do is get through it.”

She’d heard the test results and waited all afternoon for a call from the doctor’s office with a date for surgery. Dad had plans to go golfing, but thought he should stay home and wait with her. She told him to go, that she felt fine — “the same as yesterday.” He went, but got to the golf course and realized he wouldn’t be able to play, so turned around and drove back home.

Mom sounds typically stoic about it, which is her way. She has never been seriously ill, and we have always assumed that any scary health problems would be Dad’s, because of his heart. Those we feel somehow prepared for, although we are probably kidding ourselves. So we are shaken by this, although according to my sister Joan, who called later last night, only three per cent of kidney growths are malignant.

“You’ll have to do all that white-lighting stuff you do,” she said.

“And you’ll have to help me,” I told her.

Meanwhile, there’s no point in worrying, is there? A tear or two leaked out after Mom and I got off the phone, but I am not sure why. She’s all right, and probably will be fine. It’s fear, I guess, of losing my mother (a reminder that one day, if I outlive her, it will happen — a thought I can barely stand to have in my mind at all), and chagrin at her having to go through this in the first place.

Scott had come into the room and could tell there was something wrong, but I had a little trouble choking it out after Mom and I hung up. Then I could hardly stand his sympathetic glances. “Don’t feel so sorry for me,” I said. “It could be worse.”

“Well, it’s the first time you’ve been the one worrying,” he claimed, arms tightly about me. “Usually, it’s the other way around.”

Did I want to go out to BC? he wondered. I’d been considering it somewhat fuzzily, but his question provoked a clear certainty. “Mom will say ‘Don’t come when I’m not feeling good; wait until I can enjoy your visit!’ So ... I’ll go if they need me, like if she’s in a bad way after the operation and Dad can’t look after her for some reason.”

I will endeavour to spend the next week expecting a positive outcome, with my fingers crossed, and practising my praying.

Of course, I have already phoned my mother. And tried to send flowers, though the impulse was thwarted by She Who Must Be Obeyed — Mom herself, darn her hide.

Faye and Rick came over last night, and Faye brought a dozen roses from the flower shop she works at. She’d thought of telling Scott that they were on sale for Mother’s Day, so he’d ordered a bunch. They are so pretty I have them sitting right here by the keyboard, even though I had to clear off a pile of loose papers and junk buildup to clear enough space.

Scott and I were in bed this morning — were we laying there talking? it seems I was already awake — when Everett came downstairs with a cup of hot coffee in my favourite mug. Then he went back upstairs, and came down a few minutes later with a fork, scrambled eggs, and toast on a plate. His third trip down the stairs was with a glass of juice. And finally, he came with his hands full of gifts.

He has made the most gorgeous bunch of flowers out of rolled-up paper (for long stems) and cutout pink daisies, which he has glued and taped to the greenery. They totally hold their own alongside the beautiful roses here.

Next I opened the card he’d made, and started reading aloud what he’d written inside. It was one of those “M is for ______” poems, and halfway through it I started bawling like a damn baby. I finished it and he told me he’d gotten the poem from a Looney Tunes cartoon, and I started to laugh instead of cry. With the card, wrapped in blue paper, was a half-full bag of cinnamon hearts that I had given him on Valentine’s Day and which he has been doling out scroogily ever since.

** **

Yesterday I was looking out the window over the kitchen sink when a poplar tree snapped off in the middle and jumped toward me. It happened so fast that the broken tree trunk was laying still on the ground before I had time to move. I looked at the trees behind it, all swaying a bit in the heavy wind but not more so than on many other windy days. It was much calmer, as usual, right here in the yard. Another glance at the tree laying there reminded me that it was a living tree, too, not some dead thing easy to snap off.

A mini-tornado, a wind tunnel, Scott tells me.
A message from the trees, I feel.
I hope they aren’t pissed off at me for pruning the young trees and bushes along a wildly overgrown garden path yesterday. In a way it seems as if the bush itself was saying to me, petulantly, Well here, screw you!

**

Found five ticks on me after a walk to the beaver pond with Scott on Friday evening. Ticks give me the heebiejeebies. And they’re out early, oh goody.

It was fascinating to walk over the beaver trails, the long grass flattened toward the water where they dragged the trees over it, the fresh-cut pointed stumps throughout the bush. Didn’t see any beaver, just their lodge, lots of mudhens all over the pond, and a few bright mallards.

**

Snowgeese, or whateverthehellkind of geese they are, have been circling and landing and taking off again in the field east of the yard. There are so many in the flocks and they are so loud! It is absolutely awesome to stand outside and listen, even when one doesn’t get to see them up close. But when they are on the ground near a road, and fly up as we drive by, oh that — that is astounding — it is really something to see. I haven't found adequate words to describe it, much as I grasp about.

Two sparrows are sitting puffed up on the water spout above the deck. They have a nest inside the wooden eave. They don’t look like a matching set. I can’t tell who’s who, with sparrows. There are so many around that they don’t stand out. Yesterday a tiny magnolia warbler came and perched on the kitchen windowsill.

Emil is still in bed. He came down with a cough and runny nose yesterday, so is sleeping more than usual. Poor bugger. He “hates” colds, he tells me repeatedly. He was near tears about it yesterday before he went for an afternoon nap. He might be feeling sorry for himself, but mostly I think he was just fatigued and needed to lay down and recoup.

Grandma will be home from church soon, so I will go phone and see if she has plans for the afternoon. I bought some hardy rosebushes for her as a gift from me and my mother, and will take those to her. It is too cold to transplant them, I think. The thermometer says 10 C, but Everett saw snowflakes a few minutes ago, and Scott said it was 6 below a few nights ago when he was up checking cattle in the wee hours.

He’s got some rosebushes to deliver today too.

... sometimes I don't feel like writing.