It’s been about 6 years and I don’t
remember much except that I was
lucky she chose to die when I
was planning my holiday. I guess
I’ve always been kinda lucky with
death. One Uncle died while
I was returning from a motorcycle
trip so I was able to swing by for that.
Another gave me a much needed
mid-week break at work. My Grandma
though, she laid in her hospital bed
breathing raspy, short filled breaths
that gave an odd smell matching
their odd sound. It was a sound
you’d think would be easy to
fix, like an obvious gash or broken
bone, but they evidently couldn’t.
So she laid there feigning sleep
while we filled in the spaces between
her breaths with our own sounds
that too, needing fixing. Together,
it was a terminal symphony.
When we reached the end of
that day’s round (played as a round
or course, as it often didn’t know when to
quit) I jumped on an intermission -
“No, I’ll stay with her. You guys
go and I’ll just sit here for a
while and meet you at home. I’ll
call if something happens.”
As they left I felt a weight
removed. Now it was just me and
Grandma, like it used to be when
we’d sit there watching her stories
or when I bothered her in the
kitchen while she fixed beans
or peeled dutch potatoes. She had
opened her eyes just briefly in
the 24 hours I’d been there, but
I knew she could hear. I don’t
think she moved once either.
So I pulled my chair up a little
closer and, somewhat uneasily,
held her hand. I’m not big on hand-
holding. Part of that’s a guy thing but
a bigger part is that it’s just the way
I am. She knows that too. As I
sat there comfortably with her hand
and her raspy breathing and that
odd smell, I found an odd ease in
the rhythm of it all and soon dozed off.
The previous day’s drive had caught
up with me I guess, and I headed straight
into rom and awoke, seemingly,
as quickly as I had nodded off. It
was surprising, that instant I woke,
and I sensed a strange absence.
My eyes fixed on the source
of that sound that had earlier
sent me off …and I waited for it.
And waited. Math never came
easy to me especially as a kid (I blame
Mrs. Gafuik) so it took me a while to put
the two two’s together to figure out
that that raspy breathing had come
to a stop. A dead stop.
After it sunk in I realized her hand
was still in mine. It was dry, but I
wouldn’t say cold but more room
temperature. And I didn’t think to
move it, which is weird because
most kids holding a dead hand would
want to move it even a little. The
clock told me 40 minutes had past?!
I quickly got up and figured it best to tell
someone what happened so I went out
into the hall and started toward the person
at the desk mumbling something about
“…she stopped breathing. I fell asleep
and didn’t know but she must of
stopped…” to which the pink-gowned
girl seemed relieved and said it was ok
(which I thought was weird as someone
just died ….but like I said I’m not good at
math) and she talked about how my
Grandpa is probably still awake which
got me thinking about calling him and Mom…
so I did. And I didn’t go back in there
either. I stayed in the hall
while everyone else went in,
and I just paced around the front
lobby reading and rereading stuff they
had on the walls and thinking about
how the funeral would be in a few
days and then I’d get home almost
to the day that I had planned on leaving.
And I’m thinking how convenient
her death was, and how perhaps
she waited for me like she did when I
was a kid getting distracted
doing my kid things, and how luck
probably had very little to do with it.
lucky with death
28 01 2012Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: death, grandma, poems, poetry
Categories : poetry and photography
babas and birds
31 12 2011Before my Baba died she’d always send me pictures of the trees and flowers outside her apartment and of the birds flying by that were almost incidental when processed through one of those automated film-developing machines. I sent her pictures of my birds …ten feet out from my front window bustling about a feeder and calm to my presence. I counted over fifty one day I told her, most mulling about the ground picking and pecking around the seed that the energetic others would hastily spill downwards. She liked the birds, and when we talked she’d often ask if they still came by and if I was still feeding them. And of course the birds that we talked about so long ago have all died.
And yet, oddly, they’re still there.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: birds, death, grandmothers, life
Categories : poetry and photography, religion, spirituality, philosophy
enter title here
25 03 2011
Image from topnews.in
“Syrian security forces have opened fire on anti-government protesters near the city of Daraa, killing at least 20 people, residents have told Al Jazeera“ …although we shouldn’t expect coalition forces to fly to anyone’s rescue however. Syria is a friend afterall, and it’s not like their president dresses all funny-looking and stuff. Sigh. *big sigh!* But such is the interconnected, modern world I suppose. Most of the grief has to come from the suddenness of it all I’d think …on one hand we’re becoming a giant collective while on the other we’re individual cultures and communities. And the process of it is still new and in development. But yet fair should be fair, and hopefully we’ll recognize our shared, natural desires for justice while admitting to those same natural desires for power. In a perfect world that is.
In other good news I’ve been doing some light running! The knee is still a little glitchy on corners and when I try to plant hard or do sudden movements, but it’s not a constant ache anymore, which is a great thing. I have been doing the regular ‘weights’ even though the knee was sore for the past few weeks, but now I can finally not worry about how I’m standing when I pick something up …or how I’m going to put it down for that matter. The worst part of the day seems to be the morning – for both the knee and lower neck. I still have sharp pains that shoot through my mid-upper back especially when I raise my arms into funny positions; if you can call putting on a t-shirt a funny position that is. But like I say it’s just the mornings, and as the day goes on I pick up steam. Luckily almost all of my workouts happen at night.
Image from wikipedia.org
I’m planning a little sojourn out to Tisdale again next week. Spring break is happening around town and that’s my cue for less work with the Man …so I’ll use that break to head out East for a bit. Maybe my niece picked my up my chocolate bar that I asked for when they went down to the Daytona 500 last month. Mmmmm …butterfinger. Lol – I’ll take anything though, I’m not that picky. I also had to do one of those ‘fun’eral things a few days ago …sad, of course, but nice to see people too. But I guess that’s what those occasions are ultimately about; bringing people together. Sure someone has died or someone else has found love, but weddings and funerals are primarily about bringing people together …and deaths or unions are just a convenient way of getting that to happen. Parties work too of course, but it’s a lot easier to find an excuse to not attend a party than it is to not attend a funeral or wedding. Party planners take note ;)
Now I must get out of bed. I must eat. I must stretch. I must pick up some pre-ordered dutch candies. I must (maybe) see a movie and eat some popcorn in the mid-afternoon while the snow and grey that is still Winter makes its plodding retreat.
Plod faster I say!!
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Tags: baby ruth, daytona 500, death, fitness, funerals, knees, libya, parties, peace, running, spine, sport injuries, syria, tisdale sk, war, weddings, world community
Categories : current events, people and friends, personal and family, sports, fitness and health
is
28 01 2011I like the idea of death as only a change in form. What I dislike is the transference of our feelings and emotions onto these forms. If anything, why not conceive of emotions as changing forms too? That is, a scientific ‘strong‘ force might become ‘love’ while a scientific ‘weak‘ force might become ‘hate’. That wouldn’t be explained so easily however, especially given the idea that language too changes form. Boil it all down though, and matter simply is.
Not the most insightful revelation I would think.
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Tags: death, eastern religion, God, hate, integral yoga, love, reincarnation, spirituality, strong force, Swami Satchidananda, weak force
Categories : religion, spirituality, philosophy
swept into life…
24 12 2010
Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: canadian poetry, clouds, death, earth, heaven, impermanence, life, poetry, wind
Categories : poetry and photography
automation
12 11 2010I figure death must be like heaven in as much as it’s something better than this. Of course realizing Death as one would Heaven is only transferring the same constructs upon yet another unknown. Exchanging one illusion for another. Not that this is completely without merit but rather to say its purposefulness, in which we all bask, is simply a consequence of habit and routine. And I’ve no one to blame aside from those two who unceremoniously ushered in my existence during what must have undoubtedly been a heap of bustle and awkward. Again, routine. And so I submit that this precipice before Heaven or Death is but our need to skim the routine from itself, making important that which is intuitively unimportant. To raise life far above its natural automation and as such placing consciousness in control of itself; rendering time determinable, mathematics calculable and language understandable.
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Tags: consciousness, death, habits, heaven, language, mathematics, routines, time
Categories : religion, spirituality, philosophy, the other stuff
arthropods
30 07 2010For some reason (I’m thinking nature or something strange like that) we’ve had a mosquito explosion in the city. It’s actually kinda brutal. I did some clothes yesterday and had to dress in long-pants, full length jacket and a hat in order to get them hung. Worse yet we had a strong wind/rain the other night and my line snapped (grrrr.) which had me scrambling out there this morning in just shorts trying to tie the thing back together. I had to give up. Damn arthropods.
The roomie’s gone for the week too. This is good. Yep.
The funeral was what I kinda expected. Seeing the relatives was nice, but the travel there and back was the killer. Interestingly the service was performed by a ‘Brother‘ (dressed in a full brotherly robe) this time around, and included the standard Catholic routines like smoke swinging, psudo-chanting and the dreaded open casket. The casket thing I don’t get though.
Even when I get older I don’t see myself appreciating the chance to gaze upon the face of the deceased one last time. It doesn’t make sense. It might make sense if you were allowed to take a picture …then you can remember back to the last time you saw him/her and find some comfort in that. My question would be What comfort? I mean, if you think that starring at a picture of a dead person is morbid then consider having that same image (from the open casket) ingrained in your head for the rest of your life. It’s two of the same thing, so why not keep your happy images at the front of your memories. Some might argue it’s needed for closure …but I don’t know, I wouldn’t think seeing your dead loved-one is any better closure than simply dealing with the fact that they’re gone.
Heck, the picture on the memorial card is a happy, smiling one …and you probably wouldn’t appreciate having the image be that of the open casket? Or would you -lol. Maybe that’s what I’ll stipulate in my will …an open casket prominently displayed in a vertical position behind the pastor and on my memorial card a picture of the same dead, embalmed, smiling face. That and some slurpee machines in the foyer. And of course my pre-recorded audio saying something like “Hi. Would the owner of the blue car with the license plate C6H-8L4 please move as you’re blocking the path my limo’s going to take. Thanks!“ I know, I’m sick.
The rest of the visit with the sister and peeps in Calgary was nice too. Calgary’s Heritage Park trumps our Fort Edmonton offering in my opinion though. They had people in the buildings that dressed the part and gave you stories or fun little facts about the place you were in and the history behind it all. A real blacksmith shop, printing press and Windmill among many other attractions. Even the kids had fun …and in a place that was one to three hundred years in the past!
But then again maybe it was the cinnamon buns and the stop at the candy store that kept them happy. Hard to say really.
Blacksmiths ...from Calgary's Heritage Park.
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Tags: arthropods, calgary heritage park, death, embalming, fort edmonton, fransiscan monks, funeral services, mosquitos, open casket
Categories : personal and family, religion, spirituality, philosophy, the other stuff
random post #476.22
11 11 2009Alright …just a few things to mention.
I currently have a headache. I hate headaches, but I do know why I have one, so that much is good.
The ‘Man part 2′ (being not the Man but the other Man …yes there are two of them!) is on holidays and I am picking up the slack of sorts. I’ve had to repair things lately including a tuba that made me grouchy for a while and not just because I got flux on a cut I had.
There is a problem with my front-end, and I took it to my mechanic (who’s not really mine, but I’ll go with it sometimes) and he gave me four new tires …but the problem is still there. Five hundred dollars later he is no longer my mechanic.
I swam 1K the other day and my back felt great. It was also my first 1K in what has to be over 20 years …it wasn’t hard or really tiring either, and I alternated 50M front crawls with breast strokes plus my cheapo goggles didn’t once leak. Yea for that.
Dad got his pacemaker and goes home tomorrow. I’ll do the two birds/one stone thing and pay him a visit while borrowing his garage to change my rear brakes and peek at the problem that apparently isn’t a problem up front.
One of the sis’s comes in Thursday for her quint-annual-shop-till-you-drop-capade. She’ll be nephew/nieceless, but if I get motivated I might be able to get all my Christmas shopping done while rooking her into taking the parcels back for me.
November 11th here in Canada is Remembrance Day. I suppose if there’s one thing I remember it’s that war is the failure of communication. Lest I forget.
I think I stupidly took on some stuff that I shouldn’t have …two gigs that require me to learn 5 or 6 sets of more top 40 crap. They may pay off by leading to other ‘repeat’ gigs, but I shouldn’t hold my breath. They still should be fun though …and they do pay.
I’ve been cat sitting the beast this past week for my neighbor – the one whose mother died over a year ago (click). The thing I’ve realized after being in her house, is that once you’re gone life still goes on. Of course we all know that …but in the same breath, do we really know that?
I noticed I haven’t updated any of the ‘links’ on my sidebar since I first put them there a loooong time ago. I haven’t been to any of those sites in that amount of time as well, which leads me to wonder why they’re still there? I shall fix that soon.
My Aunty Min called the other day which was nice. I’ve been meaning to call her for a while and kinda felt bad …but it’s all good. I’m gonna send her some pictures from a few family trips and such.
Our river (the North Saskatchewan) is not only low but has been low since Spring. I have a strange feeling, seeing as it’s mid November and still warm/dry, that we’re going to be pummeled with a LOT of snow this Winter. And I think that’ll be nice.
Edmonton ...and the North Saskatchewan River.
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Tags: brakes, cat sitting, christmas shopping, dead links, death, edmonton, flux, front end problems, gigs, headaches, links, mechanics, north saskatchewan river, pacemaker, remembrance day, swimming, swimming 1k, top 40 songs, tubas
Categories : the other stuff
Jackie
7 04 2008My neighbor died the other night.
Her name was Jackie and she was 89 years old. She had her first stroke close to two years ago and recovered only partially, then a few months ago she had another that put her in the hospital permanently. She was the subject of this poem I wrote.
We were neighbors for 10 years …initially with her husband (who died about 8 years ago) and her daughter, who is still here. She was always kind to me, very energetic as well as upbeat and positive. She’d hop on the bus to get around, and volunteer at a nursing home for the elderly – this she did in her mid-80′s. I remember one day she missed her bus and I had to give her a lift …so she slipped into my Storm (little yellow sports car) and away we went. I had a hard time getting in and out of that thing …but she managed – I felt bad about having to give her a ride in it, but she said she liked it. It was a nice ‘banana car’. I also remember her and her husband coming out to one of my gigs a while back. It was on the Edmonton Queen (riverboat) and she said they really enjoyed the music.
I remember her giving me a ‘hard time’ about all the rehearsals and late night parties I might have had …only because I hadn’t invited her over. She would always say “I’ll bring some hootch!” …and I had to laugh. I’d always ask her if we were too loud and she’d always say no. She’d (with her daughter) have BBQ’s in their yard and invite me over all the time. She’d make us cakes and cookies, and put on icing topped with either smarties or rosebuds. She’d always make her cakes in two layers, and the middle section always had either strawberry or raspberry jam packed in it. With the leftover batter she’d make us cookies. Little ‘cake cookies’ I called them. They’d be decorated the same way. When she wanted to give us something she’d always phone and say “Meet me at the fence” …then I’d try to get over to her door before she had to actually come outside.
She used to park cars in her yard (as we live close to the baseball diamond) and she’d be the king of the alley – marching to the main road with a little sign she held up saying “parking – $3″. She’d do this in the heat and the rain. She wouldn’t quit until she had her 6 car quota, and then helped us get in anything else we needed for our yard. I remember her daughter coming to me on a miserable rainy day and saying “Mom wants to park cars today – I told her she’s nuts but she’s going out there anyway.” …and you’d watch a small old figure in a raincoat slowly make its way to the backyard. She used to have garage sales but then she wouldn’t sell anything. She had a habit of collecting/saving everything – and you really had to force her to give something up. She always had a garden, and always inspected the work her daughter was doing in it. She always had a story about something …about the government, the city, people she knew or her ‘good for nothing husband’. She had a cat that she loved. When it was young it was fat and lazy, but when it got older it became cute and adorable. She’d always sent us cards at Christmas with money in them …and she’d always write “Don’t ever move!” on the inside.
We talked about anything …and ‘whenever’ it seemed as well. If one of us was just getting in or about to leave, we’d always find a little extra time to catch up on what was going on in our lives. Sometimes she’d spend a lot of days in her house during winter and wouldn’t get out as much as she’d like – and that was when she’s invite me over. In the summer she’d bring over clothes-pins when she saw that stuff was blowing off our line. She’d always make fun of my ‘dandelion garden’ and rib me about how my garden keeps blowing into her yard.
———-
Her death was a physical act …and those who knew her will take and carry on her mannerisms, her idiosyncrasies, her originality and character. We’ll act in the way she might have acted, doing what we felt was the way she might have wanted something done or handled. We’ll take all the good she had and steal it to ourselves. We’ll think of her when we don’t expect to, and at certain times we’ll find something ‘missing’ in our lives …and then fondly remember what was there.
Your words and actions define you and your way of living is your legacy – your body will fade, so use it to get done what you feel you have to do …you’ll only notice the years passing by if you’re standing around watching them.
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Tags: death, life, neighbors, old age
Categories : people and friends
