Good morning! Spring has finally arrived in southern Ontario! The birds are singing, the trees are budding, and the daffodils in my garden are in full bloom!

I realized today that on April 25th it will be three months since my mother passed away. What a three months it has been! I remember feeling weak as a kitten, disoriented and unable to control my tears for the first few weeks after Mom passed. Then the time came when I could talk about her passing without bursting into tears. Now, when I think about Mother’s Day coming, I am able to wonder, with my mind, as well as my emotions, how to celebrate it. I have written 200 pages in my journal! I have also been inspired to write a lot for my new book Tent Pegs: How to Live With More Stability and Strength. For sure, although talking about Mom and telling the story of her final illness and passing has been an important way to process her passing, writing has been my primary way to process her life, her impact on my life, and what I want to integrate of her, her life, and our relationship, as I continue forward.

Today I heard, for the first time, the lyrics of a song called Landslide. It was written in 1973 by Stevie Nicks, at a time of transition in her life. One verse particularly captured my attention:

O mirror in the sky, what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I heard this song while watching The Voice Knockouts on YouTube. It was performed by contestant Madison Curbelo. As she sang the line Can I handle the seasons of my life? something stirred deep within my soul. I realized, with a start, that I am handling this time of transition in my life. That was such a reassuring thought! Of course, I have definitely needed lots of people to listen and encourage and support me through the past three months of grief. But with that support, and with giving myself the gift of a lot of time and space to quietly and gently process, I am making it through.

Hallelujah!!

I was glued to the TV set for much of the past four days, as the Masters Golf Tournament was being played for the 88th time. I have watched many of those tournaments, and they mean so much to me. Seeing Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player be the honorary starters brought tears to my eyes. I have such fond memories of watching these iconic golfers play at the height of their powers. They were amazing and awe inspiring to a young girl growing up in a small town.

Golf was our family game, and my Mom and Dad and brother and I played together when I was a teenager. I was the first female greenskeeper at my local golf course. What a great summer job for a university student! I would ride my bicycle up the main street at 6am, work until 2pm, then golf for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to cycle home for supper. Perfection!

I loved being reminded of those simple days of my life this weekend. I loved being reminded of Sunday dinners at my Nana’s where we were all huddled around the TV watching our golfing idols play to the finish. I love that I got to grow up on golf, and that as an adult, I got to take my Mom golfing many Wednesday afternoons, until she was no longer able to physically manage it.

Golf was a simple pleasure, but a powerful unifying factor for my family of origin. Now that Mom has passed away, I am feeling moved to try to reconnect with the game. When I am playing, will I feel the same way about it as I did when I was young? Am I still physically up to the challenge? I am feeling ready and willing to give it a try!

Hello from Canada on Eclipse Day. I hope you enjoy this day, wherever you are.

As I have been reflecting on my Mom and my Nana’s lives, I have also been reflecting on the lives of the elders who remain in my family. My Aunt Sheila turned 93 on Saturday, and my Uncle Bill turned 88 today. This year, I wanted to name for myself the things I admire about them, then write to them, letting them know, with gratitude, how important their example has been to me. As I reflected on their lives and what they have offered to me, I realized that we can make a conscious choice to intend to incorporate into our lives the good things that our elders have modelled, and still model for us.

I love my Uncle Bill’s dignity and quiet humility. I love my Aunt Sheila’s love of life and devotion to prayer. I loved Nana’s ability to create beautiful celebrations at birthday and Holiday times. I loved Mom’s love of books, learning, gardening, and her curiosity and great listening skills. I aspire, and I am consciously choosing, to try to integrate these beautiful traits and characteristics into my own life as I move forward.

What are some of the admirable qualities that the elders in your life model or have modelled for you? May none of these good gifts be wasted or lost. May we incorporate them into our lives, and pass them on to our children and our children’s children. May it be so! Amen

Happy Easter Monday! I hope you had a lovely Easter celebration and that you are enjoying the crocuses blooming and the robins returning. I got a new app on my phone called Merlin, developed by Cornell University, which allows me to identify which bird is singing the song I am listening to when I am out on a walk. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, as I seek to recognize individual bird songs more accurately!

The last two weeks, I feel a real lifting of my feelings of grief, and what’s replacing it is a desire to more deeply understand the underlying psychological dynamics of my family of origin. To do that, I have had to think back to my Nana, my mom’s mom. I have shared that Nana died two days before my first daughter was born. I have been realizing that I never truly grieved Nana’s death, because I was completely focused on the care of my newborn daughter.

Nana was a really important person in my life. She was the one who encouraged me to write and recognized me as a writer, more than as a doctor in waiting. She taught me how to enjoy my own company. When I visited her for an overnight stay, she would draw a bath for me, scented with lavender, and bring hot chocolate and digestive cookies upstairs for me to have in bed, along with reading a good book. Nana modelled how to do self-care before that word was ever coined!

She was a very quiet woman, deeply devoted to her family. She loved putting on birthday dinners, and especially enjoyed creating a beautifully set dining room table. I have her dining room furniture, which is now 100 years old, and as I set the Easter dinner table with care, using our best silverware and china, lovely napkins, and with a centrepiece of crocuses and daffodils, I realized that it was Nana who taught how meaningful and satisfying it is to do this for one’s family.

Nana also loved her garden, knew all the flowers in it and how to tend them. When I was a child, we went to Nana’s house every Sunday evening for dinner, and in the fine weather, we would walk around the garden, checking on its progress, before dinner.

I have been realizing that my love of books, solitude, bubblebaths, gardening, and preparing and serving lovely holiday meals, all come directly from her. As I have been reflecting on my Mom’s life, I have wanted to reflect deeply on Nana’s life too. Nana and I were more alike. Mom was a real extravert, skilled at interacting with people, and I learned a lot from her too. I am realizing that who I am today is such a reflection of both Nana and Mom’s influences in my life.That’s been a really beautiful thing to ponder this Easter weekend. Birth, death, resurrection. The cycle of life continues. For me, there’s great comfort in that, as I seek to integrate into my life the best of what Nana and Mom taught me.

Hallelujah!

We’ve been enjoying a remarkable two weeks in the life of our family. During this time, we’ve had the opportunity to celebrate the birthdays of three family members, and that of a dear friend. As I have been spending lots of time decorating, baking cakes, blowing up balloons, and eating yummy meals ending with chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, I have been struck by the joy on the faces of those to whom we’ve been able to sing Happy Birthday. I love how it doesn’t matter if you are thirteen or eighty, birthday cake and ice cream always hits the spot!

In the midst of grieving my Mom, I have been appreciating more than ever the balancing simple pleasure and joy of celebrating a dear one’s birthday.There’s been something very healing and life affirming about these two weeks. And for that, I am feeling very grateful!

Good morning!

I read a really helpful quote about grief this morning, which I found in a book called Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown:

“Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

Ah ha! This really rang true and was helpful to me as a person who is at the 7 week mark of journeying through grief. It helped me to make sense of an experience I had while driving to church on Sunday. I was remembering, with pleasure, Martha’s 40th birthday party celebration held the day before, and the thought came to mind, “I’ll have to tell Mom all about it next Sunday when I see her.”
All of a sudden, and it felt like out of the blue, I was hit by a huge wave of grief, as I realized that I won’t be spending any more Sunday afternoons with Mom, sharing about our week. This wave of grief was every bit as intense as what I felt early on after Mom’s passing and I wondered, “When is this going to stop happening?” I continued on to church, because I had an important job to do, but if I hadn’t had a responsibility to carry out, I would have turned the car around and gone home.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s words really helped me make sense of this experience, as I realized there’s no time limit on grief. Also, it now seems to me that if I am struck with a wave of grief like that, it tells me that this was a person who really, really mattered to me, and who I truly loved. So it feels now like, when and if a wave of grief hits me again, that I am fortunate. I have loved, and I have been loved, and that makes me feel really human, if somewhat vulnerable!

I also read that after acute grief comes the stage of ‘integrated grief’.

“ Integrated grief is the result of adaptation to the loss. When a person adapts to a loss, grief is not over. Instead, thoughts, feelings, and behaviours related to their loss are integrated in ways that allow them to remember and honour the person who died. Grief finds a place in their life.” pg 113 Atlas of the Heart

Reading this quote helped me to feel that I am ‘normal’. There’s no timeline regarding when I ‘should’ stop crying at the thought of my Mom. Maybe never, when certain memories come to mind! It’s a matter of being in a process, the process of adaptation and integration. This feels wholesome, rich, deep and satisfying to me, now that I am giving myself permission to take the time and space I need.

Hallelujah!

Wow! Today my oldest child turns 40! We are having a big bash for her tomorrow. I feel pretty ready for the party, so why am I feeling so sad today?

I think it’s because it’s the first big occasion since Mom passed away. I am awash in memories of the day Martha was born, and how Mom and Dad came to see her the next day. I am remembering how when Martha was three months of age, the day we found out Martha’s Dad had cancer, Mom was on the next train to come to be with me in my fear and overwhelm. I remember how when my marriage came to an end many years later, of all the people in my life, she was the one most loyal, even though she didn’t really understand what was happening. In other words, she was a wonderful Mom in terms of being there, silently supporting me, during the most challenging times of my life.

She was also the one who created many of the celebrations in honour of Martha. In the last couple of years we brought the party to Mom, but she was always there, offering Martha a great gift, and loving and enjoying Martha, her eldest granddaughter.

I miss you today Mom, and it will be weird not having you at Martha’s party tomorrow. Thanks for being such a great Mom in the areas of loyalty and party making! It’s been a beautiful morning of crying, thinking back on your life, Martha’s life, and my own life of being a Mom to Martha for the past forty years. Overall, my predominant feeling is gratitude. And I pray that I will continue to grow in my understanding of how important an influence you were in my life.

PS In talking with folks this morning about Martha’s day of birth, I was reminded of another very important event that occurred that day. One hour after Martha was born, My Mom was attending her Mom, my Nana’s, funeral. I couldn’t make it, because I went into labour. Mom said she didn’t know what or how to feel- her beloved Mom’s life was being celebrated, and her new granddaughter was being born 3 hours away. What a thing it is to be a Mother, to be closely connected and to love all the generations, as they enter and exit our world. The cycle of life continues…

Mom loved books and reading. I definitely take after her in that way. Together we delighted in discovering new authors, reading their books, then passing them on to others. My sister told me that when Mom moved from our family home to her condo, she donated about fifty boxes of books to the local library. Now again, Mom’s books need sorting through, and that job has fallen to me. Again, I have donated many of the books, and I have kept a small number for my own library. I also have been looking at Mom’s special books.

She kept a small prayer book which was given to Dad on his second birthday. It was a delight to read prayers written about one hundred years ago. I found a family Bible from my Mom’s side which listed everyone born from my great grandmother all the way down to my own generation. Seeing all the names written in old fashioned script gave me a wonderful sense of the continuity of the generations.

I found my Mom’s own Bible. It was a King James Version, published in 1953, the year before Mom and Dad got married. I have been slowly working my way through its pages, looking for, and listing, the verses Mom underlined, slowly building up a picture of which parts of the Bible were important to her.

It’s been an beautiful journey, providing much food for reflection. The books we own seem to say so much about us, and no two collections of books are the same. I am feeling in no rush to finish mining this buried treasure! It’s been an unexpected joy, an unexpected pleasure on this contemplative journey.

Thanks so much, Mom, for modeling that happiness is having a good book to read and a good book ahead. Thanks for teaching me how to enjoy my own company. Thank you for encouraging me to write. Thank you for showing me that happiness lies in sharing the good things we discover with others. For these and many other life lessons, I will be eternally grateful!

Good morning! The days are getting longer! Daylight Savings Time is coming soon! I hear the birds singing more often. We are getting there!

I have made three trips to my Mom’s condo now, with different things to accomplish each time. But now, as I think about the overall effect of going there, I am realizing that the process of going through cupboards, looking through bookshelves, and examining the photos and art on the walls, is beginning to give me the overall story of her life and what was most important to her.

There are excellent quality gardening tools sitting right by the door to the patio, in readiness for pruning a bush or edging the garden so it will look its best. There is artwork done by the great grandchildren posted on her fridge, as well as some funny cartoons. There is good china and silverware at the ready. There is a cupboard full of wrapping paper and bags. There is a whole cupboard devoted to, and filled with, art supplies. There are about 100 recipe books and maybe 150 art books, as well as many, many pieces of art throughout the whole condo- maybe 50? I didn’t stop to count them all. Gardening, family, entertaining, giving gifts, reading, cooking, making art… these are some of the most important pieces of her life that have emerged.

As I contemplate what’s been important to Mom, I find myself contemplating what is most important to me. What will my children see was most important when they are in the position of going through my things one day? Is there anything I want to change about the order of importance various things have in my life? What do I want to clear away now? What do I want to add? What little messages do I want to leave my children- such as greeting cards I kept and valued from them.

The time of intense grief seems to have passed, followed by a time now of asking myself what really mattered to Mom and why, and what really matters to me, and why. I am so glad this contemplation is happening as spring approaches, because it’s a time of new beginnings in my life as well as in the natural world around me.

Sending a hug to each of you!

Love, Sue

Happy Family Day to all! For those who don’t live in Ontario, we have a Family Day holiday today, allowing us to rest and recharge in mid February, as we head into the final stretch of winter.

On Saturday, I went to my Mom’s condo on my own. I had been going in the company of others prior to this, but I felt it was time, and that I was strong enough to go and be in her space by myself to reflect, as well as to do some necessary tasks there.

I came across a copy of Mom’s beloved Globe and Mail, which she read every day. She was always on top of the news of the day and had definite opinions on what was going on in the world. I had a chance to begin looking at the family photo albums, beginning with 1954, the year Mom and Dad were married. I found a great photo of them on their honeymoon, and was able to take a picture of it with my phone, and share the moment with my sibs, children, and some of the grandchildren. I found a bundle of greeting cards she had kept over the years. Reading through them again, I got a window into what she most valued about our relationship.

Probably the sweetest moments came when I encountered other folks who live in Mom’s condo building. They had lots to say about what Mom meant to them, and again it opened a window into her world at that stage of her life. I spoke to one gentleman who appeared to be in his late 80s. We talked about how Mom was still able to live on her own even up to age 92, but when her final illness came, it was only 3 weeks until she was gone. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Dear, that’s what we all hope for. To be able to live here as long as possible, and then be gone quickly.” Wow. It was a great perspective to be given by someone of Mom’s age, to help me with my own grieving process. Although it seemed to me to be too short a time of illness to be ready personally to let her go, it was good to realize that for at least one person in their late 80s or 90s, the way Mom went was perfect.

As I drove away from the condo building I realized that though I had talked to several folks in the condo, and had been able to listen to their memories and comfort them as they teared up, I myself didn’t cry. I felt like I had turned another corner in the grieving process. There seems to be a sweeter side to grieving which we can access when our bodies are ready for it. To hear the memories of others, to go through old photo albums and cards, to listen to her favourite CDs, all these are providing me beautiful moments of remembrance as I try to deepen my understanding of Mom’s life and what she meant to others, as well as deepen my understanding of what she meant to me, and what she gave to me over the 69 years that I knew her and was blessed to call her my Mom.

Thanks so much for everything, Mom!