lest we forget

November makes me sad.
It reminds me of loss.
The trees lose their colour.
We lose light.
We have lost loved ones.
Today I feel as though we have lost our way.

On this day of Remembrance we honour those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
I think of men- some of them barely men- leaving families behind. I think of women who watched them leave, or followed along. They left hopes and plans only to die on foreign soil. But they did so to fight for a cause and to keep us free.
Free from tyranny, fascism, discrimination, hate. They fought for loved ones and strangers. They battled for the oppressed and the marginalized, the victims and voiceless.

But today, I feel as though the events of the recent world dishonour them.
Just this week the United States elected a man whose campaign was run on fear and hate. It was fuelled by discrimination and disregard. The ugliness of humanity rose up and now thinks that it has a place.
What men and women fought against in other countries is seeping through the soil, staining the home land.
Race wars are the new order. Those are harder to fight than an unseen enemy. And harder to accept.

Even in my own beloved country that ignorant monster has smelled the blood spilled by bigotry. A conservative MP has called for screening immigrants for "Canadian Values". That statement turns me cold and my coldness turns to anger.
I am angry at the arrogance for this woman to assume that she speaks for the majority of Canadians.
I'm happy to say she does not, but sad to say she speaks for some.
To me, Canadian values are tolerance and acceptance. And caring for each other. Those are the qualities for which we are known. I am proud of our diversity, of our many different cultures. Wherever I travel in the world, this is the badge I wear, the flag I wave.

Today I am angry. Brought to frustrated tears angry. I see the smug hatred faces of bigots in the US gleefully causing harm to others, because they feel that this President Elect gives them the right to take away the liberty of others born in different skin, brought up with different beliefs, loving in different ways. They think that putting the Clown Prince on the throne justifies their hateful words and actions. They are too consumed with hate to realize they have gone from Super Power to Super Joke.

I am sickened by those in my own country who wear a poppy, and cry "Lest We Forget" while thinking that only those who are born here matter. Or rather, those with white skin who are born here. Those are the ones who dishonour our fallen on this day and every day. The men and women who went to war to bring peace may not rest easy. Those who gave their very lives so that ours could be lived in freedom are dishonoured with every racial slur, every misogynistic and homophobic action. Every Mosque vandalized, refusal of refuges, religious intolerance or violence towards others, spits on their sacrifice.

I don't want to be angry. I don't want to feel discouraged. Or frustrated.
I keep telling myself that the only way to combat this hatred is through love. More than ever I smile at people hoping it will carry through to the next person they see. I try to make my energy positive when everything around me is losing colour. It's not easy. It's not easy to beat back the darkness but I try. Not just today, but every day. It's just a small thing and it seems almost child-like to say it, but I hope it will make a difference.

I think of the words from "In Flanders Fields" - the words of the dead, blowing arounds me as if they move the poppies and the flags




Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.


Let's take the torch.

Let's continue the fight.

Let's fight hatred whenever we can.

Lest We Forget

it is time

There are those with the ocean in their blood.

Through the winter we anxiously await the day when we can plunge back in.

Every Fall we try to squeeze in every last swim.

Starting mid-September panic sets in. Panic that this swim could be the last of the season.

This year I made it to almost the end of October. This time there was no panic. There was only gratitude and acceptance. I felt the change in the air and water since last week. I spent beautiful day reading on the beach and then headed into the water just before I headed home. And I felt, okay, this is it. I can live with that. 

Thank you Atlantic Ocean. You were amazing. 

See you in June.

only love

Today would be our Mother's 70th birthday.

Today we commit her ashes to the earth.

But every day and forever, we are grateful for having had her in our lives and for the love she gave us unconditionally. Today the sky rained tears with us but we also have laughter and smiles in our remembering.


Life may end but Love is eternal.

the year of firsts

It is the year of firsts.
For the next year, every event on the calendar will be the first one since my mother died; the first one without her.

First up- Mother's Day.

To be honest, it really wasn't that bad.
It wasn't that bad because every day hurts.
Sundays hurt.
That's the day I think "oh I better call..."
Even though we laughed at Hallmark Holidays, we still called to acknowledge it.
And now the year of firsts will have many opportunities that won't follow through because she is not there on the other end.

So one day doesn't hurt more than the rest.
Each one is a first.

beast of burden

Grief is a strange animal

It stalks you. It never really leaves.

Sometimes I forget. But not really.
Sometimes it is just grinning at me from a dark corner with menacing eyes and snarly dripping mouth. I go back into my life and for a sliver of a second I forget. Not really, but in the way that a cloud can make you forget the sun for a moment. The mind can be preoccupied but not the body. The marrow aches with remembrance.

Sometimes I wonder why it doesn't just kill me, but it just devours me in pieces instead. It wounds but not enough.
And then it circles and hovers and strikes again, going for the center, the stomach punch.
It isn't personal, it isn't toying with me, it's just the way it feeds.
It's just the way it feels.

I've had enough loss to know that it doesn't ever really go away. It reopens the wound and bleeds until it scabs over again but it never fully heals.

And sometimes I don't want it to because it keeps me connected to the loss which is all I have left.

We exist together, grief and I.
We walk like the woman and the wolf.

spring forward fall apart

The days get longer.
Routine has returned.
Dull ache and sharp pain take turns.

what i didn't get to say

It's been over two weeks since my Mother passed. Over one week since her funeral.

There is not one second of my breath that doesn't hurt with the loss of her. There are countless times through the day that I go to pick up the phone and call and then fall into tears because she will not answer. Sometimes, though, I do call. I call just to hear her voice on the phone that is still connected. I want to cradle her voice and make it into a person again.

My brother and sisters are trying to deal in their own way. There is so much we can do for each other and so much that we can't. Face Time is spent crying at each other. Reliving moments, good and bad. Regrets. What ifs. If onlys.

I wanted to speak at the funeral.
The priest said in his experience it proves to be too difficult and I had to agree. I didn't think I could get through it. We could have had someone read it. But instead we gave it to the priest and asked if he could read it in its entirety. He did not. Instead he incorporated some of what I wrote into his own homily. I wanted people to know it was from us, not from a stranger grasping at finding a way to sum up someone he didn't know.

I wanted people to know her as we did.

My mother and I didn't always get along.
When I was growing up we fought hard and loud battles. There were years of estrangement but eventually, as adults, we came together. I will forever be grateful for this. Our closeness grew and we talked a lot. We had visits and took vacations together with our family.  For these things I am thankful. Our memories sustain us now. I have images of her with crossword puzzles, asking us for answers and scratching out what she had already written in ink.Luckily there were many laughs. Her children loved to make fun of her quirkiness and she loved to let us.

I want to share what I wrote for her, the words I never got to say or have heard in public. As I shift through regret, anger, sadness, denial, acceptance, I want to have these words to support me.

In times like these, times of loss, we look to find meaning. We look for lessons and reasons. We want our lives to mean something, to leave a lasting legacy. We wonder if we've made a difference.  

 At the age of 60, our Mother reflected on her life and thought that she hadn't done much. She decided to travel to Afghanistan as a civilian to work supporting our troupes in Kandahar. On her way there she stuck up a conversation with a woman on a plane. This woman turned out to be Christie Blatchford, a columnist for The Globe and Mail who later wrote an article about meeting a woman named Bobbi from Cape Breton and what brought her to the Middle East. 

 I learned something from this article that I had never known. 
Our mother was scared. 

 She told the reporter "When I got married I was scared to death. When I had my kids I was scared to death. When I got divorced I was scared to death" 

 This thought never occurred to me. My Mother never showed her fear. She was fierce and feisty, never held back from speaking her mind. It's funny how what can embarrass you as a child can empower you as an adult. 

 She was afraid, and yet she still moved forward. She was scared but it didn't stop her, it didn't hold her back.  

 This is the lesson we can all take away from how my Mom lived.

It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to scared. But don't let it hold you back. Don't let it keep you from doing things, trying things, saying things. 

 When my Mother received her diagnosis, I know she was afraid. But she accepted it and wasn't going to let it keep her from moving forward. She told the doctor then "I have no regrets. I love my children and I know they love me. And I know they know how much I love them" 

And it is true. 

We were lucky that we knew it. We didn't wait until she was ill to tell her and each other. We knew it because she told us and she showed us. 

There is also a lesson in this. Don't be afraid to tell those you love how you feel. Be afraid that it will be too late if you don't.  

 We are devastated to lose her and will miss her in countless ways, big and small. But we are also joyous. We are joyous in our memories of laughter and funny stories. We are grateful to have had her. She made us a family. She gave us the gift of each other. 

And we will go forward for her and because of her. Even though we are afraid. 

Her strength was greater than her fear and it is her strength that what will carry us, just as it always has. 

mother of a rant

My Mother left this earth today.

Many say she lost her battle with cancer.
This is not the case.
She didn't have a chance to battle cancer. Instead she battled bureaucracy and bullshit.
She fought a faulty system. And she lost.
We all lost.

From the moment she entered the Cape Breton Regional Hospital 5 weeks ago, she didn't stand a chance.
Actually, let me add to that because a trail of negligence began before she even came to the emergency room.

For months she complained of a pain in her back. She took this complaint to her family doctor and was told each time to go home and take Advil or Tylenol. Not once was she sent for an xray. Even when she fainted in the office, even when she coughed up blood, there was no attention given. Unfortunately these facts were kept from us, her children, or we would have insisted on action.

By Christmas time she could barely pick up the water pitcher. After the New Year she went back to the doctor insisting she wasn't feeling well. Finally, he conceded that he would send her for a chest xray and told her to go home and wait for a call for an appointment. Nine days later, the call still hadn't come. At this point we urged her to go to the emergency room to seek treatment.

After many hours in diagnostic imaging, it was discovered that she had a tumour in her left lung that was also filled with fluid, which is what caused the difficulty in her breathing. She also had spots on her spine.

For two days she was kept in the emerg because there was no bed for her upstairs. Finally when one opened up, she was placed in the ward for orthopedic surgery. The nurses and staff were very lovely, and tried their best to attend to her, but they have four or five patients each. Sometimes my mother would ring for assistance or pain medication and would wait an hour to be seen. Sometimes she soiled herself waiting for help to the bathroom. My sisters and brother and I came to Cape Breton to help her (along with other family members) But we also had to fight to get her even minimal care. Everything was a battle.

We asked why she wasn't moved to the floor that dealt with cancer patients. We were told there were no beds. Yet every day beds would open up only to be filled immediately. The nurses worked with us to help get her moved, knowing that she wasn't able to get the care she deserved on their floor, that the patient to nurse ratio was lower on 4B. Administration blocked the way every step of the way.

A very valuable lesson we learned in this, is that you must have an advocate to fight for you in this system. So we fought.
They never had any intention of moving her at all, saying that at least she had a bed. I became a rabid dog, calling the bed assignment people, insisting and threatening in order to have her moved. I am not that person, but it is amazing what you will become to protect and help someone you love.

Finally we had a small victory when they put her in a private room in 4B. We thought we had finally achieved something.
It took almost three weeks.
Three weeks of her not receiving any treatment.

Earlier, at the beginning of her diagnosis, she told us and doctors that she wanted to fight it with whatever means necessary. My mom was a fighter. We knew she would battle bravely. Sadly, she was never given the chance. We were told she could have 3-6 months but we were hopeful that she could put it into remission. With my sisters and brother and me by her bedside she laughed, talked, and told us to be positive. We didn't cry in front of her, holding up her spirits until we could collapse in private.

I felt that from the minute the tumour was discovered, my mother was written off.
When the oncologist came to give her the terminal diagnosis, he slumped in the chair and matter of factly said that he wasn't hopeful. And then in the middle of this he took a phone call as we stood there stunned.

When the radiologist said he could offer her treatment to shrink tumours and help with pain, she told him she was ready to fight. He left saying "you have a lot to discuss with your family" and we were left thinking that radiation was to start immediately. Daily we asked when it was going to start. Daily turned into weeks and still nothing.

My sisters and I had to return to our homes and jobs, my brother was able to remain. Every day we spoke with her via Face Time but she started to become less coherent and difficult to understand. My brother felt it was due to the pain meds. We found out that they were constantly asking her pain level on a scale from 1-10. No one explained to her  that 1 was the lowest amount, so when she was saying 7, thinking 10 was the least amount of pain, they would jack her up again. This was later chalked up to being a "miscommunication".

It was so hard trying to speak with her, not understanding anything she was saying. We asked if the cancer had spread to her brain but were told no.  We asked them to dial back the medication and soon she started to come around again.


Finally one chemo treatment was administered.
She did well. Then she became nauseous, unable to keep anything down and bringing up a very dark substance. When she was still sick after a week, and weaker from being sick, we worried that it was the pain meds instead.

We had a conference call with doctors, asking why radiation hadn't yet been started. The radiologist told us that when he asked her to make a decision she couldn't give one so he was waiting to hear from her. I was in that discussion, I told him, and first of all, she was so medicated she wasn't aware that it was even a question, and secondly, not once was there any follow-up. Once again, we heard the words "miscommunication".


On my last visit to see her, I had her up walking. She was eating a bit, but had lost so much weight. Yet on the last day that I saw her she was a weaker version of her old self, still joking and sarcastic. I left telling her I would be back in a week and a half.

A few days later my brother called to say something was wrong. She had become close to catatonic. She could understand us and squeeze hands in response, but she couldn't speak. He asked again about the pain medications. It turned out that she had been overdosed and was in "opiate toxicity".  The explanation was that they had "miscalculated the dosage".

A drug called Narcan was administered, which is used in overdose cases. It drives the opiate from the system. When this happens, the patient experiences not only withdrawal, but the extreme pain returns immediately. My mom became violent, pulling the IV from her arm. Later we found out that it was never replaced and she was therefore without fluid and nutrition for a couple of days. We wanted the IV restarted. We were told that it was hard to find a vein and it would be uncomfortable and painful for her. But starvation and dehydration was more painful in our opinion, so the needle was inserted.

I wasn't able to be there for her last breath.
My father is to have surgery (also as the result in a missed diagnoses from the same family doctor) in Halifax and so I stay here to be with him
My sisters were with her, and held the phone to hear ear while I told her how much I love her. Around 5.15 am they held her hands as she slipped away.

It is hard to believe that a woman so feisty and full of life is gone.
It haunts me to know that her last weeks were spent in the hands and mercy of "miscommunication".

This whole ordeal has been one fucking miscommunication after the other.

The short time we were told we would have was taken from us.

I am angry. Our hearts are broken. We are shattered.


I thought maybe writing this down will help it make sense.
It doesn't.

It is senseless.

I miss my Mom.