Flashbacks & Foreshadowing

I am deeply grateful for the four years I spent immersed in Alice Munro’s Dear Life, and how much I learned about myself through a close reading of all her versions of each one of those stories. I am equally grateful that for most of those four years Doug and I could have long conversations about the differences, subtle and dramatic–a change in tense, or punctuation, or a completely revised ending–and their effect on a paragraph, an understanding, the whole piece, and/ or the collection. 

My desk in the PhD room, 2015

Doug’s dad was a journalist and editor, author of a Toronto Star column called “Words” and passed his expertise about and love of language to his son. I was lucky indeed to have Doug’s insight. Again and again we returned to her techniques around analepsis and prolepsis. Munro is well known for her complex and multi-layered writing of time and the way in which her stories are rarely told in a linear fashion.  Time in Munro’s fiction, argues Douglas Glover, “. . . never flows in a straight line; it loops and eddies and suddenly compresses in a spasm of action then stretches out again” and Gerald Lynch notes her writing’s “temporal gaps, slippages, and recurrences.”

So true to life. Verisimilitude - another of Munro’s literary strengths.

Multiple times I day I remind myself to Be Present! Live in the Moment! But I also look both behind and ahead. “I am a part of all that I have met;/ Yet all experience is an arch wherthro’/ Gleams that unravel’d world, whose margin fades/ for ever and for ever when I move.” (From Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”) As I move forward in this new chapter of my life with David, I think back with regret at all I didn’t do with or for Doug–all I could have done differently, better. On the positive side, this abundance of regret is helping me create a full life now. No hesitation, no holding back, no second guessing. David and I share a love of travel, and we both choose to spend money on experiences rather than stuff. (Well, with the exception, in my case, of books and scrapbooking supplies.) When one of us suggests an adventure, the other says yes. And off we go. On a hike, to dinner, to Disney, to the theatre. I do not dwell on the fact that David’s dad lived with dementia, but I am aware that each day we spend together is precious, in a way I wish I had been when Doug was well.

Sneaky weekend away, April 2024

A friend and colleague who has a one degree separation from Munro’s family assures me that although she was living with dementia, she was still able to enjoy life on a day-to-day level. I wonder. I hope so. But at best, I am skeptical. I will not ask for clarification with regards the definition of enjoyment.

I understand. Last week I sat, holding Doug’s hand. I fed him ice cream and read him some of our favourite poetry. I told him about my week. I reminisced about some of our holidays, long walks, and a few of the many, many moments I cherish. I described the view outside the window; I told him what wildflowers are already in bloom. 

Trilliums, May 2024

And had his friends asked me after I’d kissed him good night and left the home, I would have told them that he was content. And hoped they didn’t ask me to define content.

Doug, like Alice Munro, was a writer, a reader, and a lover of language. To live without books, and newspapers, and magazines, and pencil and paper in hand . . . It breaks my heart.

The summer school in Cambridge at which I’ve taught for many years has survived the pandemic and I’ll be teaching with them again this summer. I am going to take David back to the place where Doug and I made our life for those four years when I was reading Dear Life. I have no doubt that I will be looking back, even as I move forward. 

Teaching, summer 2016

Trigger Warning: Butterflies

Memory can be such a double-edged sword.

I have been thinking about content warnings, about the power of words to harm at times, heal at others. 

The powerful and supportive content warning Charlene Carr wrote for her most recent novel, 

We Rip The World Apart

I expect fiction to reflect real life, and I expect real life to be full of sorrows and horrors as well as joys. If I choose to read a novel set during a war, I am prepared for savagery and inhumanity, though I also hope for moments of grace. If I choose to read a novel exploring a marriage, I expect miscommunications, hurts, the possibility of infertility and/or infidelity, along with the many forms of love that can hold a marriage together. 

My childhood was perfect; I grew up in a beautiful location, in a safe country, with loving parents. I was beyond spoiled as a child: in the summer I played on the beach and in the river in the front yard, went camping, visited my grandparents in Nova Scotia and England. In the winter I cross country skied through the woods, skated on the river, downhill skied in Quebec every March break. Thanksgiving and Christmas were magical holidays. My younger sister was - and is - my best friend. When I was older I was lucky enough to travel (across all seven continents), live in many other countries, earn three university degrees, meet Doug, a wonderful man, and make an extraordinarily happy life.

A photo Dad took of Margie, me, Ginger the cat, Mum, Em. Of those six, only two remain.

As a child, I only knew what I knew. As an adult, I can look back and see cracks and imperfections. My eldest sister died when I was three, my older sister lived with undiagnosed mental illnesses, my mother suffered from serious and persistent depression for years. I struggled through high school, only barely graduating. Later, I survived an unhealthy, unhappy marriage. A category five hurricane. Three months in a psychiatric hospital. A vicious divorce. Whilst still newlyweds, we discovered Doug was living with early onset dementia. And my biggest regret - I am not a mother.

When Doug and I were living in Cambridge we wrote restaurant reviews for several publications. After one review in the local newspaper, a reader commented that “Gloin and Ells must have been wearing rose-colored glasses . . .” because that reader’s experience of the same restaurant had not been as pleasant as ours. We laughed at the criticism but knew it was true. We both saw a glass as half-full, always. Irritatingly cherry? Overly optimistic? Perhaps. 

pub grub in Huntingdon

same shirt, different day! dessert in Brighton 

(we ordered a knickerbocker glory because that's what my grandmother and I always shared 

at Fortnum & Mason . . . more of my happy childhood memories)

But the good, the positive, the beauty in our lives - in our opinion - far outweighed the shadows. We could have focused on the negative, considered ourselves victims, and defined our lives by the hardships we’d endured. Neither of us chose that option. My sister  and her family nicknamed Doug “Mr. Cheerful” soon after their first meeting, and he was - and still is, as much as I can discern. His childhood stories were like mine–full of sunshine and love and happy memories–and although I'm sure there must have been sorrows too, I have no idea what they might have been.

Life is difficult, and navigating it is difficult. I believe in triggers, though I can’t always predict what might affect me. Despite the hurricane, I’m not scared of wind storms. The other day, however, a cookbook fell open at one of Doug’s favourite recipes and I blinked away tears. His handwriting. A shoe store window displaying the red running shoes he yearned for (he asked for so little) that we couldn’t find when we were shopping for sneakers. And this weekend, a tent full of butterflies.

Because I am supposed to be “establishing my brand as an author on social media” and I’ve been reading murder mysteries & romance novels (i.e. not literary or bookclub fiction) last Thursday I thought I might post a #throwbackthursday photo on Insta (if that’s still a thing, rather than a trend that's been and long gone) - so I looked though photographs I taken on that same day in previous years. Close to that date in 2015 Doug and I visited a butterfly garden outside the National History Museum in London. That was such a good day - I remember so many details I didn’t capture in the photographs I took. But it held bittersweet echoes for Doug; he’d taken his dad for a day out from his long term care home to a butterfly conservatory in Niagara, just a few months before his dad died. 

Doug, 2015

On Saturday, completely unplanned, I visited a butterfly exhibit for the first time since 2015 and experienced such a surge of emotion I could barely see the gorgeous creatures through my tears. Coupled with the sharp pain of missing Doug was the guilt of knowing that I am continuing to live my life without him.

Again and again I’m thankful that in our last few good years Doug and I made memories. At the same time I regret all we didn’t do; I wish I’d done so much more.

Were I to include a content warning for my novel, I could mention infertility, infidelity, 9/11, stillbirth, death, dementia, alcoholism . . . but how can I guess what else might stir up a painful memory for one of my readers at that very moment? Raspberry pie, a fire tower, the hard plastic chairs in a hospital’s waiting room, the sound of a child’s laughter, a three-way mirror, silence, loneliness, loss. And what about a butterfly?

photo by Mum

“The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; 

it simply flies on.”

-Guillermo del Toro

"Butterflies are nature's angel. They remind us what a gift it is to be alive." 

-Robyn Nola

“Till a' the seas gang dry . . .”

Doug’s care home is located on a road we’d driven many times as it’s a short cut between our house and my childhood home, when Mum still lives, just over 100 miles away. The building is well known - originally the site of a dark episode in Canadian history, but the morning he moved in was the first time we’d stopped there. As I parked, I knew that when I left at the end of the evening I’d be alone in the car. Leaving him behind. And I did, though I had to sit in the car for a long time before I felt safe to drive. 

The first two weeks were absolutely the worst (until Covid struck and I realised how much worse “the worst” could be). I arrived at the home after breakfast and stayed until he was tucked into bed in the evening. We had lunch and supper together every day, joined in all the activities, and both of us endeavoured to navigate this new routine. I tried to hold my tears while we were together, because my crying upset him. I was often unsuccessful, but I managed (I think) to suppress the worst of them until I was once again alone in the car, driving home to Piper-the-Cat. 

About four minutes from the home there is a house which, then, had an elf on a bicycle at the end of the driveway. The elf was dressed in seasonal outfits, and his bicycle was decorated to match. Over time that became my cue to pull off the road, blow my nose, wipe my eyes, and find a big smile. 

Sometime during Covid the elf disappeared. (I liked to think he was on a round-the-world trip.) Then the house was sold. (I hoped the elf had relocated with his family, and was given a new bicycle.) The new owners posted signs making it clear they supported the freedom convoy and were not in favour of vaccinations - views diametrically opposed to mine. 

Pavlov knew what he was doing. Even now, when I am far less likely to arrive at Doug’s home in tears, the empty bicycle where the elf used to live reminds me to find a smile in preparation for our visit. 

Recently a late season snowfall coated the bicycle so it resembled a ghost bike. I remember reading about the white roadside bicycles when I first started noticing them. They are part protest, part memorial, a way to make visible the invisible, and bear witness (Reverend Laura Everett, author of Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels).

Doug is NOT dead. 

But. 

But.

It has been such a long time since we were able to make new memories together. Every (one-sided) conversation we have is a distressing reminder of how far apart we are. Of what we used to do together, and how very much we’ve lost.

The day of Burns Night we listened to Burns’ poetry and songs; I was okay until “A Red, Red Rose” - the song to which I walked up the aisle on your wedding day. I had brought Doug’s wedding sporran for him to hold, but he wasn’t interested in it, so I was the one who clung to it, stroking the tassels and tracing the pattern engraved into he cantle. 

Holding on and letting go; I struggle with both.

So then to my blog: a way to make visible the invisible and to bear witness.

Again, December

 

I am not a stamper, but I’ve used this stamp multiple times this year. It reads: sometimes this time of year is just hard.

In amongst the Christmas cards on my mantle is a condolence card which arrived this morning. My Uncle Richard died last week leaving my mother, the eldest of four, the only surviving sibling. I tried to write a poem about the incongruity of sympathy cards arriving in the same post as Christmas cards the year my dad died. 

My mum and her brother, a few years ago; 

I have far more snapshots of them foraging for mushrooms, hiking, and sitting by campfires

My best friend’s mother has been diagnosed with cancer, and within days of being admitted to hospital has been moved to the palliative wing. This woman has been a second mother to me for my entire life; a world without her is impossible to imagine. My friend is somehow managing to balance caregiving and grieving whilst also creating Christmas for her children.

Many other friends are struggling with other challenges.

And everything set against the utterly horrific news from other parts of the world. 

Yesterday Doug and I had lunch together. “Had” lunch - his care home is currently in outbreak, so I was masked. Our lunch date comprised my feeding him and making a one-sided conversation. But then we held hands and listened to Fireside Al Maitland reading Frederick Forsyth’s The Shepherd, and for just a moment my eyes were dry and my heart was full.

 Our Christmas Eve tradition.

Early this year, but just as meaningful.

My wish for everyone is that the coming weeks hold many of those precious moments, when, if only for a brief time, all’s right with the world. 

Physics of A Car Crash

November was your epitaph, Dad --

That awkward month when maples, stripped

of their impulsive sobright leaves, scrape

the pre-snow pale sky

filled with leaving shadows.

The world was rushing toward holidays;

but inertia overcame me; I stopped

slitting thick, ivory envelopes.  

Christmas cards addressed to you 

and sympathy cards for us

lay in a random pile on the edge

of your oak desk.

But nothing is random, I heard you say,

explaining Newton’s laws of motion

energy and force and the ordered

behaviour of the universe,

saw rows of formulae in your neat script

like skidmarks etched into black ice.

Bittersweet

Why bittersweet, I wonder, not sweetbitter? How did this compound noun come to be created in this order, putting painful first and pleasurable second? (Yes, yes, I could open my OD of English Etymology to delve into the history of the word and perhaps discover a suggestion as to why it’s constructed this way . . . but that will only lead me down a rabbit hole . . . .)

I was thinking about the exact definition of “bittersweet” yesterday as my new step-dog and I walked a (tiny, tiny) portion of the Bruce Trail. 

I was trying to focus on living in the exact moment - truly appreciating the last of the bright autumn trees, the crunch of fallen maple leaves we were walking on, the difference in temperature between the sun and shade. 

But earlier I had read the BBC’s explanation as to why they don’t use the word “terrorist” after several Guardian articles about the Israel-Hamas war, so my mind kept circling back to the power of language.

When I passed a map of the entire Bruce Trail my first thought was, “Oh, Doug would have loved this walk.” I don’t know how much of it he walked - he lived in Southern Ontario for most of his life but I remember many stories about hikes in Algonquin Park, none about this trail. Still, my thought process was sweet first - then bitter - then sweet again.

We loved planning long walks in the UK, we loved the walks themselves, we loved having walked them. Hours spent pouring over maps & making picnic lunches, hours walking, hours reminiscing about the highlights of the walk. Win-win-win. 

I used to want to walk every mile of every walk, start to finish, including every side trail. Doug taught me to relax a little - and jump on a steam train for a mile of two, go off on a tangent at the risk of missing a few miles of the exact path, spend longer in a museum or at a ruin or foraging for mushrooms or berries, or admiring a view - then make up the difference with a bus at the end of the day if necessary. Once day we stopped for “just an hour” at an airplane museum in Carlisle because it was marked on the OS map. We spent the entire morning there.

I was reminded of that visit when David and I were in Germany last month. We went to the Technik Museum in Sinsheim; I had no idea how big a collection it was, or how fascinating I would find it. In four plus hours we barely scratched the surface. I sent Doug a postcard - even knowing he can’t read it, or even understand it when it's read to him. I was here, I thought of you, I thought of us. In this way I can witness what we had, what we’ve lost, and what I have. 

And how incredibly lucky am I to be able to turn to David and say, 'Doug would love this,' knowing that David will understand? 

That was the week of September 11th. For the first 17 years after the hurricane, I woke on September 11th every year and thought “Ivan.” Last year I was on holiday with my Mum, and the significance of the date didn’t register until mid-morning. This year it was late afternoon before I realized what day it was. It’s possible there will come a time when the entire day will pass without my acknowledging Ivan (though unlikely because that is also the date of 9/11, and the news coverage of that anniversary reminds me of my own before/ after life-changing moment).

In the library this week I picked up a novel in which a Caribbean hurricane plays a part in both scene-setting and plot. For many years I would have put it down again, but this week I checked it out. I may even read it before it’s due back. 

Thanksgiving Monday - another day of ‘remember whens.’ I was lucky enough to spend the day with my dear friend, Donna. We reminisced about Thanksgiving 2019 which we spent with our husbands and another couple. 

Doug moved into long term care soon afterwards, and the two other husbands have both since passed. Despite the many changes in our lives since that meal only four years ago, Donna and I are both still thankful for fundamentally the same things now as then. Sweet  . . . bitter . . . sweet. 

Random Thoughts on Bravery

Thankful Grateful Blessed

I have discovered that I am marking the passage of years by the appearance of this sign in Doug’s care home. Thanksgiving - again? Has an entire year really passed since last Thanksgiving? I find myself taking stock of my year - accomplishments & disappointments, joys & sorrows, blessings & burdens - and thinking about what I can (try to) achieve in the last months of this year. 

Live music at Doug's care home; a post-Covid joy I'll never again take for granted 

My problems fade to insignificance when I read the news, and between reports of wars and deaths I interpose Jay Rayner’s restaurant reviews and the Culture & Lifestyle rabbit hole that leads to. Recently an actor whose work I admire said of another actor (whose work I don’t know) “ . . . this woman showed up and claimed her seat at the table with nothing on her face. I am so impressed and floored by this act of courage and rebellion.”

In the past I might have scoffed, “That’s courage?! Come on!” But today I try to imagine what it might be like to be a person who is expected to present a certain image in public, or even a person who wears make up on a regular basis. I have zero lived experience of this, so I can’t judge the degree of bravery it takes for someone who is photographed a zillion times a day to leave her house makeup-free. 

Visiting Doug: I rarely wear make up so this is not a show of bravery on my part

(I have chosen to crop his face from the picture; I'd rather remember him as he looked, not as he looks)

As a creative writing teacher, I ask my students to include an aesthetic statement when they submit a piece of work. I explain that if I have an understanding of what they are aiming for, I’ll be better position to mark their work in a way which will be more useful to them. Not only “I think this worked well because/ you may wish to revisit this because . . . ” but also “I believe you met your objective in this way/ perhaps your desired result is let down by this section because . . . ”

For some classes I use as an example the poetry of Rupi Kaur, who writes in lowercase, almost punctuation free. She has explained that this is not a random, meaningless choice, but “in the gurmukhi script... all letters are treated the same. i enjoy how simple that is. how symmetrical and how absolutely straightforward . . . a visual representation of what i want to see more of within the world: equalness... so in order to preserve these small details of my mother language i include them within this language. no case distinction and only periods.” I choose to believe the ‘bare faced’ actor has as compelling an explanation for her choice, and wonder if she considers herself a courageous rebel. 

Back to the newspaper: I have become my paternal grandmother; I remember her reading the obituaries every morning and I do the same. So many speak of the “brave battle” a loved one has fought, with cancer, with heart disease, with a mental illness. Apart from my ambivalence about the war metaphor so often used, I question the use of “bravery” here, but remind myself - again - that I can’t guess at someone else’s lived experience.

Spring 1973 - my sister and I with our Granny Ells

I speak of Doug as “living with dementia” knowing it was not a choice he made. It’s not anything over which he has any control. He IS a brave man - he’s made lots of courageous choices in the past, and done many things I consider deserving of the term. (If the Toronto Star’s archives weren’t kept behind a paywall, I’d link here to his reports from the front lines of El Salvador’s civil war.) I am thankful that I knew him when he was well, and was able to witness his courage.

The ping of an incoming email. A friend, who ends her note with, “You are brave and good.” I hope she is right. I hope that I am brave and that I am good. I’m grateful that she can see those characteristics in me, especially on the days when I cannot. 

On to the book reviews where there will be one that applauds the bravery of the writer to tackle a certain subject, to expose secrets, or to dare to craft a novel in an innovative way. I tell my students they are brave to write at all - and brave again to share their writing with the rest of us. I am blessed to have students who are willing to push themselves far from their comfort zones, with the added bonus that their confidence helps me grow too. 

The weather has turned. A long, warm autumn, with hot summer-weather days has, overnight, become the start of winter, with the first snowfall of the season causing two highway accidents north of North Bay over Thanksgiving weekend. Next time I visit Doug I'll bundle him up, and together we'll brave the cold.