Three Things

 

(photo: a recent sunrise above my neighbours' rooftops)

I can’t remember when my sister, my Mum, and I started this (other than ‘since email’), or where the idea originated.  It’s super simple, and, for me, surprisingly effective. One of us sends an email or text, and lists three things we are grateful for in the immediate moment. They can be seemingly small (there is a gorgeous blue jay at the bird feeder) or enormous (I can afford to pay my mortgage and my heating bills and buy groceries, so I am living in a warm house with food in the fridge). Often, but not always, the other two of us will respond with our own lists.

(photo: Piper is an expert at living in the moment - here, finding joy in a sunbeam)

On days when it’s easy to count far more than three blessings, this is a reminder of our great good fortune. On days when we’re struggling . . . this is a reminder of our great good fortune. I do have a few cheaty ones. In the post-hurricane days I learned that I really like having clean knickers to wear each morning (something I had taken for granted my entire life), as well as reading lights at the flick of a switch, and fresh drinking water at the turn of a tap.  (Please bear in mind that I live in a so-called ‘first world country’ yet too many people do NOT have access to fresh water at the turn of a tap.) I will never not be grateful for all the health care I'm able to access for Doug, and for all the help I've had dealing with his Dementia.

(screen shot: I recently reviewed a novel, and the author tweeted her thanks)

One day this week I noted that it’s been a year since Doug moved in to long term care, and that we have both survived the transition. For the first several months, he thrived, because he was given greater stimulation and had far more company than I had been able to provide at home. With the progression of the disease, and the arrival of Covid, he may have wobbled a bit. But now, again, he is thriving.  In a province where so many seniors are truly suffering, he is safe. He’s very well cared for, he’s loved, he’s as content as possible.  One day when I was visiting this week a Blue Rodeo dance party broke out in the dining room; we held hands, and we danced. 

(photo: an Elvis dance party this summer)

It won’t work for everyone, but it works for me; in my darkest moments when I pause, and take a deep breath, I can remind myself of all that is good. 

(photo: a recent sunset) 

Random Bits of Paper

 

 (photo: fridge door, October 16, 2020)

The church across the street is running ‘Operation Warmth’ this winter - collecting gently used winter clothing. It’s the sign, the nudge, I needed to start sorting my husband’s closet, and passing on the clothes he no longer wears, like shirts with buttons, and trousers with zippers.  Before I run everything through the wash I check all the pockets, finding change, a battery, a roll of washi tape, and other assorted things he picked up at some point. A multitude of pens. Scrunched up scraps of paper. 

I unfold each scrap of paper before I throw it in the recycle bin, just in case I find a note.  Because even in our era of emails and texts, Doug wrote me notes. I haven't found one in his winter clothing yet, but I might, and I’ll savour it and save it. 

I’ve always saved bits of paper. Some friends roll their eyes and send me links to websites about de-cluttering. Mum jokes that it’s genetic - my using the backs of envelopes for list writing, and postcards as bookmarks - inherited from both her father and her maternal grandfather. Maybe I was drawn to scrapbooking because it involves collecting pretty paper, and justifies my saving concert tickets, tourist maps, and boarding passes. (Remember those things? Paper boarding passes, concerts, tourists . . .? From a bygone time . . .)

(photo: scrapbook page from a trip to India, 2006)

Doug and I celebrated our marriage by walking Hadrian’s Wall (as a coast-to-coast path) and the Speyside Way (distillery-to-distillery!) Fun fact: we found some bills, train tickets, and letters my great grandfather had saved (using them as bookmarks in his guidebook) from his exploration of Hadrian’s Wall in 1938, so we were able to retrace his steps.  We visited the same pubs he’d visited, and it became a running joke - translating old money into new and calculating the different in cost of a pint then and now. We also imagined and laughed about the differences and similarities in the food and the decor. So much joy from a handful of random bits of paper. 

(photo: scrapbook page from our Honeymoon, 2012)

Genetic predisposition or clutter . . . .  What matters to me is that I still find handwritten love notes from Doug tucked into books, and jacket pockets, and his desk drawers. I keep them on the fridge door, so that every single day I read his words. These tiny mementos of his love have become more precious to me than he ever could have imagined when he wrote them. 

“Three Years Ago This Week”

(photograph: Harpers Ferry, autumn 2017)

I make photobooks with a service which occasionally sends me bittersweet email reminders of past albums. Today’s was from our tour of American Civil War battlefields. Can that really have been only three years ago? Doug was so well! He could still use a camera. He could shower, shave, and dress himself. When we sat with other couples at dinner I adopted a Bossy Wife persona and hoped people would assume he was quiet, rather than hear his struggles to converse. He had a few seizure-like episodes, but always in the mornings, before we met the rest of our group. He slept through movies and bus rides, but was alert when we reached each site.  

The majority of his book collection is non-fiction, with several shelves devoted to the American Civil War. He held on to that vast store of knowledge, and three years ago he could still access it. He’d previously visited some of the battlefields with his late Dad, and had happy memories of that holiday.  (So much so that one day we bought his Dad a souvenir. By then I had realised that it is kinder to pretend his parents are still alive than to keep retelling him the sad news of their deaths.)

This was the first time we booked an organised group tour, and I was hesitant. (It was not inexpensive.) I have no regrets, I’m so pleased we went. With hindsight, we had less time left to travel together than I had hoped. 

What I do regret are trips we didn’t take together, plays we didn’t see, things we didn’t do . . . things I didn’t do. I’m sorry I didn’t learn how to play Chess, I’m sad that we didn’t go out dancing together more often, I wish I’d resigned from my job sooner than I did. 

When I feel sorrow at something we left undone, I try to remind myself of all that we did do.  We never went to Dieppe, which was high on his bucket list, but we did go to Ypres, and the D-Day landing beaches. We walked many, many miles across England together. We rented a narrowboat with my Mum and step-Dad for a week. We vacationed in Mexico with my Mum, sister, nieces, and nephew.  We visited Scotland numerous times, including a Burns Night celebration in Burns’ birthplace. We packed picnics and went for day trips. We were regulars at our local pub’s weekly quiz night.  (And, I remind myself, through the first years of our marriage we were both working and I was earning a PhD; we made the most of our limited time and budget.) In Canada we’ve explored corners of Algonquin Park, walked all our local hiking trails, and travelled from Vancouver to Toronto by train. In our homes we baked, we played Scrabble, we listened to music, we spent hours silently sitting next to each other reading (history for Doug, fiction for me).

We made friends, we built a life - a good life - together, we have a language-for-just-us and code words and in-jokes. 

It’s a balancing act, but just thinking about all the cheerful memories I could list here shows me that my happy memories far outweigh my sad memories.  For me, this counts as a win.   

(photograph: Antietam, autumn 2017)