MEMOIR
Six Years Gone
And as the years pass by grieving doesn’t get any easier
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
5th June 2024
Reminders are everywhere. Well, this was your home. Nothing in this house was untouched by you — everything modified, painted, or repurposed. The top shelf of the medicine cabinet — left as though you had just been there moments ago. The eye wash, the drops, the salt, and the lid cleaning wipes for blepharitis. The collection of sample floss I have given you over the years. The sewing machine is at the desk; the chair is now empty. I have more memories of you sitting and sewing there than I do of seeing it like this.
And that’s how it’s been every day for the last six years.
We made a pact before you died, Mom. You promised you’d come back to haunt me. You'd tell me that I’d know it was you by the way you’d visit in my dreams, the way you would whisper in the wind, or I’d hear your voice in birdsong. You’d tell me.
I’m still waiting.
There have been no strange goings on, no dream visitations, no signs in the sky, and no whispers in the night.
It’s your memories that haunt me.
Every day. Not how I expected it. Not how we spoke about it. It’s in the traces that you left—the repaired ironing board, hastily patched but functional. It’s in the multitude of little pockets you sewed and conveniently placed — for glasses, remotes, combs and whatever — but sewn precisely and neatly like they would be on presentation.
A little napkin here, so you could use it later because you hated waste. Buttons. Buttons are spilling out everywhere. Homemade spray cleaner because you had a sensitivity to the store-bought kind. And doll parts. So many doll parts. Your doll-making hobby was an obsession that kept you busy, joyful, and fulfilled. I am slowly going through the many things that were uniquely you and deciding what I can part with. Clearing out the medicine cabinet. Most of the doll parts are gone.
The sewing machine, after an eternity, has finally been used. I had a stack of scrub hats to be sewn, waiting. As I sat sewing, the hum of the machine was your voice. The stop-start approval of a garment finally comes together. I remember you being so happy to finally have a ‘sewing buddy’. Your stepstools are still everywhere. Reading glasses are in every room. You are everywhere.
Then there are the diaries and calendars. Stacks and stacks of diaries with written information that is just mind-numbingly boring. I had, at one time, hoped there was something secretly scandalous within those pages. But amongst the dentist appointments, “cleaned the hummer feeder,” and “Harry came over for tea” entries, the most salacious thing that could be found was: Vacuumed upstairs with DYSON, I got lots of DIRT!
Then one day, my eye settles on an entry that stops my heart.
Tim 6 years gone.
The entry was in a pocket diary dated June 16, 2017. So simply and plainly stated, and yet felt dark and loaded to me. My brother Tim was the youngest, unplanned, and often your favorite. You two had a special bond, a secret language that you shared until the end.
When he died, I saw how his loss tore at you. Sudden outbursts of unrelenting sobbing. The melancholic way you wore Tim’s old shirt to dust in. In the last six years of your life, we would be sharing some funny incidents about Tim and the dog, and abruptly, your smiles and laughter would fade. Not quite a year later, on June 5th, 2018, you succumbed to the ravages of cancer.
“Every seven years or so, your cells have been so productive that your body has replaced every part of itself — from your eyelashes to your esophagus. In other words, after about seven years of cellular replication, you’re an entirely new collection of cells, inside and out.”
I recall in a science class — probably in high school — that the human body is renewed every seven years or so. Perhaps when a heart is so broken that it’s impossible to piece back together, you must replace it cell by cell. I am absolutely certain this is how the cancer started. The desperate unhappiness, the despair, and the hopelessness are all fashioning a replacement body, replicating unfaithful copies of cells. It took seven years to take its toll. It took seven years to exact its damage. By the time it was discovered, we had mere months left together.
“Ah well,” you said. “I’ve had a good life.”
I don’t know if you ever read it, but in the book Obasan — about the Japanese Internment during WWII, there is a chapter that describes how a father bakes bread. The bread was made faithfully to the recipe, as a devotional practice, but it just never turns out, never rises. Its weight is like a stone, passed from father to daughter, for the daughter to prepare and eat. By this, the father passes to the daughter the sorrow and shame of the interment.
I can’t help but to think in your passing, you’ve gifted me with a similar stone. The burden of Tim’s death. The never-ending grief. The duty to keep his memory alive. The quiet rituals that include some of the things that he left behind. His shirt that you wore when dusting. His collection of tools that you used regularly. His favorite mug that you always used for afternoon tea.
Then, there was fishing gear that survived the boating accident, silently sitting in a downstairs room, keeping their secrets. I’m not sure what details you knew, what they told you. All you could tell me, as you stared hard at the floor, was ‘they found him near Riverside’.
You were drowning in your own loss. I was barely able to keep my own head above water. Trying to lift you out of your pain felt utterly pointless. You were, understandably, inconsolable.
I told you that I will always choose to believe he didn’t suffer.
I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but from all those miles away I couldn’t process the devastating reality of your death. Nor Tim’s. I had moved to Australia from Canada to travel, but mostly to follow my heart. Little did I know it would lead to a permanent move. I tried to get back as often as I could, but having chosen to stay at home to raise my children, traveling with my family became prohibitively expensive.
Back in Canada, that first year after your death, a Pandora-like box opened. All my stymied emotions seemed to release all at once. I was angry. I couldn’t understand how your sole focus had been on Tim’s loss. We were here. We were still alive.
I was confused how you could get so lost in your grief that you couldn’t find your way home. Weren’t we your home? I felt guilty. I should have spent more time with you after it happened. Talked to you more. Been there for you. And I felt alone, utterly alone. We had shared so much that I believed we were more friends than mother and daughter. I would see a book I thought you’d like and in reaching for it, have to stop short. Oh. Oh right. You’re not here anymore.
When I had returned to Australia, in those first few weeks, I watched colors become more vibrant, flavors be more intense, and a feeling of lightness return. I had been sleep-walking through this last year. I had been suppressing my feelings. All of them.
I didn’t want to believe you were gone. One day, you told me you couldn’t stop crying and you were frustrated because of it. I think I said some stupid platitude about how you must allow it to pass in its own time. Then, I learned something. Grief is never done with us. It will never “pass”. It may ease, it may feel less intense.
But it will always be there, waiting for us.
16 June 2024
I like to think I live my life in a way that I don’t have any regrets. Or, at least, many regrets. Things happen for a reason. Misstep A will lead to discovery B. And so on. But there is one regret that will gnaw at me when I allow it to.
It was years ago when dad had his accident and injured his left foot beyond all recognition. He should have had access to a wheelchair, but that never happened. Tim had been out on one of his many “adventures” and had been difficult to call. I think he had trouble keeping a constant contactable phone number.
When I was back in Canada the next summer, Tim had finally gotten a reliable cell number, and we all met at a restaurant to catch up. When the table was empty apart from Tim and I, I leaned over and said, “Hey, you need to be more contactable” I must have looked worried, and continued, “I can’t really do anything to help all the way from Australia.”
I didn’t know it for months, but he soon moved in with you and dad, shortly after our exchange. He stopped his gallivanting. I didn’t have to worry about you and dad anymore. He was home for the duration.
Until he wasn’t.
I started running a couple of years ago so I could be fit enough to snowboard. I wanted to make my son jealous so he would come over to visit me in Canada. Now, the more I run, the more I realize it’s about my mental health. Sometimes when I run, what feels like memories will come flooding back, and I must stop or slow down as I can’t see well enough through my tears.
However, there are no specific visuals, only feelings. I always run down by the river. Down by the campsite where the shallows are. There are many intertwined trails, most of them eventually spilling out onto the riverbank.
It’s a beautiful scene, the trees lining the bank, the river stones nestled in with each other, embracing each other as they guide the water downstream. The ever-present mountain looming benevolently in the distance. This is where the water slows and is calm. It brings a peace to me. Peace that can be found in gently moving water. The river whispers to me. This is home. You are home.
Late, the night I first went down there, as I was drifting off to sleep, the sign at the entrance suddenly came to mind. It hadn’t changed in the 30 years since I had last been there.
Riverside.
This was where Tim’s body washed up, onto the river stones, in the shallows. I had only just realized it.
Mothers are the keepers of your oldest secrets, a literal and figurative safe place to lay your head. They are teacher and mentor. Authors of the recipe book that remedies broken hearts, tummy aches, lonely nights, and social exclusion.
And then, of course, there are the real recipe books.
Mom, even though you mostly hated cooking, I felt yours was a family heirloom. You had added to its scrapbook like pages, all your handwritten recipes, cut outs from magazines, can labels and packaging, letters with recipes from 2 generations of grandmothers. It was the first thing that hit home after the initial shock of your diagnosis. N-stage cancer, terminal.
I cried behind the steering wheel on my way home from work. The overwhelm was almost too much, I should have pulled over. Somehow my mind immediately thought about your old cookbook. A domestic pastiche of all the recipes of your married life.
I cried for the pie crust recipe that I had made a million times and knew by heart. I cried for the chocolate dump cake; the recipe so often used, that the smattering of chocolate cake batter coloured the entire page. The Ghost Pie recipe that had to be made every year but was a promise left unkept. Your favourite lemon chicken recipe. A culinary history of my childhood. All held together with paper, tape and the ambition of a reluctant cook.
The hardest part of saying goodbye was not being able to say it. You said you never wanted a funeral. You were so against it. Perhaps that’s the reason I have so much difficulty with processing all that’s happened. I read recently: Grief needs a witness. When it came to your passing, there were few witnesses.
On the day I left, after spending three months with you talking about who would get which family heirloom, retelling family stories, and negotiating oncology appointments, medications, and treatments, I thought to myself — the next time I’m back, it will be to say goodbye.
That day never came.
Back in Australia I was bundled up and shivering on the train platform as I made my way home from work. I was thinking about our last conversation, how you were mumbling incoherently and put the phone down. I heard dad in the background encouraging you to pick up the receiver “Jody’s on the phone for you” but I could tell; you just couldn’t. I spoke with dad “Do you think it’s time I come back?” “No, no, not yet.” Confident that there would be more time. A train whooshed past and brought me back to the present.
Then a ping of a text from my cousin “So sorry to hear about your mom’s passing. Much love XX”
I missed it. I didn’t get to say goodbye. Dad told me you were stubborn to the end and wanted to stay home. That last day he finally called to have you transported to hospital. The medics said you made it to the hospital doors, then died. At least you got your wish. You didn’t have to languish in hospital until the very end. Possibly the best way to go for you.
So, I’m going to say it now.
Goodbye. Safe travels. I will always love you.
