by Sandy Bassie

January 2023

Again, I know, it isn’t January, but this is ready now.

It has been a long year since June when I braved opening myself up again to the wrenching of fear and loss I’d begun to write about the previous January. Deciding to peer into the broader context of the CRC thinking it would help me write beyond how hard it is to lose your family, church and community. The bits of ‘faith’ I’d already braved in shorter version during my three years writing beyond the journal of my journey suggested by good friends to help me get through the process. 

Where was I when all the drama crept in. I was too busy battling why in my own context to understand some of what was happening. I was also in a different culture – one of the colonies – why are we talking about colonies? I’m still struggling with Jack’s determination to do something good at school, in his communities, intentionally putting himself into the spaces in between Canadian and Indigenous cultures and hoping for cross cultural understanding and dialogue. The places his later life touch the early years and almost of mine. I still remember Emmanuel College (albeit vaguely). I have spent too many moments since my move looking for the essay I know I wrote for the class topic on impact of the churches on indigenous culture. I can’t find it and don’t know what I said that spoke to why that had me going to the various libraries on campus looking for what I could not find. What fell by the way and got buried under the day to day needs of life unlike the one I envisioned. 

I hung somewhere between my mom’s judgement of my personality, the life she thought I deserved (I never did figure out her parameters either positive or negative) and the confusion I felt watching others around me seemingly understanding themselves and their lives with far greater ease. I’ve been picking at it as I write the past few years, and talking about it with my ex husband, John, somewhat since he approached me for help with our eldest son around Christmas 2021 and a coffee July 2022.

We talk about our churches in Acton. My struggle with who we are as church.  I talked to him about Jack, indigenous connections and visiting his current church when a brother of one of the members from Acton came to do a presentation on Indigenous Ministries and some art they had on tour. It’s all still out there in the network of connections. Communities set to have their own divorce of sorts if some of the discussions I read are accurate. A denomination here barely 100 years old. Older in the States. I’ve watched others go through church splits but not really understood at the time the depth of the cut. Not until my own crisis, and I had Jack to help me get through that; we talked about timing and building in the midst of divorce. I guess if we could do it others can, but I feel sad for those who will go through it alone. 

I’m not even sure if alone is the right word. Yet it fits. Like all the times you read of those alone in the crowd. Like not knowing  you are alone or in crisis until everyone else leaves and you just stand there staring. 

This will bear some thinking and a lot of patience. I’m behind the times even when I lived in the midst of them. I’m facing words I do not know or understand. Watching them fly by my head unsure whether to duck. Waiting for the repeat to get a better look. Realizing the ugliness of a decade or more of words thrown at my head have done good work preparing me for this place.  Those and Jack’s gentle words have shaped me. God is good, gracious and loving, and even the dumbest questions will get answered in time. “I don’t understand” or “but why” are loaded ones I’ve asked and this year some of the reasons for asking are finding their place ‘on the table’ beside the weight of books and dictionaries. 

I’m going to be alright. I still need to practice planting my feet, extending my bravery where it tends to shrink back. But I feel more myself again than I’ve been this past year. 

My book is changing shape, looking more like me than I was allowing. I am looking ahead at things I will write when it is done. Some more about Jack and his journey and ours, the faith ones that surface, my life still ahead. I hope the people I care about will find their feet too. In my small church and their church plants, partnerships and mission ventures they support, I think they are strong. I know they are bold. They must be brave – they rode things out with John and me in our years there and the last ones coming apart. I hope there’s good things they learned in the process that they can turn to good things for the years ahead. I believe they will. 

For whatever it’s worth, I took good things away and grew a lot in the community I lived in, the churches I was involved with and the networks they formed. The people and their hearts for each other, those are the best parts. I stay in touch at least a bit, have visits when I can, love and am loved. I’m building new connections here, welcoming other into my story and place, being welcomes to theirs. Some long term, long distance, long views ahead. 

I smile thinking of how big my community has become, the ways and the people who grow it, and their people farther out. The world breathes in new and old, the breath of G-d from the beginning of things, the verse I repeat that holds me, comforts me still, “in the beginning,..”  I look it up, listen and let it seep into my bones. I read it in English and Hebrew, listening to the sound. It’s more than the words and more than I understand.  It’s a lot like raising Jacob, and I still don’t understand. But something in the mystery, in the trust that it demands, holds still and lets me question, and the questions make me smile. 

I shake my head often at myself. At the journey that I’m on. Beginnings and beginnings I hope I weather well, and I’ll keep reading and enjoying all that perplexes me. I’m still a kid, asking why and watching G-d show me how. 

Meanwhile, today’s smile is finding interlinear bible sources with audio readings in Hebrew. I listen and think of love for Jack, his sons and friends. Letting language speak to story, like Jacob learning ASL, and my mother-in-law encouraging me to sing ‘Ere Zij God’ an old Dutch Christmas song. Feeling the fulness of other places, other cultures, other’s words building things into life from oh, so long, ago. 

Thank you, January, you’ve been a good month so far, and I’m glad. 

Note: this is the second piece I have written recently, where I set it aside, intending to find a suitable image and return, yet gone on with other things. The timing feels right, though I can’t justify why. I’m four sessions into Halakhic Man, by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchic, and enjoying it immensely.

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by Sandy Bassie

Edge of What?

I meant to have a summer post; September, October, November posts. I’m not sure where they went. Too much looking over the edge. I had bronchitis in the summer; lost three weeks work. My trauma got retriggered last spring and slogging through it, writing got stuck. That makes sense when I’m writing about things connected to what triggered me.

Last week, my counselor and I talked about managing joy. Setting boundaries to pace it. I trigger to joy too. That probably sounds odd to people who don’t have trauma issues or overwhelm easily. I’ve been doing well aside from the ongoing pain issues from life and last year’s injury.

I have good neighbours and coworkers. Patient family. I’ve been receiving compliments in my writing groups. Those trigger me like joy. processing what it feels like is exhausting. I’ve been practicing listening to my body when it needs to rest, and not pushing it too hard, too often.

At Thanksgiving, visiting family and long-time friends I’ve missed is one place I found joy and some overload. The driving was hard on my neck and back; almost 3,000 km by the time I got home. Travel and work pain hangs at 8/10 most days and sleeping is the worst. I roll over onto the pinched nerve and muscle aches and can’t get back to sleep. I’m behind on writing and reading homework. Have gone to zero music nights. I work. I sleep. I work again, and I will edit this again today in the hope I will actually post it.

Last summer, the layers of life catching up with me. June, one year past Jack’s death and funeral, one year past my fall at work the week after his funeral. Wishing so much for ongoing relationship with his children that may not come. I got through the memorial in late May, and tipped over into early June. Longing for connection, I talked briefly to Jack’s boys, who I’d still like to know and love through their life. Their lives are just forming and his death rocked them badly.

Me too. I think it all caught up with me. Old stress and new. I’ve been writing on faith this year. Not a lot, but begun. And then June, six years away from church, working on healing, an email arrived announcing the annual meeting of the denomination my ex-husband and I attended. Life and memoir at a point looking back to faith, church.

I probably shouldn’t have watched it. Realistically I’d stayed away needing to heal. I was naive thinking I was ready. This was their first, post-Covid Synod with delegates meeting in person rather than handing off to a Board for decision. I felt for them. They had a collected Agenda, a long list of topics, 2016 on; the same year I left my ex. A tough list including use and misuse of power, racism, safe church ministry, restructuring, new graduates or candidates for ministry, and ‘celebration’ of 25th year of women’s leadership and ordination. The kicker though was a report committee with the long title “A Committee to Articulate a Foundation-laying Theology of Human Sexuality”. I naively thought myself far enough past abuse to be curious about these topics and what they’d say.

For the whole of my 36 years married, many of the above topics weighed on me in different ways. I wanted to hear them say they were looking seriously at the damages that had been done in the various areas, places they’ve dealt with, maybe even seeing the ways they overlap, the reasons people have spoken up on struggles within their church contexts. I wanted to hear the positive things they would put in place for the future. I wanted to hope.

I wasn’t prepared for the way it hit me; the video sessions, discussions, debate. My body shifted back to places if abuse, heard words weaving in and out, tone and texture off somehow. Tones too familiar, words felt misused. Memories of abuse, of 2016 leaving my house, my family, my church and my friends. Things I’ve been writing about the last few years aiming at memoir. And getting through the last two years upstream against pandemic and death. All the years life and death tugged me this way and that. Logic, not logic, love that isn’t love. Rules black and white to my colours. I know this place. It isn’t good.

And grief, so much grief. I listened, repeated, repeated again. Synod swirled around like a sinkhole drowning the ground.

July, I got sick, recuperated, reminisced. Not from Covid or Jack or the loss of my mom. But faith, church, marriage, fear. Synod bled into past, danger, divorce. I caught Bronchitis, first time in seven years. I was raw. Sat in sunshine, wrote memoir, bundled to cold. I’ve been working again five years, taken no sick time until this last year. Now my third leave from work – two bereavements and this, my health giving in. Not Covid they said, an infection in my lungs. Bronchitis.

I coughed and I slept. Watched synod again. A four-day course for writing cheered me a bit. I wrote quite a lot. I rested some more. Most time I spent sleeping. Remembering the past. I’d often get sick, ‘stress flu’, just from life, anger, abuse, judgements and pain.

I haven’t missed that, don’t want want it again. I’m doing quite well since I left, I am told. Starting to do better from the pain of last year. More strong than I realize, not bitter or unkind. Good friends help me listen. Coworkers keep me sane. They watch over me. I’m lucky. I’ve been blessed many ways.

What happened this year with Synod, raises more pain and grief, but I hope also joys. I am finding new understanding with family and friends. I spoke with my ex, several coffees and meals. Curious if he saw Synod. “Not interested,” he said. I showed him my memoir. One story, that’s all. “Have to start my rebuttal,” he joked, “but good that we talk”.

I don’t know what this year brings, but I hope it brings love built in tough places, strong connections and faith. I want Jack to be proud. He said I am strong. He valued my faith, my loyalty, being kind. Looking back, looking forward, it’s the one place I stayed through all of life’s messes. Allowing questions of faith. God at my side.

I’m no better or worse than most people, I think. I ask the hard questions. I’m hard on myself. But I sense open spaces for kindnesses learned, more space given to listening to myself and to others. Some panic, but less fear. I’m practicing brave.

Not stupidly standing too close to the edge. But I’ll look to the distance, that not-quite-seen shore, trust God for answers, the right moment to ask. Walk, enjoy the earth, breath and creatures, examples of rest.

Time again to write. One day my words may mean something. I hope they bring life.

by Sandy Bassie

Your River

May 31st. The end of the month. I’ve made it this far; not all well, not all good moments and ones that I’m proud of, but I’m here. Closer to where I want to be.

Your river.

This isn’t it. Not yet. But it is Ervine Creek. My feet in its waters. Tentative. We came here 2017. Brought your canoe down the long stone rough steps. Some peace in remembering.

I feel closer to God, closer to you, closer to myself. I want to walk in the waters until they take all my tears. I want to lower my body into the waves, more than my feet. All of me. Hear the ripples caress me. But it’s too close to last year when I’d follow you down. I’ll get there. Determined. I’ll get there. I will.

Grief has it’s burdens and living is one. I doubted my strength, that I’d see my way through. Every day has been a decision. I balance and weigh. Choosing to walk places of memory. It hurts. I won’t deny it.

I can smell the little white flowers I passed on the path. Bushes or shrubs. I never remember the name. I stopped to take it in. A second and third breath.

Cardinals sang and flew a bit closer before flying away. A seagull took one long pass down the river and another back up. A morning not wasted doing nothing but listening to the heart of the river, the creatures and myself.

At the top of the steps I met a woman and dog. We spoke for a moment of the reasons I came. Faith and belief. She’s Anglican. Smiled when I told her I talk to the light. It’s him she is certain. I thanked her for that. If I understood Morse code would I know what he said? Is it better not knowing?

How often I leave my thoughts to dangle. Mellow in the sun. June was a month of hurdles. Still thinking on those.

Home sick, a whole week. This is new.

July 15, 2022

by Sandy Bassie

Honest Hope

It’s been too quiet here. I’ve been sitting with my thoughts.

This is the anniversary of the day I lost my partner, my lover, my life. Gone and not gone. My heart still holds the music of our love. Hopes and joy, the memories that twine and untwine like grasses in the wind.

I miss Jack. He listened and asked questions, drawing out my inner thoughts and words with care. “Remember, I am your safe place.” He was. He is. His words comfort still, bring smile and laughter.

It’s been a long year. I got through another loss recently. My mother, after a long run with cancer, died the first week of May. May been a difficult month the past few years. Sad memories. Learning to allow them, to listen to the wind and the breeze, weaving then intertwining the memories they find.

Still working on memoir, I move between then and now, realizing I am a different person and can let myself be. The narrator of things past, the protagonist, a woman, wife, a mother too strong to give up, too weak to leave. Faith and doubt blocking the way. Curiosity and questions always seeking, yet afraid to find. Eventually seeing. Choosing to fall, saying the words, to God and counselor, “I’m done. I’m ready to have the conversation. I need to leave. What do I do?”

One lawyer, the year before I left, said I was in a tough place. I knew that; my ex told me in our early years he would always be self employed. If I ever put him through divorce, I’d get nothing but trouble. I tend to believe people, mostly family and friends. But people in general tell you who they are if you listen. Words and silences speak their truth. I stayed too long in that marriage, even knowing the danger. Until finally, I couldn’t. Leaving was hard. I felt broken, unlovable. And then there was Jack. Healing and hope.

I took all these thoughts of pain and loss, of love and healing, north to my mother’s funeral, expecting to write. I even brought laptop and books, thinking time may allow memories. I wrote nothing or little at best. I was there for my mother’s funeral, a long year and sudden painful demise. Cancer. I spent every moment with my sisters and my sons. Grieving loss, building new friendships and bonds. Sharing laughter. It comes in oddest moments, to meanings it may or may not explain. Then laughing at it again.

In every loss, there is so much to think about, saying to myself, “don’t over think.” All week, I said it, “dint over think. ” I’m not ready for more, not ready for Jack’s memorial, and no more time to prepare. “Pick clothes, lay them out, don’t worry if they’re right. Go to work, come home and rest.”

Tomorrow will come and be what it will be. Today, the memorial. Remember Jack and see his sons. “We got through some tough stuff and built a strong relationship.” It’s what he said, making plans for things to come. It’s what I’ll say this year and the ones after, building a future with his sons, with my own, with my sisters, my family. It’s what we do. It’s how I smile, how I laugh.

It’s how the words, these and others, come. Unexpected. Unexplained. In the quiet of acceptance and the moments of readiness, so hard to allow. And yet I do. When I don’t realize I can, because I’m weak, because I’m strong. Building strength I may not see until I’m further beyond. Until I’m told what others see. Until I need strength again, and fear my weakness, but go not knowing if I can.

Life is strange. It’s like the light best seen in darkness, the breaking of day, the finding of hope, an artist’s eye seeing what moves from palette to paint surface. Light by dark colours working magic. Brighter not by denying the dark, but allowing light to see beauty where it did not see before.

My life has that feeling. Beauty. Fear. Awe. A wonder at the magic of allowing what will come. Honesty beyond words.

That’s how I was with Jack. Open to pain and honesty. Long silences. Not many words capture that place. Words are just snapshots in time too full to empty all its joy and sorrow. Honesty allows. The wind blows. Time intertwines.

I pick up a stone. One memory to hold. One visit to Jack’s grave. My books in tow I sit and write, I read to him, I chatter and laugh, looking again at his last photo to me, the day before he died. Burrs by the river, “Thought of you.” “I love you. Now stop bugging me. I’m trying to write.” My laughter. Another recent post as he worked on his book. Unfinished like our life. One day I want to read it all, and over again.

Hope. Honest hope. I leave my stone, and wonder what will come.

by Sandy Bassie

Gratitude

I came away with questions for myself. Looking back from this week at ways I’d interact. Look slowly and kindly. Allow I had my faults. Not the ones screamed at me, but choices, habits, fears sit close upon memory and I want to look at them. Mainly because I’m writing. Memoir. Pieces of myself, my story. They are part of it, the story.

Sometimes I think my main goal must be to see how many unused drafts I can stare at in my Drafts folder; fifteen so far. The small paragraph above is one of them. Dated January 9, 2022, it resonates hope. While I have no recollection of the week in question, my encouragement to myself in these words is to look at and look past faults, choices, habits and fears., reasons I have used to let things sit, because doing so is who I am and moving beyond is breaking a terrible rule.

February brought an email accepting a poem for a local publication; online this year again as pandemic changes brought about more blog than paper publication of items. March brought another opportunity for essay to be included in an anthology on Gratitude. That one was hard. I fought with it as I fought the topic the past two years in memoir, struggling with what to say. You can’t always repeat thoughts of pain and sorrow. After a while they get wearing even to the writer. Time, as they say, bring change, allows perspective, optimism or hope. I don’t like flogging that last one either. The whole topic reminds me of days in very good mental health groups as both participant and support where I’d struggle with our common leave-taking. Expression of gratitude.

I love the gratitude of walking among trees, sitting by streams, icecream in two flavour stacks on a double cone. The tangible moments that tug at my heart, add colour to the day, draw out my senses, calling like echoes of remembrance to places within. Words are not needed for gratitude, and though I talk to the wind, the sky and the birds, it’s not required by any of us. My favourite memories are smiles and looks that share some moment of grace. The world open up and suddenly a space holds its breath, allowing the wait. Yes, these are the moments I value the most.

And this, at best, is where I sat two silent months waiting for what, I did not know. Some call it writer’s block. Perhaps, at times. But I found so many words bursting within for other places, nowhere at all. They just didn’t fit, and I’ve learned not to force them, though it is hard to sit. My time increased at work, just touching 28 hours. Enough to keep me full-time. Not enough to keep me afloat. I think perhaps writing stalls in the places of loss, where I haven’t chosen career, haven’t braved the risk of siren’s call ‘Monetize Your Blog – three easy steps.” No. I’m pretty sure it’s more than three, and nothing wrong with doing so for those with a plan to earn a living in this way. I’m a bit off topic, but connected still.

Readiness – to write, to paint, to aim for a career – it may need more gratitude than I’ve let myself feel. I joke with fellow writers, once again ‘this year’ is the year I will risk, will submit, will step past the barricade and allow myself to be .. what? There lies the issue. I don’t know what, and a lifetime of habit has taught me to be small, and not even that. One ongoing conversation a decade back questioned the reasons within relationship, to significant other, I fought the judgement I was too big and too small. Not significant enough, but too high and mighty for his daily mood. A bad fit. A poor example, a multitude of labels, and ultimately as my mother assessed it, just the wrong personality for him.

Gratitude. I learned something this year. Looked it up. Not just in my favourite etymology site, which simply defines it as ‘pleasing, thankful’, but in heart’s home, curiosity. This time wanting to know how my love saw it, what it meant in the good places I’d found recent years, encouraged to find myself and grow, being loved as I did. And so, I asked our favourite Google how gratitude was seen in the Hebrew meaning. I found myself among trees, sitting by streams, letting memory ache with the longing of joy, places I’d touched, but not this past year. Places I need to go again, to listen to the wind, let water bugs curl in the waves by my feet. Let this place speak to me its words of tender care. A moment of grief in a lifetime of love.

I am not stuck. I may not always move forward well, but slow, like a turtle or the snails I sat by two summers past, I will get where I’m going. In writing. In life. The moments of connection with present memories allow space for me to listen and to learn. The Hebrew form of gratefulness, like I found with my love, who worked hard with me at relationship, and announced it with a smile, “we worked through some tuff stuff and built a strong relationship”. Yes, Jack, we did, and celebrated it along the way with simple smiles.

Gratitude. I looked it up. I found the Hebrew meaning in several sites, two words ‘hakarat hatov’ with their translation into English. Something beautiful to read. I like the phrase and I like the story I found in one site giving more, an example that touches my heart. Harakat hatov ‘to recognize the good’. It is a gift I will hold onto and learn to live well. And the story, possibly urban legend, about a performance by Itzhak Perlman used to demonstrate what it means.

It seems to be that year, gratitude wants to smile. I’ll wait, I’ll listen and know the good is there. What else is there to say, but thank you for this day.

For those who wish to read the story, I’ll link it here. Enjoy if you will or just wait for your own moment of gratitude, your example, your breeze.

https://jewishcamp.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Gratitude_-_Mussar_Institute.pdf

by Sandy Bassie

Always, a journey.

September. I didn’t post. One lonely draft on a list abandoned in the before. It doesn’t say much, just a nod to the difficulties of healing. It’s been three months, but pick up there still struggling with grief and loss experienced in May and then June when I passed out and injured my body as well as my soul.

I’ve been even more concerned with healing in the days since. Healing is hard. What do I say? I’ve been working at healing most of my life and if I was any good at it, I’d be in a different place than I am now. But healing, I see is priorities. Do I care for my body or my mind? Both hurt and need care, but my current plan, or perhaps current actions taken towards health don’t line the two up very well.

Three times this week, I caught myself telling an old story. Funny? I’m not sure. I do use humour at times to cope, but this, I think, is more irony. “If you show me a rock and hard place, I’ll find the crack and dive in.” It speaks to my frustration. And maybe my strength. I don’t know how or why, but life often managed to leave me wedged between; where others had to face the rock or hard place in more clear cut ways, I was forced to deal with both and the weight of the crack and all it contained. My attempt at humour still held too much complaint. I struggled with the weight of things I carried, unsure why or how I managed it. And, if I am honest, have a ridiculous ability to find life there.

Stubborn. Scottish. I acknowledge it now. A culture I don’t know and tried to resist. “You are what your grandfather was,” my dad would say determined I would own it. I heard them speak so strongly of their home and people growing up. Scottish. They seemed to have so much more strength than I. They lived through wars and tough things, their memories of it clear and strong. They knew the names and dates and histories of kings and queens and clans. The clans were important, more so than kings. That was my thought. Your name, your clan, your family and connections. The occasional story of a black sheep, an uncle a generation or two from me, sent here by family. His wife and any children held behind. He was abusive I think. Their solution sharp and final, a good surgical cut. It frightened me that people could do that to someone, so literally cut them off from their family. I didn’t know I may wish that myself through divorce in later years. But cutting off, I couldn’t do. I lean to others needs and still do.

I’m good at waiting, but don’t believe patience is a strong point. I’d laugh and tell people I’m not patient, just stubborn. And that has carried me through the past few months. I’m not sure stubborn counts as healing. But it’s held on and kept me going through days of 8/10 pain and learning to read the pain scale in Lego faces my son sent to me. Acknowledging feeling, listening to my body, vehemently disagreeing with it at times and coming out worse for it at the end. Learning to listen and cut life to bare minimum. Work 6 hours come home and sleep. Hydrate. Eat a little. Hydrate more. And sleep. Some days that’s all I did and woke less sore but frustrated that’s what my body demanded of me. It’s hard to be kind to myself when it remains so foreign. Still untangling the years of fear when sick, facing anger, insults and reprimands that taught me to punish myself internally for doing wrong. It isn’t wrong to heal. Not even when I take far too long. Healing is a process of listening and learning to give or to accept, maybe to receive what is needed to restore.

For the first time in life, the last few years have allowed space to talk to my doctor and slowly accept that medications may help. I am afraid of drugs, even prescription ones. It’s a habit, this fear. The first few times I had to take some came with the anger and judgement and disgust. I had to do it – thyroid out, medication required. But I ‘knew’ it was wrong. Wrong to help my body live. Wrong to cost money to do it. Healing requires purging the old ways, old thoughts, old words and judgements followed. Healing it seems is about learning to relax. To allow. To accept. To trust. To interact.

I feel bad being quiet here for several months. Even this post, had to wait. I found it lingering from the start of November, and it was recognizing a beginning in September, early fall. The time my EI was running out and I knew I wasn’t ready to pull the full weight. I’m still not there. Hovering just below. But I’m determined, perhaps that Scottish trait again. I am determined to get there, and will in the end.

Healing is a journey, at times without a map. I guess I just keep following the trail and see what it will bring.

Life. Always a journey.

by Sandy Bassie

I don’t know

I’m tired of being tired. Dragging and dragged over rocks of grief. Realizing the many ways and places this grief is laid out over years of unmet grief.

July 15

My first day back to work. Four hours. Folding clothes. I may not make it, there are updates to online training that need to be completed. That’s easy. I can do those. It’s the floor that scares me.

July 20

Yesterday, day three. I shook. Forced myself through four hours. Kindnesses of staff.

A coworker called me brave. I was negating myself again; fear of change, fear of loss. Berating myself for falling, hitting my head, struggling to heal. Knowing I’m not okay. Missing Jack. Showing up triggers me. Too many memories of waiting for him to come through the doors. Working apart. Not able to go to him. Listening to people yell or complain about petty things. I’m afraid. I can’t go back to listening to it right now. Doing this … staying alive and learning to grieve … it does not play fair. I had no idea.

I live with levels of stress accumulated in decades of abuse. Crisis a daily reality. I thought pain would go when I left my ex, slide back into something others call ‘normal’. I would laugh off that word telling people “normal is just the fat part of the graph. Statistics.” But this is not funny. Dissociation is a common experience of abuse, of PTSD. So are the panic attacks that wake me at 2am shaking from dreams or something I don’t remember. It’s strange how …. thoughts lost.

July 25

I had rough days this week. More than rough. I get angry at myself for them, for their unpredictability, for not being able to control myself or the days. Long hanging silences on calls to the crisis line, then sobbing because I’m frozen in bed, my body a lump of shock, sizzling. Blood pressure high, pills taken, bathroom done, back to bed, lay and shake. And so I call,

“hello, my name is …. how can I help you?”

“I, um I …” my mind and thoughts racing with guilt and grief and disasters past and pending.

The thoughts freeze in my head. Instinct. Fear; of living, being, lost and labelled. Something my ex would say, A negative judgement on who and how I am. And I can’t do it. Getting it out takes a breath, and sometimes that’s where they start. But first I give my name, the basics of identity. Then the call.

I talk and talk, through getting up, getting going, going to work. Even with the fear. A rational irrational place where emotion and action don’t fit the norm, but given the circumstances I understand. Tears or not, I have to go. I push too hard. Don’t overdo. Am warned. Holding myself back from demanding full hours. I don’t want to hurt myself again. The side of my head that hit the floor is ok, but not ok. Numb or tingles at times. Stress?

There is so much I can’t predict, so much I just don’t know. I’m trying to be ok with that; not knowing. Living and being is the hard job right now. The rest will ease in slowly, not smoothly. I hope, but am learning I can’t expect it. My body needs to purge the grief, but also years of pent up grief or things attached to it. Chaos of layers, interwoven connections, years forming. I’m just taking it a day or two at a time. Feeling useless, but knowing I’m not. Telling myself to be quiet when I want to rebuff the kindnesses and compliments of others. Still so much fear letting others in. I understood that far too well, Jack. We were kind to each other’s broken places. Love lingers in the tenderness.

Sanctuary.

by Sandy Bassie

Today the Tears

June 30, 2021

Another possible blog post shunted off to the drafts folder, well really, sitting there for weeks. I may come back to it, but today the tears want out. Not hard sobs, Jack, like when I first learned you drowned. These are worn, frustrated, disoriented tears. The kind that shiver through a body too drained for emotion, but ripe with it. I can picture them, tiny trails gasping their way across scorched rock, cracked clay. Winding through evidences of distress or trauma. Ridiculous. Hope filled lines, tiny breaths rushing between scenes trying to avoid excess anything.

I slept three hours again between noon and three. Not true. I set the alarm, but my body fought letting go at the beginning and surfaced confused, too soon at the end. There wasn’t really a plan for the day anyway. Good thing. There was a brief hour or two of clarity at the beginning where I looked at my journal, reviewed some poetry, and made notes for longer writing.

But phone calls. I’m not over remembering the call, ‘silence’, him assessing the wait as I sobbed. Already knowing why he called. “Jack drowned this weekend.” Memory is tactile for me. It’s how I process. I still feel your body warm beside me, your hands gentle, your kisses soft, and one desperate upon my mouth, before you left. Wanting me. Loving me.

It’s hard feeling things intensely. Touch is important. I joked for years that I listen through my hands. They spent enough time with language falling off them. ASL. My smile at your forming ILY and smiling proud you got it. I love you. Those memories I want to feel. But lately, my body listens too hard. It yells over the memories of smiles. It yells loss.

May long weekend. I felt your heart stop touching mine. I felt it going, fighting it leaving. I tumbled with your heart. I felt it go. I begged to be wrong. And words. The call. I hate words. I love them. I want you Jack, your words, love, laughter, and all the joy I had remembering them. Waiting for you to come home. I have the memory, and words telling me you’re gone. They hit my chest in a wave of imbalance, a tug of fear. Shock.

Why is grief so much fear? Loss such a chasm?

It crashes in where it doesn’t belong. The dentist’s office calling. Jacob’s appointment. Another kind voice, explaining, rationalizing, insisting I understand. I do. But the telling, and retelling. Reasons they may not see Jacob, may not keep him as a client, flood over me. I can’t hold memory together. Focus. Listen. Their email bounced back. No way to call. Who do they email? Why they are calling me. No way to reach his staff. Simple. Fact. Context. Clear. I want to hear what they are saying. That it isn’t because they don’t like him, that it isn’t because he doesn’t need them. That they just need connection. But all I hear is the swish and score of water dragging rocks. Heaving me over the edges. My body. My head swirls.

I apologize and excuse myself. Promise to follow up with the group home. Let them know if I can get through. And even though their words say not my responsibility, I’m awash in words on why they called, I can’t hold them separate. They are loss over loss.

I can’t. Not today. Why? I slept. I’m sure I slept.

Did I sleep? I don’t know. And so I sleep again. After the call. After my text. And two or three emails, to group home manager and staff. Searching out clues. Who do I tell? What do I ask? Why is there an email address I haven’t used and dentist said bounced. And the answer comes back. Adamant. The address is right. It’s the one everyone can access. So I try. But it bounces. Flings itself up and over, bounces back without any sense of why. So I email again to the manager and dentist. One note combined. One clear, concise ask – why? I don’t know. It doesn’t work. Why? Apology. I hope they talk.

And all of this means nothing to the day to day I need to heal. I’m working at it. My head. My heart. My job. Go back to work. Jump box to box, work and home, go back to it all. Rocks I can’t miss. My body complains. At more than this drudge of tears that won’t come.

Why is so much of life about disconnecting? Losing and loss.

I wonder if the motions of my day mean anything at all. Shoppers stuffing buggies with mis-labelled essentials. Pop. Chips. Multi-buys of chocolate bars. Wanting baby clothes we used to share. They say things are opening up. I wonder. Logic disappeared months ago in swirls of ideas like water down the drain. I don’t know anymore what I don’t know. I pushed hard the last months, all my best storytelling used up on pictures drawn in the air. ASL categories, this one and that. Grocery and garden centre, front end with online, eventually curbside. Store areas mapped out as claw-hands drop in locations separate but all there. And cell phone, photo at the ready, curbside number to call. Will it still be that? Wipe, wash, story to spin. Swish. Swirl. A rock falls in, dropped from the air. Ideas weighing. Nothing that helped me hold you. Not Jacob either. He went, but isn’t gone.

I want to hold on, hold together. Know my hands are worth more than grasping at air.

There is no guarantee. No one who can promise me what will come. Just me, in the river. Thrashing. Nose above water. Flailing imagination. Covid brought colours and labels like waves over rocks. Bruises piling up. Mapping the years. Last year and this, promise and pain. Have I ever held on? Has anything I ever wanted held together? Why does it feel like so much repetition? Loss. Longing. The distance between. And always I’m reaching for a solution, a way to hold it together.

She’s right. I come back to it. The sound of her voice, rushing like water. Like she said, it’s not my responsibility. But responsibility isn’t what I was trying to hold. I wanted your love. I wanted time. Not these tears. They come and they fade. Evaporate in air.

Breathe. I have your love. I do. That I will hold.

by Sandy Bassie

Writing Life

I started May’s blog post several times. Got nowhere. The long post I eventually arrived at by June 3rd has been saved to files and deleted here.

7:30am June 6th and I’m starting fresh, though that’s a strange word for the circumstances and my now chronic lack of sleep. I passed out sometime shortly after 6pm and retrieved laundry from the dryer down the hallway around midnight when I awoke. Today, I have an essay to tidy and send off to a magazine whose current theme of ‘ancestors’ finally got coherent words from my tired and broken heart.

That said, this will be short. Off the cuff.

I emailed a note to a local councilor, telling her that I’d like to talk about a request to name or re-name several local streets in honour of persons with indigenous heritage. I have never put such a request forward before. This one flows out of grief, in honour of someone to whom it mattered greatly, and who was still pursuing a request made several years ago.

The past five years (or nearly) I have had the joy of being in a relationship with a man named Jack who died over the May long weekend pursuing another love of his life, whitewater paddling.

Jack was away teaching in a Cree community in northern Quebec. We spoke every day by text or in Facebook. I started to share my loss here, but found it becoming too poetic. I have written actual poems to Jack these last few years and may write a few more. He was an amazing man, the kindest, most gentle and generous man I know. Honest. Full of compassion and integrity. He brushed it off when I told him so, “Then you’re the only person who knows. Most people think I’m a pain.” I don’t believe that, and would reply, “If so then they aren’t listening.”

It’s still too soon after hearing you died, Jack. I wake shaking some days in shock. I read back through conversations shared and look at how many video calls show up on your side of the conversation thread. I’m glad you wanted so much to talk to me, to share your hopes and joys. To let me know how surprised you are it took you so long to say you love me. I shared it with one of your sons last week, and continue to grieve with him that it wasn’t your way to say it more. I understand why it was so hard for you, and why I said it too much. We shared places in our pasts I’m finally digging deep to understand.

I’m listening now, as I write, to Gabor Mate; a recommended listen from someone I volunteer with in mental health. Wisdom I’ll come back to more this year.

I wish we had more time to enjoy each other’s laughter, the gentleness we shared, ways we gave each other space and were discovering some of the things this man describes that need to heal. Not complicating them with demands, just offering understanding and giving each other permission to ‘not fix’. You said that to me early on, ‘don’t fix’. One of the reasons I told you I thought you were wise. So much of my life was responsibility and demands to fix things not mine to touch. You healed me in a way, just giving me space and telling me I need to respect myself and follow my dreams. Then showing me how, letting me watch you and admire your bravery.

I wonder if we messed that up just a bit at the end. You pushed yourself too hard at times. Your wrist was hurting from last time out. I was afraid you were going again too soon.

We had just four weeks to wait until you were home. You told me every day, soon, and let me know how excited you were coming back me. But the short time pressed against your list of things you wished you’d done last fall when the weather allowed you out on the waters. I understood it from the rush of photos you shared, the video rides you took me on coming back from the land. Waiting for open water. “I wish you could come up.” But the borders had been closed. “I wanted you to see.” I wanted that too. You did your best.

And now, I have to wait a little longer still. I love you, Jack.

by Sandy Bassie

Waiting for Spring

April is spring and flowers and beauty and outdoors and sitting on my back deck watching the squirrels chase their way around the pole to the feeder. There is peace in watching the small things. So many birds and small animals grace the yard.

The store is quieter with lockdowns, but there are still shoppers. I’m longing for spring. Seeds and potted plants in many sizes leave looking for gardens every day. I want them. Some already fill spots in front or back garden, and I can picture them, anticipate the colours that will fill the gardens in the coming months.  

We talk as they ring things through. Sometimes I mention the longing, how I miss my house, the bond that forms between gardener and growth, a shock of realization for me, home was outside. The plants held my heart in place.  Not only the peace of times spent there, but the can and can’t of some of the work. My sons doing harder digging or moving of things than I could do. My sons, anchored in that place, house and garden – memories, good and bad, held in context of the places they occurred.

Memories feel tangible; I remember the warmth of a smile, a look, a movement made, the tone of voice, the way a room, the deck, garden, plant or soil felt. Warmed by sun or darkened by mood. Remember.

Someone may ask how I do it. They often do. Ask. Did. Ask.

How do you get Jacob to communicate with you. How do you stand the abuse, the hours put in at two schools balancing needs, the physical effort of Jacob hanging on you, your own injuries.

How do you smile so much. Laughter. If you didn’t have your quirky sense of humour, you’d probably be dead.

I wonder. If the flowers still grow. If the bird feeder is still there. Do the rabbits come, and squirrels. Do blue jays have fights over fresh poured seeds. I saw the fence was gone. New windows stared at me. I wonder. Do you spend time in the gardens? See the same miracles of spring. Wonder. Do you think of me.

Never met. May never meet. Still I think of you. I miss my house, the gardens most. At times I cry for wanting. Remembering comes hard. Distance and the longer view remind me there were things I loved. Beauty comes in many forms. Even our broken places held beauty. Too fragile to not break.

We live apart. Shattered. Borrowed space. Concrete walls. I wish for the world, the great outdoors. Cohesive. The only lines it draws form waterways, cliff edge, a tree line.

Balcony plants. Can’t feed the birds. Don’t tie anything to the posts. Behind the screen of tempered glass. There is no grass to touch my feet, no buzzing bees to hum me tunes. Tiny birds dart quickly past. Red heads where once yellow bright as the corn, came bold within an arms length.

I must climb down. On my own. Cross lanes of concrete. Man-made lights still glowing in the break of day. Walk to find where houses still hold space for sharing. Where trees are tall enough to climb and host nests to birds and squirrels. Open doors for calling. Sounds of spring. Lingering.

Beneath your trees. At sidewalk edge. I hover. Waiting for spring.