Friday, we went to Irvine Creek, my son and I. Saturday, I came home from work early, sudden almost pain and distress, a kind of disorientation I’ve had off an on the past month that doesn’t seem to be blood pressure (that shows optimal) and my manager wondered if it could be silent migraines. Possible. There are several possibles. I’m on vitamin D now because it’s very low. Calcium is another addition, along with regular multivitamins. I’m old, I joke and half mean it. Life goes so quickly and we stay so busy, we hardly notice the lengthening of the line behind in the mist of the one ahead.

Jacob says I must learn to cook, practice, and teach him. He emphasizes practice. I’ve been going through clothes and books. Too small, okay, how long have you had this? Too many things stored where I can’t get at them and too long between cleans. That’s been going on forever, since I was a child. This odd obsession with hiding things to keep them safe. And is it really an obsession when you know it’s one and you know it’s why. My sister getting to keep our room, my closet open access even to newly purchased and not yet worn clothing she wanted to try. She’s a generous heart, dear sweet soul, but back then we were not allowed to be friends and so no template for how to solve things one shouldn’t ask or mother would interject with angry words. We’re learning now and doing well. Life is all about learning, practice, never too late.

Well, not accurate, some things are too late because they get snatched away, not offered in good timing. Things like that; regrets, Jack would say, “you only regret the things you didn’t do.” I didn’t appreciate the depth of his statement at the time. I do now. I regret losing him, not reapplying to the replacement position in Chissassibi that fall. Wondering what if I did. I’m back to parenting part time and it’s nice to have the company, but it burns me at both ends. Jacob is very patient with my online class (nearly done) and the occasional bible studies I do with a pastor who has time on a Jewish discord. The one I’m on the last year and a bit, talking to friends, learning some Hebrew, and missing Jack in less tragic, ongoing healing ways. Jacob and I often take our walks in the cemetery. We stop to check the flowers, water them, talk about or to Jack, then go the long way around the inner roads, stopping here or there to look at a memorial, talk about why one section is all soldiers, another all slots in a wall, their markers in tiny frames. It is a beautiful place of flowers and trees, and we look at where I will be, the plots around me filling in. I want him to be ready when the time comes. He’s seen so much loss in life too. Grandparents as a baby, my younger son meeting neither of the Bassie side, nor my father who wouldn’t speak to us the ten years past Joshua’s birth. A stupid thing, that’s how they go. My dad and I wanting to see each other, but not getting past John’s anger or Sarah’s. Communication. It’s held an odd place in my life and still does.

Jacob’s communication is improving lately. I have said that same phrase for years as it slowly progressed. This has been a year of notable pace. If I was better, or younger, I’d have tracking books out making note of every observation. But those were days my work was my children and my time was theirs with fewer distractions. But even then, I seemed to be always hurrying. I don’t hurry as well lately. I’ve been writing this an hour by now. Some cereal in between. But I only have one hour left until work and my fingers are slowing down, the back of my head into my jaw is threatening, hopefully not what we had yesterday. Some of that may be the walk Jacob and I took down to Irvine Creek. I was telling him about me and Jack, crazy old people, carrying his canoe down those stairs one day when all the usual access points in Elora were disappearing. We made it down and back with a little more ease than I did on Friday. We must have been younger, one of our first years perhaps. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost eight years since I met him and three since he’s been gone. I’m glad my children knew about him. He wouldn’t meet mine unless he introduced me to his, but they knew, they had that much. It helps.

I wrote a long letter to Jack’s sons today. How their rejection hurt me. Physically, emotionally, contributing to the panic attacks, stress, health issues. I’m leaving for work. It will sit in my email server and I’ll stare at it again tomorrow. I need to go more to Irvine Creek. I think that’s why I had to quit early yesterday. The long stairs, the strain. My body not used to the long steps. A man said they are replacing them. Tourist steps. I have to go before that, even if I can barely walk after, I need the ones I remember, the ones we struggle down and back up with that red canoe, or was it the blue one. He had several and favourites. I’m tired. More than tired. and I want to put my feet in the water. Write tears with my finger tracing water bug swirls. I remember going under when I was nine or ten, not able to find footing at our cottage in Georgian Bay. I feel like the last three years, sudden slip and drift away. I didn’t then, I won’t today.

How do you tell children they have hurt you so deeply?