Category / Journey

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.

Advertisement
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

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

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.

by Sandy Bassie

Imperfections

February’s been a rough month. March too. I ping between okay and ‘oh so over it’. I’ve hit the wall. All I have left is to write about it.

On one hand, I have a small box called apartment. It’s crammed full of left over bits of past life and the one I’m trying to live now. Creativity wages war with it daily; art and writing supplies, music all fight for space.

I write regularly, paint occasionally. Mostly my keyboard and guitar cower against one wall, asking me to practice. I paid for a month of guitar lessons, tossed a penny into the well of expectation and hope it brings good things. Last week, encouraging words from my teacher assured me that regardless of my frustration with ‘only’ practicing one song and one scale, I have done a good job. Okay. I’ll bite. I’ve done well. Now believe it.

I want to improve my art. Create paintings I love and learn to part with them. To do that, I need a better grip on money and budgets both for home and sales. Even if it’s just for fun, I’d like enough to replenish supplies, I need to let myself learn the basics of give and take, hobby or business.

I want to release things I’ve written. Send them further out. Not just the one or two places I know who are open to it. I want to push past the barriers and broaden my reach.

What scares me about writing? People tell me I’m good, I have a raw way of writing. It draws people. They see it in pieces I’m doing for a memoir. Say, I have a strong, staccato style to my poetry. I read a list of possible literary magazines suggested to me. I probed their online offerings and re-read. Decided to write a cover letter and choose some poems to send.

But then, a tangible restraint on my arms. typing has weight. sleep falls upon me, passing out like with a migraine. and less obvious shut down, internal, my body folds in on itself, origami folding into invisibility. impossible. i need to move. i need to …. submit …. ringing past intentions, rules that bind. breathe swallowed up within lungs that strain hesitation.

Words. They lean towards poetry. They leap at opportunity, but cringe at expectation. Dear words, can you help? I want you to know full expression. I hope this year to let you fly.

by Sandy Bassie

Counting Time: 3, 5, 7

February 3, 2021

I’m tired.

People will tell you that is my standard answer. It’s often true, but not always. January felt heavy and I was tired too often. Falling asleep at 6:30 leads to waking at 2:00 and days where the hours slide sideways down the clock. I still think in analogue even though I read digital in both 12 and 24 hour formats. Work and home, home and work; even my battery clock is analogue designed with a false tick, tick, tock. Some nights it comforts me, others it annoys. The month slid by all comfort and annoyance.

Today I will go to work. This is my middle day. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have off, but Wednesday sits wobbling in between. Those who regularly see me in the morning will ask next time why I wasn’t there, whether I’d been off work, and I will say no. I worked afternoon to evening. Not a favourite shift, but not the worst. I’d rather open and then have the afternoon to walk and write or do art. I would if the energy didn’t drain so quickly, The last few weeks, I have done less than I want and my brain says none at all. I’m writing here so that can’t be true. I do write, just not the things I feel are creative or that fit my goals. I’d like to focus more when I have the time and accomplish things I’m struggling to achieve; poem, book or blog.

But I don’t practice enough. Not art, not music, not even words. Want is a strange thing. I want to play songs, but I don’t practice the notes enough to give them flow. I want to do art that sells, but I haven’t offered any to the few people who show interest. I want to be a writer, but I submit so seldom even though I look and look at places where I could send. Why? Is it fear, laziness, lack of skill or desire? Asking pumps adrenaline through my system, grabbing all of my attention, stealing it away from paint, sounds, and story. Images and words spin around me, I hang like a child in the Tilt-a-Whirl, remnants of childhood and challenges faced. Hold on, hold on, the ride will end. The ticket booth not far away.

Getting through January was exhilarating and exhausting. Irritating. I struggle on at work and want to see friends who are still living home bubbles. One day we will sit over tea and reminisce. At the moment, my contacts and connections are all digital or work related. My life, my experience.

I want to do some writing. Get Coursera finished. Write a poem. Finish my memoir. Nothing is moving. I tried here in WordPress and ended up making some notes into my phone.

Why do I have so many words and why do they feel so useless?

The world is a-kilter. Does it kill? I feel tipped over. But we aren’t allowed that relief, tipping over is a symptom of the current times. As are coughing, sneezing, sweating, being tired. Walk carefully. I see runners and we try to avoid each other. I’d avoid them anyway, but this year we mask everything, avoiding as much as we can, and feel guilty if we make eye contact with those we pass on the random trips around the corner for a change of view and fresher air than lives inside the boxes of rest and activity that are home and work.

Listening to Anne Lamott as I type is soothing. She’s talking about jealousy and ravaged bodies. It’s an old scene in YouTube talking about her life and efforts in writing. Not yet at bird by bird but living it. I think she’s reading from it in draft?  There is clapping and laughter. I like laughter. A friend telling me he likes my laugh. Tell me you like my laugh. It makes me smile even more.

February 7, 2021

The week, like my night, blurs. I sat on the couch with my phone waiting for 8pm when a ‘saved event’ was to start. The reminder arrived at 7:30, a good half hour before the event. I left it idling while I played with French in Duolingo. Found both at 1 am still idling but now tucked down inside of the couch. By 4 am all I have achieved is a few thoughts in my phone, some articles forwarded to myself to read again later (my newsfeed may hold them, but I don’t count on it), and this – realizing a work week has passed since I began this post. I found the Anne Lamott video half finished where I left it in YouTube and let another 5 to ten minutes of it play while I write here. Time seems too long and too short this year. I wrote a note at work Friday to prompt myself for a new post. Imperfections. It made me smile Odd. There are so many and lately we are so aware (and still unaware?).

My shift today is afternoon/evening. I’ll come back to my thoughts on imperfections later. For now. Another run at sleep. I’ve turned off the 5:15 alarm. If I can manage to grab an hour or two it may not help, but may ward off falling asleep on my feet before end of shift. Today will go like hundreds of others the past year or two. I’ll head to work hoping the day is kind, hoping I don’t fall asleep the moment I get home, hoping for life and laughter to be the things I remember well. I’ll tell people I’m tired, and be told I always am. I’ll spend more time than I wish too close to strangers, a little time talking to to those who ask if I’m ever not there, those glad I am there, and those who ask earnestly how I am; glad I’m still doing okay. Mostly I’ll give thanks for the online conversations I get to have with those who love me, who make me smile in ways that reach my core and laugh at outrageous or trivial things in our day.

Today, like every other day (if you believe those who say so), people will ask how I am and I will tell them I am tired. It will be true. I will push myself through it again. I may fall asleep too early tonight and repeat this pattern. But at 4 am my end of day reasons to smile still exist in the smiling faces of those who love me, the occasional memes or jokes they send me through the day, and their appreciation of my laughter.

I may yawn behind my mask, but I’ll laugh. I love laughter and the many ways those who love me realize it. And these are the things that count.