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by Sandy Bassie

Slowing down is hard

Lately, I talk more of retirement, exhaustion, pain. I can laugh at myself writing these words, knowing how many decades I’ve talked about pain in different forms and situations; mental, emotional, physical. In ways the physical is worse because it inserts itself so tangibly into every moment of every day. But that doesn’t negate the other types of pain. They cause their own distractions, and have become far too good at it over years. The one thing I appreciate is that I’m learning to distinguish between them and the ways they speak of themselves and among themselves.

This change of paragraph is an example. I look at the last sentence above and realize I sensed a change of topic or pace. But when I landed in the empty space here below, it was very empty. Inside and out. Too present in it’s form to express what the form is, or was, or felt like; and so I sat. My body tangible and aware of the couch on which I sit, the places that touch with various points of pressure, the shape of my body on the couch, not upright, but stretched out, one heel one and the other hanging over. More distressing is the internal awareness, almost a form of pain, where food in the gut, but emptiness in my chest and a slight wobble of head where I can’t tell if there is actual weight or simply a pause in thought staring at what’s going on below.

I’m not a fan. Not of the tightness in my shoulders, the burbling in my gut the clench in my lower abdomen or the way my brain or thoughts have begun flipping through pages; topic, last night’s dream. I’ve had a series of dreams this week. They share a similarity, some form of danger, shared venue for work or accommodations, and a call to determine what they mean. On waking, I am very certain I am supposed to know what they mean. They aren’t quite like the ones I had back in Acton, pre-divorce. But they do involves houses and backyards, people hiding or needing to hide. I’ve started to yawn, to float just above falling back asleep. I can’t. I have no time for more sleep. I start work in an hour. My body would choose to ignore that and push me back under the covers of dreams, make me take another look, another run at understand, at knowing the something I am to decide. Yesterday, I wrote long notes. Today, none.

Whether this is important or not, I do not know. I just need to finish this note, to dress for work, and to walk out the day, and let things wind down how they will. I’m looking into retirement, and a bit afraid that I’m going too slowly for the realities at work. Will I find myself without work soon than I’m ready? My system is humming, not with anticipation, but nerves, fear, disjointedness. I waste more energy on navigating this place. I’m fighting the fail, the fall into sleep, perhaps late again to work, and struggling against this all day.

I put water in the sink, dishes in the water. I came and sat down, just for moment, half an hour ago. I’m swimming in the thought, in the yawn, in the dream. Why do my dreams not go away when I wake? Why do they linger the next hour or so, hovering?

Tonight I will finish the dishes. I will make the same meal I’ve eaten all week. Two bowls of salad (cereal bowls) and three strips of chicken. A cup tea, coffee, or milk. Poke at some words, watch a YouTube, and allow myself to drift away. I’m sorry words, it’s time to get up. Put my feet on the ground, hold onto the wall if I need it, get out the door and into the air. Slow walk across the street and into the building where work waits for me. How brave am I this week? Will I make it official? Shift to part time? Next step on the journey? I don’t know, but again, I don’tr know what I want, when I want and how. I wish I had time to think out more words, but I really am almost falling asleep. I’ll stop for coffee on the way, and come back later and maybe get this done.

For now, slow steps. Repeat after me, I must retire. Slowly ease my way out, and ease my way into art and other things. Take the pencils to work. Draw.

by Sandy Bassie

I thought this was a writing blog

Several years ago when I started this blog, my intention was to write my thoughts and show my process of learning write beyond just journal notes. It seems mostly to be a place of reflection on life and growth, and places I stumble.

The dead silence the last few months doesn’t please me. I do peek from time to time as if words will magically appear, but mainly I have been hanging out online talking to friends and acquaintances about life and the world. This year reminds me how easily and deeply I stress about the past, present and future. Places I disentangle slowly from my body reactions or don’t. I’ve been sick four times this year, each one connected to a family relation and loss. Two funerals, one burial, memory still of Jack’s death in between. I used to be better at stubborning through things like this, though pre-divorce I did have a number of stress flus I had to face and got in trouble for having.

Writing, journal writing, used to help me offload some of the stress, but putting things that matter into forms you want to share doesn’t seem to have the same fixative qualities. People say “don’t write then” but I can’t not write. It is my natural language for times like these. So I write and file things, rewrite and lose things.

In July, it was a significant accomplishment to tell myself enough avoidance, get an editor, do a chapbook. August, September and working towards a second consultation or manuscript edit. Maybe a combination. This is hard. I have so much appreciation for the editor who is working with me, giving me homework to keep me at it, asking good questions and making me make decisions for myself.

If I post this today, it’s one more step. If I go to the store to pick up the magazine in which a friend has two stories, that’s another. Being sick is no fun, but these two things I can do to provoke more words and hopefully a finished email reply on the chapbook’s next appointment.

by Sandy Bassie

Waters on which to drift away

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?

by Sandy Bassie

Life and Meaning

*possible trigger, difficult subject*

If life and it’s meaning had a liturgy for me, that liturgy would be tears. I cry often and easily. My mother used to say I enjoyed being miserable. It may appear that way at times, but to me tears are tiny trails of prayers. Offerings without words. The dancing of light upon the waters. They are not always sorry, and even when they are, loss doesn’t come without joy. Loss implied something held, even temporarily that had value to lose.

Fourth month of the regular year, first of the Hebrew calendar, times overlapping in interesting ways. Counting things, things I count upon. Work brings stability, a regular pattern, expected activities. Home is becoming a home again. Jacob comes to visit. I have an eight week course that allows me space to have him visit. People say it all the time – being alone is not good – have your kids, friends, family come visit you, make time and space to entertain. I do not entertain. We seldom had friends come for tea even when we were in a community that often extended invites after church. Not us. We went out, but we did not invite in. Strange that, how patterns form. Would I have been that way in another life? Could I have learned to relax and prepare a meal. Perhaps.

I bought myself flowers this week. A simple bunch from my local Walmart; cut flowers for a vase. A bit of colour here beside me at the table. Cheerful and bright. Why that’s relevant, I don’t know. It’s not that important and yet.

I’ve made several people mad at me this week. The reasons are unclear, but I take it at face value. I have hurt someone. I apologize, stand back, wait and see. I cry a few tears, but nothing like the tears of frustration and regret I wept years ago, for my ex, my partner, my mother, or years back for grandparents and inlaws. There is an ebb and flow to loss and return. The thought comes more calmly now, small realizations of what is and may be alongside of the things lost. There is love and that’s enough. I’ve been learning to hold gently things I believe, things I think I need. A lot more time is present lately.

Friday, unexplainably, time folds in; the sharp deep stab of pain I felt three years ago surges over me. Death draws near and stares, its eyes pits of darkness I want desperately to allow. I do and don’t. Was it something in the night? Something I dreamed? All I know is I woke at death’s door and it was wide open, waiting. That was twelve hours ago or more. Several phone calls and texts. A drive down to the cemetery and back. Late for an online course where words from my texts and words from calls, where even the rabbi called back, whether I was Jewish or not. He said he listened to my message and wanted to call.

A friend joined me at the grave, stood holding me while I wept. Nodded and listened even though it’s not a recent loss, but just one reactivated by time and season, family I don’t have. Is this something others go through? I so often think, this is just me, my life, too much loss where I love. And knowing I wouldn’t take it back, not a moment; every second worth the pain it brought. Love, as my course today reminded, is action, like faith, and trust, relationships intertwined. I wouldn’t change it, miss the opportunity I know G-d gave. How could I? I prayed and prayed for this love, this chance to trust and be trusted.

I have a thousand things to do before it’s my turn. Family and friends reminding me I can’t give up, and besides I made a promise to listen to Jack, to his instructions and belief, “you’ll live to be a hundred”. Oh so far away. Is it really a hundred or was that an estimate you made? I called the cemetery, got an update on my grave, the payments I’ve made, next steps and things to account for so whenever it comes, I won’t leave Joshua with the costs that it brings. Like going through my stuff. That needs the many years. I have to shorten that time. Make life more presentable here. Free up the space. Tidy cupboards and floor. I can do it. I just don’t. And today, I asked Lin if avoidance could be the plan; holding off the inevitable and the tug of darkness and dark days. If I don’t clean, it’s a broken promise, and a way to delay. Am I tricking myself into waiting, riding out one more wave, where grief hits like shock, capsizing. Or am I just still avoidant from the days of ugly words and labels and blame? I really don’t know which, and it makes a difference. Impacts the choice. Directs the days.

Maybe I’ll listen another time through. Course material. See what the evolution of religion looks like to philosophers, scientists, and students. That and maybe pray.

Tomorrow is work. Something for my hands. My heart and my mind will have to look after themselves. But at least if I’m moving and doing and interacting with others, there is hope it will fill in the time, keep edging on towards what the future holds. And don’t ask questions. Let’s give questions a small break.

by Sandy Bassie

Irony

My last post started with being sick but not contagious. This is the reverse. Day four calling in to work to say I’m not coming in today. There are things going around, but there are always things going around. I don’t always catch them, and they don’t always catch me. But last week, four days into return to work from a five day bereavement to deal with my ex husband’s passing, the shock, emotional but also physical. Timing and so many other things relating to past, present, future, the week he died and the following week when my son came down to deal in person with end of life things, and his brother came up to also stay with me from funeral to when his brother returned home. Three people with too much stress and memory crammed into a tiny one bedroom apartment. I don’t know how we got through, but we did, and I looked forward to returning to work with its expected, usual, daily repeated retail stress and stresses; and the people there who keep me sane, remind me I’m strong and make life worth showing up to do daily things.

I was tired, and sad in a subterranean way. Not surface, no tears yet, no certainty of grief.

But memory in body, taking over what the mind could not do. Displacement a habit. Move emotion to the side; look, see, do. Keep moving. A smile, a greeting, handclaps and hugs. Years tied up in seconds. Old familiar faces becoming more than just a phrase I remember from some vague song or poem. I know these faces, and most of the names. Some I forget because I forget a lot and have no place to hang them in the life of today. I hate that I forget, and yet a part of me knows, I trained that skill for good reason, very young, and even before this. No wonder I am sick. Dust from long years. Practiced dissociation, not intentional, but real, holds at bay the things forgotten, wanted and unwanted memories at loggerheads for space. No just space, but motion. Emotion. Allowing out the things told “No”, long lines of things there waiting for expression in a breath. Depth beyond this shallow breathing, deep like the hugs I received.

I sleep to these feelings. I sleep to the pain. I’ve been sleeping for years, dreaming battles I fight for some things hard to name, or for children and family, houses a lot, place in communities where religion features as camps and retreats, leaders good and bad, saving sanctity where I can, if I can tell what it is. Dreaming is hard, it steals restful sleep. I lie wasted from rest, like illness, like this week. My body screams purge. I let it. I must. It doesn’t give me a choice when pushed to the edge. Still it’s ironic how like and unlike extremes are in moments of testing. Yeah, I’ll leave it at that, and I’ve written this slowly, so now back to work. Day two may be hard, like yesterday was; full of pain, lack of energy, sitting too much.

I’m glad for the work that I do away from home. It’s repetitive in ways, like waves pushing me into pattern I know, folding pants, hanging shirts, emptying changerooms and returning things to place. I haven’t managed that at home yet in ways that I’d like – too much redress for the effort – I’ll get there, I will. There is space now in his leaving, sad to say, but there is, a letting go on his end I needed him to take. Give me freedom to think and freedom to breathe, without guilt, too much guilt just from taking up space. How does that happen? I couldn’t quite tell, but I’m writing more easily this week and last, even while sick. Some bits are still ugly, I didn’t make them that way, just allowed them to the page. I allowed them to say what is remembered, how it was said; I wonder if memory may come now that he’s dead? What a terrible thought if it’s true. I can only wait and see.

I hope that he’s safe, regardless of all that went between, the words, the curses, other things as well. We talked about some of it and what I’m writing, and why. Irony that he knew, that I visited, even though, and just because, that we talked through his questions and worries and all that he hated laying in that place. Still he wondered why God loved him, and why he was alive. Tough questions right to the end.

Irony and illness, strange bedfellows, strange friends.

Be well, John.

by Sandy Bassie

Articulation

I’m sick. Not contagious, catchable sick, but it is sick. I can feel myself swimming almost to the point of passing out. Dreams. No sleep. This is an ugly place.

But I work today; 9:30 and hour or two from now I’ll be on my way. I told myself I will make art. A collage of images creating form. Structure and the like. Articulating.

I’m shaking. I hope I make it today. Tonight, I will go to bed early. Miss my class. Let myself pass out. Hopefully not wake in the night again. That’s what I did last night. Asleep by 8pm and awake at 10pm to watch people talk, a reading mostly. Interesting.

Maybe they’ll let me start early, 9am leave early. It isn’t much.

This place scares me. My head swimming from exhaustion and chocolate. Did I mention the chocolate? Punishment I bought. I know it’s not reward. It isn’t even help. I did eat supper, a can of stew. I’m still in the place where eating is off. How many years has it been? No words. No words. I need to move, relax myself. And forget the rest, how walking soothed abuse. One pattern, then the next. Changing pace, changing steps, changing direction I walked, the side of the road. Little distractions, then sleeping at the church. Because it was quiet, because it was safe. I had the key from three different groups, and well still used benches rather than chairs. I could lay down unseen on the hard wood surface, curl into myself. An hour, maybe two, sometimes three if middle of the day and kids not coming or going to school.

I’d sleep on the floor, on the steps at the front. Same deal, same idea. Out of sight, out of mind.

Writing this shakes. Shakes aren’t allowed.

Articulation is hard, both verbal and movement. Pushing words past my teeth, over tongue, out of lungs. Not easy at times. And still, they may or may not articulate. I stretch when I can. Sometimes I can’t; not allowed say my words, unspoken but heard. Not aloud.

What will I make? What will I draw. Frames and framing and framing the frames. Too silly by far. I am silly, I think. To move’s what I need. Get up and go. If I lay out paper and glue and magazines and scissors, will I do it when home? Will I make the scene?

I need to do it for my own good. I built a YouTube channel and three short talks, so I’m thinking of topics and words and ways, things we frame, what we think, how we think and how we frame it in telling and retelling. So I want to create, images, thoughts. Something to stare at when I talk to the screen. Or I talk to the people I talk to there. Articulate thoughts in better timing and better shape, better frame and frame of mind.

Articulate.

I’m two and half days past physio this time. Edging along. Moving to pain.

Get up, go to work, get food, go to sleep. Repeat and repeat. Oh, and write out more words. Almost 2,000 in the memoir yesterday. Borrowed and created from pages of thoughts. If I don’t muck this up and can get them to form, I may have a book. I have people to read. People are important in so many ways.

Falling back asleep if I sit here too long. Getting dressed, getting coat on, getting boots, getting gone.

I’m a mess, but I’m learning, what I fear, what I don’t. What I fear until I do it. What I will do regardless of fear. Apparently a lot. So I’ll share a little listening for those who don’t yet know, and I’ll think of what it looks like now and as I go. Mixing in the people from wide connections and wider space. Articulating as carefully as I can, as honestly as I can, as politely and with grace. I hope all of that is true and that it comes through in what I say. 

Let me know what you think. If you like, you can follow. It may be a mishmash.

I will write and may share little pieces and thoughts. It’s a challenge to myself to express things I love, things I hate, things that scare me, things I avoid. It’s one tactic I use when I’m struggling to move on – extend the road, redraw the line, increase the time and journey but take a step. I hope this works.

And I’m sorry to the people who think I’m naturally brave. I’m not. I just fake it and keep going. Sometimes it costs me sleep and dreams I’d rather not have then I face myself and the world and keep moving. It’s uncomfortable, you may not like the journey so feel free to opt out. If you hang in there, I’ll try to engage, but I overload at times, quite frequently in fact.

My thanks to those who love me regardless of the mess.

I am slowly building life around me. And I’m glad.

by Sandy Bassie

Nineteen

Nineteen, the stories I didn’t write. Posts in drafts, some even complete. Saturday, I read a piece for my writing group and hopefully soon I have words for a speakers night next week. In my head, on a good day, the plans run amok, excited to race with full energy across ideas they line up for things I can do. A website, this blog, podcasts and art, stories and memoir and people I know. Questions to answer and ask as we talk. All good plans, I just need focus and energy maintained.

Structure. That’s the word, a struggle for me. I need to move things to see them. Touch and slide the couch down the wall. Just imagining it by the window doesn’t tell me much. I need to interact. Talk to my life and my things. A habit picked up doing alone all the years with my kids, years avoiding their dad, never sure of his mood or the impact it would bring. There is a tangible element; opposite the drawing away that happens too often in this place. Unformed. Uninformed.

I open my computer, begin to type. Writing is the easy part. Hands on the keys, heart to the page. Free of constraint. If I tense, I go to sleep. Sleep was escape from the time I was young to present it seems. In my dreams I see structure, a layout of form, stories created like problems to solve. Here, I am strong, I can see, know my strengths.

Two years I have promised myself a memoir; done. Both years incomplete, a failure of plan. But each one brought something new to this game. I took courses that dug deep into how, what and why I write the way I do. I’m better for doing it and will get better next year.

There are new questions on the table I’ll answer and ask. Whether I can succeed is a good one, but if not, make a start. Build a slow framework and let my hands feel their way through what it is that I want for myself and for sharing. Try new things – like a podcast, find a website I like. New poems and essays, something tangible to show me the memoir I write. Inch by inch, go slow, keep to pace. Don’t be so hard on myself. I carry great weights.

If I’m honest, this year I have given more than I know. Accomplished healing and run a race that asks my all in so many ways. And though I’m tired, always sore, feeling age, I have more ideas to tackle and am giving myself permission to work it out differently, adding pieces as I go, building up strength and stability.

I may lack grace, but bring it on, ask me how, ask me when. Now. I write now, and can gather up the pieces, dropped threads, broken seams, over stretched reach and cramped effort. Welcome to today. Let’s give it another go. Trust my instincts and the pieces for the sorting that will come. Then read, read, read to the people that I know; writing groups, online groups, friend groups, family.

Let the ebb and flow of words drift at times and settle. Trust those who love me. They have pushed me when I stall. Love and appreciation fill my heart when they do. And words come easy when I’m trusting they will come. Thanks you to my people. You are more wonderful than I can ever say, and when I’m finally done this one books, and begun several more, keep your elbows at the ready. Nudge and nudge again.

My heart sings for joy, and you are its song. Just for being you.

Thank you.

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

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.