A happy and secure childhood contributed to my resiliency. A few evenings ago, I told my story to a group of Masters of Thanatology students at a university in the Toronto area. A couple of times a year I become a focus of study. There’s always dead silence and intense focus while the class listens to my recollection of the days, months, and years following my parents’ deaths after a catastrophic car crash many years ago. It’s no reflection of my verbal eloquence, trust me, it’s just such an unusual and ‘worst nightmare’ story. I swear I can almost hear their thoughts as all the details of the story build on top of one another. A week before her 15th birthday? There were four kids? The youngest was seven?! Her dad went into a coma after her mom died? She was in a car accident the day after her parents’ accident? She picked out their coffins? Can you see the students’ concerned and thoughtful faces? I always feel like I want to stop speaking to reassure them that I’m ok. Now. Now I’m ok. The focus of tonight’s class is family resilience and I’ve been asked to pick up on that topic in relation to what my siblings and I went through all those years ago. To be resilient is to be able to ‘bounce back’ after a hardship (‘crawl back’ is likely more accurate). Family resiliency, as described by Dr. Froma Walsh, a leading expert on this topic, is the family’s ability to “withstand and rebound from disruptive life challenges, strengthened and more resourceful” ( Resilience and Mental Health , 2011, p 149). Many of the examples in my (limited) research on family resilience describe the coming together of close relatives to weather and eventually grow from the particular storm a family finds themselves navigating. A parent helping his/her kids through the loss of the other parent or how each parent might help their kids transition through divorce. The way these transitions happen, the ability to safely communicate feelings, and the family dynamic up until the point of trauma all contribute to how resilient a family will be. But what if your family, post-trauma, has been whittled down to four scared kids between 7 and 16 years of age? Kids who get bounced around among different relatives for the next several years — sometimes together but in the end, separated? What if the ‘other parent’ who is supposed to be there to help you through is also buried underground? What if you’d moved across the country just a couple of months before the accident and had no close family or friends to be resilient with? How our little souls dealt with the tumultuous inconsistencies in those years following my parents’ accident leaves me in wonder. How did we bounce back? How did we get the strength to move forward? The four of us weren’t together enough to clasp hands and forge our way through. The more years that go by, the more I look back on this time analytically, without sadness. Wounds are mostly closed though scars remain. Enough time has passed that I don‘t get emotional while retelling the most harrowing of days. We were even resilient? Is ‘forced resiliency’ a thing? Because that’s how I’d describe our experience. We all made it through. We were forced to. Today we are all able to hold jobs, each of us is happily married and we love our kids. But how did we make it through those early years? Maybe there was a resiliency in our family pre-trauma. Our dad got transferred between jobs quite often. We’d moved eight times through three provinces in my 14 years of having parents. I’d been the ‘new girl’ at six schools by then. I was adaptable and used to breaking the ice and I got good at fitting into my surroundings as quickly as possible. We were a tight family because we were each other’s only friends in every new town that we landed. I remember playing Euchre and Rumoli and Rummy with my mom and dad. If I was fourteen when they died, then we must have been playing cards together since I was eleven or twelve. Did laughing around a card table with my family make me resilient? We’d been brought up to believe in a Creator. Most Sundays, if whatever church we’d nestled into after a move had two church services, we’d most definitely be at both of them. Although I do not doubt that faith must play a massive role in the ability to be resilient, I can’t say I was reaching out to God very often throughout that time. I was blank. My insides were empty. There was simply nothing there. This is not meant to downplay the countless relatives and the church community who gathered around us to help with our survival. To remind us to eat. To get out of bed. To walk with us through excruciating situations and life-altering decisions. It would have been so much worse if we’d still been in Manitoba. Thank God we’d moved so much closer to relatives on both sides of the family two months before the crash. Could the years that our family of six spent together — not perfect but happy, each other’s first friends, feeling secure and sure and safe — be what got us through the most unimaginable of circumstances? Did fourteen years of being well-loved by my mother and father create resiliency in me/us? Having their intentional time? I think so. I believe it played a major part in our ‘bounce back’. Resiliency must begin in the most normal of days with the closest of loved ones. It isn’t fabricated after a person is diagnosed with a terminal illness or after a job loss in a single-income family. It starts building up inside someone from the time they’re itty-bitty. Perhaps a person’s ability to thrive post-trauma is embedded pre-trauma. Before the divorce. Before the accident. The home environment must shape a person’s ability to be resilient. Surely parents who love unconditionally, communicate consistently, and guide with hands wide open — even though they‘re imperfect, messy, and feel parentally unsure so much of the time (me…that’s totally me) — are the world’s most undervalued people group. And most definitely, parenting this way does not guarantee the outcome. Kids make choices that can take them severely off course. But build the foundation anyway and always. I find it hard to decipher if there was any family resiliency for me and my siblings after the car accident. When I think about it I feel confused. Without realizing it, I guess my husband and I have been building up resiliency in our home with our kids. I’ve never thought of it that way before today. Card games around the table. High fives for the big wins. Standing side-by-side through the crushing losses. Allowing our kids’ hard questions and differences of opinion about faith/sex/politics spur conversation instead of confrontation. Not doing any of it perfectly. But we’re present. Doing it.  Please, Lord, let my kids not have to go through anything close to what I went through. If an unexpected life change does come along, I hope the foundation we’ve built under their feet has been solid enough to have built up their resilience. To move forward, to bounce/crawl back.  Spend time together. Doing nothing and doing everything. Our kids’ futures depend on it.

Our final family Christmas Enraptured with the gift I’d asked for, I held the doll close.  Do I remember her because she was the most desired Christmas gift I’d received in my childhood? Or is it seared into my memory banks because it was the last time my family celebrated anything together ever again? At fourteen years old, you’d think I’d have asked for something more ‘grown-up’. Make-up maybe? Or a neon yellow turtleneck with matching scrunchy socks that were all the rage in 1986. I’d first laid eyes on this porcelain doll in the Sears catalog and although I don’t remember playing with dolls at this age, this golden-ringletted one endeared herself to me somehow. I circled her photo with a thick red marker and scrawled ‘Julie’ below as if my mom would mistake which of her four kids would want that delicate doll wrapped under the tree. No other presents come to mind when I recollect my childhood Christmases. Not one. We never had a lot but my parents always made sure there were a few special presents under the tree for each of us.  Christmas Eve was gift-opening time at our house, Christmas morning was for opening stockings and going to church. We were usually a part of the play or the choir or whatever the kid's ministry had prepared for that year. This holiday was different though. We’d only just moved to a new city a few weeks ago. New school, no friends, and certainly no part in the church play. But wherever my mom and dad, older sister and younger brother and sister were, was home. We were used to this moving thing. This was move number seven and school number six for me.  I felt safe and happy and had an understanding that things would work out.  They always did.  The continuous change had made me adaptable and it was becoming second nature to put myself out there in new situations. All that moving prepared me for things I would have never wanted it to prepare me for.  That Christmas, lights twinkling from our beloved fake tree (the kind with the color-coded branches. We all took turns sticking them into the wooden ‘trunk’ of the tree), I opened my gift.  She was perfect. Golden locks and rosy cheeks. Her creamy silk dress, all poofed out thanks to the three-layered crinoline underneath. She was so very elegant. Surely I desired her because she was a sophisticated treasure, one I could hand down to a daughter of my own one day. Thanks, Mom, I love her! Of course, I hugged both my mom and dad but, just like in my household now, most of our kids’ gifts are surprises to my husband as they get unwrapped on Christmas morning.  That doll was a gift from my two biggest gifts. My parents filled our childhoods with love and laughter. We were safe and secure.  Until we weren’t. None of us could have foreseen that less than two months later, we’d have buried my mom and been making regular visits to my dad who lay comatose in a hospital, the result of a treacherous car accident. He died soon after she did. That doll sat on my bed or a shelf in my bedroom for years. The four of us kids were shuffled around from house to house, from this relative to that, and ended up in a completely different city. At each new ‘stop’ I brought her out as a constant.  A reminder of a happier time. I don’t know if I ever named her. Girls name their dolls. All of her porcelain features are clear to me, but her name? It’s vanished from my brain’s files.  Sadly, I don’t even know if I still have her, my connection to that last true family Christmas.  I’m sorry, dear doll, if I gave you away thinking I no longer needed you. That I was too old to hold you.  Perhaps to look at you pained me. She could be packed away in a storage box somewhere. What a treat it would be if I found her in a box in a dark corner of our house. I’ll look as soon as I get home. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I loved your gift.

He was the missing piece to this complicated puzzle Everyone knew my parents had been killed in a car accident the year before. Few asked about it which was perfect because that’s how I wanted it. Numb is how I would describe myself throughout my teenage years. But I made sure that friends from my new high school wouldn’t have described me that way. Cheery, engaged, and easy-going, I seemed as content and ‘normal’ as any other kid walking the cream-colored hallways at school. It was work. By laughing on cue, dating cute guys, and doing well enough in all my classes I could carry on the ‘I’m fine’ facade. Hardly anyone asked how my insides were doing because, well, Look how much fun she’s having. She’s dating the football quarterback (well, we didn't have a football team but you get the gist). She’s always got friends around. To be fair, I did enjoy the last couple of years of high school. There were boyfriends and best friends, starring in the school musical (don’t be impressed, I was Oliver Twist), and senior year trips. When I consider the losses that my teenage heart had to decipher and attend to on a daily basis, it’s amazing to me that I could function so nonchalantly through those years. I’ve asked friends from those days if they remember me talking much about Mom and Dad, the accident, or our time in Ottawa . They all agree that no, I must have just corked it all. Instead, I joked and functioned my way through. After high school there was a year of work, a year at school in Montreal, a year in Europe, and then three years at university in Toronto. Joking, dating, laughing, doing. Denying. I can’t remember a tear shed. For years. Did I cry myself to sleep every once and a while? Did I keep a journal or would that have been just too painful? Oh, how I wish I had written it all down. Without a doubt it would have been too much to write about my inner turmoil at night while trying to keep up appearances by day. While living in Toronto, a friend from university invited me to listen to him and his band at a local venue. His best friend, Tony, would be there that night. Tony’d heard about me, not sure if I’d heard about Tony. No sparks flew for me that night. Too loud and crowded for a love connection. But two months later at a dinner party that I hosted and he attended in an accidental sort of way, something flew. Not quite sparks, but the red-tipped match was definitely out of the box and ready to strike. A year later we were married. When you know you know and we knew three weeks into dating. We still know twenty-seven (and a half!) happy years later. What was different about Tony? He was safe. He allowed me and all of my insides to come out. He listened and loved. He didn’t push or pry. He held me and held me and held me. Committed to the end after so much had been snatched away from me over and over again. Now I had a sure place. A home. Except for the first few weeks after the accident, it’s only after being married that I can remember weeping about my parents. I must have cried before that but if I did, I can’t recall. Love is patient and kind and trusts and protects and is all the things that the Good Book declares. My husband’s love allowed me to feel again. His guitar playing skills, sculpted biceps, and easy laughter were bonuses. He was the missing piece of my oh-so-complicated puzzle. I didn’t even know I was missing anything. I’m still not a major weeper but I’m more in touch with all my big feels than I used to be. A book with just the right ending, choir music (my dad always sang in a choir) while driving alone, or a commercial about loved ones reuniting at Christmas can make me a mascara-smeared mess. But now I’m thankful for the tears. This is just a little reminder that the missing piece of your life’s puzzle is likely just around the corner. Or under the table, or stuck in a drawer. When the puzzle is complete you can see the whole picture. And you can see the cracks. But you can still see the picture…

Trauma and change go hand in hand When my uncle mowed over my glasses at the cottage by accident, blasting them to smithereens, I thought my life might just be over. They were not only my path to sight, they were my security blanket.
I’d worn glasses since I was three, the very first thing I reached for every morning for the past thirteen years.
A ‘normal’ sixteen-year-old might have been upset for a minute but that day as I caught my breath after swimming out to the raft, I thought my life might be over.
Again. To say I’d had a year of change would have been a meteoric understatement. My mom had died the February of the previous year, my dad a month later. They’d both been in a car accident that had caused the deaths of four people in total.
We’d moved cities just a couple of months before the accident. Everything for the four of us kids had changed. Everything was unexpected and unwelcome.
Forced change is worlds different from change that has been calculated, thought-through, or voluntary.
During the six weeks that my dad was in a coma, it had been decided that my cousin and his wife who were unable to have kids, who loved my parents, and who’d wanted to move back to Ontario, would be the best fit to become our ‘second set’. Our second set of ‘parents’, the second set of people who would raise us through teenagehood and into adulthood.
They were twenty-six and twenty-seven years old. We were seven, twelve, fourteen (me) and sixteen. It was doomed from the beginning.
It’s one thing to step in to raise a baby or toddler who has lost their parents. But to ‘take over’ the parenting duties for four traumatized, grieving kids — all dealing/not dealing with their losses in different ways — is a job not even Dr. Spock could master, or desire.
Intentions were oh, so good. Everyone around us wanted it to work. So did we. We so enjoyed these cousins and always loved their visits when we’d lived out in the Prairie provinces. They’d been the only family around for kilometers. They were good people and I’m so thankful they even considered taking on such a life-change. But they were completely unequipped.
Of course they were.
Who would be equipped for this most unlikely of scenarios?
We needed therapy, nurturing, homework help, driving lessons, playdates organized, rides to hockey practice, advice on post-secondary options, conversations working through friend drama at school, breakfast, lunch, dinner, laundry, and on and on and on.
For a mom and dad who have a child one at a time and slowly gain experience, parenting is a monumental task day in and day out.
For a childless, inexperienced couple to take over right smack in the middle of death one and death two, well, could it have been anything but doomed? That October, my cousin’s dad had a stroke and died suddenly, six months after my parents' accident.
That Christmas, a cousin on the other side of the family lost her husband in a car accident, leaving behind four kids under six years old.
Annus horribilis. I was sure these things would keep happening until none of us were left.
I’m an optimistic person by nature and I loved my cousins. But by February of the following year, the crevices in our unnatural living situation were becoming too wide to jump over.
They wanted to keep living with the two of us middle kids, my older sister would be going off to college that September.
Your younger sister can go live with your aunt and uncle nearby. They suggested this new living arrangement to me one evening when I was home alone with them.
I sat at the edge of the stone slab in front of the fireplace, unbelieving.
No! We need to stay together! The opposition was shooting off like fireworks inside of me.
Outside of me, I sat still, eyes wide through my thick glasses. In my world, where all control was lost, I no longer knew how to speak for myself. Nothing was up to me anymore anyway.
Oh , I likely said in a whisper. So, so, so much change had happened. How could I stop this avalanche from suffocating me?
My older sister came home. They sat her down and laid out their plan. Over my dead body will you ever separate us! She’s got fire in her butt, that one.
Shit hit the fan. So no, we were not going to be separated.
But now what? And where? Who would take us in?
An aunt and uncle with five of their own kids, all boys in their teens except for their one daughter who was about to get married, stepped in.
It was decided that all of us kids would move in with them that summer after we'd finished our school years. They lived four hours away. I’m sure we were brought into the conversation but I don’t remember any of it. More goodbyes to endure. Another new city, new school, new bedroom, new kids to make or not make friends with.
The ‘exchange’ would happen in a neutral place — at my aunt and uncle’s cottage halfway between our last place and this new one.
I don’t remember saying goodbye to my cousins and I can’t recall any thoughts or feelings I had about moving in with my aunt and uncle. I honestly believe I was walking around numbed-out most of the time.
The only thing unmistakenly sharp in my memory is sitting wet but warm, during one of those ‘cottage exchange’ afternoons on the raft about fifty feet from shore. I think my younger brother was with me. We were enjoying ourselves. Having a bit of fun. It felt nice.
Before running to the end of the dock and jumping into the dark water, I’d put my extra super-duper thick glasses on a lawn chair on the grass.
Hearing the sudden crunch under the mower’s blades, I turned my head to where the sound had come from. Squinting, I could juuuust make out my uncle looking in the grass beside the lawn chair he’d just moved.
My glasses.
I’d be making the move without my glasses. No vision.
My heart fell. Why did I leave them in such a stupid place? My uncle felt awful. I told him it was fine.
It took a while to get a new prescription but in that time people kept saying ‘You know, you look really nice without glasses…’.
I got contacts. Had my glasses not met their fate that summer day, I likely would have not considered contacts with all the changes I had going on.
The mowing-over-of-the-coke-bottle-bottoms was not a change I would have made on my own. But it was the first change in a long long stretch of gut-wrenching changes that had a good outcome. I felt way more confident to start at another new school that September.
One small step. Some of it we choose, some of it we fight and some of it shows up uninvited to our party.
But change, and all its inevitability, helps to move us forward.

Have patience. It will bear fruit. Several years ago I researched the best apple trees to plant in our backyard. Agonized — not quite agonized — over them.
Bare-root or potted? Self-pollinators or cross?
After referencing and cross-referencing and chatting with fruit tree ‘experts’ all over southern Ontario, I decided on two different apple trees (cross pollinators) and a self-pollinating Montmencery cherry tree. Bare root ones, from an organic gardener about an hour away.
I knew they would take 5–7 years to bear fruit which was fine, we weren’t planning on going anywhere.
About four years in, our cherry tree began to blossom beautifully. We got a few handfuls of tart cherries that year, now we get a few bucketfuls. Good job, cherry tree!
But those apple trees? Nada. Deer were munching on the lower branches, devouring limbs and leaves. There was never a bud to be found. For some reason, the cherry tree was never on the menu for our elegant furry friends.
And there were bugs. Nothing I did could make those two trees flourish. So after several years, they got neglected. The cherry tree thrived, the apple trees were just not working out.
Cut ’em down , I told my husband with a cutthroat gesture. They’re not producing anything and they don’t look aesthetically pleasing enough . So shallow am I.

This is a story about patience. I homeschooled our kids, one right through grade 12, and the other two through grade ten. The oldest is a successful singer/songwriter. Our middle is in design school and loving every minute and the youngest is working in the trades and preparing to take an intensive firefighting program this winter. They’re kinda great.
In early 2020, homeschooling was winding down for me since our son would be going to school in the fall. I wanted to start giving some of my time away, now that I had more of it.

Just before COVID side-swiped us all that March, I‘d gotten in touch with a women’s prison in the area to ask about helping out with parenting courses, teaching literacy, or anything else that might be helpful for the inmates’. I wanted to spend some time with women who likely feel forgotten.
I was so excited about it. I believe in second chances, an third and fourth ones, especially for those who often did not get the greatest start in life.
Just as we were co-ordinating my orientation and I was filling out the paperwork for my police check, everything started to shut down — the NBA, the restaurants, the schools, the prison volunteer programs.
I checked in with the volunteer coordinator from time to time, knowing full well that the programs at the jail were going to be the last thing to re-open once the pandemic nightmare was over.
This particular jail had suffered the worst COVID outbreak in any Ontario prison system. It was a long, lonely time for the inmates who were stuck in their cells.
Finally, in June of 2022, an email arrived from the coordinator. They were planning an orientation the next month and could I attend? There was a ‘sigh of relief’ tone to the email — the prisoners were finally going to be able to get out of their cells and get back to working on their high school diplomas and learning how to care for their children once they were released.
As life would have it, I’d just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I was scheduled to have a mastectomy right around the time of the orientation. And then radiation, possibly chemo. Too many unknowns to plan anything.
So, no, I wouldn’t be able to make the orientation.
In late December, I’d finished radiation and thankfully would not need chemo. I got in touch with the jail again to let them know I was raring to go. I didn’t hear back. A few weeks later I called again and left another message. This happened a bunch of times until I just let it drop. Three years had gone by and now, it seemed like it just wasn’t meant to be.
Several months later, listening to a podcast, the host was encouraging the idea of ‘one more time’. I don’t remember his name. But the premise was to just try that ‘thing’ one more time and see where it gets you. Don’t give up on something that is important to you.
I thought about volunteering at the jail. Did I still want to do it? Yes, I really did.
I decided to call one more time .
My call was picked up right away. Of course it was. A new co-ordinator had been hired, the reason for the lack of communication from their end.
After many conversations, I was asked if I would be able to create a program to facilitate. I have my B. Ed, I’d homeschooled for many years and led many classes with all age groups but I’ve never done anything quite like this.
But I said yes. How about a creative writing class? The women were looking for something they could do in their own time during the week. A course like this sounded like a great fit.
This course will start in the next couple of weeks. I’m elated and terrified. Well, not terrified. Unsure. But still hopeful.
Three and a half years have gone by. The time is ripe for picking. I'll update you soon, my orientation is next Tuesday.
Who would have thought that rather than plugging into a program that was already in place I’d be writing one from scratch?
What a privilege. Back to my fruit trees.
They were scheduled for the chopping block.
After a week away with my daughters in May, we came home to the cherry tree in full fragrant blossom. Oh, fruit trees in the spring, we wait for those delicate white flowers all winter long.
My husband and I stood gazing at the tree. Then I moved my gaze to the left, where one of the dismal, lanky apple trees stood.
As I began to plan its demise, still looking up at it, I saw something pale pink among the apple tree's leaves.
I squinted.
Pink blossoms! There were pink blossoms about to burst all over that good-for-nothing tree! Might we get one or two apples this season? I couldn’t believe it. Seven years. It took seven years!
(The question of how our apple tree was pollinated has been raised. An apple tree in an adjoining property that we don‘t know about? No idea.)
No joke, I walked straight up to that once-scorned tree, wrapped my hands around its life-giving trunk, and apologized for even considering what I had been considering.
And at this very moment, at the very tip-top of that tree, hang three of the most luscious apples you‘ve ever seen.
The deer ate the rest of them. Eye roll.

But the apples I longed for are here. Each bite will be treasured.
Those pink flowers also saved the life of the other apple tree. Maybe its time is still coming.
I’ll wait with more patience than I had for its friend.

A car accident couldn't kill my parents' legacy When people find out about my tumultuous teen years, most are baffled because I seem so ‘untroubled’ today. I suppose I am relatively trouble-free. I have a solid 27-year marriage, our three adult kids are making good life choices, we own a home and a car, and the fridge is usually filled (mostly with condiments). There was the breast cancer diagnosis last year but I’m through the worst and am trusting that is all in my past. You could have turned out so different, I’ve heard. I would never have known, you seem so happy and well-adjusted. It could have been so much worse. You could have become an addict or super depressed or whatever. You just seem so unaffected. It was thirty-seven years ago so I’ve had a bit of time to adjust to being an orphan and all that has come with it. When asked what got me through those years and how I managed to turn out ‘okay’ my answer comes without hesitation: The grace of God and my parents’ love for each other and for me. Although the physical display of that love was severed the instant those two cars collided, it had already permeated my insides and it lasts even up until today. George and Jane, as hip and cool as their namesakes in the cartoon, The Jetsons, were a unique couple. Born in Holland and raised in the Christian Reformed Church after immigrating with their families as young children, they were not as reserved as many who grew up in the church. My dad was the third youngest of nine and my mom was the second youngest of six. More carefree than their responsible older siblings, they loved a good laugh and to pull a prank or two. They could chat up a storm with anyone. They both dropped out of high school, met at a church youth conference, and married young. They were the favorite aunt and uncle to many of my forty-seven first cousins. Yes, you read that number correctly. The Dutch ‘go forth and multiply’ and they do it well. I’ve heard stories of cousins who would confide in Uncle George or Aunt Jane instead of their own parents because my parents were so much younger (and therefore more in tuned with youth perhaps?) than my aunts and uncles. They didn’t have veteran parent status but they were warm and accepting and non-judgemental. My cousins would babysit and have parties although they knew that was a no-no. After an earlier-than-expected arrival, my parents gave a stern word or two and then my dad would pull up a chair and join the young lads in a game of Euchre. Sighs of relief all around the table. They didn’t talk down to you. They didn’t hold a grudge. They dealt with things and then moved on. They weren't Ward and June Cleaver but they listened, they laughed, they didn’t take life too seriously. When we moved provinces that didn’t stop my older cousins from road-tripping it to our house. Truth be told, I felt a little jealous sometimes. I also wondered what was so amazing about my parents that these guys in their early twenties would want to drive thousands of kilometers just to hang out with my mom and dad. The coffee was always percolating at our place. No wonder I’m addicted today. Friends and neighbors knew they could drop in day or night and our door would be open. White Corelle mugs dangled from brass hooks underneath our cupboards. A Bic lighter and a cigarette were always within reach if that was your fancy. We were not a family of means but we lacked nothing. We had enough for a casserole at dinner and every once and a while, an ice cream cone for dessert. We rarely got the name-brand lunch snacks, I longed for a Flakie or a Twinkie in my brown bag lunch like some of the other kids had. On a special occasion, I do remember a chocolate Wagon Wheel thrown in there. My mom was home while my dad brought home the bacon. The insurance settlement after the accident revealed that he didn’t bring home much bacon but us kids would never have known any better. I mean, we knew we weren’t rich but we were happy. And I realize now that happiness, like money, can be banked and it can also be compounded, growing on its own as the years go by. I’d love to know what my mom did while the four of us were off at school. Honestly, besides the laundry, tidying up, and food prep, I think she mostly hung out on the front porch with friends and neighbors — chain-smoking, chugging java, chatting, and chuckling. I’m not diminishing a woman’s choice to stay at home and the work involved. I stayed at home with our kids. But I suspect I cared way more about home ‘stuff’ than my mom did. She was all about people. She had her driver's license but she didn't like to drive. I can't remember any car driving experiences with her. Dad was at the helm of the vehicle in every car ride scenario in my brain. I don’t remember her helping out at school (did they have parent volunteers back then?) if we did anything after school, we’d find our own way home. When my brother played hockey and for the short time that my sister and I had piano lessons, my dad took us. We didn't have a second car so she couldn't have gotten around much even if she'd wanted to. Was she lonely? Did she care? It didn’t seem that way. But I was a kid, doing my kid things and having my kid feelings so what did I know or care? What I did know and feel was their love for each other and for us. I’d often catch Dad smiling at Mom from across the room. Our living room might be full of the laughter of friends - legs, and arms splayed across our banana-yellow couch and armchair. She’d be cracking a joke or exaggerating a tale, all eyes on her. He’d be busting a gut just like everyone else. He so enjoyed being with and around her. The Dutch dish with potato and sausage and her pork chops with scalloped potatoes were some of my favourites. Every spring she baked rhubarb crumble and sugar cookies at Christmas .She wasn't a gourmet chef by any means but he loved every meal she laid in front of him. She couldn’t impress him with a college degree or any specialized skills. She didn’t need to. Dad was strong, generous with his time, and hospitable. He wanted the best for her and for us. They weren’t in competition with each other. They were partners and teammates and lovers. (I found the ‘lover’ part out quite literally when I was twelve and thought I heard a mouse squeaking in the middle of the night. Their bedroom was above mine, and the door always open. I went up to let them know there might be a rodent loose in the house. I caught them, cough , off guard. It was shortly after that I got the most embarrassing sex talk, my mom holding her giggles the whole way through. She would have loved it that I’m sharing this story.) Jane and George weren’t perfect but they were perfect for each other. I think Mom longed for her family while living so far away for so many years. Together, they decided to move back to their home province for my dad to start a new career, but I’m sure a big part of that decision was for her to be close to her family again. It was going to be our last move as a family. And it was our last move. As a family. My secure and carefree childhood with parents who loved each other was my foundation. And even though I walked a slippery slope for many years, the foundation was set. The love my mom and dad displayed so openly to each other and to all those around them kept me upright. The impact of their love has lasted decades after their deaths. Love. It is the greatest of all things. It is the answer. And every second of your love counts farther into the future than you realize.

Your insides are right. Your 10-year-old won’t die without a device glued to their palm The time is ripe. Parents everywhere are losing their minds over cell phones. Susie has one, why can’t I? whines your eight-year-old. Johnny’s parents can see where he is all the time. If I get a phone you can do that too! negotiates your 12-year-old. Gimme da pone! I WANT DA PONE! The toddler in the grocery store tantrums at her embarrassed mom. Most parents don’t want to succumb to getting a cell phone for their younger kids, so why do they? Pressure all around. Our rule around cell phone ownership was two-fold with our three kids. They had to 1) be sixteen and 2) they had to be able to pay for it themselves. That’s it. Simple. We set that out as a clear and finite boundary for them. Our kids didn‘t go to high school until grade 11 so it was a little easier for us to say sixteen since they weren’t away at school until then. Had they gone in grade 9 we may have changed the age to fourteen. Do we sound like militant parents? We’re actually super chill. That was likely the most precise law we ever laid down. There wasn’t a particular age when our kids were all of a sudden allowed to go to the movies or the mall with their friends. We didn’t tell them they had to be a certain age to start dating or a set curfew. We discussed things as they happened. Who’s going? How will you get there and back? What time will you be home? You have that thing in the morning, don’t you think 1:00 is too late to come home? How about 11:30? If I could trust them to go to the mall with their friends and then to be in front of the Starbucks at 5 pm like we’d agreed to, then no problem, have a blast hunny-bun ! It didn’t matter if they were 12 or 13, it mattered if they could be trusted. Same idea with dating. And with curfews. One of the reasons we never put an age on anything was because while one of our kids may have been mature enough to go to a movie with a crush at 15, the other one…no waaaayyyyssss! Lots of discussions and ‘where are you at’ conversations happened with each kid for each of those milestones. Back to cell phones… I honestly think there are way more parents who feel the same about those f-ing devices. They want to hold off on buying a phone for their kid but the pressure is real. We need to start a movement or something — #dontbuyyourkidaphone. We could flock together. Share success stories. Encourage each other how to not lose our minds through slammed doors, tantrums, and hissy fits. A couple of weeks ago when my husband was at the airport about to go on a business trip he looked around in alarm when he heard a 6 or 7-year-old wailing. It echoed throughout the airport corridor. He soon realized it was whining, in wail form. It went on and on. And, you guessed it, as the device was laid in the tot’s sticky palm, all was peaceful again…as peaceful as a boarding gate in Toronto can be. We get it. For the nerves of all the passengers around them, those parents just wanted to hush the kid up. Thank you, parents, we’ve all been there. But imagine if #dontbuyyourkidaphone members who happened to be in the airport that day stepped forward. They surround those parents as their matching capes fall out and drape over their coats. Gripping Mom and Dad’s shoulders, they cheer them on. Don’t give in! Let him cry! We’ve done it too, it’s hard but he’ll thank you later! Strength in numbers… A friend gave her eleven-year-old daughter a cell phone after a moving to a new city. Away from all friends and family, school was rough, and ‘ all the other kids have one ’. Maybe this was a good way for her daughter to keep in touch with friends and family back home. Guilty mom syndrome in all its glory. Completely understandable. Her daughter’s mood began to change, she became sullen and distant. The mom discovered that her daughter was on that phone into the wee hours of the night playing games with strangers, watching videos, and who knows what else. It’s been about a year. She’s a good girl and her mom is a wonderful, loving, invested mother who wants to take the phone away but doesn’t know how. All the other kids have phones, her older brother has a phone. Her daughter will lose her marbles and all sanity will be lost at home if Mom goes through with it. For a while. Yelling, tears, and withdrawal are bound to happen. But by taking the phone away, she’ll get her daughter back. Not overnight. Not even over many nights. But there will come a day that sweet little girl will thank her mom, I’m one hundred percent sure of that. Parents, say no to your kids in regards to cell phones. It’s so ok for them to be bored. Boredom is when creativity kicks in. Oh, the woes you’ll hear as they lie on their bedroom floor with ‘nothing to do’. Being bored can be good for kids by helping them develop planning strategies, problem-solving skills, flexibility, and creativity. It also helps kids build tolerance for not-so-fun experiences, preparing them for life.
Child Mind Institute They won’t be bored forever. Whether we want to deal with it or not, strong parenting is what it’s gonna take when it comes to the rules in our homes about cell phones. No phones during dinner or while driving or while visiting Nana. All phones must be on the kitchen counter by 8 pm. Whatever works for your family. Write it down, put it somewhere in plain sight so no one can forget, and then stick to it! Find other parents going through the same thing and prop each other up as the complaining begins. They are lots of us out there…let’s don our capes, parents of desperate cell phone users! The idea is to grow our little humans into community-minded, healthy, contributing adults. Less phone use will lead to better conversation, greater interest in their surroundings, more self-awareness, and so much more. Parenting stretches us, sometimes beyond what seems fathomable. But keep picturing your kids as happy, fulfilled adults — the end goal. A few days, weeks, or months of I-want-a-phone tantrums may seem incomprehensible from where you’re standing right now. But we’re leaning in behind you, all of us I-hate-cell-phones parents, supporting you all the way. Stay strong and #dontbuyyourkidaphone!!

The doctors said it was just reflexes but I'm not so sure Last week, I read Widowish by Melissa Gould. I highly recommend her touching, shocking and full-of-love memoir.
Through circumstances you’ll have to read for yourself, Melissa recounts visiting her young husband in the hospital while he lay in a coma. That’s it, that’s all you get, go buy a copy of her book ;)
While reading about her experience, I was transported right back into the hospital room in Kingston, Ontario where for six weeks we visited with my still, silent dad after the car accident.
No one can prepare a fourteen-year-old for visits like those.
I had so much hope.

After the accident had taken the lives of three people, my father was the only one who was still alive.
Alive technically, but not really living.
After our surreal, otherworldly initial visit with him the day after the accident we knew his ICU hospital room would become a familiar place. We just didn’t know for how long.
So many people hoped and prayed for his recovery. Four little people believed it was imminent. My older sister, younger brother, younger sister and I all needed him to come home. Our mom was gone so it was a no-brainer that Dad would get better.
For me, no other option was considered.
Various strategies were suggested to arise a reaction or response from my dad while he lay there, a vegetable (such an odd term to describe comatose patients — vegetable. When I think of a vegetable, I think of fresh, life-giving, and colorful. My dad on that bed was the complete opposite — limp, life-lacking, and pale).
He was a lover of choir music. He’d become a member of every church choir in every church he attended. I remember his pitch-perfect baritone rising and falling with the notes coming from the record player while making bacon and eggs for us every Sunday morning.
At the hospital, instead of playing soothing sounds for him through the earphones of the Walkman that lay at his bedside, the thought was presented that perhaps rock music or something more jarring would stimulate his brain.
I don‘t remember specific conversations with the doctors about this. I do remember being surprised when I heard rock coming out of those gray circular sponges on the sides of his head on one of our visits.
Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond, or Zamphir for sure, but Kiss? Jarring no doubt. Stimulating? Who knows. Did it wake him up? Nope.
At some point, he did open his eyes though.
All the days back then are grey in my memory. It was late winter, so I’m likely not far off. I remember walking through the door into his room one day and his eyes were open! As I walked in, his head heavy and fixed to the pillow, he locked his eyes on me and watched me ever so perfectly.
This mind-blowing (to me) occurrence caused me to move slowly, as if in a dream state. I walked past the foot of his bed to get to the side where machines wouldn’t crowd me out, watching him watch me with every step.
His head couldn’t/wouldn’t move. Just his eyeballs in their sockets. Did they rest their gaze on me for a bit or did he stare blankly at the ceiling after we’d shared that initial gaze? I don’t remember.
It both creeped me out and mesmerized me.
On future visits, his eyes were often open. On occasion, it seemed he looked right at me but usually, there was just a vacant glaze.
It was nothing, they said. Just reflexes. Ok.
My dad was a strong guy. He could tackle any size home renovation project and mess around with car engines, figuring everything out along the way.
Dad had rock-solid biceps. We’d hang on them as he made my mom count how many times he could raise us kids up and down. On Friday nights, we’d lay on those biceps, curled up close, while watching Fantasy Island or Knightrider, with our once-a-week treat of a Tupperware cup of Coke and a small bowl of chips.
To try to keep him from losing his muscles completely (or so I understood), we were encouraged to hold his hand and lift his forearm, bending at his elbow and back down again for several minutes at a time. There was no obligation to do this from doctors or the adults we were with. It was something I was happy to do, for surely, this would speed his return home.
During one visit I held his large, previously calloused hand in mine. Up and down, up and down. I was doing all the work, his hand limp in mine.
Suddenly, he clenched my hand so tight I thought he might pull himself up. He just held on and on. It felt like minutes but it was likely just seconds.
I looked up at the doctor in the room, alarmed and ecstatic and hopeful and sure recovery was just around the corner.
My expectant face and wide eyes willed the doctor to exclaim, Hurrah! Pack his bag and call for the car!
It was nothing, he said. Just reflexes.
Oh.
For the two months leading up to the accident, my dad had been studying to become a real estate agent. He’d taken his last exam just before the crash. We’d gotten his last test in the mail while he was in the hospital.
A big fat ‘92%’ was written in red in the top right-hand corner. We brought it in and taped it to the wall above his bed.
We pumped him up and told him how well he would do in his new career.
Well, the adults around me did that. They were able to talk with my dad about so many things. The doctors told us to talk to him as if nothing had happened. To be cheery and ‘normal’.
Although I had beyond massive hopes for my dad’s return home, I found it very, very hard to act or talk any degree of normal. Nothing at all was normal and would never be again. I was amazed that people could chat into my dad’s ear about the weather or about what they’d been up to.
One thing we were advised not to talk about was Mom. The feeling was that if Dad knew that Mom had died then he may lose the will to live.
Lose his will to live? Wouldn’t he want to live for his four kids?
It all felt so unnatural to me.
No matter the obvious severity of his condition, with everything inside of me I believed my dad was ‘in’ there. He was in there somewhere. He knew what was going on.
He wanted to scream and rip the tubes out of his body.
He wanted to vault out of bed and gather the four of us into a massive group hug.
When we heard the numbers, it all sounded impossible.
A 5–7% chance he’d come out of the coma, they said. If he came out of it, there’s only a 5% chance he’d ever be normal.
I understood what the numbers meant. I just chose not to believe them. If there was ever a time we needed our dad, this was kinda it.
But he never made it home. He held on for six weeks.
After the Good Friday service, we drove in our church clothes to see our dad for the last time. Of course, we didn’t know it would be the last time.
I remember walking just inside the door of his room and looking at him. He looked more still and gray than usual. I didn’t feel like being in the room. My big sis must not have been feeling it either.
We watched TV down the hall in the waiting room.
Within minutes, our little sister was running down the hallway frantically motioning for us to come.
That’s all I remember. He died shortly after that.
I’ve been told by my cousin, who drove us home that day, that he had to stop the car on the side of the road because of a guttural scream that began to slowly erupt out of me from the back seat. I was a pretty quiet kid most of the time. This wasn’t most of the time.
He pulled over, helped me out of the car and I let it all out.
It’s a complete blank.
I still believe my dad had moments of lucidity and in those moments, I think he had some understanding of what was going on. I’m not sure why, but that thought comforts me even though if he was aware at any point, he would have been beyond devastated.
It amazes me that I had any speck of hope during those dark days.
But we are meant to hope. We hope in things we can not see or understand.
Hope is imperative in leading us toward our futures. Sometimes we limp there, sometimes we sprint.
Sometimes we have to stop and erupt on the side of the road.

Can any good come from this good-bye? I’d felt the lump for a few months but I wasn’t in the habit of rubbing my boobs so when I noticed it in the shower I’d think, Hmmm, is this a lump? Is this different than my other breast? Does it feel the same as the last time I noticed it? Feel it, forget about it. I didn’t mean to forget, it just wasn‘t greatly affecting me on the daily. As the months went by, it became clear that it was a lump. I couldn’t tell how much bigger it had gotten after a few months but it was not getting any smaller. My hubby and I talk about everything but this, I didn’t mention. I don’t even think it was conscious but my subconscious likely knew it might be something. Something I didn’t want to talk about or walk towards. Around that time, I was having dinner with a long-time bestie. I just kind of threw it out there. So I’m pretty sure there’s a lump in my breast. And it definitely feels different than the other one. I was a healthy 51-year-old. Rarely do I see the inside of a doctor’s office. We buy organic grass-fed meat from a local farm. We have a veggie garden. We love the outdoors. I was way too young, too healthy, and too busy living for the inconvenience of what a breast bump could mean. Julie, when you’re over 50, you don‘t need a referral, just call a screening clinic and go. Seriously, call tomorrow! I’m going to bug you until you do it. If she hadn’t pushed me I likely would have prolonged the visit. The women’s clinic at our hospital had me scheduled for a mammogram two days later. That was fast. “I’m just taking a few extra images.” The technician smiled kindly. She knows this isn’t normal , my insides told me. One squish here, another squash there. “Hold your breath…and…we’re done.” Release. Mammogrammed women, you know what I’m talking about. Not the most comfortable way to spend 5–10 minutes but at least it’s only 5–10 minutes. All done. It’ll be fine. My hubby and I were off to spend 2 weeks in Belize to celebrate our 25th/26th wedding anniversary which had been put off for a year because, you know, Covid. That lump was far from my mind. Our vacay was as fabulous as you can imagine. And it was the last time my bikini top was filled out with my real boobs. Everything happened in quick succession after that. We came home to a message asking me to come back for an ultrasound the following week. At the ultrasound, the radiologist said I needed to come in for a biopsy the next week. At the biopsy, a different radiologist said I needed to meet with the surgeon for results the next week. That next week, I found out that I would be saying goodbye to my breast. Then a bone scan, an MRI, a CT scan, lymph node biopsies, meeting my oncologist, my assigned radiologist, forms to fill out, and surgery to be booked. Jostled about in the middle of a whirlwind. And at the same time, everything standing still. What?! What is happening? I feel fine. Like I feel totally fine, how do I have cancer? Surgery was booked for six weeks after my diagnosis, on July 20, almost exactly one year ago. Before having cancer myself, I thought that as soon as you were diagnosed with cancer you found out what stage you were in. But no, we wouldn’t find out the stage until after surgery. It hadn’t traveled into my lymph nodes though and it was nowhere else in my body. Those were very welcomed early discoveries. At the same time, as often these things go, I contracted a debilitating bout of poison ivy. I have never had poison ivy, I don’t know many people who have. We have just over an acre of property that my kids have run around barefoot in for the last 14 years. Not one case of an allergic reaction. The week before my diagnosis I put up lights in a forested area of our backyard. Some bird must have shat out poison ivy seeds a few months earlier right in the area where I spent an hour climbing up and down the ladder that afternoon, in the thick of the brush at the edge of the forest. I had a cut on my ankle so maybe I got the poison ivy so badly because it got into my wound. Who knows… Within a few days, my legs and feet were so blistered and sore that I couldn’t wear socks or pants and all I could do was sit. When I went in to see my GP, she gasped at the sight of me. I couldn’t go in the sun, so I couldn’t do any gardening (I love gardening). I couldn’t put pants or shoes on, so I couldn’t go anywhere (the only thing I could wear were short shorts which beautifully displayed the blisters, scabs, and pus all over my legs and feet). And I was trying to process cancer and the imminent loss of a very significant appendage. I am an optimistic person. But wow, those were some very hard weeks. The wounds healed eventually — the scabs fell off and slight scars revealed themselves. A precursor to an upcoming wound/scab/scar. Because the cancer hadn’t spread, I feel like I spent more time trying to wrap my head around the impending loss of my breast than I did worrying about the disease. How do you prepare yourself to say goodbye to a piece of your flesh? A treasured appendage that, many years before, had nourished my three babies. Would future hugs feel the same? What would happen to intimacy with my husband? What would I look like? What would I feel like? There is no preparing. I felt gratitude for having had healthy breasts up to that point. This was just a necessary life pivot. Surgery went fine, no complications. Stage 2. Radiation was booked to start a few months later and I was ever-so-thankful to hear I wouldn’t need chemo. I’ve had a few tragic goodbyes in my life, loss isn’t new to me. But this one felt/feels different. I continue to get affirmation of my beauty and wholeness from my consistently supportive spouse. He is my rock. But I still wonder, does he think I look weird? Does he avert his eyes? I’m aware of my neckline with every garment that I pull over my head. If I bend over just a little too far, can they see the scar? Can they see the plastic boob replacement in the new bra-with-pockets I‘m obliged to wear? I suppose I’m not obliged to wear anything if I don‘t want to. But the alternative? Shirts or dresses over one very saggy, nipple-intact boob hanging on one side of my chest and, well, nothing — almost concave nothing — on the other side. Some days I feel like a freak show. Most days I deal with it just fine. I’m good at gratitude. I recognize all the very, very good things I have in my life…loving supporters, a fabulous health care system, a lush backyard where I can breathe. And purpose. Being forced to say goodbye to my breast also forced an immediate halt to all the things I was busy with. I’m becoming busy with other things. Things that hopefully will not only bring more purpose to my life but also to others. It’s been just over a year since I laid down on the operating table. I started getting back into writing after that. The best thing about finally allowing myself to get some of these stories out from the depths of my soul has been interacting with people who have some sort of struggle. And don‘t we all have some sort of struggle, or two or three? The interactions here and the other places I post are never negative. I feel so uplifted by the comments and the love sent by readers. No matter our backgrounds, beliefs, skin color, or income, it’s so apparent that we all just really want to cheer each other on. Today there are fewer days that I feel self-conscious, now there are only moments of it. This was a goodbye that I wasn’t intending to say. Being forced to move in a direction you didn’t choose is not easy. But this direction has brought positivity, creativity, new friends, and clarity. Some good things have come with this goodbye. Originally published in Modern Women on Medium

We don’t need sympathy the day of the funeral, we need it when the crowds have all gone home.
A month after the funeral when it feels like everyone has forgotten…that’s when we need to hear from you. When everyone goes back to class, back to work, and back to making the bed. Grief knows a little about me. When we moved to Ottawa from across the country, my parents were finally bidding adieu to the nomadic lifestyle that had me in and out of three provinces, six schools, and eight houses by the age of fourteen. The moving business had been rough on my dad but he was making a fresh career change into real estate way before the market got saturated with agents. His inclusive and easygoing disposition was perfect for the real estate industry. Mom and Dad were looking forward to a higher income and I was looking forward to bedroom walls plastered in Corey Hart posters. Ones that I could leave up permanently. Most of my dad’s family lived in and around Ottawa. Most of my mom’s family lived about a six-hour drive away. They planned a weekend drive out there a couple of months after moving. She was so excited to finally get to see her mom and dad, her sister and brothers, and her oodles of nieces and nephews. It had been far too long only communicating over the phone and through letters. There was talk of my older sister and I going along for the drive in our boxy Buick LaSabre but for some reason that didn’t happen. Maybe they decided that it wouldn’t have been fair to take us while leaving my younger brother and sister behind. A family trip for us kids to see that side of the family in the summer, perhaps? That’s likely what they imagined. They drove off on Valentine's Day. We love you. Kisses and hugs before school. Driving in February in Ontario is not for the faint of heart. But they made it there. So many hugs and chats and giggles and catch-ups. Thank God they made it there. They did not make it home. After the car accident, every day was long, blurry, and weighty. So weighty. More tears than I could have imagined poured directly out of my soul. Day after day after day. Is it possible to carry boulders in your heart? My brain screamed at me every single morning as soon as my eyelids separated. They’re dead. It's not a dream. They’re still dead. There were many people around the days and weeks after my parents died. So many people. I didn’t feel particularly close to anyone since we’d just moved but the ‘crowds’ were at least a distraction for us kids — the attention, the meals, the days of not having to go back to school. But then it ended. Around the six-week mark, people talked less about my parents. Less people asked. As a kid, I didn’t know how to let people know that I still needed to talk about them. If no one is talking about them, maybe I shouldn’t talk about them. Everyone is back to making their bed so maybe I should be back to making the bed. But how does making the matter anymore? Nothing matters anymore… Walking through the mall or in a grocery store I’d be inwardly flabber-ghasted at everyone’s busyness, oblivious to my new reality. MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!! I felt like screaming. Does anyone care that my parents are dead??!! I was far too polite and sweet and concerned for others to do that. On the outside. On the inside, there was lots of screaming going on. So much of me desperately needed post-funeral attention, but an equally massive part of me did not want to attract even the tiniest bit of attention. A both/and scenario. At school, after a while, I laughed at stupid jokes again, goofed off in the hallways, and gossiped with friends. There, I need to be as normal as all the other kids. School was my escape. But when I sat on the bus after school, when I was trying hard to concentrate on homework, or when I was aching to fall asleep at night — when I was oh so alone, that’s when I needed to know that someone, anyone, still remembered me. Remembered the hell I was still going through. A card in the mailbox or a message on our answering machine would have assured me of that. For most people, attending the funeral marks the beginning of the end of their mourning. For the left-over loved ones, the funeral is a part of the early, early stages of grieving. Did people remember? Of course they did. I’m sure that every hour of every day for several months after the funerals, someone somewhere was thinking of us kids and the messed up situation we were in. My parents were loved by so many family members and friends from across the country. People were devastated by their deaths. Sympathy cards poured out of several shoe boxes piled all lopsided in the corner of the living room. But it was two months after the funerals, after the hubbub was over, that I needed any kind of reminder that someone still cared. Please don’t forget about me. I’m still here. I’m hardly breathing. It’s not that I would have talked about my parents to just anyone at just any time. Nothing forced. I remember the guidance counselor at school, who I’d never had a conversation with, opening up to me in her office a couple of times in hopes that, in turn, I would open up to her. She would chat with me about how her eightyish-year-old dad had died. Like that was a relatable situation. It wasn’t, not even close. I’d shrink down into my chair waiting for a chance to shoot out of that room like a bullet. My guidance counselor was not the right person. That was not the right time. I didn’t really want to talk (I’m sure I needed to talk, but that is an entirely different thing) which is the mourner’s prerogative. My best friend and I would walk through the forest to the swamp behind her house and bring our woes to the resident ‘swamp monster’. Who knows what we talked about and busted our guts over at the edge of the slimy green but even there, with the safest of safe persons, I hardly talked about my newly donned orphan status. A card or a voicemail weeks after the fact would have brought certain solidarity. Don’t worry about what to say. It doesn’t have to be wordy or eloquent. Just say something. I remember. And I’m thinking about you. or… I may not be with you but I’m remembering your mom and dad with you. or… I haven’t forgotten your parents. Your dad was always so kind to me, and your mom… I still laugh when I think about the Cheesies she stuck up her nose at that party. I couldn’t talk about it but I needed to hear someone talk about it. It didn’t matter who. It just mattered that it was still as real to other people as it was to me. There have been many more funerals to attend since my mom and dad’s on those two bleak days, one in February and one in March, all those years ago. They’re never easy. And I’m not perfect at checking in at the six-week point, but I try. Check in on your family and friends who have lost someone they loved. Do it six weeks after the funeral and then maybe again two weeks later. You may never receive a verbal or written thank you but, I promise, your card or voice mail will have been just what they needed at just the right time.

Put yourself out there. You never know where it will lead. Remember when it all shut down? Those first months in the spring of 2020, when we were asking if a bat spread it, or was it a clumsy chemist. When cars stayed parked, and the singsong of birds was louder than the continuous drone of traffic? Had those birds always been there? Yes. Yes, they had. Always looking for a silver lining, I am. The seemingly turned-up volume of our feathered friends was a welcomed phenomenon at the onset of the pandemic. This must have been when Facebook communities became what they are today. I don’t remember being a part of a FB community before 2020. All of a sudden there seemed to be mom’s groups, my city had a group, and my street had a group. I could be wrong. Like everyone else, those days I had more time on my hands so maybe the extra time allowed me the time to discover. I continued to go grocery shopping in person throughout those crazy days. It wasn’t rebellion, I just washed my hands well and then washed the cucumbers better. Man, the time spent washing the veggies and the fruit, then disinfecting the countertop, sink, and whatever else may have touched the thing that might be infected with the ‘thing’. It’s comical/not comical now. Only one person per household was allowed to go grocery shopping where we lived. That was no problem for us, our kids were in their late teens and early twenties. But it got me thinking about all the single moms out there who might not have someone to watch their kids while they went out to fill up their cupboards. It was kind of far out there since the majority of the moms in my FB group didn’t have a clue who I was, but I put out a post to see if I could be of some help. People just wanted to help and that’s what the comments displayed. Great idea. I can help too.
I can totally make myself available to look after your kids as well. My family thought I was nuts. Who was going to leave a complete stranger alone with their kids? Fair. I’m not sure I would have. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d had no takers. But I did. Kezia got in touch with me asking if I could meet her at a local grocery store in a couple of days and sit with her 5-year-old daughter while she grabbed some necessities. I was so glad I’d put out that post. Two days later we met in the parking lot at a local grocery store. I was happy with whatever made both Kezia and her daughter Harper comfortable. Well, Harper and I got on right away and so she sat in the back of my minivan and told me all about her favorite artists (J Lo and Pitbull LOL) and her favorite color (purple). We chatted and played I Spy over and over and over again. On a couple of our grocery meet-ups, Kezia would ask if we could also pop into the local liquor store. Absolutely. No judgment here, a glass of wine during covid’s lonely, lonely nights was probably a coping mechanism for a lot of us.
I had no idea that Kezia was struggling with alcoholism. I saw no signs, likely because we didn’t spend that much time together.
She was engaged to a wonderful man from Pennsylvania and was supposed to have moved there in the next couple of months but ‘the virus’ had squashed that plan. She could only hope and pray that she and Harper could get across the border sooner than what she was hearing from authorities.
Thankfully, by late November/early December Kezia and Harper got the green light to make their move. We were in touch sporadically after that. She got married and her hubby looks to be a generous and kind new father figure to Harper.
From the time she moved, I was following Kezia on Instagram. I thought her IG name odd: @thesoberelephantchronicles. I didn’t catch onto the ‘sober’ in her name, I just thought it was some trendy phrasing that I wasn’t hip to since I was at least 15 years her senior.
But after several posts I realized that she was a recovering alcoholic, using her account to encourage and build community. I’d aided her ‘need’ earlier that year when I’d drive her to the liquor store and then play games with her daughter in the back of the minivan.
I do believe it was a ‘need’ for her at the time.
Kezia’s strength to confront her alcoholism head-on, work her butt off to overcome it, and begin to claim the life that she desired made and makes me soooo proud!
Nothing that I did helped her to get sober but I’m just so thankful to know someone like her.
She is an inspiration and the life she is forging for her dear daughter must be her greatest motivation.
I started writing this piece a couple of days ago. I got in touch with a very pregnant (38 weeks) Kezia the same day to see how she was feeling and to get her thoughts on this article. They were all super excited to meet the baby. Kezia was feeling exhausted but healthy.
Before finishing up this article this morning, I hopped onto IG and saw that their little bundle had arrived early…surprise! His literal birth day is today.
Welcome Tristan, you landed in a good home. To watch this dear family grow and thrive and walk bravely into their future has been such a privilege.
Kindness is an absolute necessity in every community across this globe of ours so go out and talk to strangers.
Reach out to your community.
You don’t have to make a ten-year commitment.
Maybe an offer posted today will make your life beyond full tomorrow.

Giving up her pink sweater crushed my teen-aged heart Our house had been descended upon by a bunch of women who came to get rid of my mom’s clothes. She’d died in a car accident a couple of weeks before. My dad was in a coma. In a blizzard, he’d been carefully driving the two of them home after a wonderful weekend of reuniting with family when the other car collided with theirs. The two people in that car were dead too. I had just turned 15. My siblings were 16, 12, and 7 years old. Two months before, we had moved to a new city and we quickly became involved in a new church community — something we did in every new city we’d moved to. This was city number five, church number five, school number six, and house number seven that I’d seen in my fifteen years. We were movers and shakers, we were. Movers for sure. And I guess, yes, we did like to shake things up. Nothing prepares you for a loss like ours — so big and deep and wide. And no one knows how to deal with it in a way that won’t have ramifications of some sort. Everyone had the best of intentions, I’m sure. But oh man, no matter the good intentions, it was a confusing, energy-emptying, crushingly hard time. Who knows who decided that it was time to get rid of my mom’s clothes? But when the idea came to the person that was in ‘charge’ of all things half-orphan/post-mom-death/mid-dad-coma, it happened very efficiently. A church community is mostly a wonderful thing, especially in times of need. There is usually much support that comes in so many forms, including an unending supply of casseroles, countless prayers, and in this case, closet purging. There could have been ten ladies in my parents’ bedroom with me that night or there could have been two. It felt like ten. I don‘t recall if my older sister was with us but I do recall that I felt alone despite the company. I mean we’d just moved there. I didn’t know any of these women. Again, who decided this was a good idea? Donations in one pile, trash in the other. Shouldn’t there be a ‘keep’ pile too? I wondered. Isn’t there always supposed to be a ‘keep’ pile? There I was on my knees on the beige-carpeted floor, her clothes and black garbage bags all around. It couldn’t have been a massive job as we were not a family of means and so I doubt she would have had a considerable wardrobe. Some bags were stuffed, some were flopped over, half filled. In my pile to fold up and not keep was a pink sweater. The pink sweater. It had been her favorite and the one I loved most on her. Besides her morning robe, I don’t remember any other piece of clothing that she wore. The sweater was Angora or fake Angora if that’s a thing, whatever was cheaper. It was so so soft. Horizontal ribbons of pink threaded through the yarn, silky and shiny. It was a light and airy sweater, a dressy one. She’d worn it at Christmas time and had looked so pretty in it. I knelt with it on my lap, my fingers stroking the ribbon, staring. How could I use my timid voice in front of these stranger ladies to say that I wanted to keep this remnant of my mom’s wardrobe? I really wanted to keep that sweater. Like reeeeally. I can still feel the desperation today, thirty-seven years later, to clutch that sweater to my chest and hightail it out of that room. What adult would understand? It would seem so childish, wouldn’t it? When your mom dies and your dad isn’t around to make the decisions that only he should be making, then the other adults who are around surely know what’s best. Don’t they? The words didn’t, couldn’t , come out of my mouth. Ever so gently, I folded that soft, knitted piece of clothing. Slowly, I placed it into the chasm of the black, plastic bag in front of me with a lump in my throat. With my arm still inside the bag, my fingers touching the sweater, I looked around the room. Surely someone would see the expression on my face, recognize my inner turmoil and kindly ask, Would you like to keep that one, dear? No one noticed. The sweater moved on. Whenever I talk to someone whose loved one has died, I always tell them to not make any decisions too fast. Take time to decide if you want to move out of the house you shared, if you want to clear out their room, or if you want to sell their car. I so wish everything had been put in storage for a few years. Everything. A plastic Tupperware tumbler that might look scuffed and insignificant to one of those ladies (who undoubtedly came to clear out our kitchen once my dad had died and we had to move — again) might hold the memory of orange juice and Sunday morning breakfasts. Of course, I am so thankful there were loving adults around to help; both relatives and church people who were overcome with the desire to do whatever they could in this most traumatic of situations. I’d just like to have gone through it all myself once some time had passed. Two or three years maybe. For the four of us siblings to have made the decisions — toss, donate, or keep. And to be fair some things were put away for us — some wine glasses, a desk, a loveseat, a clock. But I didn’t want any of those. I wanted the pink sweater. At least I can still see her in that sweater in my mind’s eye and I’m sure one of us has a picture of her wearing it. It’s not the same but it will have to do.