SOME DAYS

There was a friendly reminder on Facebook this morning that the deadline for submitting to Covering the Corner was coming up.  My first reaction was “Oh no.  Not this time.  Not this month.”  My style is to write what I think, and what I’m thinking these days is much too personal.  I would sit this one out.

But a seed had been planted.  My mind began organizing an outline, picking and choosing what needed to be said, sorting through the words that would say it best. 

This mind exercise was a breath of fresh air, actually.  Writing is therapy for me and putting my thoughts down on paper might promote healing.  I don’t know.  It’s worth a try. 

I will see how it goes.  If you are reading this I have decided it is worthy of sharing. 

We are almost a month into our family trauma.  We have worked our way through the ritual of planning Mitchell’s funeral, comforted and strengthened to share this burden with family, friends and others.  We are honoured and thankful that so many people care. 

It has been reassuring to make contact with his online friends.  He’d told me lots of times how close their friendships were, talking and coaching each other as they played.  As these people from far and wide posted their memories and impressions of him on a page they created for that very purpose, it was obvious they knew the same Mitchell we knew and would miss him as we do.  It seems alien to my old-fashioned brain that your can form powerful relationships over the Internet, but our hometown son travelled to Texas for one friend’s Grandpa’s funeral, to North Carolina with a bunch of buddies and ended up helping with hurricane clean-up while they were there, and he even drove to Edmonton to be groomsman for another friend a few years ago.  He seems to have coloured outside the regular lines with his life, and he would be proud to hear me say that. 

Counting the number of one’s days is a poor method of measurement.  You can live 9 decades and have nothing to show for it, or just 9 years and be loved by all who knew you.  We are not the only ones who are missing him: his co-workers, his customers, his close-knit group of D&D friends.  His absence leaves a gaping hole in our days.  

We don’t get to pick how long we are here, and we foolishly behave like we have endless tomorrows.

I don’t know if I’m just overly sensitive to such stories, but in the past few days I’ve heard of two more un-fore-see-able deaths of people much younger than I am.  People just scooped up out of their lives while supper was cooking.  Leaving those who love them reeling with shock and sorrow.  It’s not that I would wish this upon anyone else but it does help put the trauma in perspective.  These things happen every day.  Certainly we mourn our dead but there are also new babies to rejoice over born every day.

Time moves forward.  The world rolls on.

How are we doing? 

Well, some days are not so good.  Some days, not so bad. 

Humanity is a blessed thing.  Beginning with our close circle of friends and family, then widening outwards to include the immediate community of Redvers with all the food and gifts and thoughtfulness they have offered, and then stretching even further to encompass those we don’t really know but who have reached out to us because they have suffered similar losses and therefore extend to us priceless empathy and understanding – all of you are helping to steady us in this storm. 

We thank you.

 

FOR THE GIRLS

‘A woman’s biological clock’ is a term we’ve cooked up in this day and age when women are trying to cram two lifetimes (career and having a family) into one lifespan.  Whether they are sitting in their fancy CEO corner office or at home rocking a newborn to sleep they can hear that darned clock ticking away time whizzing by on the other end of their dreams.  There are only some many ‘hours’ on any given clock.

Let’s go all retro here and imagine one of those old-fashioned wall clocks with the numbers from 1 to 12 arranged around the outside edge.  Let’s say that we come into existence at 12:01- our first ‘time stamp’.  That’s the moment when our biological clock actually begins ticking.  We are brand-spanking new and our time has just begun. 

We while away our childhoods doing kid stuff until about 4:15 when puberty kicks in whether we like it or not.  Suddenly the ‘storks bring babies’ story gets updated to a much more preposterous account of where babies come from, and life gets real.  Talk about the truth being stranger than fiction.

So, from 4:15 to about 7:30 we can produce babies.  That’s nice.  Most of us choose to do that.  Some of us don’t.  For some there is no choice.  But the clock goes on ticking regardless.

On about 7:15 the government takes a sudden interest in us.  Since we’ve wrapped up that baby making business we aren’t checking in with our health care providers on a regular basis anymore and studies have shown that it’s more successful (and therefore cheaper) to correct what can go wrong with our ‘clock parts’ if you catch the malfunction at the very start.  We get letters inviting us to various checkups. 

We look at our clocks and think to ourselves “Well, I kinda want to be around to hold grandbabies and great grandbabies.  If I want to make it all the way to 11:59 I better keep up on my maintenance.”  And obediently we make that call.

Now, as much as the stories of childbirth filled us with apprehension before we actually participated in the sport, the stories about mammograms run a close second.  Unless you enjoy having a total stranger (probably with cold hands) occupy your personal space, manipulate certain sensitive body parts into weird positions and then flatten them like pancakes, don’t expect this to be a pleasant experience.  On the other hand, if you and the technician both have a healthy sense of humour, it’s not so bad.

Whether you like it or hate it though, expect another invitation in two years.  That’s the way this thing rolls.

For the first few times I did exactly what the letter said to do … I called for the appointment and diligently showed up for it.  All by myself out a sense of duty.  Then a bunch of us got smart.  We now make it a girl’s day for ‘the girls’, if you get what I mean.

Life is too short not to have fun.  Our clocks are ticking, after all! 

We call ourselves Breast Friends (or Boob Buddies) and we book the whole day off to do some shopping, treat ourselves to a meal out, and with laughter and conversation turn a necessary but uncomfortable clinical procedure into a much anticipated fun day.  In fact, we double the fun by getting together to make our appointments as they all have to be made on the same phone call so that we are scheduled back-to-back.

On our way home from 2024’s adventure it was decided that two years was too long, that we could plan a Girl Day without including the gal on the mammogram bus.  By the time we got home we had adjusted our plans to twice a year instead of every second year.

No one knows how close we are to midnight.  For all I know my hour hand might be almost perpendicular.  My Breast Friends and I have decided to pay more attention to the minute hand seeping past all those shorter intervals between the numbers.