where are you going laddie?

Here's a statistic to start your day: every 15 minutes a member of the “baby boomer” generation prepares to move into the last chunk of real estate they'll ever need. Of course the current options don't restrict a member of this trend-setting generation to the simple pine box and turf condo or brass urn with lid. Nowadays we can be sent into space, packed into fireworks, turned into diamonds or put in jeweled pendents for the bereaved to wear for a few days before moving the momento mori reverently to the back of the sock drawer. There seems no end, so to speak, for the ways one's ashes can be stored, scattered or fashioned. Your cremains, i.e. ashes and bone fragments, can mix with the concrete forming an artificial reef off the coast of a favorite winter holiday spot or be comingled with procelain fashioned into a small statue of your favorite golf bag and clubs It will look simply darling on the side table next to that cloisonne lamp where cousin Max awaits the final trumpet call.

Even the traditionalists who choose to go to their final resting place on the shoulders of six to eight friends and family can settle down in a mausoleum complete with flat screen tv. Death is no longer an excuse to ignore one's responsibilities to visitors. The more socially adept can provide a range of entertainment options from a solar powered screen set into a headstone that shows 10 minute loop of photos and video clip highlights of the life now complete to a luxuriously appointed tomb with plasma screens showing a custom produced movie starring the tenant of the crypt. Of course this second option requires a little bit of planning so it can be filmed in happier and less recumbant times.

It seems my generational siblings are taking the concept of disposable income to a whole new level, both in the literal and figurative sense. The positive side of all this is that death is finally being recognized as the flip side of life, the completion of the circle and the first step towards the next stage of our existence, be it celestial, infernal or compostable. There is a certain denial involved in all this: "I won't really be gone if I'm sitting on the front lawn as Grumpy, Sneezy and Doc in a tasteful ceramic tribute to Snow White."

Modern memoral services still tend to gloss over the fact that the guest of honour is in fact deceased. Not that it isn't a good thing to celebrate the life of the significantly absent – funerals give those of us left behind a chance to remember and share the living memories with others. Just so long as we keep the tears and sorrow to a decent level. None of the wailing, tearing of garments and other displays of loss found in less civilized cultures.

I don't know. I think sometimes those other cultures are on to something. They wail, drink, sing, dance and wail some more. The dearly departed is part of the party; talked to, joked with and occasionally fallen upon by a distraught family member. This is all part of getting it out and not viewed with any censure by those who merely want to commune with the spirit of the deceased and spirits of a more distilled nature. Of course this takes place in cultures where there is a firm belief the body is now an empty shell, that the soul, the identity of that person, is still present, there but invisible, celebrating right along with everyone still clad in their mortal clay.

Once the deceased has been given a decent farewell, be it by wake or vigil, they are taken to their resting place with ceremony and rituals designed to send that incorporeal personality on to it's final reward. Some rituals are performed expressly with the purpose of ensuring that departue does takes place, lest Auntie Celia hang around the house moving pots and pans, rattling chains and curdling the milk.

After Halloween, when most North Americans are struggling with a Mar's bar hangover, in Mexico there is a two day party with their dead family members as guests of honour. It isn't spooky, it isn't morbid. Great Grand-dad is greeted with warm words and given a run down on what's been happening in the family over the past year. Auntie Celia is invited to the picnic, a plate of her favorite foods laid out on her neatly groomed grave, and she meets the newest members of the family.

The difference is probably in our cultural visions of where we are actually going once the curtain is rung down on our brief moment on the stage. Do we exit stage left to be greeted by angels or by a dresser who pushes us back out in a new skin – rich or poor, human, animal, vegetable or insect depending on the karma critic's review of our previous performance? Or do we simply leap off stage into a black abyss? It's a question we all face and some of us resolve with faith, others by planning a disco party on a hilltop. Then there are those like Woody Allen who said, "I don't believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."

As for me I don't anticipate exiting stage left for several years yet but when I do take that final bow, feel free to stop by after Halloween for a visit – you bring the popcorn and I'll have the movie.

There are some good things

Among the surprisingly many positive aspects of keeping this side of the sod is remembering the way things were before....(fill in the blank). This isn't going to be the usual drooling tirade about how it was in my day and the food tasted better, the rivers were cleaner and a dollar was worth a dollar (unless you were in the United States where the Canadian dollar has always been looked upon with the same suspicion as a wooden nickel and a deed to land in Florida).

No, this is going to be a tirade about why we really need to keep some of the things that have happened along since I was a little nipper chasing a rusty steel hoop down the street and dragging home a bucket of lard for dinner...I'm old enough - just barely, mind you, to remember when there was no medicare. You know, socialized medicine.

A lot of people here don't even think about walking into a clinic, slapping down the BC health card or whatever each province uses to monitor its citizens health-care consumption, and walking out again ten minutes later (or twenty or thirty) with a reassuring diagnosis and a prescription for a generic placebo guaranteed to cure whatever ails you and add to the chemical stew pouring out into the oceans after a brief filtration through your kidneys.

When I was a child, doctors made house calls but they left this thing called a bill when they left. If you went to visit the doctor in his office, you left with the bill or paid up front, depending on your relationship with said physician. My parents were on a first name basis with our family doctor - and once you have children, you will be equally familiar with your medical care giver, I can promise that. Not only did my parents know him, they were on a first name basis with his pets, two de-scented skunks called 'Stinky' and 'Phewy'.

But I digress.

How does this affect my life? Well, I can remember a few occasions, when due to the length of time till my father's paycheque was due to hit the bank and whether it was summer or winter determining the need to take my sister or myself to Stinky's dad. My dad was a teacher. This was in the days when teachers were paid at the end of June and not expected to come around, cap in hand, knuckling their foreheads and respectfully seeking the next generous gratuity for having beaten good citizenship, math and some grammar into the the towns young'uns until the end of September. In other words three months would go by without any income whatsoever.

So, if one has to pay the doctor and is too proud to ask for credit when standing in the waiting room in front of all the other parents and respectable folk, then it had damn well better be an emergency.

That is why I spent two days with a fractured wrist before my mother decided I wasn't deliberately making my arm look swollen from the elbow down to get out of my chores. Which, admittedly, I didn't have anyway. Finally she took me in after seeing if the doctor was going to be in the hospital anyway and would he mind taking a quick look. I had a cool cast for 6 weeks right in the middle of summer and swimming season - boy was I happy, sitting in the wading pool holding my left arm out of the water while my sister, mom and dad frolicked in the real persons pool at where ever it was we had gone that summer - Radium, I think.

Actually, mom would have been sitting on a towel beside the pool because she very rarely went into a pool or lake. The bathing suit was not the problem - she cut a fine figure in a bathing suit and dark glasses - it was that she was terrified of drowning. Which I didn't learn until much later.

Anyway, over the years we have taken for granted the ability of walking into a doctor's office or the emergency ward or a clinic and receiving treatment. Some of us over use the system and some of us under use it. But the fact remains it is there for us when we need it.

I hear a lot of young adults complaining about having to contribute so much of their pay to something they never use - except for skiing accidents and the like. They look at old farts like me who has specialists booked 3 months in advance for the next ten years and for the past ten as well. I'm a huge drain on the system. As we age we drain more and more. Yup, no argument here.

So, next time you want to sound off about it, ask yourself if you plan on living to the age of 40? Of course you're going to keep yourself healthy and fit and go to the gym ten times a week plus jogging in between. You won't need a doctor - except for the stress injuries to your knees and ankles. And by the time you're 4o when you're rotator cuff blows up while playing a little friendly soft ball. But that's different. You'll save your money up to pay for these things.

But then you get married and decide to have kids. They won't change your life at all. I'm sure you will avoid all the pitfalls your parents landed in and have a mid-wife there to hold you in a pool of warm water while your infant, dolphin like, swims out of your body and into the arms of a loving family. Cue the soft, melodic 'rainforest' mood music.

Maybe you will. And you'll leap from the pool, do a few sit-ups to get the whole abdomen back into shape and return to work in a few days. A unicorn will bring your child to work so you may suckle it at your desk while co-workers look on, their barren eyes welling with envy.

Or maybe not.

Maybe your blood pressure will skyrocket in the second trimester and your blood sugars will jump around like the Pussy Cat Dolls on ecstasy and you'll need close monitoring for gestational diabetes. Yes, even if you are eating all the right foods and taking all the supplements and exercising faithfully.

Maybe your baby will come a few weeks early and you'll be rushed to hospital - perish the thought, what the hell do they know there about health? And you'll find your perfect child on one side of an incubator and you plastered to the outside of it looking in.

That's about $20,000.00 right there, not counting the extended care time for you to recover from the premature birth and finally be sent home. And the cost of the Neo-natal doctor and special Neo-natal ICU nurses.

You don't have to wait till you're an old fart like me to need the medical system and it's harder to afford if you've just started a job and still treading water at the bottom rung of the salary ladder.


So, where was I? Oh yes. I do remember what it was like before socialized medicine began in this country and I can see what it is like in countries where they don't have it or have allowed it to be monkeyed with until it doesn't resemble anything universal or caring or healthy. And it scares me to hear people who are either in the pay of big american medical insurance companies or have more money than brains talk about how awful it is here and how we'd be much better off with private insurance.

Just say no. They are idiots. They are acting out of financial self interest. They don't know because they either don't remember or don't care. Take your pick but take a moment to look into the issue and light a candle at the shrine of Tommy Douglas .

Original Owner

Standing in line at Timmie's - a line made longer by the person at one till ordering for everybody back at the shop one item at a time, aka as the large coffee with 1 milk and 2 sweeteners is place on the counter asking for the crueller that person wanted and when that goes in the bag and put on the counter "and a large coffee with 2 milk and 2 sugar" "a double double?" "no, 2 milk and 2 sugars"...and so on. It was a very long list. At the other till was someone from the base ordering the morning coffee round for the ship...Anyway, this is how it goes quite frequently at my Timmie's so I've learned to be there early on the way to work or to be patient. Yeah, okay, I still feel like grabbing the guy's list, doing a quick look over and give a full real order like "3 large, 2 double double, 1 black; 4 extra large .... 3 cruellers, 1 blueberry fritter ..." you get the idea. And as for the guy from the base, hell, there are days I'd pay the freight on their order just cause I'm an old lady and still have a thing for young bucks in uniform.

But, the thing that I was starting off with here is what I saw out the window. Just a quick flash and it took a minute to sink in. There was a beautifully maintained Mustang - A '69 or '68 with a full roof-hood centre racing stripe (which makes me think it's a '68 with the whole Shelby Cobra look happening). Dark green, stripe was orange and a post-production spoiler on the back (I don't remember them being in production before 69-70 but then I was but a mere babe in arms then). What a gorgeous car. And hanging from the rear view mirror - where the baby shoes or fuzzy dice or collection of crystals (if it was a chick's car...y'know sometimes female types drove muscle cars too) would be hanging - was a disability tag.

Yup, and that's how I knew it was the original owner. Fortunately I can say I was too young when the car came out to own or even drive one. Unfortunately I wasn't too young to have a crush on the guys who drove them...

Spirit Guides

I'd never seen an owl outside of a cage before. Even when others were pointing at barn rafters or up into trees, “There; there it is, can't you see it? That's the biggest barn owl I've ever seen!” I would usually end up nodding and making unconvincing 'ahhh' sounds as if I'd seen it. My husband has the habit of grabbing the top of my head, and attempting to line me up with his nose and extended arm like a gun site. It never works. Mostly because he is over 6 feet tall and I'm 5 foot 3 in my dreams.

I've seen owl pellets and heard their calls recorded in excruciating detail. There are so many different types of piercing calls to differentiate between all owls, lesser and greater, burrowing and nesting, snowy and barn.

Mind you I'm not a very woodsy type person. I used to like camping in tents and being out in the crisp cold air of a mountain site or down by some river relentlessly carving it's destiny through sandstone and granite. That was back in the days when I could play along the river bank or explore the mountainside while my mother aired the sleeping bags, made lunch, did the dishes, took the sleeping bags back down before it was time to start supper.

Now I'm the mom and the closest thing to camping I'll do is staying at a Super 8 Motel. Not exactly the traditional mom way of doing things, I realize but times have changed. Even though hers and mine were one income families, my spouse brings in nearly double the teacher's salary my father earned.

It was one of those beautiful dry, clear, crisp November nights that occasionally bless our end of the island. The PAC meeting had ended early enough I felt comfortable walking home despite it being after dark. Peaceful moments I could hoard all to myself were still a rarity and to splurge one on a velvet black night was a moment not to be wasted on urban paranoia and old wives tales.

I was walking down Lampson Street, towards the busy traffic on Esquimalt road but far enough away that the cars were just lights flashing by without much sound. Then I saw a sinuous shape in the air ahead of me, a broad span of wings that made no noise as they came closer until I could see only the wings and two enormous yellow eyes. It changed direction going around me and with one indifferent flap, up to the top of a nearby telephone pole.

I've never seen one before but there was no doubt in my mind this was a bird deserving of the name “Great” something. A picture clicked in place and I knew I was looking at a Great Horned Owl. Even at the top of the pole that was twenty feet away from me, it easily dwarfed any local bird I'd ever seen swinging on phone lines or hopping across the road after a bit of tasty garbage.

We stared at each other for a few minutes. I was thankful, for probably the first time in my life, not to be a mouse, and for having been on that particular block at that particular moment in time.

With a shrug, the beast lifted itself into the air, again no sound from its wings to betray the master of the night. I stumbled home laughing and babbling silly things in an attempt to get my story right for the telling when I burst through the door.

As soon as I got home and as soon as there was an appropriate break in the reality game show action, I acquainted my family with the adventure I'd had on my way home. I kept the chatter up while I finished the inevitable dishes left behind from my youngest daughter's turn at cleaning up. And I barely noticed when the phone range. I shouted for someone, anyone to raise their attentive bottoms from the comfort of the couch and answer that damn phone.

It's never good news when the phone rings after 9:30 p.m. No one phones after 9:00 to announce you've been randomly selected for a complete home make over or an all expenses paid vacation for your family to a resort in the Azores.

My sister was quiet and firm. Dad was in hospital, a stroke. The doctors didn't know how bad it would be for a little while yet. The chances of his recovery were not good but there was still hope.

It was two days later my sister drove me directly from the airport to the hospital. Another owl swooped through the headlights, night hunting in the fields outside of Edmonton.

That was my one chance to say good bye to Dad. The angel came for him one night later. I've never seen an owl since, which suits me just fine. I can go the rest of my life without another sighting and then, at the end, I know it'll be a Great Horned Owl to show me the way.

The Measure of a Life

This is a column of mine from the Esquimalt News in March of 2006

Yesterday, as I write this, the radio was playing in the background while I went through my usual early morning routines. It's my favorite time of day, before the the sibling wars begin anew. The same ground is fought over daily and the pleas for my adjudication on the issue of who who spends the most time in the bathroom depends on who is on what side of the door that morning.

That's why I put my feet on the floor at least 30 minutes before everyone else. I enjoy puttering around at my own pace, turning over thoughts without the interruption of questions regarding laundry, breakfast and where the black socks have hidden themselves.

My husband has been away on a business trip for 3 weeks now so everyday finds me driving one or the other of our daughters to some practice or medical appointment or entertainment with their friends. Weeks of giving rides to friends and staying up late to bring everyone back to their respective homes. Weeks of ignoring the latest in German thrash death metal. Actually, the music is a good thing because it plays over the squealing voices discussing teenage life events I'd forgotten from my time and really don't want to know about in my daughters. Not the big issues, mind you, just those eternal who's breaking up with and did you hear what she said to and can you believe Mr. Wallace actually made us...

Yesterday, I was trying to think of what time I'd have to leave the office to pick up one daughter to get her to the orthodontist and back to school in time for an exam. The least amount of time away from work was part of the equation as my employer's patience is starting to wear a bit thin. I can't screen the calls, take messages, field the easy questions, if I'm sitting in a doctor's office across town. Not that my work is rocket science, I realize but then again, most rocket scientists have wives and lab assistants to spare them these petty, ongoing fetching and delivery demands.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of a tragic shooting of 4 RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta. If you have family or friends in the law enforcement field, it's the sort of story that generates a whole spectrum of emotions. Even the general all purpose citizen might take a moment to remember the events, the sacrifice of four young men in the name of duty.

Normally that radio story would have made a brief emotional impression and I'd move on to the next item. It didn't; I didn't. A year ago, in the early morning of that same day, with only a nurse as witness, my mother slipped quietly out of this life into the next. We knew her time was near but it wasn't any easier to loose the last tie to childhood: to feel bereft, an orphan at the age of 50.

A year later, I sat, still an orphan. For the past year every day has had some moment in it where I remember an event from my childhood or something my mother said or how my father looked after making a joke. It's a feeling that never goes away.

For just a few minutes I wonder if the measure of a life is what we do or what we leave behind? Is it how we treat people on our way through? Maybe the old Methodists were right and that God's blessing was displayed in how much gold we amassed during our four score and ten – that faith was more important than good works.

Mom was old fashioned. When she married she put aside her career ambitions, despite being well known in Calgary for her radio work, musical comedy and theatre performances. This was how things were done then and, though she made it clear on many occasions just how unfair she felt that system to be, she accepted it as the role of women in the world.

She worked at being a mother and housewife as hard as she could and made jokes about her failings in that field. In these later years I've learned her dark moments weren't from from resentment but depression. And how much she must have struggled to keep the black dog from her family.

Dad was a teacher, an actor and well known around the city. He was always in plays, directing or advising others and every so often I'd sink into my desk as dad would appear in a lab coat in some educational film being shown in the classroom. When he died, suddenly, two years ago, there were articles in the newspaper, a tribute on the local CBC television evening news program. For his funeral the church was full, there were three priests saying the mass (two monsigneurs and the resident priest from St. Joseph's High School). There was even a police escort out to the cemetery to keep traffic under control.

Mom was a mom. She took care of us to the best of her ability. She volunteered with the CWL and every so often, appeared on stage at the amateur theatre company – Walterdale – she, dad and a few other friends established back in the '50's. There were a few pews filled at her funeral and the parish priest who'd never met mom, celebrated the mass because it was his church, his duty.

But philosophy and rhetoric will have to wait; I'll come back to the question of how to measure the worth of a person another time. The schedule of the day still has to be followed, the needs of the family tended to and there isn't time to walk by the water, tossing pebbles into the waves, gazing pensively into the misty distance. I have to get on with the day; make the bed, get the kids up and get myself dressed for work.

Some parts of growing up really suck

It's not such a good day today. It seemed to go just fine this morning and then by mid-afternoon I couldn't do anything right. Went curling - the mixed group, mostly younger than me, not the widows and orphans old lady afternoon league - and couldn't make anything work. In fact, it doesn't go too far to say the other team didn't win so much as I lost it for my team. No, really. There were a couple of times when we had rocks in the house and looked like it was going in our favour and I knocked 'em all out. When it keeps coming down to keeping the opposition from scoring too many points rather than protecting your own, ya just can't win. And we didn't.

It wasn't until I got home and realized tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of my mother's death. This sort of thing doesn't ever really leave you. The hardest part is it is a physical memory as well as an emotional one. It's going to be a long day tomorrow. Maybe a bubble tea in the morning with my daughter will help. At least I'll get a bubble tea out of the deal, even if I don't feel any better.