Commemoration Days

Commemoration is something you do to honour the person (or people) who has (or have) died... for whatever reason.  Usually you hear the word around November 11, but someone said that word to me last night as I explained that the next day would have been my youngest daughter's 24th birthday. 

"Are you doing anything to commemorate? you know, something special?"

Frankly, I was just going to try to survive the day. But when I awoke this morning and started thinking about it, and planning my meals for the day, I began to think about my girl's favourite things... and how I could honour her in the choices I make in the little things today. 

I started with cooking a breakfast for myself that was one of her favourites: "hash" - which is hash-browned potatoes made with "real" potato (not the instant kind) - bacon (cooked chewy but not crispy), and scrambled eggs (that last bit was for me). As I ate it I recalled how she would relish every bite, rolling her eyes back with ecstasy when she took that first bite of bacon, that first taste of potato. Then how she would try to get as many potato pieces as she could fit on her fork, and give her potato-head fork a "haircut"... fill her mouth really full of the food and then act silly trying to talk through a mouth packed full. 

Arielle at Sam's - early 2012
Copyright 2012, Judy Gillis

I lingered over breakfast, savouring every morsel, each one a memory of fun times at the breakfast table either at home or at her favourite restaurant to have breakfast at: Sam's. Our family still goes there, quite frequently.  We like it there too. 

The last couple of weeks I have been living in Calgary, Alberta - I'm here for my schooling - and being this close to where she had her accident has been very emotional for me. It has made me more sensitive, and affected nearly all my interactions with people.

I find myself usually thinking about the things I miss about her - and there is a LOT of that! - and not wanting to think of the things about her that drove me crazy - her in-your-face attitude, her loudness, her impulsiveness to the point of taking unnecessary risks and not being considerate of people who were worried about her - but those things were a part of her as well. It took her quite a while for her to learn not to crowd me (she'd stand too close for my personal comfort and would NOT lower her voice) but she eventually learned that it "made Mom's skin get all snaky-feeling."

I miss her smile. I miss her laughter and her fun-ness. I miss how generous and loving she was, how she would put herself out for a friend in need.  I miss the quirk of her eyebrow ... and I miss her unshakable faith.  I miss her hugs ... most of all I miss those. 

I know that I will find other ways to make this day special.  But honestly, she left such an impact on my life that I try to "commemorate" her by living a little more like she did, by her unique life's motto, "Every snowflake counts" (see my October 24, 2013 post), every day.

It not only keeps her close, it's a wonderful way to live. 

Thanks, sweetie, for lighting the way.  

Every Snowflake Counts

"Whooopeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!" I would hear as the door banged and her kitbag hit the floor. 

Then the door would bang and she would be off playing until supper, charging her emotional battery with social contact with everyone in the neighbourhood. 

She was "more."  More sensitive, more demanding, more fun, more intuitive, more compassionate, more comical, more ... everything. Many were the times she cried when someone else cried because it hurt her to see people sad. She could laugh longer and louder and harder than anyone I have ever known, and you'd find yourself laughing in spite of yourself, wondering what the joke even was. 

When she was about six years old, after a few snowfalls where her dad had gone out to shovel yet another foot of "partially cloudy" off the driveway, she decided to get dressed and go out to help him. She got me to help her on with her snowsuit, shoved her boots and mitts on, and with all those extra layers toddled down the stairs like some pink Michelin-tire man on his way to a rescue mission. Her dad handed her the lightest shovel and she worked beside him until she was out of wind, her face beet-red under her scarf. The little muscles were so sore and she was so tired and sweaty that she had to give up. In frustration, she started to cry. When her father asked her why, she replied, "Because I wanted to HELP you!!" 

"That's okay, honey," he said to her. "You DID help me. You really did. The snow you shoveled, every single bit of work you did, is less snow that I need to shovel. I appreciate everything you did. Because every snowflake counts."  

She burst into tears and fled into the house. 

What he didn't know was why she cried. She told me because I asked her, and she told me with tears streaming down her face!! It meant so much to her for him to say that. She never forgot it, and from then on, it became her motto. 

Someone would be frustrated with doing homework. Or trying to help with dishes, or baking, or raking leaves. Or trying to make someone understand. Or whatever. 

"Every snowflake counts," she would say to them. 

This past June, after many failed attempts to make a life for herself here, she decided to go to Alberta, to the 'land of opportunity' - or so the myth goes. It's great for someone with a high school education and someone out there with whom to stay while they got on their feet. She had neither. 

The only things she had were the clothes and supplies she took with her, a few hundred dollars from her parents to pay for gasoline, her computer, and her phone. That phone would be a lifeline between her and home, an anchor when times got rough - for her and for us. 

We texted. A LOT. Every day, several times a day. I footed the bill for her to get a 2nd hand car. At least she had transportation, and for a time, a job.

There is more to her story; I don't need to tell it all here. (Other parts are found on my other blog, http://idol-smashing.blogspot.com ) All you need to know is that on September 19, a little over a month ago, she was evicted from the place she was staying after her landlady kicked her out for breaking house rules. She found herself out on the street that night, living in her car. 

For a month she was homeless. She kept in touch with us, charging her phone in her car, living hand to mouth, with regular influx of cash from me to keep the car gassed up in order to survive and be somewhat safe. So many tried to help her; she was afraid to get help thinking that she would have her phone stolen, or someone would hurt her or try to separate her from her boyfriend whom she met up there. 

Two nights ago, she had run out of funds again. I'd given her some money Sunday night to get herself a cheap motel room. She had felt so refreshed the following day and yet had to sleep in her car again Monday night. So Tuesday evening she asked me for money so she could have a motel for the night again. She had an apartment viewing the following morning and wanted to be rested for it, showered, looking her best. 

I sent it to her.

She was so pleased, so relieved. She thanked me profusely. In the short text conversation that followed, she told me, "I'm so tired of this life (she meant lifestyle) Mom. I just want a home."

She had claimed the funds and was on her way driving to a suburb of Edmonton that night (for a cheaper rate in motels) when she swerved suddenly away from the side of the road and crossing the center line. Her fender clipped the fender of a pickup truck, knocking him off the road (the driver was fine). But there was a van right behind him - and they never saw her until it was too late. 

She was killed instantly on impact. 

Her boyfriend escaped - miraculously - with his life. He had a busted ankle and a compound fracture of the lower leg. Of the three people in the van that her car hit, only one had serious injuries - but thankfully was not paralyzed. 

The police came to our door yesterday around 1 pm with the news. When they had left, my husband called me.

What happened next was a flurry of activity. I was aware of people standing around me as I cried out loud. Kind hands led me to my manager's office. Someone made a phone call for me. Someone else met my husband at the door and people drove us home. We were held, hugged, supported, loved. And fed. Even though we didn't feel like eating. We still don't. Still the food comes, and with it, expressions of concern, caring, loving concern.

It all heals. All of it. 

Before I say what I have to say next, let me say this. I've heard people say to me that God took Arielle. 

THAT IS NOT TRUE. God DIDN'T take her. He would not be so cruel as to TAKE her away from us.

He welcomed her. He welcomed her HOME. Not the home she was expecting of course. Not the home ANY of us were expecting.

But BETTER. Safer. More permanent. 

Last spring, before she left for Alberta.
At breakfast - on Saturday morning.
Arielle. My belle.
1992-07-16 to 2013-10-22

I have two more things to say. Two things only. 

The first is that a day and a half before she was evicted, our little girl had a personal encounter with God - so real and so powerful that it transformed her heart and made her not feel lonely or alone, for the first time in her life. She was that excited about it!!  She couldn't wait to tell us about it. She told her story to me, then to her father, and then to our dear friend Dorothy, who had been her babysitter and a second mom to her when she was growing up. And it was REAL. We could tell. This was no passing fancy. This was whole. True. Pure. 

I can't say it changed her, not in a way that denied who she was.  But it was MORE. It burned away the impurities. It refined her, strengthened her faith, and turned the direction of her life around. Something that had only been a glimmer or a spark in her growing up burst into flame and became a luminous beacon that sustained her (and, truth be told, US) throughout that last month or so of her life. She got a job. She was on the upswing in her life.

The second thing I have to say is this. You may feel that what you are saying or doing to support us, the seemingly feeble and trite words that you think you are offering, do very little to help. You may feel helpless, powerless in the face of such tragedy. I know because I've felt those same feelings in my life when having to comfort someone who has known similar circumstances. 

And now I'm on the other side of the equation.  
And I am telling you THIS.

You have no idea the power that those little actions, those little words, those inbox messages, those Facebook comments, those hugs and well-wishes, what they all mean. You have simply no idea unless you've been there. But even if you don't have that experience (and I would not wish it on my worst enemy!!) YOU NEED to hear my words and know this deep in your hearts.

What she said to us, I now say to you.

Every. Snowflake. Counts.

Those who matter

Be who you are and say what you feel, because "Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter."

This quote is incorrectly attributed to Dr. Seuss. The portion in quotation marks was spoken by Bernard Mannes Baruch (presidential advisor to Wilson and Roosevelt) regarding whether he wanted any special seating arrangements at a banquet.

In my previous post, I opened myself up to scrutiny by those of you who still read my blog... and I will admit that when I clicked "publish" ... it was with fear and trembling, even dread of being judged - much more so when I submitted it to the one who issued the challenge about which I spoke, since I have 15 followers and she has over 300. (Gulp.) 

I will also admit that I care - even after three and a half years of recovery from such things - far too much about what people think of me. Being human, I like to be liked.  I am (just like the rest of the world) hard-wired for connection. As much rejection and abandonment as I have known in my life, it still hurts to be excluded, ignored, or passed over - for whatever reason.  

But it's slowly dawning on me, this radical truth of "those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter."  Married with the idea that "friends are God's way of apologizing to you for your family," I'm beginning to see that it's the heart connections that matter - whether those are blood ties or not.  That the support and encouragement of true friends ... trumps the pettiness and poison of those other toxic relationships, whether they are with family or not.  Every time.  I have a few such golden friends.  I value them ... I treasure them more than I can begin to express. And I can express a LOT.  ;)

As I was saying, when I submitted that blog post to my fellow-blogger for inclusion on her site ... it was with much fear and trembling.  I felt exposed, raw, vulnerable to attack. I think I even said to myself, "NOW what have I done?"  

Yet I was curious (morbidly or not) to know what my fellow-blogger thought.  I kept watching my inbox.

Nothing came.

HERE is a great article on hugging!

A few hours later, I once again checked my inbox.  Nothing was in there, but there was something sitting in my Spam folder.  "I wonder..." I said, for sometimes my email server mistakes real communication for spam.  

Sure enough, there it was, an email from Ellie.  And in the first two sentences, I was brimming with tears, which gradually turned to sobbing in gratitude and love by the end.  I won't tell you exactly what she told me -  but suffice to say that it started with a desire to hug me - and contained some of the most encouraging and uplifting affirmations I have heard in a very long time.  

I've already lost count of the number of times I've gone back to that email to read those incredible, supportive words, to feel that warm blanket of acceptance and kindness and trustworthiness enfolding me.  Ellie reached out to me across the miles, even though we've never met in person, to remind me of what is important -- and of what isn't. 

Her words made (and make) me feel ... heard.  Understood.  Even important, and not in an arrogant kind of way, but in the way every human being needs to feel valued.  Worthy.  Safe.  They gave me the courage to lean into, to make peace with, even to embrace, the truth of my birth family's rejection of me.  They gave me access to the Strength to do what I need to do - whatever that is - to accept "what is" ... and to move on.  They gave me enough wisdom to discern who are "those who matter" and who are "those who mind" - and enough security and whole-heartedness to embrace the former and to walk away from the latter.  As difficult as that is (and will be) it is also quite liberating.

I don't have to prove anything to anyone.  
I don't have to justify anything to anyone.  

I just need to look after what (and who) matters ... and leave the rest alone, because it's out of my hands.  If it was ever there in the first place, that is.

SAFE HOME

It was a cozy, if cluttered, nook - a haven of civility in a harsh world.

My father's workshop, which he slowly (over the years) built onto the garage, housed a home-made workbench with a bench vise, several shelves to hold supplies, and piles upon piles of tools, each with its own specific purpose; he knew where each of them was. He would spend hours (sometimes days) out there, working on some project usually for a friend, sometimes for a family member - for which he would take absolutely no payment.  That was his gift, his legacy to the world, if he but knew it.  He cared for each tool like it was an old friend.  He allowed each tool to share in the gift that was his generosity to others. 

On the opposite wall of the "shop", he had installed a wood-fired stove, which kept the place toasty warm and inviting in the winter.  There was a dusty armchair by the door, pervaded with sawdust and a few tiny wood chips, another similar chair beside the stove, and in the corner there was a cot made up into a bed with a small pillow and a woolen bed-spread on it - the perfect place for him to nap, or just to lie down in a little bit of peace and quiet away from the demands and rigors of living with a nit-picking wife who preached at him on every topic from church attendance to the evils of nicotine. The clutter, I learned by osmosis over the years (because he never actually said so), was a barrier to keep her out. She never went out there unless she had to.  He liked it like that. 

HERE's where I got this photo

It was his realm, his kingdom, and he was the benevolent ruler there.  Here, I would go to spend time with him, watch him work, pass him a tool once in a while.  Or just sit by the stove with him and listen to the fire crackle.  The atmosphere was supremely peaceful, restful.  

Safe.  

He didn't expect anything of me.  He was just glad to have my company.  I knew that here, nobody could touch me, nobody could hurt me.  If I brought with me any of the drama from the goings-on inside the house, he would quell it with a sharp look and an unspoken reminder of the unwritten rule:  This is my refuge. I allowed you in here. We come here to escape the shenanigans, the manipulation, the intimidation that is so much a part of what's under the Other Roof.  This is different. This is ...

Home. 

This was where I could be myself.  To have my feelings.  To say how I felt. To soak in the restfulness - to drink in the earthy smell of sawdust, of wood smoke, of 3-in-1 oil.  To enjoy the one thing I could get in no other place (not across the yard, and not in the place with the steeple up on top of the hill): acceptance.  

He died in the fall of 1993, when our youngest was 16 months old.  

Soon afterward, a van driven by a mercenary family member arrived at his little house and literally raped his workshop; the driver took every last thing that he so lovingly cared for and used to help other people, and left an empty shell - only to take it to his own home and let it gather dust and rust.  I tried going out there to Dad's workshop once after that, tried to recapture that sense of peace, of safety.  But it had changed.  It was cold, violated, distant, void of life. 

He wasn't there anymore.  It wasn't safe any more.  It wasn't home anymore.  

When I say that I miss him, I miss him deep in my heart, in that place within which he made a space to be himself with no apologies, and where he allowed me to be me with no shame.  I miss his smile, his deep bass voice, his smell.  I miss his hard, calloused hands that could be gentle enough to solder the broken wires in a tiny hand-held calculator so someone didn't have to buy a new one.  I miss his stories of the railroad and of his logging days with the horses and the pull-chains, his company, his acceptance ... his love.

That safety, that peace, that sense of being protected, of being at "home" is one I've only found in one other place.  I've tried to find it all my life, with different things, in the company of various people.  Sometimes I got the opposite, and other times I've gotten really, REALLY close to that "safe home" feeling.  

But only one place exudes that same ambiance for me.  

It's a little, well-secluded, somewhat cluttered place inside my heart, the one to which I go too seldom - the one with the warm hearth, with the burning fire in the little stove, with two armchairs, and about sixty-six books on the shelves.  I sit in one chair, and in the other, larger chair sits...

My Father.

Honour and Fame

This week, the music world and millions of fans were dismayed (myself among them) at the untimely death of the Queen of Pop, Whitney Houston.  I've always loved her voice - one of my favorite singers of all time - and her death hit me hard. For a few days running I watched a show I usually detest (E-Talk) to hear news of how and why it happened.  

In one interview with David Foster, he revealed that there wasn't a moment that went by when someone, somewhere didn't want something from Ms. Houston. Fame had placed a burden on her that no human was meant to carry, and she apparently tried to escape from it in drugs ... most recently prescription drugs.  

I blame our society's tendency to put people up on pedestals and let individuals within that society want to own a little piece of someone famous.  We do it with celebrities of all stripes - from sports heroes to singers to the royal family.  We forget that they are real people.  Real people whose noses run sometimes, who sometimes aren't at their best, who occasionally do stupid things, and who deserve to have a little privacy.  (By the way, the fact that Ms. Houston's family has requested a private ceremony by invitation only is a testament to that need - that incredible need for dignity, for respect, for decency, and [for once in her public life] privacy.  I applaud them for it.)  

Source:
www.ctv.ca/

Fans worldwide are grieving.  

But after all, Whitney Houston was someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's niece, someone's mother, someone's wife ... and more, so much more than her fans can comprehend.  May she rest in peace.  May her family find solace. 

But her death - at the young age of 48 - has sparked some comments on the incongruity of the death of a celebrity versus the sacrifice of someone who (aside from family and friends) is virtually unknown, but who has perhaps given his or her life to save another's.  Or like the guy who goes to a job he hates every day, and in so doing dies just a little more every moment of every day ... just to put food on the table for his family.  Or people like our service men and women who brave untold dangers and see unthinkable sights in the line of military duty in foreign lands.  

Whose life has more merit?  Whose death is more tragic? whose sacrifice is greater? that which relinquishes privacy and possibly health for a life of fame ... or that which gives up family and home for the grueling and dangerous task of protecting people who may not want to be protected? or that which sacrifices stardust-filled dreams to meet the needs of those he or she loves?  these are questions that cannot be answered ... but they make us think.  

Perhaps those self-sacrificing heroes are all the more honourable because they are unsung.  Perhaps if their accomplishments were to be noised abroad, they might forget their unique calling and fall into the Venus Flytrap of fame. We need them to keep on with their mission.  That guy's kids still need their dad to keep them from going hungry.  And they are no less heroes ... than the person whose face (and life in every possible unflattering detail) is plastered across every newspaper in the country - or the world.

After Math

One plan, borne of hatred and cruelty.

Two towers, shaken, crumbling.

Three television stations feeding images of real horror to millions. 

Four planes targeting the nerve-centers of the most powerful nation in the world.

Ten years have passed, and still people everywhere in the Western world know exactly where they were and how they heard of the events of September 11, 2001.

Forty people, knowing that the hijackers were headed to Washington, DC, stormed the cockpit and saved the Whitehouse, at the cost of their own lives.

Three hundred forty-three firefighters paid the ultimate price to rescue those trapped in burning buildings.  

Hundreds of police, ambulance, rescue workers, tracking dogs and their handlers, and fire-fighters flocked to New York from other countries to help their neighbors in need.

Some three thousand people lost their lives, many more thousand their family members on that day, ten years ago today.  

We remember them.

The lives of countless millions of people have been affected by the events of those few hours of infamy. The world has never been the same.

We will never be the same.