A gift from my daughter

My daughter made me laugh last night. Not just a chuckle or a short snort but an open-mouthed, body-shaking, tears-streaming guffaw. I needed it. Badly. I’ve been a bit under the cloud of cultural confusion and chaos that seems to be prevalent in our world right now, leaving me with a persistent frown in the face of wars and weather that erupts without warning, leaving death, destruction, and gut-wrenching sorrow behind. It all tends to take the joy away.

Meg’s laughter stunned me because she and her new husband have had nothing but a relentless breaking down lately. Appliances, vehicles, basement foundations, among others. They’ve met it all with humour that I’ve heard ringing in her voice as she talked with her dad. She’s always been a ‘daddy’s girl.’ They say caesarean babies bond best with their fathers. It makes sense since his were the first arms that cradled her, the first voice that welcomed her, while I lay under the lingering anaesthetic and then a haze of morphine. So I’ve always been on the sidelines, watching, not sad but a little wistful. But last night she drew me in and that has driven the gloom away. At least, most of it.

I’d been thinking about Wendy lately. One of my ‘wild women of the Yukon’ friends who has been gone for a while now. The hole she left is still here. She was my neighbour years ago, my mothering mentor. She’d had four when I had my first and found myself treading water in an ocean of rather big waves. She floated around me, showing me how to keep my head above water. It was Wendy I called when I found myself in labour 500 kilometres from home, alone in the Whitehorse hospital. It was her voice that steadied me, assured me the prayers wouldn’t fail, that Spence would get there in time. He did.

She was also the only other believer in that clutch of Yukon friends, the one who would make eye contact in a way the others never could. That made the hole she left deeper and harder to fathom in all the reunions since.

I got the call that she was gone from one of the other WWoY women, just after I’d hauled my suitcase up from the basement. I think I had already put a few things in it, anticipating our annual reunion which was supposed to happen that weekend in Wendy’s big warm welcoming farmhouse. The shock kept me from weeping for some time. She was ten years younger than me. She died alone, in her kitchen, which was her happy place. That has been a small comfort.

The first anniversary of her death came with a shock too – how had a whole year gone by without her? To ease the grief I wrote this –

On the Death of a Friend

When sorrow overwhelms

the heart, the soul, the mind,

slow their pacing

to take in the pain

let it seep slowly in

let it flow with the heart’s blood,

rest in the crucible of the soul

spark the synapses of the brain

with its own rhythm

until the one lost

to our reaching hands,

beyond our seeking eyes,

our yearning ears,

becomes one

instilled

inside

the heart the soul the mind

until our being

is gladdened at last

in the remembering.

I’d forgotten to be gladdened in the remembering, allowed the sadness to become a burden again, one that could only be banished by open-mouthed, body-shaking, tears-streaming laughter.

Thanks Meg. I so needed that.

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