This is Vivian’s daughter Erica at the keyboard. As most of you will be aware by now, my wonderful mother passed away on 30th September in the wee hours of the morning. After many painful days and months, she was finally peaceful when she went, her devoted husband at her side, as always.
The latest
This first bit is for all you “lurkers” out there, who read but never comment. Quite a few people tell me they read all my posts but never indicate that they have. I appreciate you all, and don’t feel badly about not commenting (though I love comments!). I try to read all comments and to reply to most of them, so check back for those replies! So, yesterday I got the news about the CT scan and it wasn’t good. My wonderful nurse practitioner, Andreane, didn’t mince words. She said the cancer is still spreading so she nixed the idea...
Lake St Peter
I’m writing this from my BIL’s cottage in beautiful Lake St. Peter, Ontario. We arrived yesterday and I had a great sleep last night. It’s so quiet here, especially compared to NDG, where the city is busy changing pipes and road configurations on both our street and the adjoining street. It’s been an unpleasant summer, partly due to the construction and partly the weather. Anybody else notice an uptick in crappy weather this year? Pretty sure I’m not the only one. It’s hard to believe there are people who don’t believe in climate change. At this point it’s like not...
August Update
I got many wonderful comments, stories and book recommendations from people after my last post about death (thank you all very much). I guess I hit a nerve, as I suspected I would. It’s not an easy subject to write about nor to read about, but I think it’s very much worthwhile to do so. People need a safe place to express their doubts, hopes and fears about it so I hope I provided that. It also helped me by giving me hope that there is something that connects us all and that maybe my atoms will be floating around...
The End Game
Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep I am not there,I do not sleep—I am the thousand winds that blowI am the diamond glints in snowI am the sunlight on ripened grain,I am the gentle, autumn rain.As you awake with morning’s hush,I am the swift, up-flinging rushOf quiet birds in circling flight,I am the day transcending night.Do not standBy my grave, and cry—I am not there,I did not die. Clare Harner, 1934 This poem brought me to tears. I don’t know whether I ever read it before but its philosophy is very much my own. When I die, my...
Black Lake, revisited
Taking a break from the usual today on the blog. I thought I’d publish this little bit of fiction I wrote a while ago based on some childhood experiences. It means I don’t have to write anything new, which is great given I had chemo today. I hope you enjoy it! Sometime before humans were common in the Laurentien Mountains of northern Quebec, beavers were at work, damming a creek and creating Black Lake. It was no doubt christened much later by the locals, an obvious title for a lake whose waters were so murky, you couldn’t see the hand...
How bad is it?
I bet most of you out there have googled pancreatic cancer more than I have. When I first got the diagnosis I avoided googling it because I felt I already had a pretty good idea of how bad it was. Most people don’t survive very long and it’s very painful. Those are the two facts that I had absorbed at some point previously. I dreaded knowing any more than that and anyway, people are individuals and everyone reacts differently to chemo, etc. I probably should have been more brave, but I just couldn’t face it. Then things got busy and...
Garden (and other) news
I’m four days past my third chemo of the new regimen, and I’m feeling not bad today. It’s a good thing, but, as I’ve said before, you can never tell how the day will go until it’s going. Every ten minutes I can feel better or worse than the previous ten minutes. I’ve gradually started realizing that if I feel crappy it may not be my impending death, I might actually feel okay in a few. When I first got home from the hospital back in February I was constantly wondering: what was this new symptom??? It was awful, but...
A Rambling Post
Up front, some housekeeping notes. My dear friend, Theresa, has been working on my site, giving it the old facelift and I think it’s looking really nice. The only thing is there have been some glitches in switching to a new look. Nobody knows why these things happen, they just do, that’s technology for ya! So, the only important glitch is that nobody is getting email notifications when I put out a new post. Theresa’s working on it but in the meantime, you should see a “Subscribe” button, so go ahead and press on it, even if you’ve already subscribed,...
Food challenges
I’ve had a complicated relationship with food my whole life. I’ve mentioned it in passing, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately so I thought I might as well write a whole post about it. I don’t know why I internalized the idea that slim is better – and definitely prettier – since I don’t remember my mother being particularly obsessive about food or weight, but somehow I did. (Not much of a mystery, given our skinny-crazy culture) Maybe it went along with how self-conscious I was about everything as a teenager. I was too tall, my...