Memories worth their weight in stone

Monday, May 28, 2012



I am experiencing the let down that comes with the end of a really great holiday. I liken my quick descent back to reality to the loud gurgle and sucking swirl of water that I always stare at after finishing a sink load of dirty dishes. 
“Uh huh, there goes my ‘Cloud 9,’ out with the dishwater.” 


All the life tasks I conveniently forgot about while in Wales now loom in the air around me akin to a cat litter box desperate in need of an emptying. 


Thank heaven for my “Sawzall.” 


There’s no better cure for a “down in the dumps” mood than gripping my hands around a reciprocating power tool and finding something to demolish. 
The autonomous act lifts my spirits, propels my confidence to deal with the realities of life and reminds me that I am indeed the “Jackie of All Trades” in my neck of the woods. 


The trouble is that in the throes of all that handheld supremacy I go berserk and can’t stop.


When all is said and done, the poor tree that I was just going to trim back a tad, now looks like my eyebrows did in Grade 8 when I kept plucking one and then the other to equal them out. In the end I was left with pencil thin tufts that got me stares in ways I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. 


I awoke to my writing day Monday morning to the sound of “Millie” the cat sitting outside my open bedroom window and whose 5 a.m. “rooster call” sounded like the life was being drawn out of her through a straw. 


It wasn’t exactly how I want to be yanked out of the dream I was having of being carried off to safety by Idris Elba of “Thor” fame. 
However the caterwaul beat the banshee wail I heard at 3 a.m. in Wales and that I was sure was about to crawl through the second story window of the room I was sleeping in and chew my face off.

I’ve always said I was born in the arms of a great imagination and as it turns out it was a screaming fox and not the infamous banshee. Still, the little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention when I think about the sound that shattered the Welsh night air. 


That lovely slice of the United Kingdom also sports adder snakes and hairy spiders made legend by the stories of my fine hosts. I was warned a couple of times about the eight-legged creature spotted on the ceiling of a 17-th century pub “loo” but I was in and out so fast that the arachnid never had time to get a spit line out and down to my Canadian carcass. 


When I arrived and was soaked in the world of the Welsh, it was all I could do not to want learn how to speak the language. 
Be still my stupidity. 


With all due respect to the ancient dialect I don’t think I can make my tongue and palate work like that—unless we’re talking food.


One of my favorite experiences in Wales was a day trip to car boot sales where, in parkades and fields, scores of people sold “one man’s junk another man’s treasure” to the masses.


And it was at one particular car boot field where I was introduced to “Effin Effin,” a ruggedly handsome Welsh bloke rightly and famously named in South Wales for his rampant use of the English four-letter social expletive. Jaw-dropping amazing. 


My lovely hosts went over the top with home and food hospitality and if they ever decide to break out into the tourism business I’ll be their booking agent—gladly.

I wanted to try all the ethnic foods I could and although there were a couple of times when I wished I hadn’t said that out loud as I stared at my plate, I learned to work Welsh delicacies into tasty little adventures. 


My very first Welsh meal was faggots and peas and as soon as the meat passed over my lips I knew I probably wasn’t going to ask for the recipe. 


I appreciate that Mr. and Mrs. Hibbard love it. I love a fried egg on peanut buttered toast and they just couldn’t fathom that either.
I tried the gelatinous dark paste “laver bread,” and cockles with bits of bacon and oh, yes! duck eggs. Quacking good. 


My friends kept telling me I would gain two stone before I headed back to Canada. I thought they were talking about all the rocks I would pack in my suitcase from the beaches at Swansea and Rhossili. Nope.


If I gained any weight at all while on holiday it wasn’t from liver and seaweed but from the Welsh cakes, sugar mice, and clotted cream teas I stuffed in my face. I’m a sweetie through and through.


But hey, most of you knew that already.  :)

The Anatomy of My Whole Life

 Monday, May 21, 2012

I wake up at 6 a.m. every morning, pour a cup of coffee, sit in my favorite chair, write in my diary, and read a daily reflection from “The Book of Awakening” by Mark Nepo.

Nepo is a cancer survivor and his book is touted as one “about life, informed by the shadows of death” and full of one-a-day thoughts that are “vitamins for the soul.”

In my view no truer statements could be made.

This is the second year that I’ve re-read it on a daily basis and I’m constantly finding new connections to the wise words and how the book often mirrors my own journey.

Until now I’ve lived a very safe existence—one that’s calculated and organized so that I turn as many of the knobs on the horizontal and vertical as possible.

It’s the control freak in me. I’ve prided myself on being a subtle commander, but in then end a control junkie in my little world all the same.

Thank you for change.

I know how words work. I know how to put them together to get my point across in this space but they fail me now as I scrape my brain dictionary for the right “write” ones that will paint a picture of how my trip to Wales has opened my eyes and planted a seed.

Sure, people travel in big fat planes to far away places every day and I don’t know a thing about what it does to them.

We’re all unique in our life experiences and I try to respect my fellow man and woman in theirs.

However I only own mine.

I will admit that I thought I knew the world by the view out my kitchen window, the one the media paints on television, the Internet, and yes, even the newspaper.

If I had allowed some of those avenues to decide for me I would have never climbed into an aircraft with hundreds of other people and flown. I was an unwitting victim of hype and uncertainty and the unknown.

As I write and read this, perhaps I shouldn’t ditz the view from my kitchen window. It’s pretty darn amazing.

Nonetheless I thought life was just fine and cozy-safe right here at home plunk in the middle of 59 acres of country paradise. No better place in the world did I imagine there to be—until I flew across the ocean purely on faith that it was okay to let go and let live.

Thank you for change.

And too, my friends and family kept telling me that if anyone deserved this trip to Wales it was me—for all I’d been through in the past two years and most specifically the end of my marriage to a man I dearly loved who decided not to come home and then finding love again with a gentleman’s gentleman and abruptly facing the instant end of a lovely future with him when he committed suicide.

I don’t know if there has ever been a time since I first announced the story behind my trip to Wales that I’ve agreed with anyone who replied with, “you deserve this.”

I have had a very difficult time believing that I deserve good things should happen in my life and I think it’s because if I started to believe that then I somehow would diminish the rewards that grow out of me when my soul is wounded.

And yet if I believed that wishing upon a star made wishes come true, then two years ago I would have wished Peter loved me enough to stay married, and I most certainly would have called on all the stars and planets to change Jon’s mind to more promising horizons on that fateful day in January.  And I did do my share of wishing.

But the Universe unfolded anyway.

More important to me than what I “deserve” in life’s peach orchard is that I have faith that I can grow good from the pits.

Mark Nepo writes “Perhaps the secret to growing from our wounds is to live close to the earth, to live without our hearts and minds and bellies always in touch—both inside and out—with that which is larger than we are.

Perhaps, when cut in two, it is a life of humility, of risking to be at one with the soil of our experience, that allows us to heal into something entirely new.”

The morning I left for Wales I wrote in my diary, “I want more than what I can get by wishing. I have so much life to live, so many opportunities ahead of me to experience. I will love again and in the mean time I love my life today just as it is with me in it.”

William Blake was right. “The cut worm forgives the plow.”

I am living proof.

A "Wale" of a story in the making

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

I was born with a great imagination, and as I was flying over the North Atlantic Ocean one week ago on my way to Britain I thought my mind’s eye had a pretty good idea what this trip would be like.

Suffice to say I had no clue. This experience has been more than anything I could have possibly dreamed for myself.

I don’t even know where to begin. My editor would say to start with the most important thing and even that advice is difficult just now because there are so many stories trying to jump through my fingertips to the keyboard.

The eight-hour flight to Europe was long and I didn’t sleep a wink. How could I? I was alight with anticipation not to mention that I could not take my eyes off the near full moon that shone in the night sky and through my airplane window for the entire journey. 

We reached the north coast of Ireland and England just before dawn and at 39,000 ft and clear skies it was a sight to behold as the cities below were lit up in the colour of gold.

When I landed in Amsterdam for a 10-hour layover I felt like I could do anything. The world was my oyster.

But even oysters wind up in nets.

The time and space continuum froze for me when six Dutch security guards gathered to ponder an anomaly in my carry-on luggage as it passed through the x-ray machine at the boarding gate for the flight to Wales.

I felt like a foreigner in a foreign country. Wait a minute—I was.

Another guard appeared and took my passport from my trembling fingers and pulled out his mobile phone. All I heard was my birth name and “Cardiff, Wales” tossed about in another language.

I was convinced I was a goner. My identity would be red-flagged at every airport on every continent. They made movies called “Missing” and “Vanished” about these kinds of things.

 I looked up and there were the wide-eyed faces of all my co-passengers who were sitting pretty and in the clear and staring at my folly.

Security was backed up for 15 minutes as I waited for “special ops” to arrive. I was sweating like Arnold Schwarzenegger when his wife found out about the housekeeper, but I also was as clueless as Alicia Silverstone about what could possibly be in my possession to cause such an international incident.

Eventually a guy who looked like Alan Rickman (the actor who played the bad guy in “Die Hard”) arrived wearing a flack jacket and walked over to me after looking at the x-ray image and promptly said “tell me everything that is in your bag—exactly.”

My mind went blank and all that spilled out of my mouth was “Well, I ate all the chocolate.”

It was hopeless. My nerves shot, I couldn’t remember but four of the some 25 things I had packed in that bag.

“Mr. Flack Jacket,” with a stern, heavy accent and with big blue vein throbbing in his forehead, held up his hand and said, “I will get your bag and we will open it together.”

I had nearly everything pulled out of the bag onto the table, naming off each item as I went as eight security guards stood around the contents. Suddenly one of them pointed to the earplugs for my iPhone and a metal belt clip on the “travel approved” silk zip bag that had contained my passport.

Mr. Flack Jacket nodded and left and I was free to go.

If it weren’t for the streak of white hair that had suddenly appeared on my head, there’d have been no evidence of the incident—unless of course we counted the huddle of passengers who had all moved to the other side of the room when I stepped through security to sit down amongst my fellow flyers.

The rest of the trip was “crackin,” but that’s another story—or two.

Flying high on wings of my own

Monday, May 7, 2012

Let me begin by recanting my sad story about my home septic woes from last week. It wasn’t a miserable Monday after all. It turned out that all I had to do was replace a dirty filter. Thanks to “Good Man Joe” I am free to flush!!

So here am on a merry Monday (May 7th) and on my way to the land of the Welsh. I can hardly believe I am in this story! 

I can’t believe I did it! First of all, I wasn’t even sure I’d get through U.S. Customs at the International Falls border without extra scrutiny, My vogue statement for the debut of “Yours Truly” as a world traveler included having my 21-year old daughter straighten my hair, and hence I looked nothing like my passport photo.

Secondly I also managed to fight my way into the compression pantyhose I needed to wear in order to protect my vascular system from the bane of an eight-hour flight although I pulverized the pair of surgical gloves  that I had to use in order to shovel the pair of high density leggings up my torso.

Heaven help me if I have to pee anywhere between here and my layover in Amsterdam.

I had less than 40 minutes to make my flight connection in Minneapolis and I’d never been in that airport before. I had worried about this for weeks, but everyone was right. It was easy to find my way through the maze—although I didn’t get where I needed to be without walking as fast as my legs could carry me.

The airport’s automatic walkways are awesome, except when you forget to step off properly. Me, my 17lb carry-on bag and my 15lb purse went for a tumble when my feet hit the carpet at 5 mph.

I was okay though. I was embarrassed until I realized no one in the entire airport knew who I was and would never see me again.

One hour and 45 minutes have passed in flight time and oh, no, I have to pee and I’m in a window seat. Nine flight attendants are serving liquids from all directions and as much as I would love a glass of water right now, I’m going to pass on that. Having to ask the guy next to me to move so I can get out is only going to happen once on this flight if I can help it and I’ve still got seven hours before we land.

He isn’t much of conversationalist and I really don’t want to bother him. Besides he is fast asleep and his poor head is flopped forward like a rag doll.

I’m gob smacked that there are some 350 people bound for an overseas destination and all together at the same time in a machine with only two wings—one of which I am seated over. I booked this seat not realizing that I would be looking out my window at the rivets and jet engines. But then again, I’m now some 39,000 feet above the ground and beyond the clouds. The temperature outside is -40C and there’s not much to see anyway. Wait! is that ice on the wing! 

It’s 5 p.m. and I can smell supper. My Grandpa and Grandma Drennan would have been pleased to know they serve the meals around here right on time. Besides I’m starving.

Oh no, I just realized I asked for a vegetarian plate when I booked my ticket. What was I thinking? While everyone else is eating steak and baked potato I’ll be picking through my black bean and apple bake looking for signs of life. Thank heaven I packed that Snickers Bar.

It’s 6:00 p.m. and I must admit supper wasn’t so bad. Turns out making a meal preference reservation didn’t make any difference, as noted by the flight attendant who looked at me and said “Chicken, chicken salad, or pasta?”  I still chose pasta. (I watched “Food Inc.” I’m ruined for two legged beakers that didn’t originate from my local organic farm.) 

It’s 6:30 p.m. and I finally got up the nerve to ask my co-flyer to let me up so I could go pee. It felt so good to stand up that I was going to ask the flight attendants if I could volunteer to serve refreshments for the rest of the flight.

The line-up to the bathroom was long and stirring with conversation. I met someone from every continent standing there. It was an eye- opening experience to the fact that even though the world is small sometimes, it remains a gigantic mosaic of cultures. I need to travel more.

We’re four hours in and the flight tracker on the little TV screen in front of me indicates we are beginning our path over the North Atlantic. How awesome is that?!

And not one “anxiety pill” as passed over my lips. There’s not an ounce of nervousness in me as I fly into the future.

Yet as corny as it might sound, I could just burst into tears in this moment because of how grateful and happy I am.

I used to think life was a beautiful thing as long as I held the strings.

I’m learning more and more every day that life is still a beautiful thing even though I don’t always have control over what happens in mine. But I do control the most important and beautiful thing of all—my attitude.

And folks, I wish you could see what I see right now.

That is one big beautiful ocean out there.

Sailing my ship a life long journey

Monday, April 30, 2012

“Mondays can be miserable.” Uh huh.

There’s nothing like being informed at 9 a.m. on the first day of the workweek that my home septic system needed to be dug up and repaired.

I would be lying if I said this monkey wrench news didn’t cause me to expel words from my mouth that would count as improper use of the English language.

Even the chickadees and robins went scurrying to the treetops when I stormed around like a steaming locomotive this morning. And all I could hear was my lovely late grandmother uttering the words,  “There’s always something.”

As I sit here on this otherwise sunny and promising Monday, now at 10:30 a.m., as Adele’s voice blasts “Set Fire to the Rain” from my speaker system, I’m still trying to find some blue sky in my mind.

I looked up at a quote I have posted on my desk by Louisa May Alcott, “I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship.”

I cranked the music up and thought “Really? I’ve had enough storms for a while, thanks. And as far as my ship is concerned, I don’t need another lesson.”

What I do need is a holiday, by cracky.

By the time this rant is hot off the press, I’ll have but five more sleeps until I step out of my comfort zone and into an airplane with 334 other passengers with an overseas destination.

My luggage (one big old blue suitcase from 1970s) has yet to be filled to capacity. Of course if I did that I’d have nothing to wear for the rest of the week! As it is I’m scrapping about 30 lbs of needless attire from my suitcase so that I can haul home my quota of rocks and sand from the south coast of Wales.

I’m a big fan of travel guru Rick Steves and I have his recommended “Packing List for Women” pasted to my bedroom mirror and another copy of it in my luggage in case I forget what I’m supposed to bring home.

Remember, we are dealing with a clueless green thumb world traveler here. If I didn’t read up on this all this stuff I wouldn’t have known that I am not supposed to dress for travel as if I’m on a photo shoot for the cover of “Vogue” magazine. Who knew! Now I’m free to wear my gumboots and a straw hat as I stroll through the airport in Amsterdam during my 10-hour lay over there.

I also wouldn’t have known anything about the Warsaw Convention, which I understand has been around since 1929. I had managed to get by in life knowing nothing about it (probably because I never fly) until I read the fine print with a magnifying glass, listed under “liability for international carriage of persons, luggage or goods“ on my plane ticket.

I would rather not use air travel and liability in the same sentence if you don’t mind.

Point A to Point B to Point A. Thank you. In one piece. With my suitcase on the carousel at both ends. Safely. That is all.

I can see anxiety medicine in my carry on bag being added to the list, Rick.

But truth be told . . . wait a minute, I always tell the truth. Still . . . truth be told I am about to do something I’ve only ever dreamed about. In my mind’s eye, I could not have predicted a trip to anywhere other than Virginia, Minnesota for groceries, let alone an excursion to Wales for nine days in May.

I’m so excited and full of anticipation I’m going to need gravity boots to keep me from floating.

However, don’t for one minute think I’m also not scared out of my wits. I am. After all I’m a control geek and doing this is not remotely within the realm of what I have power over. If it were, I’d be getting there by canoe.

Oh I see. This is a “learning to sail my ship” sort of thing.

As I wrote in my column a few weeks ago, this is the miracle reward I received from the Universe at no cost to me when I was standing in the shower one night last week thinking “maybe I should start traveling and write 'The View From Here' from somewhere else.

I’ll be doing just that for the next two weeks.

Tune in!!

One more hurdle in the bag before take off

Monday, April 23, 2012

Leave it to me to make a mountain out of a molehill. I may be free of guilt trips and voyages to “regret-ville” but I certainly haven’t conquered my anxiety when it comes to stepping outside my comfort zone and away from my neck of the woods.

I had best find a way to rest my apprehension. My trip to Wales is but 14 days away and there’ll be no turning back once I’m in an aircraft 35,000 ft over the North Atlantic Ocean.

But like I said, leave it to me to make a mountain out of a molehill.

All I had to do was get in my car and drive to Thunder Bay this past weekend to visit my sister-in-law. I planned the trip about a month ago and yet, as the days to “take-off” crept closer I could be heard having conversations with myself about all the reasons why I couldn’t possibly go.

And it’s not like I haven’t done a Thunder Bay run and other trips by myself before this, but there have been none since Jon died and yet I didn’t expect the doing would be such a mountain to climb.

If I could compare this hump in my road map to anything I would liken it to being on a boat cruising out to the lake to fish.

I expect to coast along for a while with minimal effort when suddenly the boat motor quits and the trolling motor goes on strike. I coax the motors, talk to them, and reason with them and still I get nowhere. Eventually I have to paddle my big boat if I want to get where I’m going—never mind try to paddle AND fish at the same time.

That’s what my trip to Thunder Bay looked like late last week. My motor quit and my trolling motor folded its arms and gave me the flat stare of a 16-year old teenager who I just asked to take out the garbage.

I hotwired my trolling motor going over the Causeway and yes! got on the road but it kept failing and eventually I had to resort to paddling and paddling down the entire highway.

I hadn’t realized what a comfort zone this little town and my little world had been for the last three months—where everything was predictable and I always was safe at home.

But you know me. I took the wheel and made it from Point “A” to “B” thus deciding that I would use the trip as a trial run for my clueless green thumb world traveler-self who need a fast learning curve on how to pack for nine days in May.

I knew this for sure because I was hauling three-quarters of my clothes closet and 16 pairs of underwear for a day and half trip to the city.

Thankfully there was a hydraulic dolly in the barn that bore the mammoth bag out of the house and into the car’s trunk.

I’ve been reading travel blogs and travel wikis and travel advice columns for all the latest recommendations for what to pack. I challenge myself daily to pack less and less junk (save the giant Toblerone and must-have chocolate bars in case I get stranded on an island with Tom Hanks).

Yet in the trial to pare down the piles of underwear et al, I will not give up my compression stockings. Yes folks, compression stockings.

I may be aging gracefully above my chicken neck, but below the knees not so elegantly.

Thus, seated in an airplane for eight hours while my lower legs dangle helpless and motionless as the blood tries to jump past the faulty valves in my calves, means I have to wear therapeutic high density trouser socks made for travelers with varicose veins. (There I said it).

And if you think that’s a media shocker, you are very lucky you didn’t walk by my car on Saturday in the parking lot of the home health store in Thunder Bay while I was trying to put one of those compression socks on my foot.

Never in my life had I such an experience. I used to think tummy control pantyhose was a hard haul on to my body until I tried to stretch that black sock out far enough so it would fit over my toes.

Anyone who wondered what was happening inside my car that day would have thought I was being devoured against my will by a 12-inch black eel, as I writhed in the front seat.

By the time I got all five toe digits kidnapped in the compression sock and pulled and stretched the rest of it up my leg, a big fat blue bulging vessel had popped out between my eyes.

Please tell me I don’t have to buy something similar to compress my head before I travel.

Getting that evil sock off at night was like firing a boomerang from a slingshot in a small room—but that’s another story.

I like it simple not messy

Monday, April 16, 2012



I woke up in the wee hours of Monday morning to the clicking sound of my dog’s toenails in failed stealth when he tried sneaking into my bedroom to catch a floor nap before dawn. 
“Cash” knows better, but who am I kidding. 


This is the same dog that kisses the bottom side of every skunk that pays a visit to my neck of the woods each spring. No amount of skunk squirt ever will be enough to teach that dog a lesson in boundaries.

The world was darker than usual that early morning when I walked through the house to make sure the dog hadn’t peed in the living room or some such nightmare. Dark is really dark when you live in the country and when the power goes out—as I discovered it had that morning—I had my arms outstretched so I wouldn’t slam into something at eye level.


Unfortunately that posturing didn’t guarantee where I put my foot as I stepped into a warm and gooey pile that oozed between my bare toes. 
I took up an impressively difficult pose that I have to master in yoga class and balanced precariously on my clean foot as three messy possibilities were considered.


Dog poop, dog vomit, or cat throw up?


I’d pick the latter because cat throw up isn’t quite as disgusting on your foot as the first two. Trust me. 


I forgot however that I’d recently fed my cat worm pills and wondered if what I had just stepped in were the half-dead beasts he’d expelled onto the kitchen floor.

I had no electricity to shine a visual on my predicament and the flashlight was in the other room. I was afraid to move for fear of the unknown for my other foot so I just stood there in the dark making improper use of the English language.


“Press 1 for Yes or 2 for No,” said the computerized man-voice.Sometimes I think the Universe likes to play games with me. I was static in my predicament when the lights came on and the phone rang.

Still perched in a contorted tree pose I reached out to grab the phone and was greeted on the other end by the recorded voice from the power company checking to see if the lights had come on.
I pushed “1” but wanted to leave a voice mail that said “352878273 spells Flat Stare!”

Of course with the lights back on, it was all I could not to look at what I’d stepped in.

They say curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity also killed my appetite for a good breakfast when I squeaked open one eyelid to see that what was between my toes looked like the unknown byproducts in a can of dog food after it went through a blender. I don’t really know what it was or which end it came from.

By the time I had hopped to the bathroom and showered hot enough to cook a bird, Monday’s dawn had peaked over the horizon and I saw the white bane that is Mother Nature’s prerogative after a lovely stretch of warm weather.

My new wicker couch covered in a layer of snow white looked especially forlorn out there on the bank of the creek and I lamented it all until I turned on the television and saw the deadly twisters that tore a strip through the U.S. Midwest.

Besides, I refuse to be crabby about this small inconvenience when I see how entertaining it is for my dogs.

All I have to do is let them out and watch them tear across the yard, romp and play and shove their snouts into the same spots as yesterday, tails wagging as they find new excitement and new smells in the unexpected cover.
I remind myself that the canine capers in my world are better models of adaptability and upbeat outlook than most people I know, myself included!

It comes as no surprise that I admire simplicity and positivity in life and the kindred spirits out there who are nodding their heads when reading this probably have dogs or cats that keep them grounded even though the pets they love occasionally leave gifts on the kitchen floor.

In a rare disclaimer, I do however acknowledge that pets are not required in order to be an optimist.
But they sure do make a difference in my neck of the woods.

Weighing in with less baggage

Monday, April 9, 2012

On Saturday, my college kid and I filled 126 plastic eggs with goodies and hid them outside in the farmyard. The little peppers and their moms and my parents were expected for Easter dinner that night and the first annual “Granny’s Easter Egg Hunt.”

Easter this year was an extra fine celebration of gratitude for me even though I was missing a certain someone.

It was one of the first years I had stepped forward and offered to host Easter dinner and as cook I had beginner’s luck whitewashed all over me that day.

My glazed ham, orange-glazed carrots, and homemade hot cross buns emerged from recipes unscathed and to the table in fine order, along with my mom’s yummy specialties of scalloped potatoes and deviled eggs.

 I don’t think I could duplicate the perfection of that meal nor the groaning satiable comments that followed.

Afterwards came the “Hunt,” which I planned post feast to avoid “The Hunger Games” sequel playing out as little children poked in all those jellybeans before eating a proper evening meal.

The dogs were outside while we devoured our supper, and to my recollection, with their noses pressed to the screen door pining for a scrap of ham or flung bun from a highchair.

What I didn’t know as I poured over my meal with saliva and a smile, was that “Dot” was indeed pasted to the screen door, while “Cash” was no where to be found.

I expect that during a pee break, Cash had sniffed out the scent of sweets emanating from the 126 grassy-knolled eggs we had placed them in.

More than 20 of the prizes were scattered from their hiding places, snapped open with the precision of a chipmunk’s dexterity, and emptied of their contents into the canine stomach.

Skulking dog syndrome ensued as I shook pointed finger at big black dog and uttered some lower form of improper English to the mutt who clearly had no clue what he’d done in the 15 minutes prior to my madness.

He just sat there burping up sweet fragrances of strawberry and pieces of purple gummy bears.

Life changes in an instant every day. More and more I’m learning to accept that some changes have few better options under my control than my attitude towards the thing.

I still get caught up in the muck and buck like a wild donkey sometimes but I really work on my outlook these days.

I remind myself of the outstretched pointed index finger of “Celie” (played by Whoopi Goldberg) in “The Color Purple.”

“Everything you done to me has already been done to you.” 

It’s my wisdom warning statement that reminds me that my reaction to the actions of others or to life in general is my karma.

The late mystery thriller writer Arthur Somers Roche once penned, “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”

I concur.

At 7:30 a.m. on Monday April 12^th in my diary I wrote, “I am struggling to compose myself in the face of my afternoon counseling session today. This is causing me the most turmoil I have felt in nearly 12 weeks.”

At 10 p.m. that same night I wrote in my diary, “My counsel session was not as bad as I anticipated. I cried and said it out loud [my undelivered communication to Jon] in front of my counselor and I felt better immediately. Immediately.”

I’ll be the first to admit I was a skeptical about this part of the healing process of recovery through counseling but I’m also the first to admit it’s been a life-changing event for me. I am—by my owning it—free.

Truly I am free.

I’ve worked very, very hard since January to find some peace in the face of the half-stitched scars that ooze unspeakable pain following a suicide.

If my brain and my heart could form calluses from working a program so hard, mine would have them.

Not only am I one of the many “left behind” by the tragedy. I was the one who came home at 4:30 in the afternoon that day and found the dark truth.

Suicide shreds the soul and slashes hope and creates unspeakable black crypts of self-doubt.

The nine minutes that followed that hour as I waited for the ambulance to get to my neck of the woods were the longest of my life. They have been weighted and judged on self-deprecated scales along with the 402 days that preceded it as I searched desperately to directly blame myself for what I did or didn’t do that affected Jon’s choice.

In the end I come up empty and I am filled up with gratitude.

Thanks to loving myself enough and to Riverside Counseling Services all of this horrid treatment of myself is over and I am free to experience this process without guilt and remorse and regret.

I am free.

Coming clean cuts like a knife

Monday, April 2, 2012

It’s Monday morning and I have a hell of a lot to write about and a whole lot of it that I really don’t want to write about, some of it that I do, and some of it that I am compelled to write about. 

So in lies my dilemma.

Last week I was bemoaning the dry spell and burn out that had arisen from perpetually pulling my heart out of my chest and letting it do all the talking as I wrote about life in the weeks since Jon committed suicide.

And I was tired. I really was creatively burned out, used up, parched of emotions, and ready for a break. So I just quit trying to find all the answers at the end of my fingers on a keyboard. 

Little did I know that the Universe once again was conspiring to assist me in the next leg of my journey. I think it always knows what I need. I just have to be open to it, stand back, or just plain ask the right questions of myself.

But of course there are no next steps in life, truly, until a lesson is learned or, as I am about to discover, until I cough up some undelivered emotional communication.

That’s going to happen for me today at 2 p.m. when I take all the positive and negative events that I have discovered (with help from my counselor) in my relationship with Jon and communicate and complete them with out loud apologies, statements of forgiveness, or statements of emotional significance. 

It all sounds big and wordy but what it really boils down to is about me moving towards being complete by coming clean. I would be stupid to think that I do not have undelivered communications to my dear late Jon in all three categories that I need to release to the Universe.

I readily admit however at this very moment I would rather have dental work done through my backside than open that gate just so I can close it. 

Just thinking about saying these things out loud to my counselor makes me run to the bathroom as if I had food poisoning. 

But if I don’t do my “me” work I do not heal and I do not get to pass “GO.”  This I know for sure.

I also know for sure that yoga is the new bomb for this green thumb mat monkey. 

If I’m not already taller from all that stretching, then I am well on my way to becoming the tree I want to be in my next life. 

I am learning the true meaning of “focus” and “breathe” AND although I’m still falling over while attempting it I am learning to hold a pose I’ve only seen in the movie “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.”

And although this next statement begs to be expounded on in many more columns—and it will be . . . 

“I am going to Wales in the United Kingdom for nine days in May.”

This is the miracle reward I received from the Universe at no cost to me when I was standing in the shower one night last week thinking “maybe I should start traveling and write 'The View From Here' from somewhere else.”

The next morning I had a random, “pulled the rabbit out of the top hat” email from a world traveler I know who was important to me even before I received the ticket money to “go smell the salt sea air and wash away my past and get healed.”

The quote I have on the wall above my writing desk that says “Today is where your book begins . .  the rest is still unwritten” just fell off in my lap. 

Thank you.