Thank you to everyone who supported me yesterday, on my Dad’s first anniversary of passing away, whether by a phone call, text, email, food, flowers at the door or even a gift basket brought by my sweet neighbour Lorie. It means a lot to be loved and accompanied by you all!Thank you also for your prayers which carried me through the day with a lot of extra peace and grace. We are truly so tenderly supported!
Last week, I was chatting with my friend Sister Angela as she came to drop off some bread and fruit for us (yup, spoiled again) and she said something helpful about loss. That there’s a saying that when you are missing someone, you should do what they would do…strive to imitate the things you admired about them.
So in my Dad’s memory, because he had such a heart for the poor and oppressed, we are going to make a donation to a family who is fleeing persecution overseas, and needs funds to help keep them at a temporary safe-house until they can get their refugee papers completed to come to Canada.
What grabs my heart is that they are good, hardworking people who are fleeing an unjust government, and that they had to leave almost everything behind, except their two children and a suitcase or two. In this precarious situation, with death threats hanging over them, they are trying to be a loving family and reassure their little children who just want to go back to school or play outside. Right now they can do neither.
But for $35 a day they have room and board for the next few months, and help to bring them food. This already is a miracle, as their previous situation was even worse. My dear friends Monique and Ryan who are fundraising for them are in direct contact with them, as one of their relatives is a student of Ryan’s. He explains much more on video updates on his gofundme site.
Please pray for their safety, as for all the paperwork to go through as soon as possible. if you’d like to hear more of their story, or share it with others, please visit the site below:
Here’s another poem about my Dad from this summer, written in early July.
The Simplest Things
It’s been nearly eight months but the simplest things can still set me off,
like dumping out Suzie’s Spicy Brown Mustard, which I took out of your fridge after you died and kept as long as possible (even long after it expired) just because I didn’t want to let any piece of you go—
anything that smelled like lunch with you, Dad, like you visiting, like you smiling at me from across the table, and it being the best day ever because you were there.
Until my October Garden post not long ago, I hadn’t written on my blog for so long. It is not that I stopped writing, but that I stopped sharing. Sorting through my Dad’s belongings this past summer while I cleaned out his apartment, I was at times overwhelmed with memories, longings and regrets. I read over old letters and cards I wrote him as a child. He saved every one in a special folder, “Anna.” Everyone since since before I could spell Daddy.
The pain of having lost so much time with him as a child after the divorce, and while living overseas in Holland as a teenager, resurfaced. I didn’t want to talk about it, because I didn’t want to hurt my Mum, but silence is suffocating, at least for me. I need to let things out to let them go.
I did pour that pain into poetry, and as my Dad’s one year of passing approaches on November 9th, I am going to share some with you again.
Since losing a baby 7 years ago in labour, and losing my Dad last year to cancer, I have written a lot of poetry about grief. I wonder if this bothers some people in our “get over it and on with it” society. Am I that weird lady who always writes about death?
At the core of it though, I realize I am ultimately writing about love—because love is what connects us beyond death. Grieving is not being stuck in the past, but honouring the fact that parts of your heart have gone ahead to the future, leaving holes until you are reunited.
All we can hope is that the holes will make our hearts bigger, and let the light shine through from those we love, who are already bathed in heavenly peace. If this is all too cheesy and cliché, that’s just too bad. I am tired of not sharing. So with no more fuss, here is one of my poems from this summer:
Laundry Landay
1 July, 2021
I am sitting in the living room folding laundry when I find a sudden sign of you
I inhale your familiar scent lingering beyond the grave in your soft pillow case
I crumple and hide my face in it faded and butter-soft from oh so many washing’s
I think of your quiet gentleness your simplicity, poverty, and deep love of peace
I remember your arms around me my eyes closed, my face resting against your shirt buttons
I breathe in deeply and the pain swells my heart bursting with the bittersweet scent of you, Dad
I miss you so much in ordinary little things…I’ll be deciding what to make for dinner, and thinking I’ll make something you like, and then suddenly remember that you can’t just drop in for dinner anymore. I will see someone in the corner of my eye wearing a reflective vest, and think for a second that it’s you, riding on your scooter. If a car goes by that looks like yours, my heart skips a beat, wondering if perhaps it’s you coming to visit. I still think, “Oh, maybe Dad can drive me to this appointment,” and then have to remember you can’t.
I was there when you were dying. I arranged your funeral and wept over your ashes when I picked up your urn from Kearney. I was there when you were buried, but my head and my heart are having a hard time catching up. It’s like I can’t really realize you’re gone. Often I say to myself, “I should really call Dad and catch up,” and then I remember that I disconnected your phone after you died, and why can’t I remember that? I feel like someone who is constantly waking up from a happy dream, only to have reality slap me in the face.
So many things remind me of you: the garden beds you built out front, filled with brave spring bulbs peeking out, and the planters in the backyard by the garage, your worksop, which contain the mournful remains of summer sunflowers and tomatoes, now scraggly and black, the little hooks on my cupboards which you hung up for my washcloths, and the many books on my homeschool bookshelves, which you were always bringing for the kids, whom you adored. It is hard to realize you’re gone because there are so many signs of your loving presence everywhere.
One night shortly after you died I couldn’t sleep, and went to read on the couch. I pulled a book from my Montgomery bookshelf: “Emily Climbs.” In it was an inscription from you to me as a child, “to my dearest ‘star,’ love + hugs–Dad.” Emily Starr was also very close to her gentle father, and lost him at a young age. Reading this always made me cry as a kid, because it felt like my pain in being separated from you after the divorce. I was four then, and now I’m forty, but I’ll always be your little girl, and being apart from you still hurts terribly, especially each time I momentarily forget, only to remember again.
Loving you always, and waiting to give you a huge hug in Heaven,
There is a common misconception that safety lies in control, and that the more powerful you are, the more you can control. But one thing my Dad’s recent death from cancer taught me is the bravery of surrender.
Let me back up a little to his last month or so of life. None of us realized quite how sick he was, although we had our suspicions. All of us, his family and friends, wanted to somehow rescue him, stop the disease, and make him get better again. After all, he had already recovered from the brink of death twice in the last five or six years.
But Dad, in his quiet, firm way, never making any drama or fuss, already knew. He spent this last year, this year of horrid covid isolation, preparing his apartment for me: purging papers, decluttering, labelling, sorting, highlighting his Marie Kondo books and covering his walls with mindmaps and plans for his home, putting everything in its place so it would be easier for me to deal with when he passed.
He kept telling me enthusiastically how many old papers he had sorted and gotten rid of, and still I didn’t realize. Perhaps it was too difficult for him to tell his only daughter the words “I’m dying” out loud.
When we went to the oncologist, and heard that his PSA’s were skyrocketing, I think he had confirmation that his fight was coming to an end, and he could now let go. He spoke to me of the peace of surrendering, but I stubbornly encouraged him to keep trying. His reaction was not despair, although I know now that the news hurt him deeply, but was his acceptance of a bigger plan, in which he no longer had to grip the wheel so tightly.
Page from my Dad’s journal
At first, when the pain intensified and his body no longer wanted food, he wanted to hide away by himself. He told me he felt like a grumpy bear who kept getting woken up while trying to hibernate.
Sketch from my Dad’s journal
But when I begged him, weeping over the phone, if I could not come and do something to make him feel better, not offering food or solutions, but merely comfort, he admitted he would perhaps like to be sung to.
So the next day, with the promise of a song and a gentle massage, he let me come and see him, lying in bed with his cozy toque and scarf, and very little able to move.
The next few days were a painful dance of trying to soothe, while also encouraging him to try to keep eating…pulling out all my best mom tricks, giving little sips of juice, convincing him to let me feed him minuscule bites of kiwi on a tiny grapefruit spoon.
“It’s your baby bird diet,” I joked, while blinking back tears.
After three days of this, I was able to speak to his oncologist over the phone and ask him the hard question:
“What is my role doctor, to try to save him, or simply to soothe him in his parting?”
His clear answer was given gently and honestly: “To soothe. Within a month, he will be with the angels.”
I was devastated—but also freed. No longer did I have to fight, but to surrender, and to walk my Dad as gently as I could to the gates of Heaven.
And Dad, you let me walk you there. You didn’t hide your weakness from me, nor your pain.
A few weeks before you had been hard on yourself, feeling like a terrible disciple, because you’d fall asleep every time you tried to meditate, even now, as you were trying to prepare your spirit for the next world.
Having a gentle, loving father like you has helped me understand the tenderness of God, so I said to you:“But Dad, don’t feel bad. God knows your heart, and he knows all you’re going through. He knows you want to spend time with him. Just tell him so before you settle in to pray, and it won’t matter if you fall asleep. Just imagine you’d come over to read to your granddaughter, and she, being only two, fell asleep on your lap. Would you be mad at her?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, it’s the same with our father God. He loves you and is so happy when you seek to be close to him, even when you’re asleep.”
Not long after, you found the courage to not only be a little child before God, but before me. You let me soothe your aches and gently stroke your head until you fell asleep. Thank you, Dad, for this honour.
Thank you, Dad, for surrendering to getting more help, when things became too much for me alone, playing nurse when all I know how to do is be a mom. The bravest thing you did was give up the comfort and control of your own home to enter hospice care, so that I would not have to worry that you’d be alone, in pain and unable to get a sip of water at 2 am.
You surrendered and let yourself be carried to the hospice by the friendly ambulance guys, and after six more days, in an atmosphere of peace and prayer, you let yourself be carried to Heaven.
Since you let me accompany you to the steps of Heaven, I know you’re still so close to me while I’m on earth. Together we struggled, we surrendered, and in the end, everything was perfect.
Just East Of Crazy Land 