ELIZA'S CROSS CANADA LOVE TOUR
Everywhere and Always
7/31/2019
It is my last day in Manitoba, and ostensibly the final day of my “love tour”. While I have continued to write a lot on this trip, I haven’t posted as much as I thought I would. At first this was because I started having a lot of fun and became more interested in the events of my travels than I was in describing them. Then when my Aunt passed away at the beginning of July I felt like I was back to square one emotionally and had no desire to share anything I was feeling with anybody. I hardly wanted to share it with myself. I was devastated for my aunt (I still am) and my family for having to go through this all again so soon. I also felt discouraged to be experiencing, what felt like, backward motion on my journey through grief after I had slowly started to feel better as I was traveling.
In many was, in this past month, I have felt the lowest that I have in the past six months. Everything that I had lost was finally catching up with me and I was no longer able to run. I hadn’t felt like I was running before; I was crying, trying to process and feeling my feelings and speaking what I felt out loud, but I was also in all new environments. I was not being confronted by any visceral memories of my mom. My trip felt like a fresh start and that was what I thought I needed to feel like I could be a human instead of a walking pile of grief. I had had very little expectations for my trip going into it, other than to let it be whatever it was going to be. To my surprise, what it started to be was amazing and while I was traveling I began to feel like I was developing a kind of narrative for my new life and finding the new version of myself that I was going to emerge as out of all this trauma. In short I was fooling myself into thinking that I had arrived at some sort of sustainable clarity. I had gained clarity, but like they are called “moments of clarity” because they are just that “moments”. At my aunt's funeral the bottom fell out of my beautiful dream and I was right back where I started; grieving the loss of yet another mother figure and wondering how I was supposed to deal with all of this again. I couldn’t fly away on another adventure this time, in fact the adventure was quickly coming to an end and the reality of regular life without my mom, and now without my aunt too, was about to begin. Emotionally I felt spent, but practically I had some strategies for forward motion which mostly consisted of putting one foot in front of the other. I put a sort of schedule in place to keep myself occupied, bike rides, and visits with family and meals with my grandpa. I have tried to take in the rest, and appreciate this past month by allowing myself to relax into this time where very little is expected of me, because I knew that soon that would soon change. Slowly, and not without many low moments, a way forward has begun to present itself. Now on the day I am returning to Toronto, I feel flickers of excitement again, and at least somewhat ready for another beginning. ... Yesterday Morning I went for one last walk out on the prairie, the same road I walked every day for five months while my Mom was in the hospital, it is the road that kept me sane. This road is where I let myself cry the most, because no one was ever around to hear it. Crying loudly on the open prairie is an activity I would recommend to everyone. It is highly cathartic and pleasingly dramatic (especially on a windy day). On this particular walk I was crying while listening to Chelsea handler's new book (Audio book) “Life Will Be The Death Of Me...And You Too” which is comprised of a lot of grief content, which is right up my alley lately. Chelsea details her therapy sessions where she realizes how the loss of her brother at a young age has still affected her so many years later in ways she never noticed before. #relatable. There is also a chapter specifically chronicling the loss of her mother to cancer (oh boy) and in that chapter she speaks about how she found herself feeling closer to her mom after she passed away. I’m paraphrasing of course, but she said that although in life they hadn’t always understood each other, suddenly, after she died, she felt her mom more acutely as a sort of warm presence watching over her. I was already crying but this hit me right to my core, I doubled over as if I had been punched in the stomach. That is not how I feel. I don’t feel closer to her since she died, and the only thing I feel acutely is her absence. I remember my mom speaking of her brother that way after he passed away, that she felt like they were suddenly closer, but neither my sibling nor I have described that same sensation. Some of her final words to us were about how she would send us signs, but I haven’t seen them. In fact, every time I think something might be a sign from her, It only reminds me she is gone and I feel worse. She was such a presence in my life, through her energy yes, but also tangibly, through touch and talk and laughter, so having her as energy or a concept only is a loss. I cried and cried and cried because in that moment I realized it had been so difficult to find the ways in which she may still be here when I am completely consumed by the ways she is not. I stopped and looked out on the prairie. Call it a sign, a voice inside my head, or divine intervention but I felt the sudden urge to listen. I took out the headphones. Next, I felt compelled to walk forward, down into the ditch, closer to the field full of canola flowers. As I was walking, I began to feel a little joy as I remembered how gleefully my mom would have walked through this tall grass, how much she enjoyed interacting with nature and how she always let us do the same. She never worried, when we were kids, if we would get dirty or procure a couple scrapes, she always encouraged us to run through the field, and jump in the leaves and play in the snow . A few more steps and now I was at the bottom of the ditch, low enough that yellow canola flowers were all I could see.They were vibrant and bright and taking a second to witness them filled my heart up a little more. As I climbed out of the ditch to observe them closer I thought to myself “maybe mom told me to listen to lead me here just to notice the flowers”. Once I was on the other side of the ditch, standing right next to the flowers now, I saw it, a beautiful, white butterfly. … Butterflies appeared to me through words and imagery time and time again in the year before my mom died. Before I found out she was sick, I had anointed 2018 a “butterfly year”. The transformation I had been expecting was not one that involved death, but even still, I had come to think my prediction may have been right. We were all changed forever by the events of that year, never able to return to who we were before, just as a caterpillar is changed forever once it leaves the cocoon. No choice but to fly. Since my mom passed away I have been quietly associating butterflies to her, only to find out recently that my cousins and uncle had been told specifically by my aunt that butterflies would be the signs to look out for from my aunt once she had passed. To my knowledge I hadn’t told my aunt about the butterfly connection to my mom and yet it was what she chose for herself and separately we had both come to the same conclusion. ... Here I was, standing on the prairie, and the more I expanded my vision the more butterflies I saw. They were everywhere. They had been there the whole time I had been walking of course, I just hadn’t seen them because I wasn’t paying attention. I can't say if this moment was sent to me by my mom (or my aunt for that matter) and personally I don’t believe she conjured the butterflies through of any sort magic, but she is, without a doubt, the reason that I saw them. That moment never would have happened without my mom, and to me the message was clear: I don’t need to look for signs, I don’t need to try to find my mom, I just need to pay attention to exactly where I am and she will be there. That moment with the butterflies provided me with a lovely epiphany. I don't notice my mom all the time for the same reason that fish don't notice water; because she is everywhere. I haven't felt her presence more clearly since she died because she had always been equally present in my life, that has never changed, the only change has been the loss, so that is what I noticed. Everywhere and always Over the past 7 months, everytime that I have cried over the pages of my journal searching for answers, pleading to the air, pathetically asking "where are you? Why did you have to leave?" all I hear is “I am here”. Over and over I hear her voice, full of gentle kindness saying "I'm here, I am right here with you, I am always right here". I don’t hear it with my ears but I know it in my bones. Her presence hasn’t gone anywhere, but I do have to take time to notice her, and that requires more work on my part. Sometimes it feels easier not to look for her and to instead let myself feel like she is gone and only gone. Sometimes it is easier to feel abandoned, easier not to notice the ways she continues to show up in my life because to notice how she is here, is also to notice how she is not. She is not here in any of the ways I had thought she would be, and we can’t do any of the things that we used to do together, or all of the things I had hope that we someday would. We won’t laugh together, chatting on a car ride, inevitably sitting in the car for an extra hour to chat more after arriving home at the end of the day. She won't ever brag about me to anyone again and I won’t meet that person only to have them say "I think I met you mom earlier?". I won't laugh knowing that they definitely met my mom earlier and she is probably making another new friend as we speak. I won't be able to support her dreams for the future and she won't be able to proofread what I'm writing right now. She won't ever ask me to send her my newest songs and she won't ever hear them. She won't meet who I marry (If I get married) and she won’t ever hold my children (If I have any). We won't eat a veggie burger on a patio discussing the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy. I won't be able to take her as my date to a special event and watch her charm the pants off everyone in the room. I will never get to take her to Australia with me. She won't be able to call me or text me or attempt a failed facetime. I will never hear her voice, consoling me or encouraging me or just telling me something new that she has never said before. I won’t see her cry. I won’t see her angry. I won't hear her laugh. I won’t watch her fill with joy and jump into action. I will never be able to hug her or smell her or see her again and the list of things that are lost could go on forever. My grief counselor talked about finding a way to re-integrate your loved one into your life in a new way and although I understood the concept intellectually, any “new way” felt empty compared to the old way. Everything felt empty because of the never-ending list of the things I had lost. Things I thought we would do together, things we could have experienced, things I thought my life would be when my mom was still in it. But standing on the prairie yesterday morning I began to feel something new. Not only did I notice the butterflies, but I also noticed that the list of things was just that. A list of things. It was not her. And if there is a list of the things that have been lost since she died, there is also a list of the ways she is still in my world and always will be. She was with me on every step of this trip because I wouldn't have taken it if it wasn't for her. She was in every conversation I had, and even though she won’t brag about me, I got to brag about her to all her friends and hear them do the same. I found her picture in the hallway of her university and I saw backstage at the theatre where her and my dad first met. I stood where she had stood in multiple provinces all across Canada and I told everyone I met about her and how she would have loved this grand adventure I was having. She is in the way I talk and what I choose to talk about. She in my laugh and my smile and quite frankly my whole face. I have her feet and her hands and as I age they will look like hers more and more. She is in my words and my creativity. She is in my gentleness and my enthusiasm my kindness and my determination. She is in my sibling and the love we have for each other. She is in all the creative works she left behind many of which were written specifically for my sibling and I. She is why I write, why I sing, and why I notice canola flowers on the side of the road. She is why I want to hug every tree I see. We love vegetables and we don't eat meat. We are more interested in picking up rocks to feel their history than learning about that rock from a book. We want to feel the wind and the water and the hot and the cold and exist in nature as much as we can. We want to walk for hours, especially if it's sunny, but even if its raining. We dance in the rain. We smile at new faces and don't treat them like strangers, even if they are, and we see the good in people even when you have to look closely. We love people, and we give them the benefit of the doubt. I say “we” because now everything I do we do together. My mom is "right here" always, in the fibre of my being and if I keep paying attention she will continue to show up for me in new ways that I can add to my new list. Everything I have experienced on this trip, she has too, because she hasn't gone anywhere. If anything she has just gone everywhere. I haven’t found a permanent clarity, I never will, grief is forever and it would be silly to try to “get over it” or to think that I had figured anything out. Even still, at least in that moment on the prairie, and this moment heading home after my beautiful “love tour” I feel like I have stopped looking for signs from my mom. I don’t need to. She isn’t in any one sign or with me in any one moment, she is simply with me. She is everywhere that I am, always. Lets face it, not even death could keep my mom away from me, not now, not ever.
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Vertigo
6/2/2019
Grief messes with your mind and mine never felt particularly regular to begin with.
For example, long before grieving, I used to have this recurring sensation of a pair of scissors cutting through my clothing. The blade would cut through my t-shirt and bra smoothly, in one even stroke, leaving me exposed. The leftover scraps of clothing would fall gently to the ground. The sensation would come to me most often in public. I would describe it as a sort of vertigo. Akin to standing on the edge of a high platform and feeling you will jump, even if you don't want to, that some unstoppable force will intervene and cause you to throw your own body over the edge. In this sensation/vision however, I would often be the one wielding the scissors. The feeling hinged on the fact that I could be suddenly naked by my own hand, that if given the tools I could be laid bare for all to see at anytime. Instead of feeling afraid and out of control, like you might during a bad bout of vertigo, the image in my mind made me feel free. As if at any moment I could rid myself of society’s trappings, clothing, identity, civility, sanity, all in one or two cuts. It became a strange sort of fantasy. Not one I was actively choosing but one that would come to me from time to time, and land in my mind as a comfort. "Ah yes, that’s an option" I wouldn’t choose it of course…but it was an option. I would venture a guess that sudden public nudity isn’t an uncommon desire. We were all born naked after all, and if no one else wanted to be naked in public there wouldn’t be nude beaches, or exhibitionists. Still, probably imagining that I might cut off all my clothes in public isn’t totally “normal”. Even so, it never bothered me much. It was only a thought, and everyone thinks weird things you wouldn’t want to say out loud…right? My current mental “comfort” is more extreme, but it doesn’t concern me much either. Perhaps the only thing unnerving about it is how little in concerns to me. I see myself cut, sliced open with the same ease as the t-shirt being torn apart by scissors. In my mind, the cuts do not cause pain, but instead create an opening, a way to see inside. To see my heart, my chest, my spine. To be able to scoop out the pain, to tear myself open in order to let the pain pour out of me. Right now, everything feels trapped, I feel trapped in my body. So, in my mind, I see myself being able rip apart so easily that the pain would have no choice but to leak out through all the empty spaces. To be explicitly clear, for everyone reading this who loves me, I don't want to hurt myself. Not at all. The same way I don't want to be naked for no reason on a crowded street. What I want is to feel free, only now the trappings to escape aren’t societal, they are on the inside. Grief, despair, anger, guilt, pain, the possibility that my genes are diseased or broken. It all feels too much to bare, I want it all out, I need it out of me.... but I can't use scissors. I can only use tears and words. Even after watching Grey's Anatomy for years, I never understood the appeal of surgery before, but now I do. It’s efficient. To take the broken diseased part of you out and leave it on a sterile tray. Just like that it’s gone, no longer tormenting you from the inside. But what do you do when you can't live without the damaged broken part? When everything you are is a broken part. When you can't cut yourself open take out the pain and leave it behind. I don't know…but I do know that, sometimes, imagining that I could is a comfort. I would also venture a guess I’m not alone in that either. Acceptance: Part 2
5/10/2019
Face The Truth On November 12th, 2018, I sat down on the bed and cried.
I was in the guest bedroom of my Grandpa’s condo in Brandon, Manitoba, the same bedroom my mom had been living in before she was diagnosed with cancer only a few months before. Sitting and crying on what still felt like her bed, I couldn’t understand what was happening and I didn’t want to. Instead I started down the familiar path of painful questions. How had this become my life? How can my mom be sick? Why did this happen? What could we have done differently? What had any of us done to deserve this? How is this possible? Then for the first time, I said to myself “It’s not fair.” “It’s not fair.” I chanted it again and again to myself until eventually the tears started to slow, and, to my surprise, I began to feel more and more calm. I took one deep breath after another and on the exhale, I would say it again “It’s not fair.” In my journal that day I wrote about the clarity that came from that simple statement: Is it strange that eventually that idea felt comforting? Just... that it isn't fair? I can't explain it. I guess it’s because it really isn't fair and at least I know that is true. Amidst all the uncertainty I know one thing for sure- It's not fair. Months later the grounding effect of these words does not seem strange to me at all. I didn’t know it at the time but through acknowledging that the situation I was in wasn’t fair, I was also acknowledging that it was happening, that it was real. I had spent months up until that point in disbelief being unable and unwilling to believe what was happening. I knew in my mind that it was true, but it was too painful to go there. Denial is like a hallucinatory drug that tricks us into believing we are safe in our beds when in reality we are wandering around a cliff’s edge late at night about to fall to our deaths, plunging head first into the icy waters below. If we were to become sober to the reality we would at first be disoriented and terrified, the illusion would feel safer, but it is only with our sober minds that we have any power to save ourselves from the danger at hand. When you cut yourself you have to acknowledge you are bleeding before you can stop it. Acceptance heals, plain and simple. Once I accepted what was happening to my mom was “not fair” the first question inevitably became “okay…so now what?”. My mom is sick, she may die, this is the reality, what do I need to do to move forward? For me the answer to that question was “pretty much exactly what I have already been doing” (be with her, make sure she knows I love her, say what I need to say and really hear everything she has to tell me). Finally I had an answer. While I was in Manitoba, I began watching a lot of horror movies. I found them suddenly relatable for obvious reasons. One common thread present in almost all the horror that I watched was the moment in the film where the protagonist stops doubting themselves or thinking they are “crazy” and instead accepts that the terrifyingly insane situation are experiencing is real. In other words, the moment they stopped screaming and running away and turned to face the monster head on. This is a perfect example of the power of acceptance; You can’t overcome anything you refuse to acknowledge. Even now, the days I spend most lost in grief, most distraught and heartsick, are the ones when I can’t seem to accept the reality. Days after nights spent dreaming of her, where her alive self feels as real as it ever did. Days like that are the most painful because they confuse the truth and make acceptance much more difficult. On the other hand, I feel strongest and most clear on the days I’m able to know for sure what has happened, to remind myself she has died right away. Knowing she is gone helps me stay present. Do I still wish things were different? of course, but wanting things to be different won’t change reality. As much as it’s not the reality I would have chosen it is still my life, and sure life isn’t fair but it can still be beautiful. For me, there is great freedom to be found in the truth, in the times am brave enough to face it. Acceptance: Part 1
5/7/2019
Feel The Love In times of tragedy, gifts will appear. They may be small like a card or a casserole. They may be large, like a place to stay or a plane ticket. They may be difficult to see through darkness, and you may deny that they are there at all, but they will be there. Accept them. Accept all the gifts with joy. Let yourself feel the love. Let yourself be loved. If a gift is impractical or unneeded, share with the giver what you do need. If you do not know what you need, that is okay, but find a way to accept the love. The help being offered may not suit you, but you can always accept the love. When you are lost and your heart is broken, there will be gifts of light and kind words. When you are grieving and you soul is heavy, there will be gifts of strong people to help shoulder the burden. The gifts may not come all at once, they may trickle in slowly over time, but if you pay attention they will be there. The gifts and the angels are everywhere. Look for them. Do not treat them as a consolation prize for your pain, receive them as if they were born of no sorrow. If you are afraid you are taking to much, or you do not feel worthy, remember that greeting the givers and receiving their bounty is also an act of giving. If giving is a gift to yourself, receiving is a gift to the giver. Receiving with love is how to give when you have nothing left. The more we turn away good things the more we teach people not to offer. Even worse, we teach people that their offerings are not enough. We teach them that their love has no worth to us. Let the love from others hold worth to you, and you will let others feel their love is worthy. Heal by accepting. Give by receiving. Allow yourself to fill up on love, to become so full of love that it will begin to overflow, showering back onto all the givers. So full of love, that through accepting help, you have once again become one of the givers yourself. Through accepting the gifts that tragedy brings you, you can become the angel you needed. Pain
4/25/2019
I am someone who has tended to avoid painful experiences if I can help it. I'm only assuming, but I guess that's pretty common. Not only have I avoided physical pain, but also emotion pain and especially conflict of any kind.
When I was a kid and people would start fighting, I would quietly back away and find anywhere else to be hoping that no one would notice I had gone. When the “scary parts” of movies came on, like in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” (spoiler alert, but also, you’ve had your chance) when Quirrell slowly unwraps his turban to reveal Voldemort underneath it, I would close my eyes. If I got physically hurt, I would nurse my wounds diligently and show them off to anyone who was around, and if I was emotionally hurt, I was not quick to forgiveness. I was the youngest in a big family full of cousins and being coddled was one of my greatest joys in life. I was hard on myself and a not-so-secret perfectionist, but I loved the “get out of pain free card” that being the baby of the family often afforded me. Consequently, whenever I did encounter pain, it felt like a monumental event. There was a phase of time when I was around 8 years old when I remember thinking that I was cursed. We had been lucky enough to be able to go to the indoor play place “Adventure City” a couple times that year, but each time right before going I had hurt myself badly. The first time I had a huge wipeout on my bike, and the second time my finger was accidently caught in a slammed door and I lost most of my nail. The nail incident was especially traumatic and the combination of the two had formed a very clear pattern in my head; “I go to adventure city, I get hurt.” Confirmation bias then kicked in for me hard and in the coming years anytime we went to adventure city I would look for examples to prove my theory true. “I got kicked” or “I slipped in the ball bit” or “ I scraped my knee”, incredibly common things to happen in a rowdy day of playing on a giant play structure, but in my mind, irrefutable proof. It was reassuring to feel like I knew the way of the world and when the pain would come. It felt like I understood the pain, and if I could predict it then maybe I could control it. As I grew up I unconsciously continued this pattern. I was a mostly a healthy gal but the times I did get sick or injured almost always centred around big life events. Specifically, things I had been excited about and looking forward to. Trips, sleepovers, performances, camping trips etc. Examples of this include but are not limited to: Falling off the stage in my middle school’s production of Annie, injuring my back two days into gymnastics camp and throwing up hours before my high school holiday show. I could relay each and every detail of these events and all the dozens of other examples, because I told these stories to others and myself over and over again. For so many years, I was surprised when I would get through an exciting event unscathed by injury or illness. I suffered through countless trips, friend’s birthday parties, performances etc. plagued by ailment and eventually I just got used it it. It changed my view of reality because I truly believed that for me that was just how life was. In many ways it became a part of my identity. It made me feel weak, and like a part of me was always holding my breath. The incident that broke the camel's back, or more aptly its neck, came when I was 17. I have mild scoliosis, but I started doing ballet at an early age and the introduction of proper posture into my life came before puberty, so many of the negative effects my condition were mollified. That is, of course, until I woke up in the middle of the night in searing pain screaming for my parents. In that moment I was pretty sure I was about to die, all I knew about neck issues was that if your neck was broken you could die, and I couldn’t move a millimetre without experiencing more intense pain than I’d ever every felt, so much so that I was sure it must be broken. Up until recently it was the scariest thing I had ever experienced. I felt trapped in my own body, unable to move for fear of even worse pain, but somehow my parents and I made it to the emergency room. The drive to the hospital was less than three blocks away but every second was excruciating. Every bump we encountered made the pain 10 times worse. Once the doctor finally saw me, I was informed that I had temporary torticollis (or wry neck), and to our dismay there was nothing to be done but take some pain medication and wait for it to go away. It could take days or longer, but the next day my performing arts high school was putting on its annual holiday variety show (the one I had been throwing up during two years prior) and I was supposed to be in 3 group dances as well as a variety of sketches and songs. In my condition, I would be unable to perform. It had happened again, only worse, because I couldn’t suffer through it, I was going to have to miss out altogether. Nothing about this felt controlled or reassuring, I was terrified. The stiffness and the pain went away within a week (with the help of a chiropractor/naturopath that I still see) but the fear burrowed deep inside me, infesting my brain with questions: “Should I go on this rollercoaster?” “Should I stay home today?” “Is my neck going to spasm again?” “What if it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse?” “If it’s like this now, how will it be when I’m older?” “What kind of life will I have if I’m always in pain?”. In many ways the fear of the pain became bigger than the pain itself, and as much as I continued living my life as I had, the shadow of that pain followed me and the next several years of my life were spent in constant conversation with my pain, attempting to fend off it’s advances. My neck never spasmed again after that first time but I spent many days in bed, my neck stiff and immovable, forced to rest for fear of it becoming worse. I recently re-read a journal entry I wrote a couple of years ago on one such day. In it I wrote “I wish to know myself as intimately as my pain does”. Pain had become my barometer for what I could handle. It stopped me before I went too far, it pulled me back if I had been pushing myself too long, it forced me to rest. Unlike what I believed when I was a child, I was not the one who predicted, understood or controlled my pain, it predicted, understood and controlled me. My beliefs around pain controlled my life. The pain was real, but the stories were not. I can have fun without getting hurt, I can live a life uncontrolled by pain but to do that I had to face it. Not only face it but embrace it in every way. I had spent so much time resentful of the pain, trying desperately to push it away, and it only made things worse. I was ashamed of myself for not being stronger, embarrassed of what I saw as a character flaw, instead of merely incidental. When I look back at those events now, I don’t see my weakness but my strength. I am amazed by how I was able to make the best of those situations. I wasn’t weak, I was strong and brave. When I fell off the stage I got back up and kept going, when I injured my back during gymnastics camp I still went back every day doing modified versions of every exercise, when I had the flu during the holiday show I rested curled up in a ball in the dressing room whenever I wasn’t needed onstage, but when I was called I pulled it together and made it through each number so that my grandparents (who had flown in from out of town) were able to see me perform. Pain had not actually controlled my life, it was just a part of my life, a part I had tried desperately to avoid for fear of seeming weak for not being able face it. Except, I had faced it and come out the other end repeatedly. For all my avoidance and self blame and resistance, I had faced pain and it had not proved me to be weak, it had shown that I was strong. When my mom was in the hospital, she was in pain pretty much all the time. She never described it as pain to her nurses, she used terms like “tight” and “uncomfortable”, but still it was present most of the time every day for months. Not just physical pain but emotional pain too. Through all the pain my mom was resilient and brave in the face of unimaginable circumstances. Even still, one day in a particularly hard moment she told me that she was afraid we would think she was a fraud because she had always believed in things like being able to “heal yourself” and meditation and “breathing through the pain”, but she hadn’t been able to do that. From the inside she felt like she was fighting a battle with pain she couldn’t win, and in that moment needed help seeing her strength. I responded right away "Don’t think that for one second when you are in the middle of pain you have to do anything but experience it, however you need to. It can be all consuming, but in the moments of grace you have been kind and encouraging and hopeful and playing with babies and having birthdays and living your life, so you have been doing exactly what you said". She started to cry saying "How did you get so smart" I laughed and as a not-too subtle compliment to her I said, "I've been paying attention". I feel like wisdom has a way of floating back and forth between people depending on who needs it. In that moment she needed to hear those words from me, even if she was the only reason I knew what to say at all. … I can’t overcome pain, no one can, I can’t control it or will it away or find some secret key to becoming its master, but I can accept it. Instead of trying to avoid pain I can embrace it as a part of life and stop letting it have so much power over how I feel about myself. The other day I woke up stiff with a familiar twinge in my neck. I put on some muscle relaxing cream, I drank lots of water, tried to relax, and I kept going about my day. I had to clean the apartment I was staying in, thanks to a generous friend, before I left Halifax the next day on a five-hour bus ride to PEI (a not-so fun activity to do with a painful neck). I spoke with a friend on the phone and expressed that I was slightly nervous, but I was just going to start cleaning anyway, gently and a little at a time. So, I swept, and I dusted, and I washed the dishes and I cleaned the bathroom and did the laundry and made the bed and a few hours later the same friend checked in to see how I was doing. Much to my surprise I realized that pain had left as easily as it came, and my neck felt almost 100 percent better. I also I realized that even if it hadn’t started feeling better, I probably would have kept cleaning anyway, or I would have stopped and rested, either way it wasn’t a big deal. An Invitation
4/20/2019
"What would you do if you were suddenly homeless, jobless and mom-less all at the same time?" This is not a typical travel blog. Or really, it’s not a travel blog at all. More than likely I won’t mention the traveling much as that is not really what this “love tour” is about. On January 05th 2019 my mom passed away from uterine cancer. I had spent five months in Manitoba, away from my home in Toronto, to be with her. After she died, I intended to return home to my “normal” life, if that was even possible. Surprise! It was not possible. On the morning of January 22nd, 2019 there was a fire next to my apartment. I woke up to a bunch of text messages from people who thought I was home when the fire broke out. I was not. I was safe in Manitoba at a friend’s house, set to fly home that evening. There was also a frantic phone message from my boss, you see, my apartment was located right on top of where I worked. By the time I returned home it became clear that my apartment and the store where I worked had been so badly smoke damaged that it would be many months, if not longer, before either would be safe to live/work in again. Everything had gone up in smoke. Literally. I just lost my mom and now I had no job and no place to live. The fire felt like an outward representation of how I felt on the inside: Altered, damaged and entirely unrecognizable to myself. It was the crappy cherry on top of a horrific year, but if I’m being honest, a tiny part of me felt relieved. I wasn’t ready to fit myself back into the life that had been waiting for me. My former life felt like a beautiful dream, a perfect intangible place slipping away in the harsh light of morning. A place that I was no longer able to inhabit even if I wanted to. I didn’t have room in my heart for the fire to devastate me, but I was completely lost, and had no clue what to do now. So, like the mediocre millennial I am, I posted on Facebook: “What would you do if you were suddenly homeless, jobless and mom-less all at the same time? Looking for actual plans as well as humorous suggestions as either would brighten my day.” Aside from the recommendations to adopt a pet ferret and purchase a monocle, almost everyone told me to come and visit them. When my mom was in the hospital, she often felt guilty for having to turn down people’s requests to come and visit her. She was exhausted and unable to predict how she might feel on any given day. In an effort to calm her worries I would tell her she didn’t have to spend any energy worrying about whether she could say yes to every visit because if things “went south” I would go on a “farewell tour” and visit everyone to thank them for the love in person. It was slightly morbid, but dark humour becomes a comfort when every day feels like a mini horror movie, and I do believe it comforted her slightly too. “I’ll visit everyone.” I promised. Now a few months later it seemed like I might actually have the opportunity to “visit everyone” and travel across Canada to see all the people I love and the people that loved my mom. I knew this is exactly what she would have wanted for me, an adventure. It’s the kind of adventure that we would have done together if she were alive. This is usually where someone might mention making lemonade out of lemons, and sure, you could say that. However, I prefer to see it as taking my lemon on a road trip. The lemon in this metaphor is grief (in case you were confused) and It’s not going anywhere. I can’t smash it or squeeze it or add sugar to its juices to make it any less bitter or more palatable, but I can bring it along as a passenger. I can let my lemon propel me forward or at the very least, not hold me back. Lemons aside, it has only been a few months since I lost my mom and I am still right in the thick of it. My mom was my best friend and I miss her constantly with every fibre of my being. This trip will be a journey through grief as much as it is one across Canada, likely more so. There may be a travel anecdote here or there, but mostly, I plan for this to be a place to share my thoughts, feelings and musings about life and loss and my mom. Then again if I have learned anything so far, it’s that plans change, so who knows what this blog will become. Either way, you are invited to join me and follow my “Love Tour” as I travel both across Canada and the treacherous waters of my grieving heart. Love to you, -Eliza |
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