Laughter is the Best Medicine

 

I slept through the night! I had a shower! It’s not even nine am and I am drinking coffee, watching it snow outside! Oh, and Eydie and I podcasted yesterday and will create another today.

Going back to something one loves - for me recording this levity-filled, yet often profound little podcast of ours, 2 Chitchat Chicks - felt a little iffy because Eydie and I knew it could never be quite the same. In the early days after Emily’s passing, I was quite sure the 2 Chit Chat Chicks would also go the way of memories. After all, who can or should chitchat and laugh in the face of catastrophe?

This is a lesson I am learning in fits and starts: laughter is essential, even if it sometimes subsides into tears. The two live so closely together, probably even share the same bed. Even in my my most somber of times and sharing about the most challenging of topics, there has always had humour hiding in the wings. I’m a little bit famous (in small circles that mostly include students) for my storytelling skills, and even the saddest of stories is always fringed with funny. 

I was even able to make Emily laugh fairly often, bring her to lighter places - and she was a tough audience. She had strong opinions about what made for good humour, but huddling up with the family, Emily often in the middle, on the sofa or the bed with a popcorn bowl shared between our laps, we would watch Shitt’s Creek, Kim’s Convenience, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, and of course Ted Lasso, with the laptop screen perched on the coffee table or on a pillow. Our family prioritised this snuggling sweetness over visual acuity when it came to our comedy-watching, for which I am now so grateful. 

(Btw, If you wish to honour Emily and have not yet watched one of these series, this is one way you might do it. She knew quality. As I write this, I know she is saying, “Yes, Mama, this is a great idea.” You might also want to combine your watching with Don’s famous popcorn that Emily and I never said no to: olive oil, gently heated in the wok on lower-than-usual heat, put in just a few kernels until they pop, and then pour in a bunch more, jiggle-shake the wok continuously, and voila. I’ve never made this myself, so Don may have more advice, but that’s it from what I can tell. He’s been making it for me since we met in Taiwan, fell in love our first day together, he learned I was a serious popcorn eater and we had only a wok and a burner. It's been one of his many acts of love these 30 odd years. When I am sad, he will often ask, "Can I make you some popcorn?" That's the kind of guy he is.)

But I digress. Emily was a serious student of film. She could’ve have and might’ve been a film maker. While erring on the serious, deep and metaphorical, she always made time for comedy. And her laughter was magic. Her smile, oh my: how her eyes crinkled up and nearly closed when she smiled…

So today, on this New Year’s Eve, when we will be going to Steve and Jeanie’s for pot roast, not on the town for a party, I will laugh and I will smile. Of course, I will cry a bit too, but it won’t overtake me.

Emily loved to laugh. She invites you to laugh also. Some people say it’s the best medicine. Let’s all give it a go. Emily would love that.

Just Say Hi

 

There is a level of guilt that I had been experiencing that if I was not thinking of Emily often enough or with enough intensity, I was perhaps not grieving enough, which is pretty much exclusively my full time job with the time off we have been given for the most horrendous of reasons.

When my Facebook memories came up a few mornings ago after another dismal night alternating between non-sleeping and graphic nightmares, I audibly sighed, feeling the obligation to look at all the precious photographs of days gone by, and the consequent sadness. Then, I heard a voice in my head gently saying, “You don’t need to look today, Mama. Do something else.”

With that whisper of permission, I went on to read my cosy book , snuggle a bit with my sweetie, and get on with another day - each one feeling so busy in spite of no routine, no schedule, no obligations…the oddest time I’ve ever experienced, even as a teacher with summers free.

Emily continued to come up in conversation, in thoughts, in everything really, and this teeny voice kept repeating a mantra to me, “Just say hi, Mama.”

So it was the first day that I did not ruminate. Whenever Emily came up in my thoughts I just said, “hi” and smiled, even if it was a sad smile. It mostly worked. It felt good. I didn’t feel guilty. And it gave me some breathing room. I acknowledged my youngest daughter, chose to believe her presence was with me, and carried on.

Of course, I spoke of her. How could I not? There were many and varied conversations of Emily throughout the day. There was grief, and lots of discombobulating: it took the longest time to get through Walgreens to pick up a tiny assortment of things, with Ellen following a short distance behind me, gently managing my perambulations.

Our plan had been to go to a wee wool shop and purchase some lovely yarns so Charlotte and I could begin new projects (Don’s 15 cast-on stitches for his first scarf turned into 43 after less than 10 rows, so we are letting him take a break or perhaps find another way to keep his hands and mind busy). After a long drive across town, we found the shop closed. The snow had become sleet and driving by strip malls and fast food joints, to find ourselves at JoAnn Fabrics exemplified to me all that was wrong with the world. Why so much ugliness and sameness and lack of creativity, even in a craft store? I sat on a wheelchair at the front, waiting for Charlotte to finish her perusing.

Coming home, tears streamed down my face in silence as Ellen drove and Charlotte sat in the back. Gratefully, no conversation was expected. In these days at Ellen’s and the same at my sister, Nicole’s, and my dear friend Steph's, I have done exactly nothing to help. I have sat, often in stupified silence, as love, manifested as efficiency and industry, is all around me. There is chopping and murmuring and washing of dishes and steam from woks and pots and stoves. Nothing is expected in return, not even conversation. They know that in this infancy of grief, nothing can be expected. I hope they know their loving ministrations, providing us with a soft buffer against the storm of sadness, is the most profound kind.

The worst is bringing out the best in all around us so we can gingerly tiptoe through this time, in soft woollen socks.

Just say hi. Breathe in, breathe out. Just say hi.

Snow

 

In, out

Deep, slow

Ease, flow

Relax, release

These are the words I have adapted from Thich Nich Hanh’s book, How to Live When a Loved One Dies. I have long been a fan of this monk, and Don and I are most days reading a chapter and doing some breathing together based on some of his gentle meditations as we continue to live through this trying time.

I woke up to snow this morning - not just snow on the ground - but giant, airy flakes coming down with a gentle intensity. Ellen is sitting across from me in the living room, in her robe, planning dinner, Kal is puttering around the house and my beloveds are still sleeping, though I had to wake Charlotte up to show her the cascading snow in case the party ended before she decided to wake up at noon. Soon, I will go and nudge Don so he too can share in this joy. It’s the first snow we have seen in more than a few years and it somehow lightens my heart and further encapsulates me in a quiet warmth and stillness.

I’ve returned to my black coffee, no longer requiring sweetness or creaminess to make the start on a day. It seems more appropriate to have a somber cup of black fortitude to meet the day.

In an hour, I will have an online therapy session since we are away from our temporary home in Vancouver, and I look forward to processing a bit more. I am breathing more easily, able to not just skirt around the edges of grief because of all the trauma that has electrified me around Emily’s sudden passing. 

I know it seems as though I have been grieving and I have, but much of my process has been around trauma in these early days. A lovely lady has entered my life, another member of the “club” who lost her son some years ago, and she often messages me after reading my blog, sending solace. One of the things that she wrote was about how her grief has globalized and she may be doing something mundane in her day-to-day tasks, not thinking about her son at all, and she will suddenly well up and cry, not even recognising it is there until it is.

Presently, I am triggered by things: something unexpected in a tv show, yesterday it was the first line sang by the “Cork and Jug Band” at the Harmony, a bar on Atwood Street, a place that Don and I had frequented often, as we lived just across the street from it during our fleeting year in Madison some 20 odd years ago. It was where Eydie, Don’s ex-girlfriend, now one of my best friends and podcast partner, had helped us plan our little wedding in a cabin on a lake, with an annoying justice of the peace, a missing brother-in-law/best man who had gotten lost on the way, a blue wedding dress, a shabby chic motif hastily but beautifully arranged by interior decorator extraordinaire Ellen, multiple plates of olives that needed to be auctioned off because Don thought that everyone loves olives, even though there were probably less than 30 people there, a walk out onto the iced-over lake, my dad wearing a blazer that looked suspiciously as though it had come out of the woman’s section, bloody Mary’s (though they should have been Caesars - why did this Canadian not insist on that simple twist?), and Leah laughing through her vows because she didn’t want to marry her beloved Don, just stay with him forever.  And now, we will do it again: because we have so much to pledge now, eternal reasons to stay together, bound inextricably in the richness of our experiences, our daughters, our travels, our adventures, our joys, and, yes, our sorrows…

Last night, in the first thrums of the blue grass band’s opening - how could I not have realised it was Blue Grass? - I felt horrified by the twangs and banjo and wailing voices - and then suddenly, “This girl…”: a tune about never having loved a girl more. I grabbed my coat, eyes welled up with tears and also the discordant (to me) sounds hawing, looked fleetingly at Don lining up to buy us all beers (me a hot water - haha), and said, “I gotta get outta here.” He nodded in understanding, also frequent victim to these unexpected triggers. With my hand on the back door,  tears tipping over,  my dear Eydie walks in: the Eydie of this bar where we planned the wedding together, her insisting that we needed to celebrate not just go to the courthouse, the Eydie that has become my mainstay over these many years since.

And that was that. In the best of ways. We sat in a little corner in the back, as far away from the music as possible, her in just a sweater, me bundled up in down coat and scarf, and laughed and cried, and found joy together in yet another reinvention of love and friendship after loss. It was exactly the same, except with that mantle of sadness, that careful introduction of an entirely new element that will now forever be a part of our friendship. 

So slowly, I circumnavigate this grief, occasionally diving in like a dog into the ocean with all four paws, and often scampering around the edge of it, tentatively exploring what it can look like outside in the wider world.

The meditation is helping me, the breathing, the storytelling and remembering. Saying Emily’s name. 

Emily loves snow. Today she is happy for us to be surrounded by this flurry of whiteness. If she were here, she would already be outside. 

Flying into the Light

 

It’s been a few days since writing and I haven’t really had any private moments in between travels and family over the last few days. I’m worried I may have lost my ‘touch’ because my fingers have been flying on the keyboard the last month and very little editing has been necessary before I’m satisfied with what I’ve written. I think it’s because I am processing, not imagining, not self-editing, not looking for beauty or cadence or a message. In fact, I’m trying to find meaning in something that goes so far outside the fringes of being able to make sense that it might as well be in another galaxy.

We are now in Madison, Wisconsin via Vancouver, a night in Seattle with my sister, brother-in-law and Dad, and a three and a half layover in Chicago O’Hare. Madison is Don’s hometown and a place of beloved refuge for us with Don’s sister and brother-in-law, whom we also count among our closest friends, hosting us. We will ‘winter’ here for a little over a week, to grieve with Don’s family and other dear friends, but more to receive solace and love and make yet another new beginning in a pivotal place for our family, without Emily’s physical presence.

Something I thought of on the airplane last night as we were flying over Lake Michigan - first over Chicago, then Milwaukee, and then over farmlands and small hamlets and onward to Madison - is this: if one is an atheist before losing a child, especially to the disease of depression or any other mental illness, the process of going forward without hope of a beyond would be unendurable. I challenge anybody in such an unenviable position to not change their belief system.

So…here I sit, in the sunroom with subdued afternoon light filtering through the barren branches of winter, colours and fabrics and carpets and coziness surrounding me, a cop of Rishi tea, yellow with turmeric in its clear mug, my ever-present tiger balm jar beside me, and a crocheted blanket and warm socks to wrap me more deeply than I already am in a hot flush of love and compassion.

I recognise I am not only receiving compassion from others, but I am gifting it to myself with these physical accoutrements along with much self-soothing in the form of stroking my arms, clasping my hands tenderly in a prayer of sorts, rocking gently - always choosing the chair that rocks as well. I’ve not always been so gentle with myself, so the giving and receiving of it feels profound.

It’s becoming easier to talk about Emily off-the-cuff, without always having a confluence of grief that follows the mentioning of her. As a family, we have committed to the importance of ‘saying her name,’ bringing her up in the conversation; we are beginning to do it now with a bit more ease, though it is in no way easy. We never know when the tears will come and for how long or how intense it will be in any given moment, but there is more self-regulation now from all of us. We are becoming accustomed to Emily in her memory-form and growing into thinking about her in her non-physical form, and how that can be a part of our individual and family life.

When we arrived last night and sunk into the haven of the basement here at Ellen and Kal’s house, where our family has stayed so many times with great joy and such welcome, there were immediate tears. The bed set up for Charlotte was always Emily’s bed, with Charlotte on the sofa. As soon as we descended to this space, always lovingly prepared for our family of four, we all felt the whoosh of absence, the multitude of memories, and the agony of knowing how this city, this house, this exact location, was one of Emily’s happy places where she was most content and comfortable and delighted by life.

                                                              ****

Cracking open again and again…every time we are with loved ones and those who loved and ‘got’ Emily: it’s an exhausting exercise. But we need to do it because we also crave communion with these folks. We love them and we share so much of the sacred in the reliving and remembering of our dear, dear girl.

There is the smallest smudge of hazy orange on the distant  horizon, an inkling that we may be moving into a place where we can celebrate Emily’s life rather than focus so intently on her passing. May this flight go fast. Wishing us Godspeed.

New Beginnings

 

It’s been a month now. A month today. This is not something I want to dwell on, but as I see the date - December 24th, Christmas Eve, usually my favourite day of the year - I can’t help but inhale deeply. One month into a lifetime of grieving. One month into a lifetime of healing. One month of collecting no new memories of our Emily.

But…

Now the sadness is over. Not forever. Not for today, even. But for this blog. Today I want to talk about new beginnings and how there are glimmers and sparks of those emerging and becoming our new reality.

Six years ago, we bought a house on Vancouver Island, close to the ocean, surrounded by nature (and a mobile home park for seniors!), and with a little mother-in-law suite along with a large garage in which we have parked our 1989 Itaska RV. The purchasing of this house is serendipitous and miraculous and one I will save for another blog another time, but in an agreement with the renters, on some summers, we have camped out on our own property: Don and I inhabiting the little suite, and the girls sleeping in the RV. We would spend much of our time on the beach, a mere five minute amble from our property.

It’s a gorgeous slip of ocean through which the orcas, the Powell River ferry and the cruise ships sail. The serene community spirit of Little River mirrors the ocean on a calm day. There are a few Adirondack chairs set up along the shore, a  sprinkling of picnic tables and always some lawn chairs that people leave for whoever wants to come and ease into the beauty of this magical little beach. It was where Emily built forts and took orders for food. She would run off with excitement, eventually coming back with drift wood plates, adorned with our orders, made from special stones and sticks and kelp, sprinkled with sand and all manner of beach findings - the presentations fit for a five-star restaurant. She has been our chef on beaches around the world, and just this last summer, created sumptuous feasts for our eyes, if not palates, on this, a beach that always delighted her and drew her in.

Our plan had been and still is to leave Beijing after this teaching year. It was to be the year Emily graduated, coinciding nicely with the year that Don is officially too old (by Chinese law) to continue employment. Originally, we thought that we would move to this sweet locale and begin our new lives with our children a few hours away by ferry. As Emily’s depression became more pronounced in recent months, however, we decided we wanted to be closer and would move to Vancouver to live and work, in a city we both loved. Emily was planning to attend UBC (application and essay written and ready to be submitted, with almost certain success of acceptance) and our Charlotte is already happily ensconced at SFU, thriving in her second year of study. Both daughters wholeheartedly endorsed our plans to move to Vancouver, which delighted us. What a gift to have our daughters actually wanting us to be close by enough to pop by for weeknight dinners or to do laundry or to just hang out together in a coffee shop or over wonton soup.

The job opportunities for Don and I would be plentiful here also; we hope to continue teaching, probably adults, and most likely in an EAL role of supporting immigrants and refugees preparing themselves for their new lives in Canada.

When Emily ended her life, all we could think about was that we needed to get to Vancouver to be with Charlotte. The universe worked quickly to arrange everything: friends and family and school aligned to get us packed up, flights booked, time off, a house to live in free of charge during our extended leave of absence, and the loving embrace of community from around the world came to our aid and took care of everything.

For this last month, we’ve had to do so little: just grieve, graze on food, sleep (when we can), go for not enough walks through the forest just steps away, and see those closest to us, when we could bear to be with people. Like a burn, the salve and bandaging of people is necessary, but painful, though it is getting less so with each passing day. As we ease ourselves into bed each night, we reflect on how exhausted we are and then recount what we have done and sometimes, for me, it is little more than circumnavigate the house, drink coffee, write a little, read a little, bathe a little…

That is to say, this past month has been heart work and hard work, but we have been graced with having few other obligations. This is a gift beyond what most anybody is granted in trying times.

I’m getting to my point soon. I am granting myself some wandering in my writing today because it is Christmas Eve and I have nothing to do because we don’t plan to acknowledge this, my favourite of days. We will let it pass just this one year, and, in the next, we will find a way to reinvent our Christmas Eve celebrations with Emily as the star on the tree, if not the child under it.

During our near-month here in the Vancouver area, with Charlotte living with us in this cosiest of houses, we have continued to imagine ourselves here in the city, using public transportation, finding a house to rent or buy, bringing Moondog with us when we commence our new lives in June in a more permanent way. We have grasped at many ideas, many areas, many ways we might live and prosper here in this city that I love and know well. For a few days, we would stumble on an idea and say, “this is it,” only to realise it cannot be it, for a variety of reasons.

And then, after all of our perambulations, we circled back. We have a house. We have a house beside the ocean where we can heal, where Moondog can run free, where we can nest, where Don can putter, where I can garden, where we can find employment, where we can live gently and easily, where we have community and can continue to build more, where our independent daughter can come whenever she wishes and we can hop over to Vancouver with ease and be greeted with welcome by friends and family. And where Emily can come to us on the beach, her favourite beach, with the ebbs and flows of the waves, where we will hear her and feel her and remember her. We can move to Emily’s happy place and make it ours.

Why it took us a month and many dead-end explorations to come back to this, I don’t know. But we are at peace. We are joyful and looking forward.

Two nights ago, Don said he would like to have a recommitment ceremony, to begin again, together. To confirm our ever-deepening love for one another and a fresh start that will ever and always involve our Emily and, of course, our Charlotte. But it will be the two of us creating a new way forward, smelling the sea salt, hearing the undulating waves, walking hand in hand.

The past, the present, the future: they all hold beauty. They all hold Emily. Each is sacred. This is my Christmas Eve gift to myself, this realisation. May you all be blessed with peace, that is my wish for all of you on this special and sacred day. 

Heart Work is Hard

 

Yesterday evening was excruciating. I mourned from the very depths of me, yet couldn’t make a sound. It was a dry vomit of emotion, nothing left, yet still it came. Unrelenting.

I can think I’m okay and suddenly see a moment of tenderness when watching Modern Familywith Charlotte or Don or reading a paragraph in a ‘cozy’ book where nothing overtly upsetting should be happening, and suddenly I am right back in this overgrown forest with no trail on a cold and starless night.

I’m reluctant to visit with people much because it starts the cycle of remembering. People want to honour Emily, share stories, and, honestly, I sometimes want to forget. Forget that she was. Forget that our 17 years together were full of love and light along with some precipitous chasms that she would tumble into without warning.

Depression is a tricky beast. That’s all I want to say now. That’s all I can say because I don’t understand it. I’ve never been there. My sadnesses have been around events and circumstances, not a heavy coat that could smother me at any time, without warning or weather, one that was always waiting in the closet for me, no matter the season. 

There is an unfathomable sadness in me that we could not fix this thing that existed in her, that we could not make this go away in spite of Don being the most amazing father, with a true soul connection to his Emily, and me being the best mother to our daughter that anyone could honestly be. I don’t say that with pride. I say that with such difficulty because my love, our love, was not enough to save our child. That is a hard burden to bear. Probably the hardest burden I will ever carry. God help me if there is anything more difficult than this.

I’ve been driving today - I drove from Vancouver with Charlotte to Abbotsford to pick up my father, and then delivered them to the bus to take them across the border. They are bound for Seattle to spend time with my sister and extended family over Christmas. Don and I will join them after the celebration. They both need the company and the loving. At this moment, Don and I need space and an ability to get away in the face of either too much joy or too much grief received from others. Both are triggers. Everything is a trigger.

I have pulled over in a parking lot, facing a forest, somewhere on my way home. I don’t really know where I am. I don’t care. I’ll get there eventually.

This heart work is hard. I hate it. And yet I know it is the only way out of this dark night.

Solstice

When I came home from therapy and picking up Charlotte at the Skytrain station from her own counseling session, Don greeted us at our little borrowed bungalow with some oldies playing from Emily’s Spotify playlist on her iPhone.

Charlotte had been reluctant to open the phone, though she knew the password, because she thought it would be invading Em’s privacy; I was against opening it because of my fear of being triggered by things I didn’t know or care to know about; Don wanted to open it so he could retrieve memories, but not invade or search. The three of us collectively agreed that Don could open it with an uninvolved third party. He chose his therapist. (Yes, he also went to see his therapist in the morning; it seems we are in a continuous state of therapizing!)

While I have not yet unlocked the phone and may never, Don assured me there was nothing triggering, but much that was wonderful: unseen photos and Emily’s many playlists. She had such an eclectic and varied taste in music! Last year, we got her a shower speaker for Christmas that she kept in her bathroom, and whenever she got up in the morning or brushed her teeth or did her evening ablutions, the speaker would be turned on and we’d hear all manner of music misting out of the bathroom. 

The particular playlist Don was playing on our arrival home had The Drifters, The Bay City Rollers (my fifth grade favourite!), The Monkees ( from Don’s teenage years), The Beatles (of course - a band she came to love through her Daddy), The Beach Boys, and a sweet little addition of Doris Day, singing Qué Será, Será. This was my Mama’s chosen song: she was always singing it to her three children.

When I was just a little girl

I asked my mother, what will I be

Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?

Here's what she said to me

Qué será, será

Whatever will be, will be

The future's not ours to see

Qué será, será

What will be, will be.

Don was full of offerings for the day; he also had a proposal: that solstice be the day that we light a candle for Emily and honour her each year. That, yes, we remark on, recall memories, but not celebrate her December birthday and adoption day, but on solstice, the longest night of the year, we dedicate it to our Emily.

Solstice represents rebirth, renewal, a return to light: this is what we wish for our Emily and we also wish for us, as a family and as individuals. We want to start anew with Emily in our hearts, but with new lives that hold blessings, and hope and joy.

We found a swirly green tapering candle, that perfectly represented Emily with arms uplifted, Don cannily lit it on the electric stove as there were no matches to be found. We encircled the candle, holding one another, and murmured our love and wishes to our beloved daughter and sister. We also said this prayer:

May you be free from suffering.

May you be healed.

May you be at peace.

As the days start to grow longer again, so will our stamina for living without her physical presence. May her light glow within us steadfastly, leading us forward.

Be Here Now

As we creep toward Christmas, I have no wish for Michael Buble or anyone’s greatest holiday hits, but I do think that some boys’ choir solemnity along with an organ and some strings is in order. That’s my preferred seasonal ‘cheer,’ anyway. If you know me, my musical preferences veer toward sad violins, choral music, and melancholy jazz. My playlists aren’t a match for most.

Emily always felt we did too much for her at Christmas and for her birthdays. She didn’t like too much acknowledgement, which is why all the hoopla around her death would have been excruciatingly embarrassing for her in the earthly realm. She would have downright despised it! My sense is that in her pure positive energy form she has rather enjoyed the outpouring of love for her and us, our family. I’d dare say she would thank you, if she could.

This whole idea of inhabiting another realm - in whatever form one chooses to believe - is quite comforting, and I’d like to believe it is not a crutch we humans make up, but an unempirical, but absolute reality that exists beyond our earthly comprehension. Faith is a word, when brought up in the context of religions, that I am not a fan of. But I’ve always had faith that there is more than what the eye can see, that death is not eternal sleep, but a portal to a kind of peace that is inscrutable to us. 

Today, I choose to believe that my Emily is both at peace and is somehow among us. I crave her earthly body: her strong shoulders, her crinkly, smiling eyes, her delicate, long fingers that played the violin with such beauty, her slight slouch as she sloped along in her jeans, plaid shirts and Doc Martens, and how she would always turn around and wait for me when I was limping just behind the rest of us. I want to massage her scaly dry calves with lotion, and watch multiple episodes of Brooklyn 99 with her: I want to go out for coffee and study together in companionable silence, and have that frequent nugget of her letting me in by telling me a story or asking for advice; I want another time with her at the cat cafe, where she was so serenely delighted; and I want to hear her sweetly lilting voice, “Come on, Moon,” and the gentle tapping of her thighs as she called her Moondog for her evening walk; I want to run into her on the campus that we shared and hear her say, “Hi, mom,” being both slightly embarrassed and happy to run into me all at the same time.

I so badly want her physical presence, as I lie here in Vancouver, a city I am so intimately familiar with, but feels so empty without her. I want you, my Emily. 

But I will let you fly under the radar, dear girl, as you chose to do in life - so deep, so clever, so artistic, so musical, so physically gifted, so philosophical, so full of fun and playfulness, so imaginative, so driven, so observant and precise, so full of compassion for people - yet only showing your true self on your own terms. You were always a mystery and will continue to be one, dearest of Emilies. 

So, I will look for your spirit in the subtleties and nuances of what I read, how you bring out the beauty and value of what I write with an ease I don't always possess, and in what I see and hear and smell and taste that reminds me poignantly of you. 

I will never stop looking, Emily, and I expect you to find ways to crack through that heavenly realm and make yourself known to me, your beloved Daddy, your sister, your friends, and all the other dear ones in your life. You were loved by and loved so many. We all want to keep you close.

More Pepper, Less Salt

Last week I was video chatting with my bestie, Claire, commiserating and compassionating (new word I’ve just coined). Not surprisingly, we two English teachers, with a penchant for analogies, came up with the metaphor of having more pepper and less salt as the rambling path of grief progresses.

The constant thudding of grief is slowly abating, but it still takes my breath away several times each day as I return to the empirical fact that my Emily, as I knew her, is gone. 

My dreams have always been vivid and stay with me for hours, sometimes days afterward; this is both a gift, but mostly a curse, that I inherited from my mother who would regale us with her dream life each morning as we ate our detested porridge, smothered with brown sugar. My beloved Mama, fortunately, was blessed with happier dreams than mine tend to be.

Understandably, my day life has mostly been preferred to my night life throughout the history of me. Last week, I had a dream paralysis situation that felt like it lasted for hours, so full of horror that it was still deeply embedded in my amygdala several hours later. I used to be relieved to wake up, but in these past weeks, not so much.

I recount this a week or so later because I am no longer waking up from a nightmare and finding myself in a ‘daymare’ (another Leah word!): rather, I wake up knowing Emily is with me in spirit, my head resting on her soft blanket that is wrapped around my pillow. I greet her, always with something akin to, “Good morning, Emily. Please be with me. Help me find some joy today. Protect us all today and give us peace. And if you wish to show yourself to me in some way, I am open.”

Yes, there is still much salt, but I want to start seasoning with a lighter hand, peppering my days with memories of my Emily, never shying away from them, but also living in the present moment, moving forward, and creating a hopeful future. With Emily in it.

Graces

Because we have bereavement leave on top of holidays and then a bit of extra yet, we have until mid-February to grieve and heal here in Vancouver before returning to complete our contracts back in Beijing. It will entail moving back for roughly four months, continuing to teach, reuniting with Moondog, saying our goodbyes to many friends, and releasing ourselves from the country we have lived in for more than 20 years together: the country where we met our children, raised them, and lost one.

Having the privilege of grieving privately, in a little old lady house that holds all the elements of coziness, security, and stillness, is beyond grace. When Emily died, all we knew was that we needed to get back to Canada, to our Charlotte, and hold each other tightly. Even booking the flight, we had no idea how things would pan out when we arrived. Would we be huddled in a musty hotel room? In my sister’s basement? In Steph and Aman’s back room? Couch-surfing, as we usually do in the summers, with grief as an extra-large and very noisy companion?

Today I must list the graces we have been gifted and given; I must acknowledge how deeply our entire family is loved and how much people want to share their love:

I am grateful:

For this house that Donna and Blaine have given us, free of charge, for the entirety of our stay. There can be no greater gift than a 1959 bungalow in Port Coquitlam, that was lived in until short months ago by Donna’s 90-something year old mother. The house is like a warm hug.

For the car of my father’s - his Austin Cooper - that toodles up hills and barely contains our groceries, never mind our luggage, but is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. And now my Daddy is back to walking everywhere all the time, which he does with grace - because he so much wants to extend his love to us. He is a man who understands sorrow and will do whatever he can to alleviate ours.

For our international school, that has graciously given us all the time we need, and how the community has come together to help us move, pack our things, arrange our flight tickets, take care of all the red tape of death, especially in another country, and has allowed us to completely absent ourselves from the process of school while the professional and loving staff figures out ways to carry on minus two integral teachers in the middle and high school.

For our school again, for honouring Emily’s life in so many ways, for acknowledging her death, for providing extensive and ongoing support for all Emily’s friends and classmates, all the teachers, everyone who has been touched by our dear Emily or by us, her family. How you have not only respected but honoured and are continuing to find ways to acknowledge our Emily and help those mourning through the shaken, everything-has-changed-now last semester of high school.

For all my friends in Beijing - for Rachel, for Christin, for Jenny, for Erica, for Ian, for Tom, for Helen, for Kerri-Lee, for Zhang, and for more of you than we can name - who have put in so much love and work to insure we are free from all obligations, other than the pressing need of grief, as you silently move behind the scenes to make it all happen. You have been the concierges of our grief.

For the community banding together to find Moondog when she ran away: this is a whole other blog/short story/children’s book/novel about the power of a community set on finding our dog, who in her own grief, ran away from her foster family, and was missing for more than a week. The army of people who came together to search for our beloved doggie is testament to a community who loves Emily and our family, and would do ANYTHING to support us, and this was such a tangible way to do so. We are forever grateful: Moon will be coming to live with us in this rich rainforest of Vancouver, having been the most looked-for dog in the history of Beijing. It is the stuff of legend.

For my beloved sister, Nicole, and brother, Anthoney, and their families, who have moved heaven and earth to support and love us and our family, in spite of their own deep grief over the passing of their beloved youngest niece. 

For our dear friends, Steph and Aman, Jay and Saleem - for making time, providing comfort, being there for us and providing food and libations and open ears and hearts, even in their own deep sadness.

For Heather, who has mourned Emily’s loss deeply and speaks with her everyday on her beach walks. For the ceremony she privately held for Emily on the beach by our house on Vancouver Island, and for the agate Emily found for her and that she will bring to me…

For the many hundreds of you who have reached out to us through notes, through emails, through this blog, through FB, through every avenue imaginable: I am touched and grateful beyond what I can express for the outpouring of love that I feel. I wish I had the energy to write each of you your own poem, expressing my gratitude. The comfort I have received from your condolences, your admissions, your soups and flowers, and socks, and quotes and wisdom and assurances of prayer and lifting us up, to your beliefs that Emily is now at peace and that she is watching down on us…all these things are akin to being swaddled in a soft feather bed with tea and lemon (and a big of sugar) by my side, along with an expansive view of mountains and a lake. That’s how I envision all your love.

For Charlotte, our eldest daughter, who cannot stop caring for us, even in her own grief. For the joy she radiates and we feel by just being in her presence.

Great grace has been bestowed on our family. Thank you for giving us ease and comfort during this most challenging of times. 

Today I will be thankful.