The Thin Places

It’s been so long – too long – since I wrote. The reasons are many: crushing fatigue, busyness and unacknowledged dread. No – not unacknowledged – a dread I’ve been grappling with because it means accepting a world that does not contain my Dad.

Talking to him about it might help but this is the first ‘big’ thing we’ve been unable to discuss. No – that’s not precise either – we’ve never been able to have a frank discussion about death. Not when my Aunt Annie died, not when his own mother – to whom I was very close – died. Not when Piglet died. Death has always been taboo except as it appears in Gilbert and Sullivan or Carlyle’s French Revolution. Or as an abstraction – Death Be Not Proud; Every Man’s Death Diminishes Me; After the First Death There is No Other.

And now here we are, face to face with the hoary monster and his power grows, not because he’s so close but because we aren’t acknowledging his presence, his imminence. He’s come to call and we aren’t offering him tea. Muffins would strain both hospitality and human forbearance, not to mention general Dylan Thomas outrage, but this is a guest who should be offered a cup of fairly ordinary tea and some simple conversation. To look him coldly in the face and preserve the amenities, admit he’s a legitimate caller who’s going to take something precious with him when he goes but to offer some defiance, too: One short sleep past, we wake eternally/And death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die.

After I returned from my visit to the Excited States to see Ellie, towards the end of May, I spent the weekend at my parents’ so my Mom could get away and rest. “To a place where I can sleep as long and as much as I like and eat meals I haven’t had to cook,” she said. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs would have paid for a respite worker but my Dad refused to have a stranger stay with him so I was ‘it.’

I arrived bearing strawberries and real cream, gourmet salmon patties, a proper pepper mill, and a little whirry machine – a sort of hand-held blender that purees things. Mom had told me Dad was eating very little and favoured ‘mushy’ offerings.

A surprisingly smooth two days ensued despite a couple of minor tragedies. Mom left two pages of closely-written instructions which I earnestly perused – repeatedly – trying to memorize such details as which cup the decaf coffee should go in and which small glass the juice. She forgot to include how much water to add to the micro-wave porridge (one quarter cup oatmeal sprinkled with a tablespoon of bran), but it turns out that wrongly mixed porridge peels fairly neatly off the walls of a microwave oven, almost like strips of two-sided tape. I forgot to chill the Ensure (a protein drink) and put jam on the toast when it was a marmalade morning but we successfully weathered these small squalls and even watched a bit of baseball and most of a movie, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

None of our conversations took off, though, which troubled me because ever since I can remember I’ve had long, deep discussions with my Dad and always learned something new or glimpsed an alternate viewpoint. No more. He doesn’t have the energy. Or maybe the looming presence of Mr. Death has to be acknowledged to free our thoughts and words and we’re spending our stamina pretending we don’t see him.

Caregivers came in morning and evening to help him get up, dressed and out of bed and then into pyjamas and ready for sleep. Although he rarely uses the walker to get himself from bedroom to living room and back again during the day anymore, he did manage it two or three times – with me walking behind him, heart in mouth – and didn’t fall, which had been my greatest fear.

Over the 48-hours of my constant attendance, even in such a short time, I noticed an infinitesimal downward slide, a diminution of faculties and powers by less than millimetres; not a progress registered by the eyes so much as by the heart. This heart that loves him and doesn’t want him to go any more than he wants to leave. The Blue Jays ball game, for example, we turned on and followed for less than ten minutes before Dad lost interest. That was Saturday. On Sunday, he lost interest after five minutes.

This process, I decided, is just as hard as having someone die suddenly the way Piglet did. It’s the difference between being swamped by a monster tsunami that crashes down out of a clear blue sky and standing on the beach, knowing the tsunami’s coming but being unable to move.

The following Saturday, I went for lunch – a lovely lunch featuring prawns wrapped in bacon and ribboned in lime aioli – with my old friend Dannie. We’ve known each other since 1970 and shared a spectacularly naughty and rebellious teenagehood so can talk about anything. Her husband died of brain cancer last October. How could we ever have imagined, at 14, that we’d both find ourselves widowed in our early 50s?

For once Nietzsche may have been right when he gave a nod to the dazzling realm of music and literature, ballet and drama: “We have art in order not to die of the truth.”

But no – I won’t believe that. The truth can also be beautiful if we can stand the awesome might of its flame. Is it not written, And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free?

During lunch, I mentioned that one of the things both Tickles and I find difficult is that my Dad often cries. He cries if we express affection; he cries when we’re leaving. I have never in my life until now seen my Dad cry. It simultaneously puzzled and irritated me because I don’t know how to deal with it and lumped it in with the whole refusal to discuss death syndrome. Dannie suggested a very simple explanation – he cries because he doesn’t want to leave us – and I was grateful for the insight. Although I can’t say it makes things any easier.

One day less than two weeks ago – it seems much longer – Mom called me at work and said, “I think you should come over on your way home.” Needless to say, this threw me into a bit of a panic.

“Do you want me to come over right now?”

“No, I just think you should come over on your way home.”

To say Mom is a master of understatement and euphemism would be a vast understatement in itself. When Dad had his horrendous accident in 1962 and was lying at death’s door, she told me he had “a couple of sore legs.” Granted, she was attempting to project serenity and allay fears in my sensitive, six-year-old self; nevertheless, it’s vintage Mom and not all that much different from the way she describes catastrophes unto this very day.

When I was 19, she called me at work and chattered on about the price of hamburger and Tickles’ latest misadventures, then concluded the conversation by saying, “Oh, and by the way, Auntie Annie died last night,” and hanging up. I started crying and couldn’t stop. My alarmed supervisor sent me home. I didn’t ever tell Mom how much she’d shocked and upset me because I didn’t want to upset her.

And so it goes...

And so, on that day less than two weeks ago, dithering and worrying and repressing panic, I eventually left work 15 minutes early and sped over to the family home.

“Things have taken a turn,” said Mom. “I think Dad’s gotten very weak and I don’t like the sound of his breathing. I just wanted to see if you agree with me.”

I walked carefully into the bedroom where Dad was deeply asleep, his breathing uneven and shallow, interrupted now and then by a sort of hitch or gurgle.

“It doesn’t sound good,” I said to Mom, thinking to myself, His lungs are filling with fluid; this is a stage of congestive heart failure.

“And he’s hardly eating anything,” added Mom.

Since he’s had the appetite of a delicate five-year-old for the last several weeks, this was definitely another worrying sign.

“What does Dad think?” I asked. “Has he said anything?”

Mom paused, as if to gather strength. “He thinks he’s dying.”

Taken aback, it was my turn to pause. “Has he said anything else? Is he feeling more comfortable about it all yet?”

“I think so,” said Mom. “A bit anyway. But he doesn’t want to leave me.”

Of course he doesn’t, I thought, He’s been married to you for over 55 years and you haven’t spent more than a couple of weeks apart in all that time.

We sat and discussed our theories of heaven until we heard, unbelievably, the sound of walker wheels sliding across the carpet. Dad had gotten out of bed and was painfully navigating inch by inch, propelling himself by sheer will power to his chair in the living room. I had the feeling – humbling and poignant – that he was doing it for me; walking out to the living to sit and converse, to honour my visit.

Mom and I fell silent and watched his slow progress, aghast. I thought he’d miss the chair entirely and subside onto the floor but he managed, at last, to sit down at an awkward angle, pale and shaking, more exhausted than he’d been the night of the Healing Service and unable to speak.

We conferred, Mom and I, and decided that she’d call Toy and I’d call Wumbles. It was time.

We have arrived at a strange crossroads, a fearful junction where the unknowable seems strangely commonplace and the commonplace is imbued with mystery.

It is a place akin to those known as “thin places” in Celtic mythology...these are threshold bridges at the border between the real world and the other world, still points where the barrier between the human and the divine is stretched thin as a membrane that may finally be permeated and transcended.

Now I see that the opposite of knowledge may not be ignorance but mystery, that the opposite of truth may not be lies but something else again: a revelation so deeply imbedded in the thin places of reality that we cannot see it for looking: a reverence so clear and quiet and perfect that we have not yet begun to fathom it.
Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

-from Diane Schoemperlen’s Our Lady of the Lost and Found

Goslings and Cherry Blossoms

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I didn't think I'd see goslings this year. The property management people talked about addling the eggs to cut down the goose population. And of course, ice and snow threatened the nests late into what should have been spring.

As I drove towards my parking spot, though, mind swamped with Ellie and the bittersweet joys of grandparenthood, I had to slow for a small gaggle to cross the road.

Here they are, then - goslings and the long-awaited cherry blossoms.

Elation for Ellie

Finn chats to Uncle Tickles about his new cousin, then loses interest in the conversation.********************************************************
Life is truly an arena of contradictions, a blighted plain quickly eclipsed by a swirl of emotions and colours that can’t be contained. Or, as my mother says in her quiet Winnipeg way, “You never know from where you sit when the man in the gallery’s going to spit.”

We gathered today at the homestead for Dad’s 84th – and last – birthday. Tickles, Creature, Finn – now know as Super Grumples – and me. Wheelchairs, walkers, rolling meal trays and eject-em chairs litter the living space and a strong medicinal smell pervades the air. We milled about awkwardly, trying to summon cheery smiles and witty asides – festivity amongst the ruins, so to speak.

Tinny music burst forth suddenly from the car seat where Finn lay sleeping.

Creature’s cell phone, announcing its presence.

“Hello?” she said.

A pause.

“Wumb! Is your baby born?”

Tickles and Mom crowded around me, staring at Creature as if she held the key to the universe.

“Yes,” I told them.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” asked Creature.

“A girl,” I announced impatiently to my eager audience.

“When was she born?” Creature continued.

“Today, of course,” I said, “On Dad’s birthday.”

Since I couldn’t divine the name – and Creature was getting irritated at my foreknowledge of all the answers – I silenced myself. Briefly.

“What’s her name?” Creature went silent for a moment. “Helen Elizabeth? I like it.”

Mom gave a sort of ‘whump’ sound as all the air in her body – right down to her stomach – was ejected in a millisecond. She’s never had anyone named after her before.

And so we are joined by Helen Elizabeth, to be called Ellie, born at 3:30 a.m. on May 5th after 48 hours of labour. She has a headful of black hair and weights seven pounds.

What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?...
I see them showering like stars on to the world –
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images. They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched. They are walkers of air.

...it as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

Sylvia Plath

Side Trip

From the Canadian Street
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Back at the hotel, unable to sleep, I ventured into the bar for a beer. It was set up like a Bedouin tent, characteristic black and white hangings delineating the outer walls, the booths hung with red, brightly embroidered blankets. (An example of these can be seen behind Nazeeh in the picture of him seated in the tent where we smoked shisha.) Artfully placed brass coffee pots enlivened the floor space and two large cages held a collection of strange birds that whistled and shrieked at ear-splitting volume.

Striving to ignore the din, I ordered my beer and leafed through the lavishly illustrated Guide to the Egyptian Museum I picked up in Cairo. A young man approached and began feeding sunflower seeds to the birds in the cage just beside me.

“Excuse me,” he said suddenly, “Are you reading an Egyptian tour guide?”

“I nodded. “For the Egyptian Museum actually.”

“That’s wonderful! I am Egyptian,” he declared, and we exchanged a few pleasantries about the glorious Mother of the World.

Before I relate what happened next, I’m going to take a little detour, launch a discourse about the Canadian character, or What it Means to be Canadian, using three short tales.

The first comes from local history and concerns Victoria’s Empress Hotel, a turreted and ivy-covered edifice, standing proudly at the head of our harbour, named for Queen Victoria and long considered one of the final bastions of the British Empire. High Tea is still served amongst the potted palms in its hushed lobby and it reeks of faded elegance and quiet dignity.

One day a man intent on armed robbery entered the hallowed precincts and made his way to the Garden Cafe. He waved his gun about and yelled, “This is a stick up!” No one paid him the least attention, just continued eating their meals.

He approached the cashier. “Give me all the money in the till!” he ordered, pointing the gun at her.

She didn’t bat an eye. Giving him a look of stern reproval, she said, “Young man, this sort of thing just isn’t done at the Empress.”

The man looked wildly about, discharged his firearm into the ceiling and fled. The diners continued eating placidly and a neatly garbed lackey appeared with a broom and dustpan to sweep up the bits of ceiling plaster that had drifted down to sully the pristine floor.

End of episode.

The second story occurred in Paris. I was there with 29 teenagers, the rash and harried leader of a Spring Break ”field trip.” Late one nascent spring day, I was crammed into the metro cheek by jowl with ten of my students and about half the city’s work force. We stood patiently, clinging to metal poles as the train clattered through station after station.

Suddenly a woman shrieked, “Voleur! Voleur!” and lunged towards a man standing innocuously beside me. A look of alarm crossed his face and he darted out the doors just as they whooshed shut. I managed to jab him with my elbow as he passed.

“That man was trying to pick your pocket,” the woman told me indignantly.

I had my coat tied around my waist as it was hot underground. I checked the pockets which had contained only some loose change and my teaching credentials. Nothing was missing.

Out on the street, I asked the students if they’d noticed anything.

“Oh yes,” said one particularly sweet girl, “That man kept putting his hand in your pocket. Every time he did, I just took it out again. I was starting to get a bit scared.”

I gazed at her in astonishment. “Why didn’t you say something?”

She gazed back at me in equal astonishment. “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

The third story takes place in the Ontario hinterlands and involved my other brother, the one who isn’t a musician. We’ll call him Toy. My parents do, so why not?

Many years ago, when his twins were tiny, Toy and his wife lived in a cottage that had a summer kitchen. These rooms are found off the main kitchen and aren’t well enough insulated for year-round use. They tend to become storage areas and usually have a locking door that separates them from the house proper.

One morning my sister-in-law, Syl, came toodling out to start breakfast. She whisked up the blind in the window of the door leading to the summer kitchen and what to her horror-struck eyes did appear but a villainous looking male body lying on the floor amongst a heap of croquet mallets.

“Toy!” she called. “Come out here right away.”

Toy dutifully presented himself and peered through the window at the body, which was now starting to stir ominously.

“You have to do something,” said Syl, “Before the babies wake up.”

Now, if Toy had been American, he would have fetched the family gun, taken aim and blown the intruder’s brains out. Being Canadian, he opened the door cautiously, tip-toed across the summer kitchen, bent down and gently tapped the man’s shoulder. “Excuse me,” he asked. “Can I help you?”

The man opened bleary eyes. “Huh?” he intoned, obviously sunk far into his cups.
Toy solicitously helped him to his feet and out to the street where he stumbled to the neighbour’s lawn and collapsed once more. I’m told he lay there till noon, alternately sleeping and belting out slurred renditions of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, fortified by cups of coffee trotted out to him by anxious local residents.

These anecdotes should serve to illustrate why, when Bird Feeder Guy at the Bedouin Bar in Aqaba turned to me and said, “May I join you?” my automatic response was, “Of course.” I didn’t want him at my table and had no desire for further conversation with him but – well, the poor guy must have been exhausted after attending to all those birds and was probably too weak to make his way to an adjoining table. Either that or he wanted to practise his English.

To my relief, however, he sat down for only few brief moments then got up and left the hotel. The happy feeling of release warmed the cockles of my heart and I carried on with my awe-struck perusal of King Tut’s treasures.

Ten minutes later, BFG returned.

“I invite you,” he said, “to Happy Hour – special drinks – in special hotel across the street.”

“No, thank you,” I said coldly and with a deep inward sigh.

“Why not?” he demanded, very assertive now.

“Because I don’t want to.”

“But why? We have good time. Very nice place.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to go. And I won’t.”

“Why not? I am your Egyptian friend. I take good care of you.”

This distressing exchange continued for several minutes, BFG now verging on the belligerent. Unfortunately, the shrieks of the birds muffled our words so I couldn’t look to the bar staff for rescue. Finally I summoned what Piglet used to call my Teacher Look.

“You will go away,” I said sternly and with authority. “You will go NOW and not bother me any more. If you do not, I will start to scream. Do you understand?”

A few shreds of argument threatened to dribble from his lips.

“NOW,” I repeated.

He went.

Even in Jordan, I thought, even in Jordan.

Hubbly Bubbly

Palestinian shepherds; Nazeeh and the sea; Awaiting the performance; Hubbly bubbly with the lights of Eilat in the background.
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From Wadi Rum we drove through a lunar landscape to Aqaba at the northernmost point of the Red Sea. We passed some men tending sheep on a rocky hillside and I insisted on stopping to take pictures.

“Palestinian shepherds,” Nazeeh said as we got underway again.

“Palestinians?” Startled, I found myself up against the brick wall of my own ignorance. “There are Palestinians in Jordan?” I scrolled through my inner geography for the country of Palestine I was sure existed somewhere in the region.

“Many, many Palestinians here,” Nazeeh announced. “Especially since three hundred thousand get kicked out of Kuwait.”

“Kuwait? Kicked out?”

“Yes. Mr. Yasser Arafat support Mr. Saddam Hussein in Gulf War, say he a good man and Americans bad, so when Kuwaitis get their country back, they kick out all the Palestinians.”

“But why did they come to Jordan?”

“Nowhere else for them to go.” Nazeeh shrugged. “They are – what is the word – workers who go to another country but not citizens there.”

“Migrant workers?”

“Yes. Migrant.” Nazeeh rolled his tongue around the syllables. “I remember this new, good word.” He paused, committing it to memory. “So they come back and their camps get very full.”

“Camps?”

“Yes, Palestinians live in camps. Many millions.”

Numbers don’t often translate well, so I didn’t immediately take this figure at face value.

“How long will they stay there?”

Nazeeh looked at me pityingly. Poor ignorant western woman his gaze said. “Only God knows. They always live in camps. Long ago Israelis kick them out of their villages and they run here. Live in camps. United Nations send food for them.”

Some shreds of history returned to my shocked consciousness. “Are you telling me that Palestinians have been living in refugee camps here since 1948?”

“Oh yes. Is big problem because Jordan very poor country. I tell you before, we don’t have oil. Our King give citizenship for two or three hundred thousand but we can’t help the rest. Jordan very small country, too, with lots of desert.”

Too stunned for further comment, I readjusted my mental bearings as we wended our way into the city of Aqaba.

Since the lobby of my hotel was full of Arabian splendours, my dingy, poorly-lit room was an unpleasant contrast. Bashir certainly fell down on the job here, I thought. If I’d become his doxy according to plan, I’d most definitely have pelted him with strong words for his lapse in attention. I pulled open the curtains to let in some badly needed light and watched the sun set over the Red Sea, a shimmering orange ball sinking swiftly into the shiny grey depths.

“Why is the Red Sea called Red?” I asked Nazeeh when I met him in the lobby at 5:30.

“Because of coral,” he said. “The sea is full of red coral reefs. We go now to the beach but you will not see coral tonight. Too dark. And in the morning we go to Dead Sea. So maybe you never see the famous coral.”

Horrified to learn it was illegal in Sharjah – Sheikh bin Sultan al-Qasimi thought it encouraged gambling – Nazeeh insisted he was going to treat me to some “hubbly bubbly” or smoking shisha as it’s more formally called. Not narcotic, as fans of Alice in Wonderland might suppose, it’s just fruit-laced tobacco filtered through water and a kind of cotton batten. I chose apple, hoping it might be the least cloying of the various fruits on offer.

Setting up the pipe was a genuine performance with much to-ing and fro-ing and fanning of coals, which have to glow just so to coax the best flavour from the tobacco.

Nazeeh watched proudly as I took my first mouthful. I found it overly thick and sweet and it induced vague nausea but I puffed valiantly on as the sea lapped over stones, its little tongues slipping in and out almost at our feet, and children splashed in the shallows. Others tried to sell me cheap plastic sandals and tin trinkets and irritating Arab pop music blared from speakers mounted above a kebab stand.

Like a blessing from heaven, the mournful rising cadence of the call to prayer challenged the blare and a teenage boy hurried to turn it off. In Jordan, it’s illegal for music or other canned public noise to play while the muezzin’s calling the faithful.

Allahu Akbar!
Allahu Akbar!
Ash-haduan la illaha il-Allah!

God is most great!
God is most great!
I testify that there is no god but God.

When done properly, by a well-trained, truly devout muezzin, the call has a lovely liquid sound, trilling and tripping like a spring brook gurgling over smooth stone, as it did that night, blending with the soft splash of the sea and producing a feeling of profound peace.

“Those are the lights of Eilat,” said Nazeeh, pointing across the rippled sheet of dark water.

“Eilat?”

“Yes. In Israel.”

“Israel?” It was hard for me to believe another country could be so close, especially one with such a big history. I experienced one of those little flashes, or shifts in understanding. Canada is a huge country, the second largest in the world. For me, a journey of several hundred miles, one that can be done by car in a single day – and driving 800 miles in one day wouldn’t be pushing the limits for a Canadian, especially a western Canadian – is short. China is also huge, only marginally smaller than Canada, and I easily assimilated its endless bus and train journeys. Much of Canada is a frozen waste. Distance means little. Here, in this most ancient and holy of lands, distance a Canadian would consider negligible – a matter of metres – means everything: the difference between joy and sorrow, freedom and incarceration, hope and despair, life and death.

Nazeeh chuckled. We were beginning to know each other well. “Yes,” he said. “Small countries here. Not like Canada or China. Tomorrow night we see the lights of Jerusalem. I, Nazeeh, will show you.”

Rendered once again speechless, apple essence fizzing in my veins, I stared at the sea until dessert arrived, also courtesy of Nazeeh, a block of mozzarella-like cheese drenched in honey and topped with orange angel-hair coconut and a sprinkling of chopped pistachios – perfect antidote to the sickly sweet hubbly bubbly.

On our way back to the car, I saw a small, ancient and very battered flatbed truck parked at the side of the road. In it, a woman was cooking dinner on a circular pan hooked up to a propane tank. Puffs of steam rose into the night air and the woman, thin and stooped, wearily brushed strands of hair off her forehead. A young girl, swathed in a heap of tattered patchwork blankets, sat on a threadbare couch that ran the length of one whole side of the flatbed and chattered animatedly to the woman, no doubt her mother. The girl’s eyes danced with joy despite the dire poverty of her surroundings.

I remembered Nazeeh’s comment, “Jordan is a poor country.”

Maybe my hotel room wasn’t so dingy after all.