"You are all over the place," he said. "Good," I responded in my head, "because I would hate to still be sitting where I was."
I see myself sitting in Bragg Creek, my friend having asked me to housesit for the summer. With Kananaskis at my finger tips, I tell myself it will be sure to give me the mountain hugs I have been waiting for since land locking myself to Vancouver Island only 8 months ago. I had left Kelowna in pursuit of self care and Victoria has provided a healing space that was do or die.
In the months following Cassidy's death I fully understood the common request of privacy following the death of your person. Once being extroverted, outgoing with upcoming challenging trail race rosters, bibs of races past, and a hunger for barrelling up and down mountains while telling the world from each summit, I quickly fell silent. All I wanted was to be alone. Visiting felt like short circuits as when I would look in the mirror each morning, I had no idea who I was even looking at. The 'before me' had faded so quickly, I had no room to request she stay. How can you relate in the world when you don't know who you even are? Conversations were fumbled by brain fog and fatigue. Nothing they had to say was going to clear the path and there was no exchange to be given. I had requested to only see people who had been at the hospital with us and knew, with their own eyes, what truly had just happened. Otherwise incomprehensible to anyone else, it lead to many hurt words and action. I checked myself quietly into my own mind, and stayed in it's protection until my first blog post here. From all my years on the cushion, It has been a most beautiful safe space to be.
Kelowna was a place of great challenge. I had positioned myself right in the epicentre of the quake and each time it rattled my earth, my presence requested, it beat me down blow by blow. I was surrounded by relationships that took and did not replenish. There was only one way out and it was to remove myself from the equation entirely. I had tried to build my perfect escape in a 2019 Sprinter. I had believed it was the answer to my pressure. It was kitted so beautifully to surely provide me with freedom to hold my broken heart. It is not to say that Liv (the van) didn't do her expected job. She certainly tried her best as she shuttled me from the coast into the Rockies a million times over, staying in patches of no service allowing me to breathe before I drove into cell range, but the reality was that the answer was not in moving around in my van from peak to forest to ocean. The answer was to simply learn the phrase... "No."
After my body took on the job of stopping my self destruction with a life long autoimmune disease from adrenal fatigue, the pressure pushed me to sell my house and head to a place that had always held me with the deepest of respect. With almost no notice, I parked Liv in Victoria and began an honest journey of self care. The 2000 km prefix in my van had taken me to the ocean to realize that no matter where I travelled, my sorrow would come with me.
None of this looked as seamless as I write it. I assure you that pulling yourself from the pit of self destruction is no easy task. The worst part is that none of it was transparent. I do not have vices like alcohol or drugs to pin it on. It is directly pinned on me and my choices. From the outside, my worst vice is to wander. I was told that it was seen that I "couldn't find my way", It was noticed that I was "lost for quite some time now". I left my comfortable, well paying corporate job as a paralegal to allow myself and my body to wake up each day and take the day as it was. I would make a plan to do XYZ and then change my mind. I would feel afraid to be without income, and then relieved to attend to my disease without pressure. It took several corporate jobs to remind me that I wasn't in the right place, unless I was looking for money, hire, quit, hire, quit, before settling into contract work that gave me the freedom to not log in some days. I almost bought a farm, I lost the farm. One day I was happy, content and full of grace. The next I was crying, angry and yelling at my partner to do more. For 8 months and standing, I question everything. What is even real? Time. Time is our only commodity. I said No, over and over and over. No. No. No. No. I did not answer calls, I did not make calls, I turned my phone off. As I swing through it all I tell myself to be gentle with only one person, me. When I gleefully announced I was going to buy a farm, a friend said to me, "You are all over the place." "Good," I responded in my head, "because I would hate to still be standing where I was."
Will I find peace in Alberta? Maybe. Am I ready to re-connect with my family there? Yes. Will it be too much for me? Likely. Do I know any of this? No. Will I leave again after buying a 'forever home' in Victoria? Absolutely. I don't have to know. That is the beauty of it all. Knowing is an illusion. The only knowing is in not knowing. This is the art in the forgiveness of being lost.
Letter 2
Jan 23/2020
Mom, should I go? She asked
Yea. I said. You should. The last of her circle had ventured west to the coast, as they should. A mice infested house shared with 8 close friends, fumbling reality, a record player, soaked in cigarette scent. That is the place to be in your 20s. It wasn’t my time to keep her any more. Ivanhoe street. She was so proud. She brought me in to the old Vancouver living room with pieced together furniture and hums of happiness. My little Woodstock had left the nest... for good.
I knew this as I sat back and watched first cars and broken hearts unfold. She was living, breathing
into a young woman after her spiraling adolescence. Jack was his name, after Kerouac. The car, not the boy. Not the car that killed her. The car that shaped her some into the world of responsibilities. Her first car. Her first everything, I was witness too. The eyes of a mother. So un-
perishable.
One summer day her sister and I witnessed a car accident and she yelled - I want to wash my eyes!!
Mothers can’t wash their eyes. They see and feel empathicly far beyond the last exhale.
Un-perishable, mothers eyes
and hearts.... a witness to the eternal.
With Metta,
L.
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