Jules Van de Vyvere died today

Jules Van de Vyvere died early this morning.  He had seemed physically robust at his birthday party on May 2, but he was upset and restless as we were leaving.  He kept looking for the car keys, wanting to make sure he would be able to drive home from the place where he was.  Cathy and Brian phoned him there after we had left, and she told me later that he had been very distracted during their call.  Bert phoned a couple of days ago to say that he was failing, imagining that he was on Mission Street in Winnipeg again.  Carol thought he was nearing the end, but I was still shocked when Bert phoned today to say that he had died.  He was a real old Belgian of his generation, tough, admirably so in many ways.  Even though I saw him rarely and knew that he was close to death, I can’t help feeling moved by the knowledge that another piece of what was the heart of my life is gone.  This too will pass.  Life is tenacious even if it often seems less vibrant with age.

Jim and Jules harvesting apples in Kelowna

Victoria Day, 2014

Victoria Day began very well, with a great chat with Jay and May at 7:00am.  And after two days of rain, it looks blue and sunny outside.   

I’ve been talking with mom every evening, just after her dinner and before mine.  Dad seems to be doing well.  Her central theme is the wonderful care he is getting.  Even he admits that every part of him, mentionable and un, is being thoroughly washed, and she can’t believe how clean shaven he is.  His main problem seems to be ordering his meals.  In spite of having no gravy one night and no coffee another, he persists in dismissing the instruction at the top of the order page that says you have to check off everything you want.  However, last night he didn’t get any dessert because he hadn’t indicated he wanted it.  For a man who loves sweets, that was a hard lesson.  I think he will have learned from it.  Mom hopes so because she had to leave him the part of a peanut butter granola bar that was left from her afternoon tea and that she had hoped to finish at night with her tea, watching the news.   Perhaps she shouldn’t have softened the blow of no sweet; she may have missed the teachable moment.  Dad is supposed to begin physiotherapy on Tuesday.

The hike up Sugarloaf went well in spite of the fact that the weather was less than perfect.  It rained off and on all day, but the trail was in good shape because it is mostly through tall firs and pines.  The branches kept off the drops and the ground in many places was dry.  However, as we approached the lunch spot, a misty cloud blew over making it cool and rainy.  We found sheltered places at the base of trees and ate, still with a view over Lake Okanagan.  The rain stopped as we hiked down; it didn’t begin again until we were driving home, at which pointed it pelted.  I now feel that I can help with more clearing expeditions, hikes and rambles, which makes me happy because the VOC has made my move to Vernon much more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been, and I would like to do my part.  

I wish someone would knock the fedora off the head and smile off the face of Goodluck Jonathan.  He seems to be reveling in the international attention now being paid to him instead of seriously trying to find and free the kidnapped Nigerian girls.

  I’ve always liked the Habs’, even though I hardly watch hockey now.  I don’t worship them, as many Montrealers seem to but I did enjoy their series against Boston.  CBC had a show on them in which they interviewed a Roman Catholic priest and mentioned that the goalie, Carey Price is being referred to as Jesus Price.  I laughed at that, but the smile was wiped off my face this morning when I heard that he has been injured and will probably not play again this season.  The Habs’ chances of making it to the finals are seriously diminished by that.

Some of the motley crew on the hike up Sugarloaf on Sunday

The view from the top at lunch

Chocolate lilies

Mother and child on East Hill

Aged Ps and Asia

A lot can happen in a week in the life of a retired person living alone in a small town in BC, even if much of it is virtual action.  In our Skype conversation last week, Jay and I agreed that the idea of a four-day holiday in Kyoto was unrealistic.  When he merely suggested the possibility a couple of months ago, I embraced it.  Don MacMillan said once that I reminded him of the line, “I’m just a girl who can’t say no; I’m in a terrible fix.”  I thought it was funny at the time, but the more I live with myself the more I appreciate the fact that it’s true.  If someone comes up with an idea, I’ll get excited about it.  Jim’s comment that I was all sail and he all anchor has come to me often since he died.  I realize the extent to which he kept me from blowing away, as Joni Mitchell would say.  I did think that the flight to Kyoto, the rapid train to Osaka, the two full days in Kyoto and back on the train and plane might be hectic, but it was bound to be an experience.  Jay’s final, more realistic assessment took into consideration moving around the five of us, including two young girls who have their own inalienable rhythms.  So we will go on a more manageable excursion to somewhere in Korea.  Whew!  I feel more relaxed already.

 Canceling the Kyoto hotel reservations that I had made and modified on Bookings.com was a snap.  I have only good things to say about Bookings.com and Expedia.ca.  I have made, altered and canceled many reservations with them in the last few years without any difficulties whatever.  And for a person whose own mother used to call her “wrong way Corrigan”, that’s saying something.  My assessment of Air Miles on the other hand is not as favorable.  Trying to turn their points into viable travel is becoming difficult.  We had lots of success with them in the past, but lately I find that by the time you pay the taxes and whatever else on top of the points, you might as well get a ticket through Bookings, Expedia or by going on the airline’s site.  I think I will take Al Pollock’s advice in future and cash in the points to invest in some small stock venture.  That at least is a get-rich-quick scheme that is a bit more realistic than buying a 649 ticket.

I have a few friends who, like me, have aged Ps, and we often talk about ‘getting the call’.  On Saturday night at about 10:30, I thought I’d got it.  The phone rang.  Before answering it I read VIHA on the receiver and knew it would be from mom.  It was.  Dad had fallen again.  She had gone with him in the ambulance to the hospital and now they wouldn’t let her go home until she had notified me of what she was doing.  Dad has a small crack on a bone high up on the same leg he broke early last April.  She called me again when she got home and told me a few more details, but she really wasn’t able to say much and was very tired, so we said good night.  When I hung up, I didn’t know what to think but knew that in spite of that my mind would be spinning without fuel as it does so well.  So I took a gravol, made a cup of herbal tea and read until I couldn’t focus on the words any more.  I almost didn’t go on the Sunday hike but thankfully went.  It was a wonderful warm day, the drive to Camel’s Hump was a rugged adventure and the views were spectacular.  When I phoned mom at 4:30, she was in relatively good spirits.  Dad had been more thoroughly bathed and shaved than he has been in a while and she was delighted with that.  He wasn’t in pain and ate well.  When he will be released is another question, but I guess maybe the Saturday night call wasn’t ‘the call’. 

Last night, I helped a friend who prepares a snack for the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra musicians before their Vernon concerts.  As a result, I got a ticket to their final concert of the season, ‘Asian Celebration’.  It was a wonderful show; she said it was their best of the year.  They played music from the Philippines, China, Japan and Korea.  The highlight was the ‘Butterfly Lovers’ violin concerto played by Yi-Jia Susanne Hou.  The story is a Chinese Romeo and Juliet.  The violinist is the daughter of the man who was China’s most famous violinists prior to the Cultural Revolution.  He is still remembered in China as the first violinist to play the song.  He was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution and moved to Canada as soon as he was able after it ended in 1976.  She played wonderfully and received a long, standing ovation.  She was very cute.  After receiving a bouquet of flowers, she mentioned that as it was Mothers’ Day, she would like to take a ‘selfy ’ of herself with all the mothers in the audience standing and waving to send to her mom.  We all happily stood and waved.

 I’ve been on an Asian kick lately.  The book I am reading at the moment is Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron.  He’s a travel writer whose books I want to read more of.  He’s as informed about the places he travels through as is Dervla Murphy, and his trips are just as rugged.  He writes well.  

The view from Camel's Hump

Silver Star in the distance as seen on the hike up Camel's Hump

Some of the many tulips in my yard.  This has been a great year for tulips, but I think the tree peony was nipped in the bud.

  

Monday, May 4, 2014

My first time leading a Ramble was a success.  No great feat but I did think about it and prepare some information.  We walked up from the Anderson home, through a ‘draw’, over the hills and grasslands of the ranch to a dam on Goose Lake and back over different hills.  It was all very easy, but the day was perfect and the 58 people who had turned out were happy to be in the sun.  In preparation, I had looked up what a draw actually is.  It’s like a small ravine or gully except that it rises on 3 sides.  We entered between two high sides and walked gradually uphill so that we rose to their height and continued on the higher ground.  Barbara Anderson, the widow of Pike Anderson, had suggested to Miriam and me when we scouted the ramble that we start by going up the ‘draw’.  We could see what she was pointing to and did that, but I wondered exactly what a draw was.  In looking it up, I discovered that the word ‘draw’ has hundreds of meanings, as a verb (transitive and intransitive) and a noun.  I didn’t bore the gang with anything more than the one that applied to what we were doing.  I also told them a bit about some of the birds and wild flowers we might see and about Pike Anderson; he was a genuine cowboy and is in the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame. 

Another local activity that I attended this week was the Powerhouse Theatre production of Georges Feydeau’s “rollicking comedy”, ‘A Flea in her Ear’.  It was a bit long and frantically farcical for my liking, but, some of the actors were very good and a few scenes were perfectly timed and ludicrous. 

I volunteered to work twice at the Friends of the Library’s big book sale in the Curling Club.  What a well-run, moneymaking event that is.  I found a copy of The Lonely Planet, Japan from 2012, which I bought for one dollar.  Japan is a rapidly changing country, but I think some of the information will still be current when Jay, May, the girls and I go to Kyoto in the fall.

On Friday, I drove to Kelowna Mazda for the spring check up and tire change.  When that was done, I went to Bert and Peggy’s for lunch.  We then went together to celebrate Jules’ 91^st birthday with him and Carol at the residence where he now lives.  The staff was very friendly and some of the other residents also tried to be helpful, with more or less success.  One man was removing things from the table as fast as they were laid down.  He had to be gently steered in other directions a few times, but a woman pulled her walker up to our table, sat on it and stayed with us the whole time.  She had a very pleasant expression on her face and seemed to find our conversation entertaining.  Everyone in the room had a piece of the cake Carol had brought, and, aside from the woman who dropped most of it in carefully broken off pieces onto her lap and the floor, we all enjoyed it.  Even she seemed to be pleased with what she was doing.    

Bits of blue are showing through the cloud, so I might spend the afternoon in the garden.

Jules' 91st Birthday 

Rambling over the Anderson Ranch to Goose Lake

The leader and the sweep

Me with Mo on the Goose Lake Ramble