It’s April 8, Jim’s birthday, the third anniversary of his funeral and still he’s helping me with my difficult family relationships.  He was the one who kept me in touch with mom and dad by suggesting and largely organizing their visits to us in Mexico and for 2 weeks each summer for years.  Even within those 2 weeks, he would plan a 2 or 3-day road trip to Montreal or Stowe or some other nearby place of interest.  Today, he seems to have influenced our lives even from the urn. 

Dad seemed to be in pretty good shape yesterday, so mom was in good spirits last night and this morning we enjoyed our breakfast and talked a bit of Jim.  Then she went off, pushing dad’s walker, piled with dirty clothes in an ancient crumbling plastic basket tied on with a shoe lace that saw many years service on a runner before it was taken by my dad from his drawer of old things too good to throw out and attached to that walker for that purpose, to do the ritual 8am Mon. morning laundry.  I took advantage of this blessed moment of action over worry to drive to Canadian Tire to buy and have installed 2 new windshield wipers.  I picked up a few groceries and returned home to find mom in the laundry room folding underwear, her face a mask of misery.  When she saw me, she burst into tears.  I got her back to the apartment and sitting down.  When she stopped sobbing, she explained that a nurse had phoned to say that as dad wasn’t doing well there would have to be a meeting about his case and that they were considering sending him to the Aberdeen Centre.  Mom knew nothing about that place and assumed the worst. 

She told the nurse that she couldn’t talk about it and said she would be at the hospital every day between 11 and 7.  She sobbed that she couldn’t take it any more and that ‘they’ weren’t taking very good care of dad, etc.  And this is where Jim came in, or rather I pulled him in.  I began to talk about a few moments that he and I had lived through as we were slowly coming to terms with his cancer.  Mom actually listened without accusing me of being on ‘their’ side.  She calmed down, and we talked.  Then she got dressed and made up and invited me out to lunch at Kate’s Place across the street from their apartment.  I drove her to the hospital and went home to make macaroni and cheese for our dinner and Skype with the Pollocks and Jay.  It was good to see and talk with them and Jay, as usual managed to find the humor on the dark side.  He told me I had to appreciate that what mom is going through is similar to what a criminal does when released after 40 years in jail.  She and dad have been ‘institutionalized’ together in their own little world for almost that many years, and she is afraid of being out in the big world alone.  He made me laugh with stories of some of the cons. in the half way house he worked at in Ottawa one summer who would try to make a pay phone work with a nickel or narrowly escape being hit by cars as they crossed busy streets as if they were the exercise yard in the jail. Much relieved by these chats and laughs, I picked mom up at the hospital and she also was in better shape.  She and dad had actually discussed the situation.  Up until then, they had each tried to protect the other from the truth and both worried without any idea of how to settle the situation.  Now mom has talked with her friend, Marilyn, who told her good things about the Aberdeen, and I have talked with Mo who has given me some insights into the medical system and how to make it work for you, so we enter the battle with a few weapons this time.

Meanwhile, dad’s still tired and weak, but he was sitting up in a real wheel chair today.  That’s the good news.  The bad was that my new wind shield wiper on the driver’s side didn’t work in the serious rain that was falling this morning, so I had to drop mom at the hospital and go back to Canadian Tire, straining to see through the passenger side, to exchange it.  I think that I have learned to master my temper to a certain extent.  The man in the service centre even commented on how calm I was.  I told him it was the result of spending hours in hospitals and practicing Yoga breathing and balance moves.    

Matti, Burke and Cleo in Matti's new truck.  Note how the Tim's cups make this the quintessential Canadian family photo.