The Time of my Dying is not...

....today or even next year.

I’ve made up my mind.

I don't have time to be old!

Hibernation would be my choice, but for today ~

hiding myself away in a bed alone and covered to my eyebrows seems rather boring, don’t you think?

As long as I can, I’ll continue every morning to get myself dressed, ready for challenges of the mundane and the fun.

I am certainly  ~ most definitely ~

not at the stage where my bottom has to be wiped by a stranger!

There are days when I'm pretty darn tired........

Today, I’m going to get my hair done.

My shoulders are too stiff to do much more than 

pat hair spray to keep my curly locks in place.

Then I’m off to the library for more books.

I always longed for time to read,

whatever and for however long I wanted.

A favourite topic is the time of dying - my dying, although no one's written anything about me.

Are you offended or shocked?

Using the word dying?

Applying it to myself?

And to now?

We often think of it as though it must always be

Sudden! Tragic!

And oh, so very Sad.

A thing ~ not a process ~ that all of us go to, and through, unwillingly.

We don’t think of the Choice to cuddle into the going out,

as we were cuddled into our entering in.

Certainly some deaths are tragic in Unexpected Suddenness,

just as some births are tragic in Unexpected Suddenness

And there are Births and Deaths occurring on the same day no less!

Spirits joining in the moment to give each other directions.

One spirit sliding into home at the beginning of this earthly game.

One spirit soaring into heights unknown at earthly game’s end.

In Death personality unravels ~ a person passes from family large or small.

Unknown soul direction into the great beyond to be wished for, speculated about and believed in.

In Birth, personality not yet molded ~ a child born to family large or small.

Soul’s direction into this world to be wished for, speculated about and believed in.

“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle our skin, 

but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

~ Samuel Ullman

Addictions Depictions

A serious task.

A humourous task.

The spirit grows sad.

A smile isn’t bad!

What amusement can be

from chaotic debris?!

Colour and music.

Compassion and caring.

The fear of yesterday ~ tomorrow ~ today ~

illusion with chains feeling real and so heavy

But add colour and music ~ 

Laughter and grace.

Fear’s illusion balloons....

And pops!

"I don’t need help quitting, I have quit a thousand times! 
I need help STAYING QUIT!”

~ The White Book

Seeing Things.....

           Seeing Things.....

So-o-o hungry when I got up but just too tired to make my usual great breakfast of bacon and eggs, I had energy enough to get out my blender and ingredients for a smoothie. Carrot or strawberry smoothie? I decided to make both, which turned out to be more work than if I’d made my regular breakfast.  

Standing at my kitchen counter, I stared blankly out my window overlooking the ocean front. Squinting suddenly, I rubbed my eyes. I checked my glasses to see that they were clean. For once they were spotless. Stopping long enough to pour myself a smoothie, I took a big drink and looked again out the curving bay window that I loved so much. It really was - a man? – or else I’d been reading too many Harlequin Romances. A very handsome buccaneer, his shirt open to the waist revealing his bronzed gleaming chest, leaned on my windowsill grinning at me. Blonde curls spilled over his brow, long tresses graced his wide shoulders. I closed my eyes tightly, took ten deep breaths and thought of doing laundry. When I opened my eyes the buccaneer had vanished, and I was left with an empty blender.

 “In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.”

~ Wallace Stevens

A Writers Group exercise to write a story from 'seeing things..'

Character Study

Character Study

Movement was busy at the bus stop. People waited restlessly while on errands for home or work, everyone’s clothing in varieties of downtown sameness. One face materialized, more significant than all the others. Pale and unhealthy, it was all angles and hard surfaces. I couldn’t see his eyes but remembered hard blue eyes flickering downwards when he began to speak. His hair was crew cut short with no particular style or colour. Wearing non-descript clothes, a winter jacket hung loosely open from his sparse frame. Dark jeans folded down his long legs to dark worn sneakers. In animated conversation with a longhaired young woman, he stood taller than her. She leaned back against a restaurant front. I did not sense anything more than casual, interested conversation from the forty-something man. His presentation to her would probably be polite, kind and genuine sounding. He glanced up. Seconds long eye contact with me. I walked quickly past.

“One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye;

it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Simply Decadent

It was only a bit of crisp bacon, cheddar cheese with just a hint of onion salt between two quarter slices of brown crusty bread.

A tiny square of a sandwich made

microwave warm until cheese melted,

golden and oil moist onto my plate,

a slide for softened bread.

Only four tiny bites for my quick morning break

each flavour separate,

then blended on my tongue and savored. 

Decadent? Maybe.

Guilt ridden? For something that tiny ~ never!

My tongue, taste buds and tummy satisfied ~ till lunch.

“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can

 never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

On the Trail of the Five Senses

Dusk gathered around me, darkening vast forests of trees on either side of the highway. Wide and paved, the highway was silent save for the thrum of my old car, and the occasional evening bird call. Cool fresh air wafting in the car window was somehow different. It was not the familiar smell of prairie dirt or new mown hay. Unfamiliar, yet the aroma was delicious and clean.  

***

A small blue Fordson tractor grumbled into the fruit stand bearing a bin of apples, depositing it unceremoniously and returning to the orchard for more. I had never seen so many apples! 400 pounds of apples. Gala apples. Small, red and cream striped with dimpled bottoms, their dainty brown stems the umbilicus separated from the parent tree. Oh, to taste an apple that hadn’t traveled many miles to the prairies for mom to cook down into apple pies, apple sauce and if we were lucky, some saved for fresh eating.  

Randomly I chose one from the center of the big, red wooden bin, apple skin smooth and yet grimy with orchard dirt. Sinking my teeth into the tough striped skin, juice squirting to the back of my mouth, my taste buds were bathed in bright, clean apple taste. Later, at the door of the outside cooler where the apples were stored, rushing cold air posed a riddle for my memory that the fresh apple taste had begun. As our work day deepened and dusk approached, silence fell with the evening light.The hesitation in highway sounds from the day was broken by evening bird call. I was transported in time into my car, driving between dusk blackened orchards of fresh fruit waiting to be harvested, returning to Canada, not to the prairies, but to this rumpled province filled with orchards. 

“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory.

Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding

objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”

~ Denis Diderot

Remembrance Day Tribute

Flags carried in the opening military march through

Remembrance Day 
comes round again.
Drifting dry snow memories swirl around poppy laden wreaths laid at the base of the cenotaph in Milestone.

Men, some of them my uncles, seen daily in stores or repair shops in Milestone, transform into soldiers once more in

left over bits of uniforms,

navy blue berets

medals

ribbons

serious faces.

Strength and bursting energy of youth reshaped by 

Cenotaph on the grounds of the Legislature

life experience and age.

Memories scatter like dry leaves around me of little, if any, talk of war experience, save the brief story about the long painful walk across Europe in deep grey mud, or hearing the words ‘shell shock’ never explained or asked about.

The real war only known from a very great distance, knowledge and limited understanding bolstered after years of life experience caring for veterans of many wars in hospital beds far from those battle grounds.

War memory drifts and swirls around cenotaphs

in the diverse places I have lived:

on the Saskatchewan prairies,

the Texas plains and

to Vancouver Island on the West coast of Canada

Empress Hotel facing the Inner Harbour

and all regions north, south, east and west.

Today, at the corner of Belleville and Government street, civilians in rain gear or puffy down coats gathered respectfully in the chill, 

military units marched, saluted, called out to attention, senior veterans straightened fading hearts and bodies, young cadets swung vigorously to military marches,

flags flew in the cold wet wind.

At 1100 am sharp silence fell on the square for two minutes, brackets of a twenty one gun salute and an aircraft chevron flyover enclosed the hushed moment.
Only the scree of two gulls, 

rustling wind in the pines and

the spatter of tiny rain drops on umbrellas and jackets
wrinkled the silence.

“The soldier above all others prays for peace,

for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear

the deepest wounds and scars of war.”

~ Douglas MacArthur