Quiet Spaces

Listen to thoughts and feelings shaped with words and actions.

Trust what is heard and felt deep inside your head and heart.

Speak softly and clearly with your own voice.

Listen for nuance and timbre resonating between spaces.

“...you listen first with the ears ~ then, you wait and listen for what your 

heart feels ~ then you consider what they’ve said ~ then, you reply…..”

~ John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

A Simple Remedy

There are many strange and wonderful gadgets and therapies in the ever widening world of health care.

Bells and whistles to call for help or to help the nurse.

Beds that lay flat or raise or lower searching for comfort and for ease.

Medicines that calm fuzzy nerves, dull shooting pains or bring a long day to darkened close.

But the most magical and cherished of all is the plain, beige, soft flannel sheets warmed to not quite hot ~ soft warmth sinking through skin deep into bones that cry out with cold, muscles cramping with pain or feet turned to unyielding blocks of ice ~ blanketing, cosying, warming and calming.

Warm flannel blankets, wrapped ‘round in hugs, bring smiles and deep sighs, trusted always to bring relief even from tears of sadness, grief or despair.

“The most complicated skill is to be simple.”

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Ancestory and History

Ancestory and History

Two stories of family, culture and progress of humankind

Biographies, text books and archives.

Documents documented about ancestors in history.

Individual stories of the present rest only in memory ~ the history of our personal lives told through evolving families and communities until lost in time ~ even the embellishments!

Each person’s story has no need to be told to everyone

yet each person’s story has brought them

from a distant there to whatever here they have arrived in

to raise a child, to mend a fence, or to just buy groceries.

Have trust and compassion in your own story ~

Remember the experiences of the child, the adolescent, the adult

learning through just not knowing or through stubborn know it all

Your own story is written each day with each step that you take, each dance that you dance.

“There was never yet an uninterestng life. Inside 

the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy.”

~ Mark Twain

Home Again

A too short visit with family and long time friends, never enough time to talk and visit and visit and talk, conversations that were started, but only hesitated due to years and miles ~ hugs and meals, laughter and tears shared in trust and love and fun.

Home again feeling rejuvenated and reconnected with a rooted horizon.

“A tree stands strong not by its fruits or branches, 

but by the depth of its roots.”

~ Anthony Liccione

Another Prairie Highlight

Yesterday evening, I did promise to tell you about my trip to the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina. My sister Janet and I left the Nurses’ reunion we were attending to join our sister Kate at this outstanding gallery. My words seem very inadequate tonight. The image I have used to accompany this post is of the Qu’Appelle Valley, rather than trying to capture the wonderful works of art that we viewed.

Our trip into the Gallery was to see the Drs. Morris and Jacqui Shumiatcher Art Collection. This private collection was phenomenal in size and variety. The entirety of the collection was not on display and yet what was on display filled at least two large room with paintings and with sculptures. Norval Morriseau, Kenneth Lochhead and Allen Sapp are only three of the artists featured in this collection. Inuit art was featured prominently. Trusting in art and artists as an important part of any culture, the late Dr. Morris Shumiatcher and his wife, Dr. Jacqui Shumiatcher, collected a variety of exquisite art and are now sharing it with the patrons and visitors to the Mackenzie Art Gallery.

As part of my trip to my home province, this was a special visit. Being with family while viewing such an amazing collection of Saskatchewan talent and artistry was another highlight to my short visit home.

“A country’s greatness is measured, not by 

the uniformity of its people, but by their diversity.”

~ Dr. Morris Shumiatcher, 1940

Trust in Belonging

This highlight of my year, rejoining classmates and nursing instructors for a meal, many hugs and visits, and laughter, was made much greater with an afternoon spend with two of my sisters and a brother-in-law.

Upon my arrival at the Hotel Saskatchewan where our annual event takes place, I was seconded to a registration table to welcome the classes from 1945 to 1955.  Some ot those years had graduated two classes. All of the nurses in attendance had been taught by older, even if only by a few years, nurses. We had, and have, taught and worked with younger nurses, some of us in schools of nursing, some of us in clinics or hospitals ~ some working northern outposts. All of us have cared for our patients in various stages of injury or disease; surgery or rehabilitations, psychiatry or addictions. Outside of clinics and hospitals, there are school nurses and travelling nurses. We have worn uniforms of many designs and in some cases, street clothes or civilian dress.

The joy for me is the sense of trust and belonging I feel when with all of these women. Once we were girls from small prairie towns with little idea of the lives that we would live, the crushing pains that we would share with patients and their families, the joy we would share with recovery of the health of our patients and the busy satisfying raising of families. And now we are those same girls, much more mature ~ at least chronologically ~ many of us retired, some of us with our own illnesses, aches or pains, and some who have gone before us. Our families have expanded, some larger than others, with grandchildren and greatgrandchildren swelling the family ranks. We are still the same prairie girls, but many from far flung places on the globe and most of the Canadian provinces.

My afternoon with my sisters was a lovely wander through the Mackenzie Art Gallery that I will tell you about tomorrow.

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

~ Epictetus