Annette

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Last week was the first anniversary of the passing of Annette, my close friend here in Qualicum Beach, who lived on the next street over. So now it’s a year later and I ask is this a short time or a long time? I’ve come to the conclusion that I feel the same now as I did then, and it feels like no time. No time. I said back then “I don’t really know what to do. So I guess I’ll just keep talking to her”.

And I do.

Everyone who leaves your life opens a subtle trail of loss that still connects you with that person. When you think of these people, miss them, and want to be with them, your heart journeys out along that trail to where they now are. – John O’Donohue

Shortly after we moved here, over 9 years ago, I was out for a walk in the neighbourhood and passed a couple walking their little dog. We greeted each other and the woman shone her wide smile at me and complimented me on the deep blue jacket I was wearing. We chatted for awhile, joked and laughed. There was something about her that attracted…some sense of joyousness and light that I have only recognized in a few. The next time we met and stopped to chat I blurted out “Do you want to go for coffee?”, and she said “Yes!”. It reminds me of how little kids are so quick to walk up to a new child and say “Do you want to play?” and they’re off and away. It doesn’t usually happen quite so fast with “grown ups”.

Well we too were off and away, and play we did. That was Annette.

Together we went on countless walks (the walkie talkies), sharing stories and talking about life’s challenges and pleasures. We visited at a favourite cafe in town, checked out the galleries and shops, explored our surroundings, drank endless cups of tea and got to know each other well. We shared books and garden flowers. Over the years we became close. We also got together a lot as couples, along with Scott and Kelly, neighbours from down the road. The six of us would gather for summer dinners in one of our gardens for great food, great conversation, great company, and lots of laughter. There were bigger parties for other neighbours and there were always lots of excuses to celebrate. Birthdays were a big deal, as were Solstice parties, Royal Wedding viewing, a New Year’s Eve party designed to get us all to bed by 10:00 (we celebrated New Year’s in Rio, a more reasonable time zone). For many years Annette and Graham would take their motor home up the coast and park it at the beach for the month of June and/or September. Close enough for what became a ritual day trip to go up and join them for a barbeque and beach hang out. There are so many happy memories.

How to describe Annette? As well as being the warm, fun-loving hostess or party guest, she was also a good friend to many people. Her circle of family and friends was large and she paid attention to and nurtured those relationships.

Watching her with others, whether friends or strangers, was like watching joy in motion. She brought light to others through a smile and genuine engagement. I noticed the way she would talk to people easily and with real attention. She seemed to know every shopkeeper in town and often stopped for a few words with people we’d pass on the walkways in town, the beach or the forest. People’s faces lit up as they responded to her warmth and words of kindness and encouragement, reflecting back that dazzling smile.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about why she had that affect on people but the simple answer is she just made you feel good! The light and joy that made a small part of this world better and happier, did not mean that she did not have her own struggles and challenges – not at all. She had experienced it all over the years, as we all do – the joy and the sorrow – and she was wise.

A friend described her, “She is…full of grace…tremendous grace”.

In December 2018, as Christmas approached, Annette became sick and all plans for Christmas were cancelled as she tried to recover. Right after the new year, she went for tests, saying, “I’m scheduled for tests on January 2, looking forward to the all clear – and then I can forge ahead into 2019 – I’m ready”.

So what happens when there is no “all clear”? Life changed for all time.

She was sick with cancer for 13 months, and she used to say “my cancer has been teaching me”. I’d respond with “your cancer is teaching me too”, and that’s true, my life also was transformed in all ways. Her lifelong spiritual path served her well as she became “palliative”, meaning medicine had nothing more, and she looked elsewhere for what would help her on the journey to the end. On our last visit I could see that she was totally ready to go, her body was done and she had come to the point where she was at peace with leaving this earth. We talked about that and said our good byes. Whatever happens next was beckoning.

She died on the morning of February 6th, 2020 at home surrounded by her children, two grown grandchildren and Graham, her husband of 30 years.

I was quiet in the Bunkie Studio at the time, one street away. I didn’t ask her for this, but yes I did see the signs before and at the moment of her passing, the second time this has happened in my life (see My Father), and I know that all is well.

She was with me for 8 years; we walked together for as long as she was meant to. We’re all just walking each other home, as Ram Das said. Eight years of living that friendship was a gift. A very precious gift in my life that I cherish forever.

We’re all just walking each other home – Ram Das

How to Travel During a Pandemic

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Who’s counting? A sign in the neighbourhood.

At the same time that travel restrictions got even tighter this week, in Canada and other countries, I hear that friends of a friend have just booked travel to southeast Asia in the fall. I really had to stop and think about that; is that a short time or a long time away from now? What will change between now and then?

I find it almost impossible to imagine travel in the future right now. My imagination isn’t working that way these days, it’s too busy amusing me in the present I guess. It may also be part of the wider time warping phenomenon I’ve found all through this past year. Time has become a fluid, shifting experience – I can’t remember whether something occurred a week ago, a month ago, or 3 months ago. And future time didn’t work out so well either, when everything I had looked forward to never happened. For me, thinking of a time in the future means I have to imagine that future, and I can’t. So I don’t. At the same time, I have never thought of “getting back to normal”, as wherever it is we’re headed, that’s not it.

Like a lot of people living in the middle of global pandemic there are things I miss doing, like getting together with friends and family, near and far, and traveling for a change of scenery both locally and abroad, but I don’t think much about where I’ll go when some day it would be possible again. Because I can’t see that far away.

So instead of thinking about future travel, I’m amusing myself by second hand travel, in the here and now. Turns out I’m traveling to all kind of places. Video.

For example, if I had a bucket list, Scotland would be on it. Last fall local public television was showcasing Scotland in their programming for a couple of months and aired a wide variety of shows – travel, arts, history, natural world – and I watched a lot of it, roaming the country on my screen, letting someone else do the driving (and drone filming), and act as tour guide, allowing access to places you’d never see even if you were there in person. I have never been to the country of my father’s birthplace but this has to be the next best thing so I traveled vicariously. Travel shows are keeping me going.

The real fun began when I came across a You Tube channel of a woman who lives in Italy, on the Amalfi Coast in a town called Positano. Originally from the U.K. she lives there with her Italian husband and teenage daughter and films scenes from her everyday life, posting a weekly video about this and that – selected scenes from life – making pasta, gardening, having lunch with friends and family, walking the dog, kayaking, taking a boat trip to Capri for the day, and visiting other towns along the coast. The real star of the show is the gorgeous scenery that she captures beautifully in every episode – or maybe it captures her.

Now Positano has featured very large in my imagination and memory, going back a long, long time. When I was a teenager, I happened to read an article in Gourmet magazine at my Aunt’s house about the town of Positano and the famous San Pietro Hotel, carved into a cliffside and was completely enchanted by it. (I still have that magazine and rereading that article elicits those same feelings of longing). It became a dream of mine to visit someday, to walk the steps of the town and see for myself those bougainvillea and Mediterranean views.

Years later my dream came true. More than 20 years ago, Howard was working in international finance and mentioned to his Italian counterpart my long-time dream of visiting Positano. The next meeting the group was having was scheduled to be hosted by Italy. “I’ll see what I can do,” said Lorenzo. And he did, he went the distance for me in planning the meeting location. “My apologies, it can’t be in Positano, the town is too small for this kind of meeting, but we’ve arranged for it to be held on the island of Ischia, in the Bay of Naples, which is close enough for you to easily spend time in Positano after the meetings. ” And so, there I was, tagging along to southern Italy. Thank you Lorenzo.

Ischia was a dream. I remember the sheer beauty of the buildings, the stone walls and gardens under the Mediterranean sun, exploring by motorbike, enchanted by the vegetation and flowers. I found out for the first time what a real lemon was (as opposed to what we buy in our supermarkets) when we walked past a low-walled garden filled with lemon trees and struck up a conversation with the owner/gardener, who as it turned out had lived for some years in Toronto. He gave me a lemon from the garden. Its smell was so extraordinary that I carried it around for three days, constantly sniffing it and sighing loudly. If anybody noticed, it wouldn’t have been the first time to raise eyebrows among the locals. There was also the time I went into a small shop selling produce and, valiantly trying to put together a sentence in Italian, I ended up asking the woman for “a kilometre of cherries”! Laughed and laughed (still do). Speaking of three days, that’s how long it took for the airline that misplaced my luggage to get it to me on the isIand. I wore the same clothes for three days and couldn’t have cared less. I was so happy in Ischia.

That was the appetizer. Then we got on a boat and sailed across the Bay of Naples, passed the island of Capri, continued down the coast a bit, turned the corner and there it was. The town of my dreams.

We were there only a short time, just a taste, but it was wonderful. We stayed in a sister hotel to San Pietro in town, the Miramare, with its balconies and terraces covered in bougainvilleas. Cliffside buildings were all shades of cream, yellow, peach and coral. Purple wisteria was in bloom – I had never before seen these over-the-top dripping blossoms, making gorgeous messes of violet petals on patio floors. Pots of flowers were everywhere, in front of every door, on every wall, windowsill, lining pathways and steps. And, always in view, was the sun shining on the glistening Mediterranean. Sigh.

So now, I’m having a great time binge watching someone filming her surroundings as she lives and hangs out in Positano and the surrounding Amalfi Coast, traveling around with her and rekindling my own memories and imagination. Oh, and there’s a huge upside to this kind of visit to Positano. There is also the issue of the defining feature of this gorgeous town. Stairs!!

There are only a few roads that run through the town from the Amalfi Coast highway above so access to most of the buildings in this town is by foot. And because it’s built into a steep hillside that means walkways and lots of stairs between the buildings and garden walls. Anywhere you want to go in town will be 500 steps. And back. I know this very well. Our hotel was only accessible on foot, some guy carried our luggage on his back down (and up) from the road, and we walked and climbed and climbed and walked the entire time. I thought those stairs were killers then and that was over 20 years ago! So now it suits me just fine, to have my YouTube Positano host do all the climbing and walking as she films the scenery, or takes me with her on the back seat of a motorbike, watching the landscape pass through her IPhone. I’m leaving all that climbing to someone younger.

One day the time will no doubt come when I can dream about a future of travel plans to somewhere but not just yet. For now I’m traveling through memory, imagination and video – the next destination, who knows where, but only a click away.

Meanwhile, back in this time zone, in this decade, I took my camera for a walk at the beach the other day at high tide. It was cold, cloudy and damp. 4C degrees. That morning it had even snowed a little but that melted in short order. I had on three layers under my jacket plus a large scarf, hat, jacket hood, 2 pairs of gloves. This is what I found, painful to watch. You will never find me swimming in the ocean on the coast of B.C. in January – never. I have known that some do swim all year ’round in all weather, so there must be something about it that fulfills something. But my imagination doesn’t stretch quite that far.

PassTimes for a Second Year

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My entire social life at the moment consists of going out for walks and randomly running into my neighbours. Some I know quite well and we end up stopping to talk for awhile to catch up, standing apart in the middle of the road. Our streets are wide, without sidewalks, and there’s hardly any traffic so distancing is not a problem. Others I know by sight from walking these roads and forest trails for the past 9 years; I am more likely to know their dogs’ names than their own. We acknowledge each other with nods, smiles and brief stops to chat about this and that. The latest big news in town is that the small pine siskin birds that are passing through now are dying from salmonella poisoning probably from bird feeders. Or so the story goes. I’ve seen two dead ones on the road and two in the backyard that I can certify were not killed by Dennis.

The other day I was talking to someone about what we were going to do in Year 2 of … what are we calling it this week – lockdown. “I’ll just have to get more hobbies, more pastimes!” I suggested. The truth is, there’s no shortage of things to do. Friends are finishing up long neglected projects, cleaning up their stuff, redecorating parts of their homes, and discovering new interests in new ways. It really feels like a very creative time for many.

So what have I been doing and what’s next? Since it’s January and we’ll be inside for awhile yet, both because of stay home rules and winter weather, I’ll think about inside pastimes.

Last year, from May to December I painted almost every day, learning to use watercolours, which were entirely new to me. Till then I had been either drawing or painting in acrylics of one sort or another, but I’m always up for something new. To learn this new medium of watercolour I joined the online art school of a well known, loose style watercolour artist in the U.K. and I’ve been having a great time, it has exceeded expectations. However, for the past 6 weeks or so I’ve put painting aside and I’ve been spending a lot of time in front of a monitor, creating a number of photobooks to have printed, including some that are snatching 14 years worth of blog posts out of the ether to become hard copy (ahem) page turners. It’s pretty mechanical and repetitive layout work so I amuse myself by listening to podcasts. These projects are going well but the lure of colours is beckoning so no doubt I’ll be painting again before too long.

An annual ritual is the post-Christmas jigsaw puzzle. This year the 1000 piecer was finished in record time. A great time passer. Should the mood strike to change up the ritual to twice a year or whatever, I have a cupboard full of them and access to a neighbour’s puzzle cupboard as well.

Then there’s this situation…

This Christmas, once again, I collected all the books I have that I haven’t yet read, put them into a huge gift bag and put them under the tree, re-gifting them to myself. I counted 65 and I know there’s even more than that here and there around the house and Bunkie. Am I a book reader or a book collector? I’ve been doing a lot of reading this past year and it looks like there’s lots to keep me busy in Year 2.

Last summer I heard that a favourite author, Colin Cotterill, had just released the 15th and final book in his Dr. Siri mystery series set in Laos. I first found these books in a bookstore in Vientiane, Laos in 2007 on the first of many visits. Cotterill, who now lives in Thailand, was having them printed locally and proceeds of all sales in Laos were going to scholarships to young Lao trainee teachers, rehabilitation of bomb victims (bombs and bombies leftover from the American war are still exploding) and children’s literacy programs. He’s been releasing new books in the series regularly since then. Until now.

The protagonist, Dr. Siri, is a 70-something reluctant national coroner in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos in the years after the Communist nationalists took over in 1975 after a long civil war. With the help of a small, motley group of friends, and the assistance of the spirits of the dead, he solves a series of strange mysteries, all along serving up commentary on life in Laos in the 1970’s. They are the funniest books I’ve ever read.

I decided I would honour the event of this final Dr. Siri by, before reading that last book, re-reading the entire series again, concluding with this new grand finale. So that was my summer treat, self-isolated on a chaise in the garden, laughing out loud with my favourite books and dreaming of Laos.

After the first Pause and lockdown lifted late last spring and the small shops started to slowly reopen in town, I noticed that my favourite shop, a used book store, had closed for good. Our town is mostly made up of small independent businesses – there are no large chains or anything like that, so the spring lockdown and subsequent very scaled back summer tourist season was difficult to say the least. The book store was a first casualty and I was so sorry to see it go. But then it got worse.

When I first saw this sight of the liquidation and upcoming closing of the used music store in the next town I’ve been frequenting for the past 9 years I was pretty devastated. Owned and operated by one guy, the place was a wonderful anachronism. I’d go in every few months and spend a lot of time flipping through CD’s of all kinds of music finding old stuff and new stuff and stuff I never knew existed. I bought lots. Glad to support the last of a dying breed.

The store was temporarily closed when I first saw the liquidation signs and for a few days I felt sorry for myself and the prospect of being cut off from my great experience of music-seeking. Poor me. But when I returned later I walked into a heartbreaking scene. The owner, Tim, is a small man, slight and stooped, of indeterminate age, older but not old. This day, I found him behind the counter, among the usual mess of assorted cardboard boxes filled with music, shuffling CD cases around. When he slowly raised his head to recognize me, I looked into the sad and weary face of a man who was completely and totally gutted. The sorrow hung heavy as he told me his story.

In the spring when everything shut down for 3 months, there was some government financial support for awhile and temporary rent reductions. But when reopening was finally possible it didn’t bring back what small business he had had and now the landlord was not only wanting full rent, but he was requiring Tim to sign a new 3-year lease. Not possible in the middle of such uncertainty, and the fact is he had already been struggling for some time, for obvious reasons. So now it was the end, and he was hoping through the liquidation of inventory that he would have enough money to keep him going through to the end of the winter. He had no idea what he would do for work.

And…his mother had just died after her third bout of cancer…

I stayed for a long while that day, flipping through the plastic CD cases, finding gems, absorbing the atmosphere, respecting the past – it felt like I was present at a visitation, grieving alongside. As usual I bought lots, more than lots. Before I opened the door to leave I stopped and backtracked a few steps. I leaned over the counter and told Tim exactly what joy he and his store have brought to my life these past years.

Then I left.

That was my first experience of personally knowing, and witnessing, someone losing their business this past year and it gave me a lot to think about. Behind every liquidation sign we pass by there is a story. While acknowledging my own sense of loss of my favourite this or that, or that I can’t go and do this or that, in the end it really doesn’t amount to a hill of beans compared to what so many others are up against. Compassion and gratitude will see me through – that and a whole lot of patience.

I’ve decided that another pastime to pass time as time passes will be to stop collecting and take a very deep dive into my own private used music collection and discover, rediscover and appreciate what I already have. Over 400 CD’s and more than 5000 songs on my IPods. Should keep me busy happy for a (non) foreseeable future.