WHY DATES MATTER SO MUCH.

He had the job of rebuilding the chimney on one of the old buildings at the campus of my high school.  I just happened to be with him when he needed a couple of extra hands.   I was standing on a dormer of the roof and with welding gloves as my only PPE, it was my job to catch the bricks from the chimney as he threw them my way.  This was during the late eighties.  Safety was all in how you behaved, not so much in what you wore.  

What I remember that day was the confidence and trust he placed in me. This wasn't a ballgame on the ground, we were playing catch with bricks on the roof of a three story building.  

Today would be my Dad's ninetieth birthday.  I had this date marked on my calendar with a big 90.  I wanted to do something to remember him and to honour this day.  I had hoped to spend the day with my whole family, but that plan fell through because today now has me going to the vet hospital with my cat.  So no family gathering and I am left to wonder how today will be spent.  

Why do dates matter so much?  As of next January, it will be fifteen years since Dad died.  That is a lot of dates gone by, both birthdays and different anniversaries.  As I understand, not everyone is a stickler for the dates.  Remembering is something done when that person's memory comes to mind.  After so much time has passed, the dates go by and life goes on.  Yet, to me, the dates still matter.  

I have heard people talk about their missing loved ones like this.  "Not a day goes by when I don't think about him/her."  It sounds romantic and sentimental, but is it real for everyone? Some days go by for me and I don't think of Dad.  If I don't glance at his picture, or have a memory, a whole day can go by and my thoughts don't go his way.  That is why dates matter to me and today matters to me.  I have a whole day when I can focus on remembering my Dad.  

As I write this, it is about 5:30 in the morning.  I don't know how I will spend the day today.  How will I invite my Dad into my day that will make it significant.  I hope I can find a few things to do as the day goes by.  

I may have tears when I see a picture of me on top of a building tossing bricks with my dad but it is pure joy as I remember that day.  As I look at the picture I find there is so much joy, and that joy is going to come with tears too.  I'm okay with that.  

"The pain will pass, but the sadness will remain."  Bill Warwick

LISTENING TO THE NAMES OF THE DEAD

 9/11 MEMORIAL IN NEW YORK CITY 2022

THE NAMES OF THE DEAD

How long does it take to recite the names of every person who died on September 11, 2001 as a result of four planes and their destructive destinations that day.  It takes over four hours to recite the 2996 names of every one that died that day in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.  

Every year for the last twenty one years, this day has become a day when I stop and find a way to honour and remember.  9/11 has become my Remembrance Day.  I was not alive during the WW2.  I cannot remember something that happened before I was born.   But I remember that day in September 2001.  I wasn't there, I knew none of those who died.  But I remembered that day and I find ways to remember every year the anniversary comes around.  

One year I read a book written by one of the widows of that day.  Some years I write poems.  Today I am listening to the grievers of the lost recite the names that are carved in the perimeter of the pools that mark the place where the World Trade Center Towers once stood.  I won't get through the whole video today, but I will listen to it until I have heard every name.  Some names sink in more than others, but they all get a chance to imprint themselves in my cranium.  I hope it's true that the brain never forgets the data that it takes in.  Then those names can have a place in my head for the rest of my life. 

The video is long, but not boring.  The cameras take you from the speakers to the memorial pools where you can see some of those names.  The flowers are fresh today.  The speakers that inspire me the most are the young children who never met the people they mourn.  Some are named after their aunts, uncles, grandparents.  It is beautiful to see how people's legacy of love extends to people not existing in their time line.  

I wonder how long we will remember.  How long will I remember?  It's been twenty-one years.  Will I stop remembering one day.  I don't know. But this year, I am still remembering.  

"No day shall erase you from the memory of time." 

Oleh D. Wengerchuk's sister reciting a quote at the 9/11 museum. 

HER COLOURS AND HER JOY... WHAT I WANT TO REMEMBER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II

"This picture shows what I admire most about this woman…. her joy and her love for colour.  I don’t think you can fake a good smile.  She had purpose and she lived until she died.  That is someone I admire."  Ruby Neumann  

I send this collage and these three sentences in an email to my mother and my friend of forty years.  I didn't know who else to call that could help me navigate some feelings towards this loss.  

I'm not crying as I would if I had lost a treasured grandmother.  Those tears belong to someone else. No tears, but I need to spend time honouring a woman who has been a part of my world for as long as I have breathed.  

I wondered what I could do to honour her and highlight what I appreciate about her.  I went to Google and found the most colourful and most joyous pictures of her.  There were so many.   I made a collage of colours and smiles from a woman that I think embodied beauty.  

I am Canadian.  I might question and wonder of the purpose of the monarchy, but it's not the monarchy I want to pay tribute to today.  I want to honour her as a person, because as a person, she matters and matters to me.  

She did a lot of what no other woman has done in history.  That is huge for me.  That makes her the most treasured role model for women around the globe.  Even through she didn't work her way up to her job assignment, but was given it because of the family she was born into, she took her role and gave her life to it.  She didn't seem burdened by obligation or responsibility, but found joy in all her duties and interactions with people along the way.  Countless testimonies are evidence of that.   

After I found out of her passing, I went on Youtube and soaked up some of the tributes.  I found some that I want to share here that warmed my heart.  

Queen Elizabeth's Tribute Video

Queen Elizabeth II in her own words

Queen Elizabeth's sense of humour

 (Sept 9) ...and this next video is what brought the tears to my eyes the next day... she was truly special! 

Dancing Queen Elizabeth

(stay tuned.. I might find more videos as I peruse the memorials this week.  I will post them here if I find some worth passing along.) 

King Charles III first speech

James Cordon's tribute to Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth II: Above all Else 

My Poem for Queen Elizabeth II entitled "Her" 

"Grief is the price we pay for love."  Queen Elizabeth II

TEARS AT A FUNERAL, BUT FOR DEEPER LOSS THAN FOR THE MAN WHO DIED

 It has been fifteen years since I was part of that community.  I had left the city and left behind most of the people that attended that church.  That is what happens.  More often than not, church community is only for the people still going, not for those who left.  I don't want to blame churches for what happens across the spectrum of gathering places of any kind.  It is much harder to keep connecting when you don't have that gathering place as a meeting ground, whether that is church, work or a club of any identity.  

Every so often, I find myself perusing the internet and seeing if anything brings me back to those communities.  I was on Facebook looking at the page of a former church I attended, and I scrolled down to find a funeral service, from almost a year ago,  of someone I knew when I attended there.  I did what I always do now when watching online funerals.  I bypass the introductory music and religious rituals and go right for the tributes.  I listened to four people that shared their stories - a friend, a wife, a daughter and a son.  Only one of those four drew a response of tears and pain out of me and it wasn't the family.  

The friend shared first and it was his presence there that opened up a painful memory for me.  I hadn't seen him in over a decade.  I hadn't heard him speak publicly for fifteen years.  I remembered the smile and his mannerisms.  He didn't identify himself, but I knew who he was.  He was someone I once respected, someone I trusted to give me wisdom for my life's journey, someone I would come every Sunday to listen to because it was his job to do all that.  He was my pastor.   

Today, I still can't quantify what happened to me back then.  Why his "indiscretion" had so much affect on me.  What if I saw her face again?  She was just as much to blame for my pain as he was.  But it was him I saw standing at the church he led all those years ago.  He was the one I had trusted.  He was the one who broke that trust, not only for his wife, his family, his church... but somehow for a single thirty something year old woman who found her way to his community.  

He was terminated as pastor when the affair became known.  It was painful and ugly for everyone who was involved.  But somehow that community was able to forgive him.  Fifteen years later, he is back in the same church at the funeral of a man who he said never abandoned him during that time.  The man they were honouring that day was more than a friend to him, he was a "brother".  

Even now, fifteen years later, it's hard to understand his role in my deconstruction.  When I stopped going to church, my mother told me, "I don't blame you."  She somehow tied this event to my journey away from church and the importance that it held for me.  Maybe she understood more than I could at the time.  

My emotions betrayed me yesterday.  I had assumed the pain had passed and forgiveness had healed all the wounds.  But what if not all the pain has passed.  What if I still feel damaged by what happened fifteen years ago.  

Maybe one might ask what this story has to do with grieving creatively?   I thought that when I watched the funeral service for this man I knew, that I would cry for him.   That would be normal, that would be expected, that would be understood.  But my tears were not for him.  My tears tell me that I still had some grieving to do for something that was lost fifteen years ago.  There is no common place to go when a mind choose to bury pain.  This is the uniqueness of that moment.  That is when grief is allowed to be expressed.  Being creative in grief isn't a choice, it's a response in the moment by rebellious emotions. 

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends." — Keanu Reeves