THE LAST LETTER TO HIM... WRITTEN AND MAILED THE DAY AFTER HE DIED

Martin                                                                      January 10, 2022

Today I write my last letter to you.  I counted.  You sent me twelve letters last year.  They will always be a treasure.  Your last letter to me was such an encouragement.  Thank you so much for leaving me with such love wrapped up in your letters.  I will miss them and I will really miss you.  This year, 2022, marks forty years since we met.  It was the fall of 1982 when I started my second grade eight year at Round Hill School.  I still remember you greeting me and my parents that fall day.  Your love was evident even back then by how much you cared.  

It was an honour to get to know you and Doris over the years.  You were the first person that Mom and I called the morning after Dad passed away.  Because we knew you were awake early and knew you were the only one who was awake to take such a call.  Thank you for being there for us.  

2021 will always be the year I shared with you in our correspondence.  You shared your heart and soul with me when you were missing so much.  Today is my Mom's birthday.  She is now 85. 

 I was told you were in the hospital, but didn't know yet of the outcome.  On my way home, I went to the Round Hill ball park and sat in my truck and thought of the many times you were umping.  I then went to the school and had a moment to remember meeting you forty years ago.  You were already "beyond breath", so maybe you heard me saying "Thank you" to you.  I didn't know, but I just wanted to be in those places... just in case today was the day... and it was.  My only wish was to send you one more letter and thank you for being such an awesome friend to me over they years.  

I love you and will miss you so much

Ruby Neumann

  * * * 

I wrote this letter and coloured this card for Martin, the day after he died.  I could have just kept it or ceremoniously burned it and let the ashes mingle with the molecules in the atmosphere and imagine his molecules mixing with my letter.  I didn't... I mailed it.  His daughter would have received the letter when she went to clean out his things.  I wonder how strange that would have been for her.  But I wasn't thinking about her possible discomfort, I was needing to thank my friend.  

Martin was the principal at the school where I attended my second year of grade eight.  He reemerged into my life when my parents retired close to the same community where Martin and that school lived.  Last year when I started writing letters, I send a letter to Martin, and he wrote back.  Martin was the only male pen pal I had.  He was 92 when he passed away.   Like I said in the letter, I have twelve letters from Martin.  I hadn't seen him for years, but those letters brought us close once again.  

Martin said something in one of his letters. "Don't ever stop writing".  That encouraged me to find a way to honour Martin in the way that he had blessed me.  So after an internet search, I found an organization called "Love for our Elders"  that arranged for people to send hand written letters and cards to seniors who needed some love.  Every month the website posted were first names and the mailing addresses of the family member that nominated them.  

I wrote letters for six months,  some months, every name posted got a letter.  I enjoyed writing for a while, but it was hard to continue after the months went by and I would get no response.  I was told to expect no replies, because the recipients would get so many letters.  I had only hoped that maybe one or two would get a letter and want to write me back.   I hope the six months was enough to honour Martin.  

I will continue to write as Martin requested.  Maybe it will still be in the form of letters or maybe just poetry and blog posts.  I will write as long as my fingers can move over the keyboard of my laptop.  

I never did hear back from his family.  I hope my letter was a gift to Martin's children.  I hope they know how much of a blessing and encouragement he was to me. That is what I wanted to communicate. in my most unconventional method.  I just wanted to say "Thank you" 

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

SHE STILL GETS FLOWERS

 "I like your flowers better."  are words I remember coming from my Mama  Bernice after I shared a visit with her and her granddaughter.  I had brought her flowers from my garden as was my regular gift to her, and her granddaughter brought her a plant bought at a store.  Both gifts were given out of great love, but because the flowers I brought came from my garden and not Safeway, they reached a special place in her heart.  

Mama Bernice has been a special lady in my life for forty years.  I met her when I was a lonely fourteen year old.  Her story is long and one I have written about, so I won't share too many details here.  I met her in 1982 and she became family in 1988 when her son married my sister.  It is hard to quantify what she meant to me in a blog post.  I think even in my own reflective space, I can't even come to a full understanding of who she was to me.  

When Covid hit, I was not allowed in her facility to see her.  This was not easy on either of us.  The last time I would see her in person was in 2019 and she just passed away in April of 2022.  BUT... that didn't stop my flowers.  I made special bouquets during the summer and brought them to her residence.  I was told that they brought a smile to her face and she knew who they came from.  

When she passed away, I chose not to go to the funeral.  I was given a link to watch it live, and watched it on my computer while I was at my mother's house not that far away from the activities.  There were a lot of reasons I didn't feel comfortable going to the funeral.  I don't need to list them all here.  I did get a chance to take some lilacs out to the grave after every one else had gone.  My mom has a shelter belt of lilacs so there were lots of blooms to pick from.  I filled up a bucket and went to the grave.  I stuck the lilacs in the dirt mound that remained.  It brought a fresh spring look to a rather desolate grave.  

I have been back since to visit my Mama Bernice's resting place.  Once I went by and I wasn't prepared with blooms from my garden, so I walked the perimeter of the grave yard and found something amid the wild weeds.  I didn't want to leave without at least a simple botanical offering of sorts.  

This week, I clipped another mix of flower blossoms from my garden - sweet peas, roses, lilies anything I found blooming and filled another container.  I brought a bouquet that my sister-in-law gave me and put that at the head, while I spread the container of colours over the remainder of her grave (see above picture).  

Grieving creatively really means connecting more personally with the loved one that is gone.   Finding a special place, finding something that is just about the griever and the grief and being unique in that grief, brings so much meaning into the journey. 

I could have done the funeral and graveside, for Mama Bernice, as so many did, but when it came to decide, I felt like my grief and sadness would have been lost in every one else's grief and sadness.  I understand the need for some to have a corporate grief ceremony.  It's not that I want to discourage it, it just isn't enough.  I need to carve out time, a place and memories that are just about me and my loved one.  In my grief and loss, I need to matter too.  

“There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” — Mahatma Ghandi

WHEN WE DON'T BURY OR SPREAD THE ASHES

 The first time I was made aware that some people don't inter or spread the ashes of a loved one right away... it was a friend of the family.  Her name was Dorothy and the ashes belonged to her deceased husband.  I was a lot younger at the time and that confusing image stayed with me for a long time.  The prevailing questions in my mind were ... Why doesn't she bury or spread his ashes?   Why does she hang on to the remains? Is that weird? Am I supposed to be freaked out by that?  Is she holding on to her husband in an unhealthy manner?  So many questions and no courage or rudeness in me to ask her.  

I grew up being familiar with graveyards.  They made sense to me.  Bury your loved ones and go visit them.  That seemed normal.  It wasn't until I was an adult that I was introduced to the concept of cremation as a way to dispose of the remains.  Even then the story dictated that the remains were either buried or spread in some ritualistic fashion.  Hanging on to the ashes didn't make any sense to me... until it happened to me.  

In 2013, my husband and I had the painful experience of putting down our cat after he was diagnosed with a heart condition and wasn't recovering.  Tigger was family.  He was with my husband for ten years and with me for four of those ten years.  We discussed the options and went for cremation.  I don't really remember thinking of the reasons, but cremation seemed to be the best option.  Ashes are easier to deal with physically and emotionally.  It was him, but it wasn't.  

The day we put Tigger down, was the fifth anniversary of my Dad's passing.  I remember remembering and it seemed like just a side thought.  "Oh, it's five years since Dad died."  I think I was emotionally spent at that point, because I had just witnessed my first euthanizing.  I held Tigger as the vet "put him to sleep".  It wouldn't be until I picked up the ashes from the vet hospital a week later, that I released the hold on my emotions.  I held the bag with Tigger's ashes and just bawled.  Someone at the hospital had artfully decorated the bag with a drawing of a cat with wings and a quote that read. " Thinking of your beloved pet will hurt for a while, but the memories of the love you shared will one day replace the tears with a smile."  

Someone went above and beyond to honour Tigger and give us some encouragement in our loss.  I brought the bag home and we didn't discuss what to do with the remains.  So for a while, the bag was stored in my closet.  Then one day, my husband and I found a display cabinet at a garage sale and we took it home and put it in our bedroom.  What do to with that space was a subject of discussion, but eventually it became a place to put special memories and keepsakes.  I thought of our friend's remains that were out of sight, and I brought them out and put them in the middle of the cabinet.  The colourful packaging makes it a little less awkward.  It seems to belong there.  

We still haven't had the discussion about what to do with Tigger's ashes.  What we did was okay for us for now.  If anything, this has increased my compassion for others who don't inter or spread the ashes of their loved ones.  It seems that we all have our own stories and reasons for not doing what seems to be so normal.  I still can't give you a good reason why we hung on to the remains of our cat.  I don't think anyone else can fully verbalize what goes on in the soul of a being when they are faced with death.  We do strange things.  How do we cope best?  We do strange things which is just, I guess,  grieving creatively.  

"Time spent with a cat is never wasted." - Sigmund Freud

KEITH AND THE SUNFLOWERS

 

The first year I planted the Ben Garden in 2017, I found some volunteer sunflowers emerge amid the planted blooms.  I had used the stump as a bird feeder in the previous years before and some stray seeds found themselves in fertile ground and produced some amazing flowers. ( You can see pictures of those sunny blossoms in the video I shared in the post on the Ben Garden.)

Last year, our neighbour Keith, passed away from lung cancer.  His family had been living beside us for eight years, and I enjoyed our back yard connections, as our gardens shared space under the same sunny section of our block.  Only a chain link fence separated our yards, so we would often have chats over the fence when we were both seeding or weeding.  

Keith had an array of Sunflowers planted outside of his fence on the west side of his back yard.  They were often a joyful addition to back alley walks as we took in the smiling yellow faces.  

This year has been a painful one for me.  I miss my gardener neighbour.  His back yard food collection has been replaced by a grove of Canada Thistles.  I don't blame the family.  Maybe it was his thing and they just spend time with him when he was there.  Without the gardener, maybe the garden is too painful for them to spend time in.  I don't really know the whole story.  I only see the weeds and the lack of smiling sunflowers.  

I decided as a memory for Keith, I would plant my own sunflowers.  I had that in mind last year already.  I had ideas, but I ended up planting in the Ben Garden.  It seemed fitting that I would memorialize Keith in my memory garden.  I am sure Ben wouldn't mind.  The odd thing happened.  I found a stray sunflower growing in my beet patch.  I let it get a little bigger and then transplanted it to the Ben Garden.  That is the bloom in the above picture that just opened up this week.  The other sunflowers I seeded are coming up, but at a slower rate.  I have also noticed a few volunteer sunflowers coming up around the other crabapple tree and in the garden.  So I let them go.  I don't know if they will reach to fruition by the end of summer, but it seems a fitting tribute for my neighbour.  

Keith was not just my neighbour, but so many people's "neighbour", as he was the local Baptist pastor.  I never went to his church, but never felt judged for that.  It seemed okay that we had our community time over the fence as we talked about plants, vegetables and life.   When he told us that he had cancer, I wrote him a tribute poem called "The Backyard Pastor". 

Even through Keith hasn't been around for the continuation of my journey out of what was to what is, I think he would be one of the many who still liked me for who I was, not what I professed or how I processed an understanding of life.  Every time I see a sunflower, I remember my neighbour.  His sunny disposition carries on in those beautiful yellow blossoms.  

“When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.” — Sufi

WHO IS SQUISHY?

(Please read this post first... "Where the Roadkill Rests") 

I sit alone in silence pondering how to process the latest lost.  Last night was anything but peaceful, but it was beautiful.  We had an amazing lighting storm.  I couldn't sleep so I found myself watching the light show.  I wanted it to end.  I wanted to sleep.  I wanted so many things in that moment.  Most of all, I wanted not to hurt and I wanted my husband not to hurt.  It seems like a futile desire in the world we live.  We get to hurt.  It is part of the package we call life.  

This morning I went out to the rain barrels.  I had forgot to put the downspouts down last night.  I have six rain barrels in operation in my yard.  Three big black barrels catch water from the eavestroughs (Canadian for rain gutters) and three smaller barrels I use as over flow.  The three smaller barrels were almost empty with some water in the bottom.  I went to put the downspouts down and I jumped back in shock.  In one of the barrels was a dead drowned squirrel.  I looked again and the only word coming into my head was "Squishy".  

In my previous post about Squishy, we eventually came to conclude that it wasn't our beloved squirrel that met its demise on the road that day.  But this morning, I am torn.  I don't know again if that squirrel is the same critter that took peanuts from my hand on a few occasions.  But every fibre of my being accepted it.  Squishy often travelled between the garage, the garden shed and the neighbour's fence.  But this morning it was storming, and maybe the travelling wasn't as easy for him.  Maybe, like me,  he too was scared.  How do I know?  I can only imagine.  

My first thought went to my husband.  How do I tell him?  We already went through the pain once.  Squishy has become a very precious part of our life.  We leave peanuts on our deck to feed him and enjoy his antics as he collects his harvest.  He often would sit on the deck and just eat.  It was quite the show.  How do I tell him?  Do I wait, hoping that our Squishy returns?  I put peanuts on the deck, hoping that I am wrong in my assumptions once again.  Right now... I don't know.  I just don't have the heart to bring this sadness to my husband right now.  Tomorrow we are going to spend the day with family, I don't want him to take this pain with him.  

I did what I did with the other squirrel and rabbit.  I laid this "Squishy" to rest by the other "Squishy" in my Saskatoon patch.  I put some peanuts in the hole.  They are roasted, so they won't grow, but I thought of the ancient Egyptian tradition of burying food with the departed so they would have something to eat on their journey to the afterlife.  It seems like a strange custom, but that is what came to mind... and those peanuts are our connection to Squishy.  I also cut flowers and put them in the hole and on top of the dirt.  

I remembered that I had marked the death of the last squirrel on the door of my garden shed.  I added today's date underneath it with a heart.  (see above picture) I looked at the cross that I had marked for the first "Squishy" and reminded myself that it meant something two years ago, but this year... not so much.  So I put a heart instead.  

Who is Squishy?  It seems that over the years we have called every squirrel Squishy.  Maybe it makes the pain of losing one of them a little easier.  We never lose Squishy, because there is always another one coming around later.  But it doesn't take the pain away.  It hurts to see what I saw this morning.  I can't get used to it, but maybe I'm not supposed to get use to it.  Maybe death is my constant reminder that today matters.  But our Squishy... ate peanuts from our hand, and wasn't scared of us.  I think we will know if it was our Squishy  We knew last time that it wasn't.  

My husband just came in to the office and was wondering what I was doing.  He knows I'm sad, but won't ask why.  He knows I can handle the sadness, but he's not as good at it.  If you are into the Enneagram, it is the difference between a 4 and a 7.  We have had to navigate a lot of sadness in the last thirteen years of our life together.  I wish I could spare him from most of it.  I can't.  I wonder if I have to tell him about this too.  I just think it's bad timing and we can't do much about it other than be sad.  Tomorrow is our annual trip to see his family, so sadness seems an intrusion.  We love Squishy, and if this was him, we will miss him.  But it won't be long... we will see another "Squishy" come around.  That is how nature works.  That is how nature heals.  

Here is a video I did of Squishy.  I published this on Youtube, two years ago...  one month before the first squirrel died. 

Disclaimer: My husband and I  have assumed in our conversation,  that Squishy is a he.  And I have made that assumption in my blog posts on Squishy.  We really don't know.  In the German language, the pronoun used for squirrel is gender neutral "Das Eichhörnchen".   Sadly, we don't have that in English.  

 "Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief." — William Faulkner