TToT: Thirty-five For Me and Five For Her Headache, #Blogiversary #10Thankful

Here, I hope to leave something behind when I go. Here, I won’t look back with any shame or regret at what I’ve said, what I’ve written. I am proud to be Her Headache.

I am
thankful
for this blog and all those who’ve found me here and read what I’ve written on these virtual pages, ever since that 2014 February of my thirtieth birthday.

As for how to celebrate my five-year anniversary with this space, I couldn’t quite settle on how to best show my gratitude and my pride on all that this blog has brought to my life.

In the beginning, it all started with me showcasing my
BUCKET LIST
of items I’d wanted to experience.

Since my kidney transplant, twenty-two years ago, I am all about not taking each day for granted and my list was a way of stating my purpose and no longer settling for less out of fear. Things like chronic pain and disability threatened to take away a life worth living, but I fought against that and found this blog as a part of that.

In this last five years, I’ve been lucky to check off several things on the list, though I am enjoying the ups and downs of the journey, as I’ve learned that to be the best part of the whole thing really.

Still, I can’t stop wondering where life will take me and so here we go with the review of the things I have done and seen in five years that I may not have dreamt I’d do, during the most difficult days in my past:

I am thankful for the teacher I’ve had, for the last three years, since I decided to take a chance to learn to play an instrument in my thirties. Violin was beautiful to me and I wanted to learn to play with a bow, to produce those kinds of heartbreakingly gorgeous sounds I’d heard from the violin for years. I was drawn to it since I gave up on clarinet back in high school. (Too much air needed, blowing into that thing, which was hard on my head, prone to headaches already.)

She is leaving on a new adventure soon and I must face that thing I often dread, “Change”.

I am thankful for my violin and the progress I’ve made so far, even when I get down on myself for not learning more, faster.

I am thankful for my autumn of 2018 visit to the Maritimes, Canada’s eastern provinces, even my short visit and the limited bit of Nova Scotia I saw. I am thankful I got to place a small item, a token of my appreciation for her gift of iconic literary characters like Anne Shirley in Canada’s cultural landscape, on her gravestone. I got to write a note of my gratitude, from one writer to another, in the guest book in the house Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in. I was brave to finally state, in writing, that I think of myself as a writer, even up next to someone as talented as Montgomery.

I am thankful I got to walk along those Prince Edward Island beaches, the coastline and the smell of the sea. Red Point. The End of the World P.E.I. and the force of the wind at that spot, lighthouse next to a drop down to fearsome ocean roaring down below me.

In these last five years, (not only out east) but I’ve traveled to Mexico, Yukon, British Columbia, and back to Florida for the fourth time.

I am thankful I got to make it to my twenty-year anniversary with my kidney, from my father, and that I got to celebrate that with him and my family and friends, zip lining at my favourite Niagara Falls on the Canada side. I hope to zip line in more places around the world in future.

I am thankful I technically did get my writing available in bookstores, when I wrote a short piece which was included in a print magazine called Misadventures. It was only available in Barnes & Noble, in the US, so a friend went into one and took pictures for me of that magazine on the shelf. I hold that book in my hands and am proud to know I have writing inside of it.

I thought it fitting to make my five-year blogiversary into a TToT post, one of the best things to come out of this blog since 2015 when I discovered other bloggers doing it and I joined their exclusive TToT blogging community.

Thank you, TToT comrads and all of you, for visiting me here. You’re the best.

All jokes aside on the wisdom of getting older, as I turn thirty-five and look back and look ahead, I know the fun is in the journey, not necessarily its destination. Still, I will always write about it all here, or for as long as I am meant to,

Where will I be in five years? And, how will I have gotten there?

Three Years and Counting: Blogging and Birthdays, #TBT

So, here’s the thing: Blogging –
Everybody’s Doing It,
at least according to Brevity Magazine.

But, you know what, so what! I like it. It’s helped me grow as a writer, take first steps and chances for exposure, possible ridicule from which to learn and grow from, and has produced wondrous connections with readers and other bloggers/writers,
starting with this one.

I started out with this blog, afraid to be a writer, like the post I’ve just included speaks about.

And here I am, three years into it, and I love having this space that is mine to say what I want to say.

I’ve been writing down several quotes of a particular kind lately. I’ve been using them for motivation to keep trying new things and striving for more for myself.

This is a big year for me, but I am trying really hard to hold onto the proper amount of perspective in my life.

I started the year 2017 on a high note, in several ways, but now I am marking three years here and I like to think on where I was, one year ago and then one year before that, when this blog felt like the huge step to be taking, as
I left my twenties and entered my thirties.

Last year I rounded up all the posts from the previous twelve months of
1000 Voices Speak For Compassionlove/
that I’d written. I thought it would be a nice way to commemorate two years of having this blog.

For my one year anniversary before that,
I gave thanks.

So, now what? Where am I with Her Headache? Where am I headed?

I blog less here during the week these days. Monday through Friday I often use Facebook as a blog of sorts instead, one where I write shorter things, reflections and observations. I am writing a lot of other things now and it’s still sometimes tough to decide when to write a particular piece here or if I should save it for possible submission or publication elsewhere. It’s nice having this space to come and write and share my thoughts, but I’m learning that sometimes it’s best to hold onto an idea and to find a different home for it, one that may help me grow as a writer, somewhere else.

My weekends are still for blogging:

I finish sentences on Fridays,

write stream of consciousness stuff on Saturday,
and
participate in the sharing of song lyrics on Sundays.

Of course, I still feel strongly about writing down the things I am thankful for. I use that as my weekly checkin point.

I can see how much I’ve achieved here, when I look back to a year ago, and I like having that perspective. I don’t know what 2017 will bring, though my plans are in the works. I do hope I will be able to look back at those, whatever they may turn out to be, from this position, in 2018 and beyond.

We Are One!

Happy One-year Anniversary 1000 Speak.

#1000Speak for Compassion

Although 1000 Voices Speak For Compassion had its first link-up on the 20th of February 2015, the birth of our initiative was one year ago today!

January 12th was the day it all began, was the day around 200 or so people responded to the invitation to join us in writing about compassion on an unspecified day. In A Year of Compassion, for our link-up in December, I wrote about some highlights of 2015, so check out that post to see some of what we’ve done.

And remember our link-up this month is about FORGIVENESS. If you aren’t sure what to write about, check out our prompts post.

So we are one  year old, but we are also one in another way. We are over 1600 members, but all with one vision – to create a world filled with compassion, to feel compassion for others and for ourselves…

View original post 245 more words

My Top Spills and Thrills of 2015

Okay, so instead of a movie review for the newest instalment in the Star Wars franchise (which I am postponing until 2016), I am attempting to sum up this past year: the good and the bad.

It has been a year of huge surprises, stupid spills, and awful scares for myself and my family, but there were thrills to be had throughout. It all ended, with a bit of a bang, and now here I am. I see I am not the first to write one of these, but since I waited and just posted about my hopes for the coming year, last New Year’s Day, I thought I would follow that up with another review, of sorts, about how those hopes translated into one wild ride of a 2015.

First Day of the Rest of My Life

I say in that post that I am not a fan of resolutions at the end of one year, with the blank slate of a new year stretching out in front, but I did have a vision for what I hoped my year might look like.

Now that I can reread that post and see how I fared, I want to bring it all together.

This is how it’s done.

So I thought I would take a page out of this blogger’s book/blog and go month by month. Bare with me.

JANUARY

One of my first posts of 2015 was all about trying new things.

Speeding Up and Slowing Down

I hoped this would be a sign of things to come for the year.

I continued participating in something that matters to me, that is all about a subject near and dear to my heart and life. I would continue writing about awareness for equality and disability rights. This post was a kind shout-out to all that.

I Don’t Want Coffee. Here Are Some Links, Though.

This links to another blog hop I could participate in, if I had more time and more days of the week, but I read it weekly. I have found and left a few different circles of bloggers and blogging groupings over the last few years, but many of these circles intertwine with one another, here and there.

Speaking of blogging circles – January was the start of one of the best things I’ve gotten involved in in a long time.

We All Need The Village

&

1000 Voices Speak For Compassion

Thank you: Lizzi and Yvonne.

Also, it was a month of endings and beginnings.

Letting Go and Continuing to Write Another Day

The ending of an opportunity for the short story I’d written gave way for the beginning of a chance event, one for which I am so glad I snatched up my chance to be included in, in the months that would follow.

FEBRUARY

This, my birthday month, brought not only the day to celebrate my birth, but also the celebration of my first full year of blogging.

One Year and Counting: Kind and Generous

Then came

1000 Voices Speak For Compassion

And after that, my first contribution of many for #1000Speak, there came more focus on kindness with a post I’d written, which was published on a site devoted to love and friendship.

A Friend In B By Kerry Kijewski

I continued to write about a vitally important cause to me, rare illness awareness

Rare Disease Day, 2015: Ventilation

There was a weekend in Ottawa with a friend. This I will never forget.

This year I took a step forward, in the right direction after lost love, and began dating again.

Dating in the Dark

This is my life.

MARCH

This was not easy for me and I didn’t want to do it, but I did it and hope to do more of it.

Microwave Popcorn For Dinner It Is

As the year went on I managed to keep a secret that I’d been keeping hidden for a few months. It would involve the struggle I constantly have inside about the fine line between truth and fiction, memoir or not?

Truth Or Fiction: Which One Is Stranger?

The first of two weekly blog hops I would soon come to depend on for both comfort and inspiration began as the third month of 2015 came to a close.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

And I finally published an interview, long worked on and awaited, with a female who is making a mark for herself as a smart businesswoman.

Keep Calm and Get Your Hair Done

There were three deaths this year, in the entertainment world, of which were sad ones to me.

The first was Richard Gilmore from Gilmore Girls. Edward Herman died almost exactly one year ago.

I did not write a post for this at the time, but wanted to include him here and now, with news recently of a NetFlix Gilmore Girls reboot, of which the man who played Mr. Gilmore will not be able to reprise his brilliantly portrayed role.

RIP Edward Herman

(He had an amazing voice and used it to read voiceovers, playing Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Ken Burns documentary, of which I watched near the end of the year, after Herman was gone.)

Second,

Love and Despair

with the shocking death of Jonathan Crombie (Gilbert), the man behind the portrayal of a great literary heroic character.

Third, Christopher Lee.

Into The West: RIP Sir Christopher Lee

APRIL

Babies are born and babies die everyday.

Departed and Demented

Upon hearing of the loss of one precious life, for which I had to rant about the unfair ways of the world, next came a re-blog from my own blog, written one year earlier, the worst kind of anniversary imaginable.

The Dark Mark

These few things from early in the month on my blog only served to show the contrasted miracle, the wonderful shock I would get at the end of the month

I had no idea I was about to learn of the upcoming birth of a sweet child in the month of spring’s renewed promise.

Let’s just say, to say I was shocked to learn of my friend’s pregnancy was an understatement. Best surprise all year and, as I continue on with this 2015 summary, that is about to demonstrate how much this brand new little girl means to me because she is a part of my oldest friend. No publishing achievement or literary goal met can possibly compete.

I saw my aunt twice this year, in her new home, a senior’s long-term care facility, sadly. My uncle, my father’s half-brother, he visited from Germany. He wanted to see his sister because nobody knows when it will be their final time together.

Milestones and Siblings

I spent lots of time with family, not only during the month of April, but I make a point to do this every month, any time during any given year. This year, 2015 was no exception.

Orphaned

It was only by doing this that I could think enough about how lucky I am to have family of my own, that I was able to write the guest post about famous orphans in literature.

MAY

Into the fifth month of 2015, nearly halfway now, and things really took a lousy turn.

I was distracted and although the first computer problem was a simple mistake, a fluke thing and a sign of my naivete with technology, it was only when I was careless enough to have a sticky drink next to my precious laptop that I really had something to kick myself over.

Having to fall back and depend on an ex boyfriend to fix things was a hard thing to do. I knew he’d help, if I asked, but I didn’t wish to bother him. It was still hard to admit that he was the one person I would still need, in the desperation I was facing, when it came to computers and technology, the one person I would still trust most to help and help he did. He’s good like that.

If it weren’t for the honour of a request to write a post on a writer’s site whom I greatly admire, the month would have been a total disaster.

Writing the World, Sight Unseen

The girl’s got a way with coming up with titles. Oh, and she’s got the neatest sounding last name around.

🙂

Oh, and then there’s this.

The Second Chances Anthology

At least some good came from the month of May.

Oh, and I can’t forget this either and never could.

Ten Things of Thankful

May was the month I joined this wonderful weekly blog hop. Many examples of what TToT stands for and looks like can be found in the comment section of this origin post.

There was, also, the series finale of a truly great show.

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Men World

End of an era really, or several, from the 60s onward to the end of 2015 and the start of 2016.

JUNE

And I had a publisher. Yay!

Little Bird Publishing House

And with that, I had to attempt to put into words what writing means to me.

How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life

Still working on this, but I keep letting other things come first.

Close But No Cigar

The year 2015 was now halfway over. I was still working on both education and love.

New Month, New Me

Another milestone. I made it another year with my father’s kidney, working and keeping me well and off dialysis. Every year I avoid that is a reason to celebrate.

The year 2015 has been a spectacular one for music.

Every F****n Day – Lolawolf

“You must be curious. Even…just…a little.”

🙂

This song, among others, made my year and it was only half over.

Figure It Out – Royal Blood

I was trying.

This year, 2015, meant the anniversaries for my grandparents’ deaths:

**Five years for Grandpa

Ruby Red

**Five years for Oma

Gardens of Sunset

**And ten years for Grandma

You Are My Sunshine

Speaking of death, the composer of the wonderful Titanic soundtrack died, tragically, in a plane crash.

RIP James Horner

The US did make some progress this summer.

ROYGBIV

JULY

My country has made some much needed changes this year too.

Canada Day, 2015

We’re working on reconciliation and welcoming our differences, rather than hiding them away and spreading fear.

Life is all about the fireworks.

BANG!!!

Whether it was the stress of a first date or the unpredictability of a summer fling,

(Men Are From Mars, Women From Venus, and Then There’s Jupiter)

I had one hell of a summer.

One Last Kiss

I’VE BEEN PUBLISHED!!!

CHECK!

That’s another item I can check off my bucket list.

Color, Light, and Magic

Plus another guest post on J.K. Rowling’s end-of-July 50th birthday.

AUGUST

It was a truly spectacular book and a fascinating study in literature.

Jean Louise The Silent: My Review of “Go Set A Watchman”, Part One

&

Jean Louise The Silent: My Review of “Go Set A Watchman”, Part Two

The summer was full of not only literature, but also some amazing theatre performances, culture, and history.

Read a review of the play here:

Stratford’s Diary of Anne Frank

And the summer ended with a bit of nature by Future of the Ocean.

Big Blue Live

And one more guest post I had published on Hasty Words.

Be Real

My summer of 2015 was full of new experiences, harsh realities, and missed opportunities.

Rural Pride, County Wide

Sometimes, some things just aren’t meant to be.

SEPTEMBER

When the anthology with my story first came out in the summer it was only available as an EBook, but finally I could hold a book with a story I’d written in my own two hands. It was an indescribable feeling and a dream come true.

With the arrival of autumn there’s the twenty year anniversary for Jagged Little Pill.

Perfection

At the end of the month I had a trip to Toronto which was full of surprises and adventures.

Faith and a Spinster’s Gratitude List – Harvest Moon

OCTOBER

I tried my hand at Writer’s Digest’s month long October Platform Challenge, but I messed it up and did not finish. Admittedly, it was a bit of a half effort and I misread the instructions.

Check it out here.

This year marks three anniversaries for television and music I’ve loved:

Gilmore Girls, A Boy Named Goo, Beverly Hills 90210

By the time we were nearing the end of 2015,

Canadians felt it was time for a change.

I also decided to try something a little different, when I was invited to do an interview for an online radio program.

Travelling with the Speed of Sight

Canada’s one-and-only Major League team, Toronto Blue Jays, came closer than they have in more than twenty years, to winning the World Series. It was a wild ride.

NOVEMBER

The eleventh month of 2015 found me trying something new, something I’ve wanted for a long time.

Words with Friends

Being a part of a writing group is exactly what I have needed to progress with my own writing. I hope to continue with this in the year to come.

Remembrance Day and November 11th had a special significance this year.

In Flanders Fields: One Hundred Years Later

An unassuming Friday the 13th in November turned into much more, so much devastation,

with the attack in Paris.

Then came the first of the hospitalizations for my brother for 2015 and this one was frightening enough, but it was only a prelude to what was to come for our December.

And with one one hundred year anniversary there came a forty year one shortly after,

with a Great Lakes ship wreck and a song written more like a tale set to music.

It was time to celebrate a great man.

My Father Turned Sixty

On the final day of November.

DECEMBER

As Long As There’s Christmas: My Grownup Letter For Santa, 2015

We almost made it. We’d arrived at mid month, only a few weeks left in 2015 and then the bottom dropped out.

My brother had a bad fall and suffered a brain injury.

For a few days we weren’t sure what kind of Christmas we would have, but my family and his friends never stopped believing he would come out of it the same old Brian.

Decade Adrift

The doctors didn’t want us to get our hopes up, but we had a Christmas like the others.

We were all together and Brian played music again.

My last guest post of 2015. – Advent Calendar Day 20: One Tradition After Another

Now I end 2015 with a huge Happy Birthday wish for the most special five-year-old around and I ring in 2016 with a friend. Girl’s night!

In the world of feminism, 2015 was a fabulous year for discovering awesome female voices in music, literature, travel, social issues, and history.

FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE: NEW SINGLE PACKS A PUNCH

The Danger of a Single Story – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Talking to Amy Gigi Alexander

He Named Me Malala

&

The 1994 Miep Gies Lecture

Not all of these are current, but the act of me finding them this year is the point. All examples, of females who are or were strong, which gives me the push to keep moving forward.

Women of the Year: 30 Canadians Who Rocked 2015

On the continually fascinating subject of wickedly special females, three albums and their artists are worth mentioning this year:

First, Vulnicura.

Black Lake

by Bjork.

Second, How Big How Blue How Beautiful.

Ship To Wreck – Florence + The Machine.

And third, Honeymoon.

High by the Beach – Lana Del Ray

As for The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge, it was an every Monday sort of thing for the previous half of 2014 and I continued, missing a week here and there, but I have not forgotten about its importance in my own world and here on my blog.

This coming year I plan on really starting something that I want to focus on though. The year 2016 will be 20 years since I began the journey that matured me before my age likely would have otherwise.

Let Them Eat Cake

I have imagined writing a book about it, memoir called Piece of Cake, for years. Now that I have this blog I will start by writing about those days, as the next few years pass.

I have goals and dreams for 2016 and beyond, but I hesitate to speak of them all out loud, in fear of falling short.

FGP’s Virtual Holiday Party

I want to make more connections with writers, creative and smart women, and I want to keep writing. I want to not be afraid to keep putting my words out there, even though the fear of more rejection is a lingering one.

I want to keep working on the one and only “resolution” from 2014/2015: jealousy. I hate that part of myself and I wish I could let that go. That doesn’t mean I don’t want the best for others and don’t cheer other people on. It just means I do both and feel conflicted.

Some make resolutions, others pick one word for their year, but I resist doing both. If I have to choose one word though, I suppose I will go with “Adventure”. I do want more of this, as I believe life is one giant adventure, all the years we get to live it.

We in Canada made a change and took a stand in 2015 and, the question for 2016 is and will be: America, will you?

Okay, so I just went through my entire blog for the year, to prepare for this post. I know. It was a long one.

Wow, I wrote a lot. I did not receive an end-of-the-year WP blog stats report like I did last year though. Hmmm. Wonder if that means I didn’t do well with follows, comments, and views this year. Ah well. Staying true to myself and remaining authentic is all I can ask for.

Goodbye 2015…hello 2016. Be kind.

15, 20, 25, #SoCS

“Is there anything to feel. Is it pain that makes you real. Cut me off before it kills me. Long way down. I don’t think I’ll make it on my own.”
–Goo Goo Dolls

SoCS

Another Saturday has come round and that means it’s time for another Stream of Consciousness:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/10/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-1015/

I need as a part of my week.

Celebrating!

I guess that’s kind of like “Winning!” and Charlie, wherever you are, if ever there were stream of consciousness, you were it.

I am celebrating a few things this week. First of them is the Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, where my family come together, eat my mother’s delicious dinner, and have a whole lot of fun and good times. I am certainly winning with this to look forward to.

Perhaps I will write about the events of the day’s celebrating in next week’s SoCS post.

As for other reasons I am celebrating, this week just so happened to be the anniversaries for three important things in my life.

It has been 15 years, this week, since the very first episode of Gilmore Girls aired for the very first time.

I can’t believe how fast time passes me by. Really.

I know many people think this show is irritating, but I was immediately, or nearly so, just so drawn into its characters and premise, from almost the very beginning.

I was glad to see that television could still be original. The writing was snappy and witty. So many references to literature, culture, music, and so many things I did not know, would go right over my head, but these girls seemed to come up with this stuff, like stream of consciousness was could and did come just so unbelievably naturally to them in their everyday lives.

There was just the right amount of drama and fun. The town and its residents were wacky and out-there. I most definitely did not have that relationship with my own mother, could not have had a more different family situation than the Gilmores’. That was the attraction, I suppose.

Watching that show was a way I could bond with a friend, even when I felt like I was losing touch with her and the rest of my world, in all other ways at the time. She and I could still get together and have an all night Gilmore Girls marathon, cup after cup of coffee consumed in her basement, until we both ended up falling asleep in the early hours of the morning anyway.

Back when I taped every single episode on VHS and then began collecting DVD.

Next, going back 20 years and this week in time. The huge Goo Goo Dolls album, “A Boy Named Goo” was released and this rock group was my best wishes/going away/good luck with your kidney transplant gift, presented to me by my seventh grade class, at the party they had for me before I left.

Sure…it was stolen…when my house was robbed…as I found out my transplant had to be postponed…due to a sudden and mysterious seizure I’d just had…but the robbers couldn’t have known, what that CD meant to me, or I’m sure they would have stayed home and lived to rob another day.

Insurance bought back all our stuff in the end, but I loved my present and loved the music.

Speaking of this particular Goo Goo Dolls album…I really first heard their songs on the season six finale of the show that turns 25 this week.

This week in history…Beverly Hills 90210 first aired and this time I was not there, would not be for a few years.

I wanted to write a whole post to explain, to commemorate the value of this show for my life during the 90s, but then I fear sounding frivolous and silly. How could some glam and superficial show about privileged teenagers, living in Beverly Hills, how could this mean something so great?

Maybe you don’t ask, but I write about it here, think stream of consciousness is the perfect time to write about it.

My sister caught on first, but we were both still quite young in the early to mid 90s. We weren’t prevented from watching the more adult type shows.

Summer episodes, at the Beverly Hills Beach Club were the summer later, after the show aired on Fox. It was then that it took off and the phenomenon started.

My decade would soon be shaped by 90210 and its 10 season run. I started to watch the recorded episodes my sister had, braille labelling the VHS tapes and watching the shows, over and over again.

When I would eventually get sick, in 96/97 I would watch to escape, to imagine I was a beautiful, blond bombshell with a credit card and a boyfriend. Yes, I use the word bombshell. I had the posters and the dolls. Barbie became Beverly Hillized. I was stuck in a world between little girl playing with Barbie and the grown world of nighttime dramas. Every Wednesday at 8:00 I would watch, I would record. I would learn the lines by heart.

Kelly’s mother: “What do you want to do?”

Kelly Taylor: “Smell the roses. Maybe ponder the question of why God bothers to give us life in the first place when all he seems to do is fill it with pain and suffering.”

–Kelly Taylor/Jennie Garth

This line made me cry. Over and over, when pain and fear in my own life were at their worst, during the 90s and beyond.

I wanted to acknowledge these three events, for the role they all three played in the significant moments in my young life.

Celebrating a show or an album and its anniversary and poignancy in my life is really celebrating a feeling.

But I guess, now, I’m really just rambling.

Long Way Down

You Are My Sunshine

You know those cinnamon hearts so common for Valentine’s Day?

He carried a clear plastic heart, but instead of filling it with candy, he placed inside the heart a picture of her – his dear wife of fifty-five years.

He had the words of the song written out on a piece of paper inside with her picture.

You Are My Sunshine

She was taken from him, suddenly, as is often the case.

He lost his sunshine and I lost my grandmother.

How can I make it possible, even through my precious words, for someone to understand just how special she was?

I had dealt with death, more than once, but I felt entirely unprepared for it when it came around again.

She has been gone for ten years and I wish I could tell her about my life since that day she had to go.

The Ties That Bind

I didn’t get to say goodbye. I just figured I would visit her the next day, either in hospital or out. It never really occurred to me that she would never come home again.

I heard my mom on the phone and I heard the news. I would not be visiting her in the hospital the next day.

My cousin stopped in on his lunch hour, as he worked nearby, and was speaking to her. My uncle and grandpa stood beside the bed. My cousin looked away for one second and when he looked back at her, she was silent and would not speak another word. He said her name, but she was gone.

I knew it wasn’t good news. I laid down on my bed and let the tears fall onto my pillow, unconcerned with the business of wiping them away. What was I going to do without her?

Her last diary entry

***

Thur. 21 32 degrees low 19
Telephone repair man here at 5 o’clock. Phone out since Sat morning, July 16th.
Caned 1 jar pickles..

Wed. 20 31 degrees low 20
I got pictures developed. Janet took of our 55th Ann. (tried out new canon camera)

Tues. 19 33 degrees low 21
I washed 2 loads. My right big tow sore. We rested in afternoon. I using Myoflex on arms & legs. It relieves pain.

Mon. 18 32 degrees low 22
Dad picked first pickles. All big. I cut some up 5 jars caned.
I phoned Connie at Dr.’s . She has to make an app for 2-D-Echo Cardiogram for me.
Craig came at nit to say Good-bye. He leaving to go to camp tomorrow till school starts, at Lions Head.

***

She kept a diary, as she called it, on her own terms. She did it her own way. I admired that about her.

I sat in their bedroom, with a cousin and we discussed our memories, and I wondered if my uncles or cousins might have any objections with me keeping her diaries. I certainly could not read the entries, but I wanted this one part of her, her memories and her words, even as I was being forced to let go of the rest.

I wanted to write the tribute to her. I wanted to be the one to read it at her funeral. I worked hard at what I wanted to say about her, writing it out and printing it out in braille, so I could take the words up there with me. I wasn’t going to draw a blank.

The three of us went up to the microphone. It was me, my sister, and my cousin. If I got choked up, my sister could take over. Our cousin was a back-up, just in case she too could not speak. I broke down a few times throughout, but after taking a few seconds to recover myself, I got through it. My usual issue with being unable to speak when I cried did not seem to be happening now.

As we stood at her grave, her sisters gave me flowers. I wanted to put my copy of the tribute, in braille, with her in the casket. I hoped my words were enough to show what she had brought to my life.

She was truly the only one who understood. She fussed over me when I was in pain because she knew my pain better than most. She had lived with her own pain since her children were young.

Many people didn’t understand it and she felt alone. I felt alone too. Together, we weren’t alone anymore. I feel alone sometimes because she is now gone.

I’ve lost something, an innocence not from childhood, but from her presence in my life. I miss it and I miss her.

I miss her singing.

She had a sweet naive quality about her, instilled from her upbringing in the tiny corner of the world she’d always lived in, but her many travels (Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, Australia) were just as important to the two of them. I love travel because of all the times I hoped she would sneak me along in one of their suitcases.

She loved Niagara Falls and she taught me to love it too.

Finally, we would go to Cuba together. She loved Varadero. She loved to watch the people in the hotel’s open-air lobby. She loved to stroll the town, not remaining in the resort the whole time. She loved to meet the people and to speak with them. Her open, friendly nature made other people feel at ease. She wasn’t afraid to try new things, no matter how old she got.

All the times we would stay awake long into the early morning. We would talk and before we knew it, it would be late. My grandpa could be heard snoring from the couch in the family room or in the spare bedroom across the hall. He could sleep for hours. She didn’t sleep well, for years, from pain and other things. I think she enjoyed having someone to talk to.

She said it so sincerely. She said she knew, somewhere out there, one day there would be the right man for me, someone who would take care of and love me for me. I believed her then.

Sometimes – I don’t know if I believe her anymore. I feel like I let her down, as her words and the reassurance in her voice once felt like the greatest comfort, but of which I can no longer hear.

I have only a far off impression of her telling me that, back at the back of my brain and it feels like the confidence in her statement, which she sounded so certain of that night, well I hold onto her and her words of love and comfort and I cling to that purity of hope she had, the sort of positive and optimistic nature she passed on to my mother.

I have my mother still and for that I am blessed because she continues to offer hope.

All I learned about love from my grandma is still in there somewhere.

It feels like more of a rarity now, with all the modern conveniences and technologies, whether that’s actually the truth I don’t know. I hope it isn’t.

But love, like the sort she and my grandpa had in each other, that must be proceeded by hope.

Love. Marriage. I stopped pretending those weren’t things I wanted, like having a bucket of cold water dumped, suddenly, over my head.

It’s something to hope for…something, worth risking failure for.

No matter how painful those failures may be.

I don’t know if what they had, the kind of love and connection, if that really even exists anymore. It’s rare, I know that much. It existed in a time long gone now, as fast-paced as things move these days. It’s a vanishing world of which they lived.

I often feel stuck between the beliefs she had, the religious woman of faith she was, and all she used to tell me and the modern world I live in. I sometimes don’t know what to believe, what I believe, but having her inside me somewhere, I know I follow my heart.

His heart was all wrapped up in her. When she went first, he would carry her photo in that Valentine’s Day heart, and for five more years he lived. She was his heart and he was hers, and now I think I will go visit their graves because writing this isn’t getting me to where I’d hoped.

Ruby Red

Without her here to read what I write, I can’t quite get over these last ten years she’s been gone.

After the funeral and all the family gatherings stopped, a stillness and a silence fell over my mother and me in the kitchen, as we wondered where to go from there. What to do now, without her?

Ten years, flying by like nothing now. I wish I could feel like she’s not really gone, as long as I remember her and write about her.

I need to hear her in myself when I clear my throat. I need to recognize my own naivete, of which I got from her. I need to run my hands over her diary and feel the indentation of her hand writing on the pages within.

Since I began my blog and knew this anniversary was coming, I started wanting the day to get here for me to write, assuming I would write a ten year tribute, building on the one I wrote the day we said goodbye, but I guess it’s something different. It’s everything I’ve thought about her and the things I’ve learned since losing her.

It always comes back to the two of them, for me, and the life they shared for more than fifty years. I wanted to find someone I could love like they loved each other. That was all fifteen-year-old me really wanted.

She was a warm woman and a bright light to all who loved her.
Ruby Witzel, 1929-2005

TToT: Extra Thankful For These Last Eighteen Years

The first week of June showed me just how thankful I am for everything in my life. Here’s why:

Ten Things of Thankful

Tuesday: for precious gifts and beautiful flashbacks.

I was babysitting my nephew. I can’t believe how much he’s grown, over these last few years. He celebrates his third birthday this summer, but it feels like just yesterday that he was born and I was there the moment he came into the world.

Ordinary Miracles

As the first year of his life flew by, many times I used to hold him while he slept. I did this, the first few weeks, at night so my sister could get a few hours of restful sleep and then many times afterward. He used to sleep against my chest, so small, peaceful, and still.

As I was babysitting him this week, he fell asleep in the afternoon, for the nap he still takes and I decided to have a little rest with him.

I am thankful for the chance to feel him sleeping on my chest, maybe for the last time. I held him tight and felt his steady breathing as he slept and it brought back those early memories, reminding me of those early days as his aunt.

Also, I am thankful for old friends and my desire to stay in touch.

I have been afraid to contact this one certain old friend of mine recently. I got over my ridiculous fear, borne of unnecessary worry that I might be bothering her, and I am glad I did.

I was worried over nothing, like usual, and I got to here her voice and feel better about things I was letting make me crazy these past several weeks. I also got to hear her remarkable newborn baby daughter through the phone.

Wednesday: for countless opportunities for reinvention.

I get the sudden urge, every year around this time (for reasons of which I will explain a few thankful’s down) to make a change, to reinvent myself and do something bold and daring.

This doesn’t always work out like I hope it will, but I did decide to cut off my long hair and go short, at least through the hot summer months.

It’s only hair, after all. It will grow back, if and when I want it to.

Along with this, I am thankful for the fact that I’ve got my very own hair stylist in the family.

Okay okay – so she hasn’t yet agreed to sign on as my personal, daily stylist, but I’m wearing her down, slowly.

It sure would be nice to have someone to do my hair every morning, as I have so much trouble knowing what looks good and thus, I rarely do anything with it at all.

For now I am just happy to have a cousin with a lovely salon here in town.

KEEP CALM AND GET YOUR HAIR DONE

It’s a place I can go, where I know the stylist and trust her to do a good job.

Also, I am thankful for the fresh and plentiful food I get to eat.

As I ate dinner out with my father, we sat in the warm June air of the evening, out on the patio.

He read from the newspaper, an article about the play of Anne Frank that we are going to see in a few weeks, and it made me think of Anne. I know this article was just about the actress who plays the role, but I couldn’t help thinking about the real family and the young girl who were stuck in that attic all those years and the war they were all in.

I have been watching a lot about World War II lately actually. June 6th is the anniversary of D-Day also. I know the food shortages that went on and the starvation. I know it is still a problem around the world.

I am thankful for a fresh salad. I ate my salad, out on that patio, and let my taste buds fully take in the fresh, crispness of the lettuce. I had a huge menu of items to choose from, right there in front of me and at my disposal. Not all today nor in days past are/were quite so lucky.

Thursday: for the release of new songs and albums.

This week I discovered music from a music group and an artist I listen to.

On June 2nd the newest Florence + The Machine album came out (How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful) and also the newest single by LOLAWOLF.

The first has a voice infused with raw power. This song by Florence,

“What Kind of Man”,

had me finding a place and a way of releasing a little bit of my anger. We all need this from time to time, which helps us learn what we are most thankful for once more.

Also, I am thankful that I can share interesting music with my brother, when on a rare occasion it is me sharing with him what I’ve found, not the other way round.

I showed him this song from LOLAWOLF,

“Every F—in Day”,

which is the band of Lenny Kravitz’s daughter – Zoe Kravitz. It’s a strange song, likely not to everybody’s taste, but it’s the weird songs I send my brother’s way, just to see what he thinks.

I’m thankful for the tiny perfection of baby clothes. I got to pick some out for a little girl I already love and I haven’t even met her yet, but she is the daughter of someone I couldn’t love more if she were my own sister.

I love clothes, and these small garments are perfection, just like the little beings who wear them.

Baby clothes are so cute and I have only really gotten the chance to buy them, on any regular basis, in the last five years. I hope to buy even more now.

This includes the softest of soft little baby blankets.

Friday: for anniversaries, good health, and lack of dialysis.

I couldn’t let a week of things I’m thankful for go by, specifically this particular week, without mentioning the importance June 5th has to my past, my now, and my future health and well-being.

I wrote about it just the other day on my blog, my thoughts on this particular June 5th.

It’s now eighteen years and counting since I received a kidney transplant. My father donated his kidney to his youngest daughter and I owe him more than most children owe their parents.

June is Father’s Day for many fathers, but for myself and my dad it can’t quite compare with our anniversary.

Most fathers and daughters don’t have anniversaries. That is what we call it, but in many ways (like I said in “New Month, New Me”, I also think of June 5th, 1997 as my birthday of sorts. It was the day when my life began again, after feeling so sick for the previous couple of years. It was one of those life-changing days that you look back on as being when your life was forever altered, one of those days when your life would never be as it was.

So I am thankful to my father. He went above and beyond what a father usually does and he gave me a new lease on life.

I hope I’ve made him proud of me since then and that I continue to do so. Our connection as father and daughter grows ever deeper.

Saturday: for vanilla lattes.

McDonald’s really does make the best ones. Who’s with me?

So thanks to:

Lizzi and the rest of the Ten Things of Thankful group.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone and don’t forget to be thankful for your health when it is good.

One Year and Counting: Kind and Generous

Happy Birthday to me and here I am – I made it one year as a blogger.

I didn’t give up, I didn’t give in, and I did not burn out or run out of things to write about. It felt somewhat like a floodgate that was opened, spilling out all the things I’ve ever wanted to write about but didn’t for so long.

I liked the idea of pairing my actual birthday and what would become my blogging anniversary and that is just what I’ve done.

I never could have imagined, when I wrote my

very first post – Bucket List,

that I would have come so much farther than I dared believe I could and that I would have so much to show for it.

I thought a lot about how I wanted to mark this occasion and I decided to take this opportunity to thank all those who have made this, creatively, one of the best years of my life.

🙂

***

CANDACE JOHNSON

One of my biggest supporters, almost from the very beginning, has been Candace at:

Change It Up Editing and Writing Services

She gets the first spot in my list of thank you mentions – well deserved. The tagline from her website reads: “I love words. Especially yours.” This clearly shows her dedication to helping others.

When I was only debating and throwing around the idea of starting a blog in the first place I discovered her

Facebook page.

You can tell, or I soon learned how to, when someone genuinely wants to help you and to give you a moment of their time. I recognized, right away, that she was and is someone who is happy to help whenever, wherever, and however she possibly can.

Not everyone is willing to listen and do what they can, but when I reached out to Candace because I was, with my iPhone and its VoiceOver, unable to click on her Facebook links, she made a point of listening to what my issue was and doing what she could for me.

Ever since then, she has repeatedly put an extra copy of each link in the comments, where my VoiceOver recognizes it and allows me to read all the interesting articles and blog posts she shares on writing and editing.

I have learned so much from her. She granted me an interview, my first on Her Headache, and generously gave me the exposure, allowing me to write a guest post to explain to her readers some of the particular issues with technology that I face.

Since then she has continued to read and share my blog posts whenever she can. I will never forget her kindness and her support, the belief she has shown in my writing ever since.

I guess you could say that the bloggers and writers I have discovered and who have come to mean something to me, showing me kindness and assistance along the way, fall into a handful of different categories.

MAXWELL IVEY JR.

There’s the first blind seller of carnival rides I’ve ever met, who started a website to help advertise his business:

The Midway Marketplace

He is the friendliest person I have ever come across and he has done so much to show me how to open up, online and off.

He has introduced me to places for my blog and my writing to fit in, all while introducing me to other bloggers and writers, always there to answer any blogging or social media questions I might have.

Since I’ve begun talking with him he has started a second site (The Blind Blogger) and published his first ebook (Leading You Out of the Darkness Into the Light), which can be found here:

http://theblindblogger.net/ebooks/leading-you-out-of-the-darkness-into-the-light

STEPHANAE MCCOY

Then there’s the lady who has lost a lot of sight later in life, but who has not let that stop her. Instead, she has come out with this incredible resource for all women who are visually impaired and blind, but who still wish to be fashionable and stylish:

Bold Blind Beauty

Stephanae has again been someone willing to offer me support and an exchange of interviews. She has a site where she discusses things like makeup, shoes, and other accessories all girls like to indulge in from time to time. She includes not only photographs of these items, but the descriptions necessary for all women, even those who can not see, to be able to enjoy the things she recommends.

Sure, I may not wear makeup, but I still love to visit her website and especially I love to read about the interesting women she highlights on her Fierce Friday posts.

😉

She draws me in with the alliteration her blog name possesses.

🙂

I have met some wonderful authors and writers along the way too:

Alana Saltz,

Jordan Rosenfeld,

and writer, activist, and feminist:

Julie Zeilinger, from The FBomb.

The blogosphere is an amazing place; however, I sometimes feel like I stand out or I don’t quite fit into any particular niche. I guess this isn’t the worst thing in the world because I enjoy a number of areas of the blogging world and its many varied subjects.

I am in my early thirties, for those unfamiliar with me and my blog, but I am not a mother.

Parenting blogs are one of the most commonly found on the internet.

I have grown quite comfortable sandwiched between two groups in the blogging universe, all of which I do read for the array of different perspectives offered.

The second group are those twenty-something writers and bloggers, writing about the decade of exploration and self-discovery that the twenties has become. I guess I continue to return to blogs like these because, in some ways, I feel I am living some part of my twenties over again in my thirties, learning and growing and still so easily able to relate to the struggles these ladies are experiencing.

These bloggers include brilliant and insightful young women such as:

Young and Twenty,

Scarlet Wonderland,

Flowers and Wanderlust,

and

Single Strides.

Other blogs I love to follow include a Canadian writer and mother, a French blogger now living in the US, an Australian visually impaired travel blogger, a wizard with words, and a guy who lives with his illness and disability as best he can and who is a tireless activist for others with rare and debilitating conditions:

Carrie the Obscure CanLit Mama,

French writer and life coach Sylviane Nuccio,

Maribel of Touching Landscapes,

Lorraine of Wording Well,

and

Michael at Migraine Discussions.

What have I learned from one year of blogging and what advice would I give to those just starting out, who are where I was one year ago at this time? Hmmm.

I think this post from Scarlet Wonderland says it better than I ever could:

Advice For New Bloggers,

The best and only thing I have learned, think I knew all along, and would advise would be to remain authentic. I only know how to be me and that is all. If I ever did have those moments of watching what another blogger was doing, and the thought to emulate them crossed my mind, I soon realized that I have to stick on my own path and do things my own way.

Thank you to every one of my loyal family who read this blog and any friends and family, those who I know are reading, even if I sometimes don’t realize it.

Also, I want to take this time to thank everyone else. If I forgot you, I apologize. Just know I am grateful for your collective presence here and for each and every time you return to read one of my posts.

Whether it’s 100 or 1000 followers – I’m lucky to have you reading this. I appreciate every comment made, good or bad, because they’ve all taught me some powerful lessons, being able to hear other’s thoughts on what I write helps me to grow my voice.

This blog has sustained me through the hard times of the past year, gotten me through multiple rejections in love and in writing, and captured some new experiences and some lasting memories.

Half-way through this past year I got the crazy notion of starting a second one.

What was I thinking, right?

🙂

Kidding. I may have come a long way since I published my first post here, but I still have a long ways to go when it comes to the blogging side of things.

Now it’s each year of this blog that marks my life, more than New Year’s Eve does for most people.

I have goals I’d like to have reached this time next year.

I have a stubborn streak with the publications I was turned down from this past year. Maybe those serve to make me work even harder or, perhaps they are meant to be lessons, serving to teach me that not everything is meant to be.

I have a few exciting things in the works at this very moment. I hesitate to say anymore than that.

I know, I know – don’t you hate when people do that?

🙂

I will say as much as I believe I can, without jinxing myself completely. Yes, it’s happened before.

I hope to continue to write about new, different, and interesting subjects here and share even more fascinating people with you through the interviews I love so much to do.

Currently, what I can say is that I am in the midst of participating in two things, specifically:

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge

and

1000 Voices Speak For Compassion

Both are causes I believe deeply in.

Finally, I couldn’t end this post without thanking the one who first got this blog up and running for me and who encouraged me, helping me get passed the tricky and the technical.

Thanks BSK.

***

Now then…

*Clears throat*
Now that I’ve come full circle.

Love and life are scary sometimes. I am scared a lot of the time frankly, but this blog is one of the greatest rewards for all that fear.

Jennifer from Young and Twenty sums up fear best in this way:

The Power of Being Scared

**I truly believe that where I am right now, at this moment in time, is where I was always supposed to be.**

This line from my very first post (February, 2014) was true then and, hey – it’s just as true today.

What do you know?

🙂

Through all the hard times and the struggles – I still believe it and I can’t tell you how comforting that thought is.

An so – one year and counting and here’s to many more.

Natalie Merchant, Kind and Generous, on YouTube

I want to dedicate this anniversary post and this song to you all.

Ode and Lament

As the final few days of 2014 are coming to a close, I wanted to highlight a few anniversaries. Most importantly is the twenty years since the release of an album full of music that has changed my life and gotten me through everything from illness, to loss of a loved one, to the end of an important relationship.

The Cranberries released their second studio album in 1994 and this has remained, not only my favourite, but the favourite of so many others. Songs like “Ode To My Family” and “Zombie” remain this Irish band’s biggest known hits of all-time, but it’s in every song and beautifully haunted lyric that I find solace and refuge from some of the harshness of life.

I know this particular album may not hold the same meaning for many people as it does for me, but I urge you to listen to it sometime if you haven’t already.

The Cranberries, “No Need To Argue” full album, YouTube

When I was eleven or twelve years old my sister brought home a mixed tape from a boy on our school bus. He was from an Irish family and he gave my sister this Irish band to listen to. They were called The Cranberries and right away that name caught my attention. I shared a room with my sister and I started out listening to what she listened to because that’s what a little sister did.

Once I listened to the selection of songs however, a mixture from “Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We” (1993) and “No Need To Argue” (1994), I was mesmerized and I was hooked.

I soon would confiscate the mixed tape and would wear it out, eventually taking more interest in the band than my sister. I would listen until the point of wearing out the tape, until I was gifted a copy of my very own as a get-well present, during one particularly long and unexpected hospital stay, near the end of 1996 it was.

What it means to me now and what it meant to me then …

Ode To My Family:

“Understand the things I say. Don’t turn away from me.
‘cause I’ve spent half my life out there. You wouldn’t disagree.
Do you see me? Do you see. Do you like me, standing there?
Do you like me standing there? Do you notice? Do you see me? Does anyone care?”

As I’ve struggled to fit in with the world, I have felt separate many times, invisible and yet glaringly obvious. The gawkers I felt watching. The staring that I could not truly see. Leading to the thoughts of will I fit in and will I find belonging? Wanting to be seen as anyone else might be seen.

“Unhappiness, whereas when I was young and we didn’t give a damn. We were raised, to see life as fun and take it if we can.”

The themes of family and a past of mine now, a place where I belonged. A freer childhood of innocence and security, I could not ask for and you would not find.

“Understand what I’ve become. It wasn’t my design. And people everywhere think better than I am.”

Feeling like a fraud sometimes, somehow, as everyone does at one time in their lives. The events that have shaped me leave me with jagged edges and some corners smoothed down.

Feelings of belonging, always felt with them, but not when I go out there. Never to duplicate what they have given and give to me. What does the rest of the world know or care of these things and of me? Will this sense of belonging ever be duplicable out there, ever again?

I can’t Be With You:

“Lying in my bed again and I cry ‘cause you’re not here. Crying in my head again and I know that it’s not clear.”

Longing for that one I know I can no longer have. All such sorry substitutes, who will compare, but still I look and I search, always hoping, always.

“But it’s bad, and it’s mad, and it’s making me sad because I can’t be with you.”

It’s the letting go of what should be, what’s not meant to be that creates so many feelings of desperation and regret.

“Thinking back on how things were and on how we loved so well. I wanted to be the mother of your child and now it’s just farewell. Put your hands in my hands and come with me. We’ll find another end. And my head, and my head, on anyone’s shoulder, ‘cause I can’t be with you.”

Still in love sounds so horribly pathetic, such a thing to admit. I wondered than and I wonder now at the young love spoken of.

“Still in love with you.”

Twenty One:

A dark night, so many years ago.

Age ten, eleven, twelve…I grew up these last twenty years, going on twenty one myself.

Driving through the countryside at night, the haunting sound of Twenty One ringing so sombrely in my ears, nearly lulling me to sleep or at least a strange peaceful trance.

Couldn’t then imagine being twenty one years, but that year has come and gone. I’ve long since passed by, on and on and I hurtled straight into my thirties.

“Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-one.”

These two numbers, put together and repeated ring in my ears and bring on that trance-like state, closest I’ve yet come to being hypnotized.

Zombie:

The song to become a hit, bigger than they probably could have imagined.

“Another head hangs lowly. Child is slowly taken. And the violence cause such silence. Who are we mistaken?”

My love of the Irish people, and yet a place I had never been to. Such history and violence I could only hear in her lyrics, her pain at the helplessness of it all evident when she sings.

“With their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns, they are fighting. They are crying. They are dying.”

I slowly became more aware of its historical reference and meaning, as I grew to understand more of these things and our world, past and present.

“It’s the same old theme since nineteen sixteen.”

What changes there and everywhere where violence persists? I want to scream out the lyrics in frustrated rage, helpless in my smallness, and still, and yet, so I listen to her singing words of mothers losses instead.

Empty:

“Something has left my life and I don’t know where it went to.”

So few lyrics in this one. So few are needed. Soft piano and violin wrap around my heart and pull its strings tight as if on an instrument.

“My identity. Has it been taken? Is my heart breaking, on me? All my plans they fell through my hands, they fell through my hands on me. All my dreams, it suddenly seems…it suddenly seems. Empty.”

A future rearing up dark, blank, devoid of anything else. My life, ending up not at all where I thought it would, fearing an encroaching emptiness that could swallow me whole. It’s an emptiness I shake off as best I can. This line, this song, her wild cries of “Empty!” and the lump in my throat forms and the tears they start at the corners of my eyes.

Everything I Said:

“It makes me lonely. It makes me very lonely. It makes me tired. It makes me very tired.”

These, all feelings of weariness that take hold when someone, when love has come and gone.

“Everything I said…oh, well I meant it. And inside my head, holding on.”

What am I holding on to, for exactly? I guess I have always had trouble letting go of friends, family, and of love. Probably the fear of being alone and lonely are ever on my mind.

And if I died tonight would you hold my hand? Would you understand?”

Her thoughts of gloomy, rejected sadness grip me every single time, as she sings,

“I’ll get over you.”

Her cries of sadness I was in awe of then and I know them, I know them now. If I were to have someone would they stay ? You can’t make anybody stay. I remember everything I say and I mean it all the way, but, in the end, who will stay?

The Icicle Melts:

First my sister would sing and then I would follow, lyrics of helpless images that the world shows us any day of the week. The image of an icicle was a strangely vivid one, to me.

“I should not have read the paper today cause a child, child child was taken away.”

I hear headlines and I feel for mothers. I wanted to share the love I felt with a child who needed someone. A mother, a wish, one I may never be, but that instinct burns strong in me.

“How could you hurt a child? Does this make you satisfied?” I don’t know what’s happening to people today, when a child he was taken away.”

I want to shake all those who hurt the children, would-be mothers and fathers, government officials, strangers, those who should love them. Children suffer everyday and I can not help. And sometimes it’s the mothers, with such strong bonds, that must see the suffering of their child, must go through losing that child.

“Nine months is too long.”

The image of those famous months where a child is nurtured into development. Such a short time really, but all the time it takes to build that bond between mother and child, all to be broken in nothing but a headline.

This swooping ballad pulled me along from the very first listen and still does to this day.

Disappointment:

Someone is lost and can’t be found. As she repeats the words, the loss is felt over and over again..

“Disappointment. Oh, you shouldn’t have done, you couldn’t have done, you wouldn’t have done the things you did … .”

She shouts out, she decided. I don’t know why, what she has decided. To leave a particular situation? The mystery intrigues me and sweeps me along to a disappointing conclusion.

“We could have been happy. What a piteous thing, a hideous thing was tainted by the rest.”

More and more desperate emotions in this song that I can’t quite put my finger on, but that I can’t ignore. I share the same hope for the well-being of someone I once loved. You can see through the chaotic frenzy of emotion, to the part of you that wants them to be happy, wherever and however that may be.

But it won’t get any harder, and I hope you find your way again.”

There’s no guarantee that hard will not become harder. I must weather the disappointments that truly are. Again and again she repeats the word and I am forced to face my own disappointments head on, taking them for what they are worth.

Ridiculous Thoughts:

I have them all the time. Ridiculous thoughts. They grow and they build. I hold on tight, onto the ride, through life. I move on and keep moving forward. These thoughts, threaten to swallow me up.

“You’re going to have to hold on,” she repeats, “to meeeeeeeee!!!”

Swiftly, she pulls me forward with the force of her words, but how do you escape your own thoughts?

Dreaming My Dreams:

The perfect song for marriage and a life together. Sure, I dreamed it would be mine someday too, the sentiment of this song that would run deep. To find that one other person to live out my dreams with. These words bringing me hope and faith that he exists, somewhere out there.

“All the things, you said to me today, changed my perspective in every way.”

What an uplifting thought, that one other person, the right person can totally change the perspective from which you look at life.

“It’s out there. It’s out there. It’s out there. If you want me I’ll be there.”

Guitar and violin here are the stuff of those dreams. the dream is hard to give up. I won’t. I will be there for someone, for the right one who wants me and what may be waiting for us both out there.

Yeats’ Grave:

“Silenced by death in the grave.”

As a child, this poet I did not know, but who was important enough to become this song to this band. Talk of graves did not deter me, even as a young girl with talk of graves and misery.

“Had they but courage equal to desire.”

The darkness of it I was drawn to from the first time (poem, song, words, and lyrics), both courage and desire, in the darkness, being things I wondered at most already.

“And you sit here with me, on the Isle of Innisfree.”

Innisfree out there somewhere. Poetry and lyrics of which I wanted to explore and a place far in the mists of the mythical, but the Isle of Innisfree was out there somewhere, a real live place, secluded and remote.

“Why should I blame her, that she filled my days with misery?”

A time when this song played on a bus, on the way to this grave where I then stood and this poetry and the music I know oh so well now became oh so real.

“William Butler”

Lake Isle of Innisfree, Wikipedia

Daffodil Lament:

“Holding on. that’s what I do since I met you. And it won’t be long. Would you notice if I left you? And it’s hard for some, ‘cause you’re not the one.”

The song with the two parts, the sorrow first, in the end of something.

“All night long, laid on my pillow. These things are wrong. I can’t sleep here!!!”

And then the beauty to be discovered underneath, with recognizing the problem and taking steps to make things better and beautiful again.

“I have decided to leave you forever. I have decided to start things from here. Thunder and lightening won’t change what I feel. And the daffodils look lovely today.”

The symbolic daffodils, “look lovely today.” The symbolic use of nature, thunder and lightening and pretty flowers, the disguises hidden under the surface perhaps?

“Ooh in your eyes I can see the disguise. Ooh in your eyes I can see the dismay. Has anyone seen lightening? Has anybody looked lovely? And the daffodils look lovely today.”

The song grows into an upbeat theme song for looking on the bright side of things and then ends, its final note on a downcast layering of a true lament.

No Need To Argue (Title Track):

A quiet end to a one-of-a-kind musical and lyrical experience.

“There’s no need to argue anymore. I gave all I could but it left me so sore.”

One lowly organ and her memories.

“And the thing that makes me mad was the one thing that I had. I knew, I knew, I’d lose you. YOU’ll always be special to me.”

Such memories, it feels like an intrusion, but perhaps a window onto these memories that can be sad and wistful at the same time, but that don’t have to be forever painful to recall.

“And I remember all the things we once shared, watching TV movies on the living room armchair. And they say it will work out fine. Was it all a waste of time? Cause I knew, I knew I’d lose you. You’ll always be special to me.”

Different memories, perhaps, but the same remembrance.

“There’s no need to argue anymore.”

And there’s a certain peace in this, in the quietude and solitude of this last track, the snapshots that flip, from one to the next, in the minds’ eye.

“Special,” she whispers faintly at the end.

Yes, “No Need To Argue” is certainly special to me.

Happy Twenty-year Anniversary to an album that changed my life and will surely last the test of time.

One Hundred

Number 15 on my
Bucket List
is to visit the setting of the poem that can always give me goosebumps.

On this one-hundred-year anniversary of the start of Britain’s fighting in World War I England went dark, except for a single light or candle, for one hour starting at 10 this evening, August 4th.
Poppies fill the moat of The Tower of London in remembrance.

It’s unfathomable to me that 17 million lives were lost over the four plus years of The Great War (and I use that term with a dry chuckle). I know what “great” means in this case, large in scope and impact, but I can’t imagine what it was like to be Canadian during those years.

We had no choice. Britain were at war and we were Britain’s young and inexperienced child. We followed them into the darkness and the death.

I have been fascinated by John McCrae’s tragically sad poem “In Flanders Fields” since it was read at our Remembrance Day assembly in school. Now that I am older and love literature and poetry I see it for the meaningful piece of both of these that it is, a brilliant lyrical window into the suffering of combat and conflict that would be the world wars of the 20th century.

I read about the pride and the duty to one’s country; about the trenches with the death, rotting corpses, the blood, rats, and the lice; the shrapnel, machine gun fire, and the poison gas. I can’t and never will understand this hell. I feel a pull to this time in history too for the romance of the love letters written by soldiers on the front back to their sweethearts a world away at home, the toughness and resilience of this period.

It is hard for me to relate to a time when Germany and the German soldier were considered the enemy. Whether it’s World War I or World War II I know that was the case, but having such a connection to Germany with family living there, now I feel stuck in a war inside my head that has long ago been fought and resolved. I don’t have to choose, but in my mind I am pulled back to that time when things were just that black and white.

As for McCrae I imagine him sitting there in the midst of all that death and writing a poem he probably never could have guessed generations of school children would be hearing and taking in as we have.

I hope to travel to this spot. Places in Europe I hope to still visit in my lifetime such as Flanders, Vimy Ridge, or possibly Passchendaele would bring it to a whole new level of surrealism for me.

For now I must settle for reading and rereading the

poem,

and letting my mind stretch to grasp such a time in history that I will never know, but I feel the impact on my own personal view of the world since the guns were silenced and the century I would eventually be born into wore on.

Talk of foes and the ones who once lived, loved, and felt the sun on their faces will never stop affecting me, but back then it would take one more, one more World War would be necessary before death on such a global scale would have all countries involved saying ENOUGH!

I don’t think we’ve quite learned our lesson, on the contrary. I just wanted to explain why number 15 appears on my list and why I even care at all when it is often thought and said that today’s generation could care less.

I once asked my father (ever a cynic) if he thought there would someday be a World War III and he said gravely:
“I think, nowadays with nuclear weapons, that would spell doom and the end of this planet for us all.”

Only time will tell I guess, but for my niece and nephews sakes I hope he is wrong and I hope our world has learned something from the World Wars of the past. Nonetheless, it will mean something to me if I ever manage to check number 15 off my ever-growing list.