Missing 4 months, a signature and a year of firsts, some thoughts and a laugh from in and around the Carr family for another week.
Open
I am happy to say I am feeling more like my normal self. A carefully scrutinized dose of some serious medication, lots of friends’ shoulders and a team of therapists, working around the clock have confirmed my original thought, that I am basically fine and the rest of the world is completely messed up. It has been a few months since I blogged the stories from my little life, and I have forgotten how much I missed it, and how much I get out of it. I write for me, and hope to be read, but in the end if it is only me and the automated spiders at Google that scan the words in the confessions page, I am ok with that too.
One of the reasons I have feared beginning again, was how do I recap the missing 4 months of not writing. And when I mentioned my apprehension to blog reader and great sister, Janey, she gave me the answer I needed to get back at it, “You just do it one sentence at a time Jim”
4 weeks before May 20th, I had a little conversation with Bentley the super dog, after reading a look in his eyes that reminded my of a line in my favourite poem by Robert Service called “The Cremation of Sam McGee”. In the piece, after a long trek in the cold and snow, the main character – Sam, who hates the weather and is not well, says to his friend and travel companion, “I’ll cash in this trip I guess”. You see Bentley was struggling to make it up the stairs on his own, and the look in his eyes, said it all to me. I am tired, I am in pain, I don’t like this and I am done. I asked him if he was ok, and picked him up, rubbing the back of his neck like I had done so many times before, and he looked away, almost as if to say, please don’t look at me. I knew at that moment for sure, that his 14-year trip with us was drawing to a close.
I tried to sluff off the image, the words, and the whole thought of it, and instead tucked it in my back pocket for a future blog. This blog. The blog that I knew I would write after we had say goodbye to a great dog for the last time on the 20th of May.
Bentley thank you for teaching me the true meaning of unconditional love. Thank you for teaching Nathalie and I, early on in our marriage, not only responsibility, but how to deal with each other, on important issues like destruction of personal property and thank you for always knowing when to bark, when to sit and when to run away, most of the time and most of all, thanks for giving us, someone to run home to.
A Year of Firsts
This has not been the easiest of years for my family or me. One of the themes I have heard of a number of times while making my way through life for the last 365 days, was that for the first year after a loved ones passing, of course it will be difficult, but mostly during significant anniversaries, events or family gatherings. When you mark a date in time, as you have so many times before with that person, it stands to reason that when you have to do that same without that person, your emotions are heightened.
The year of firsts, was full of happy memories, and some sadness and an over all comfortableness over the loss of my Mom. It is not that time has made me forget her, but I think that time has allowed me to appreciate all that she meant to me when she lived even more, and that is a good thing I guess. I don’t hear her voice as much as I did a year ago, but I still can see her smile and when I need to smile myself I close my eyes, and just watch her dance.
In Closing
Somewhere in a box, possibly labeled “old stuff” in my garage, in a large stack of paper is one piece of lined fullscap I know I saved from a life ago. A page that many would look at and immediately think it was a scrap paper with blue or black pen doodle on it, but I kept it because I thought it was a great symbol. Before Nathalie and I got married, when her name was longer, naturally, she had her signature down pat, but she needed to figure out how the “new” name would work in addition to hers, and she must have practiced it a million times. Two dots over the “i” underlines, circles and lines in varying lengths over and under others, all part of an inspiring piece of artwork, the way I look at it.
I remembered that piece of paper this week, after an innocent conversation with Jordyn that ended up making me laugh. She said, “Daddy, when do I get my signature”. Confused, I asked, “What do you mean?” She said, “You know, when do I get to have a signature of my own?” After processing the though of being given your very own signature, I said, “You have a signature now Jordyn, you have a name, so you have a signature. Your signature is something you make. You can have it anytime you want!” She smiled, and said, “Ohh I though like the government would send it to me, and I would have to practice it.”
Off to practice my own signature!
Thanks for reading and have a great and safe week,
Jim
