In My Life, I’ve Loved Them All

Just being alive, it can really hurt,
These moments given, are a gift from time.
Just let us try, to give these moments back,
To those we love, to those who will survive.
---- Kate Bush, "Moments of Pleasure"
On Saturday I attended Ian’s memorial service. It was as good as these things can get, a true celebration of somebody’s life and what they meant to people, despite the evident heartache.

An unusual thing happened to me, one of those “full circle moments” Oprah talks about. It was the first time in more years than I can count that I was only with my immediate family. My niece, and my sister and mine’s respective spouses couldn’t make the service. So there we were, just the four of us, my mother, father, sister and me. My sister and I were in the back seat, rolling through the countryside just like old times. I remember loving these drives as a child. My sister and I would pretend we were on a roller coaster.

Lately, many things are coming back to me, especially from my childhood. I don’t really understand why. They are things I haven’t carried with me and I haven’t thought about in a very long time. For example, the other day, I smelled a rose that I recently transplanted to the back yard. It has a delicate tea rose scent that I associate with childhood summers. I remembered as a four year old using my Fisher Price cook pots and an obliging rose bush belonging to my neighbour to make my own perfume. I also remember the rose bushes we had in the front walk way of our first house in Canada. I always took in a bunch of hand picked roses to my teacher the last day of school. The scent would hang in steamy air that was just on the verge of a blast of summer’s heat.

All of this came rushing back with one sniff. So strange and amazing.

The meaning of this for me didn’t really sink in until Saturday.

Death has a way of bringing everything to a crashing standstill. In thinking of Ian I’ve had a lot of time to think about my own life and where I want to go. It’s like I’ve been a fog since I heard of his passing, forced to fumble around in the opaqueness of it all. And the only way I’m getting out is to decide on my direction and go. Eventually, things have to clear.

So thinking of where to go has inevitably led to thoughts about where I’ve been, what I’ve been through and who I’ve met along the way. I realized on Saturday, perhaps for the first time in a long time, that I have been through quite a lot and that I need to stop being so hard on myself. By this I don’t mean a “trial by fire” viewpoint, but just that the sheer act of living has taken up so much space inside of me. It has this effect on all of us. I have so much to look back on and think about and I’m not even mid-way through my thirties. How will I be feeling when I am, God willing, twice this age?

Through all the changes, disappointments and heart break, there have also been some wins too and the adding of new and wonderful people to my life, like Rosy, Ragdoll, Georgie, the Marine and the Duke.

What does all this mean? I don’t know. But I do feel like I am excited about what lies ahead and I’m grateful for what’s happened so far, all of it.

From what I’ve heard, some of you are actually reading this thing. I’ll let you know what I discover. In the end, I'm just sorting myself out as I go. Aren't we all?