Remembrance

Alright I admit it. I kinda had a bit of a meltdown the other day.

I honestly didn't feel at the time that I could keep writing here. But some things have happened and I'm beginning to think that maybe that isn't the case.

I've felt very raw lately. A lot of emotions are surfacing and I'm going through a time of immense personal change where I'm really seriously thinking about my future and reconciling myself to the losses of the past. I know this process is for the better, but we've all been through it and we all know that change, however good for us, isn't easy.

I was immensely grateful to my employer today for two reasons. We are closed for Remembrance Day [very rare for a private sector company in Canada] which gave me an extra day of rest that I sorely needed. It also let me watch the national Remembrance Day ceremony from Ottawa, always so wonderfully done.

This year's ceremony was particularly poignant in that it marked the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI. While watching it, I suddenly remembered something I had not thought of in ages. I thought about my first year at the University of Toronto and how my class schedule would often allow me a mid-morning break at Diablo's coffee bar at University College. It's situated in a room where the names of U of T students killed in WWI are scrolled on the walls.

At the time, I always had mixed feelings about this. On one hand it seemed ridiculous for me to enjoy something as frivolous as a coffee surrounded by the names of students my age lost to the meat grinder that was The Great War. But another part of me was resentful. I also saw these names as emblematic of an era in which as a woman, my chances of joining them at U of T would have been slim to none.

But mostly what I remembered this morning was the sense of respite and of connection and continium I experienced in that little coffee shop. That I was at U of T, getting an education in country that was still a democracy because of the sacrifice of those names on the wall and those that loved them. I remembered the peace this time of year brings, as the earth settles in and reconciles itself to the approach of winter and the simple joy of a cup of coffee when the air starts to have a nip to it. I am not as far away from those names on the wall as I would like to think. None of us are.

So on this Remembrance Day, I look to my own future, a future hard won by those I never knew and I remember the members of my own family who served and suffered, my grandfathers who were in the military and home guard, my grandmothers who raised children through the relentless bombings of Glasgow and Clydebank.

I'm thankful to them for the luxury I have of making future plans.