Angel Baby

We have many nick names for Harry. One of my nick names for him was, “Angel Baby”. How prophetic.

I recall so clearly the last time I called him that. It was on February 24th, 2008. We were still in the room on CK4, not yet moved up to the oncology ward CK5, but it was after we had been given the devastating news of his cancer. A nurse had come into the room to do something, I can’t recall what, take some blood, check a temperature, take a blood pressure reading?

I put the side of the crib down, I was on Harry’s left side, and I held his hand and stroked his head and comforted him as she poked and prodded. I can so clearly hear myself saying, “It’s okay Angel Baby, don’t cry, you’ll be okay Angel Baby”.

And then, my Awareness, observed myself hunched over Harry’s hospital crib; heard myself say those words, prompted me to say to myself “Stop. What kind of idiot calls her child, who has just been given a grave diagnosis of metastatic liver cancer, “Angel Baby”.

“Oh God," I thought. "What AM I doing. NO, I don’t want him to be my Angel Baby. Don’t call him that, I can’t call him that. What AM I thinking?”

I never called him Angel Baby again. Well, until he was my Angel Baby. Now I’ll always call him my Angel Baby.

Love,
Cynthia

The Harry Venema Memorial Fun Park

Hi Folks

Here is the first description of the Harry Venema Memorial Fun Park, we're planning at Robert A. Steen Community Club. We've established a working group to bring this vision to reality.

We've now raised well over $10,000 dollars and expect to attract co-funding for project construction.

I'll use the blog to keep people apprised of our progress.

thanks,

Henry

The Harry Venema Memorial Fun Park - Description

The Canadian Liver Foundation

The Canadian Liver Foundation just called. Yes, I am not kidding. Yes, I gave them $50.00.

The poor guy, I think he said his name was Adam, he started on his spiel and as soon as I heard him say, “... calling from the Canadian Liver Foundation ...” I interrupted him and said, though I am not quite sure why, because I didn’t need to divulge this information, “Yes, our son just died of liver cancer in August, we’ll give $50.00”.

So apparently there is a way to stop a telemarketer dead, mid-sentence and render them suddenly speechless.

Until he called I had forgotten that it must be pretty much exactly a year since they last called. It was around the same time of day. I remember checking the number on call display as the phone rang. A “480-number.” I knew it was a telemarketer and I had debated not answering. But I did anyway.

Last year, I patiently listened to their spiel, “Canadian Liver Foundation ... blah blah blah ... research for liver disease ... blah blah blah”. We give a lot of money to charity. I sighed, considered it for a moment, “Should we give to the Canadian Liver Foundation?”

Then, I thought, “Oh, hell, we don’t know anyone with liver disease”. Yes, I really thought that.

And I said, “Thank you very much, but we give a lot of money to charity each year, and we just can’t afford to give anything else at this time”. And I had politely hung up.

We don’t know anyone with liver disease. Two days before taking Harry to the hospital to find out that he was, very likely, dying of metastatic liver cancer, I said no to a telemarketer from the Canadian Liver Foundation because, “we didn’t know anyone with liver disease”.

I’m not sure what that means. But if you believe in signs, then it was one of just several signs, of what was waiting for us. This year, it just seems like a cruel reminder. Yes, okay, okay, okay. I know someone who has died of liver disease.

Happy Harry Inner Tube Dancing to the Wiggles

I wanted to post something happy about Harry. Not every day is sad for us. Many of our days since Harry passed over have been full of joy and love and laughter. We so strongly feel Harry's presence in our home and lives. We know that he is "just around the corner" or sometime right in the room with us, always loving us. I am just trying to figure out how to post videos to YouTube. Henry has put all of our video clips of Harry (about 41 minutes total, I think) into an iMovie movie. We will post it on YouTube - but we have to chunk it into 5 segments (max allowed is 10 minutes). So we still have some tinkering to do.

However, I have figured out how to post a small movie to YouTube.

Here is a link to one of our very favourite videos of Harry. It is Harry 'dancing' inside an inner tube in our living room.

The four of us were hanging out one morning. "The Wiggles" came on TV. Harry LOVED the Wiggles. In the video we captured the moment when the song "Wiggle, Wiggle, Wiggle" came on and Harry started spontaneously clapping, laughing, and wiggling right along. This is such a CLASSIC Harry moment - he is so full of joy and life. It is my favourite video of him and one I just treasure. It always makes me laugh and cry tears of joy when I watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTJ_fhONu_M




We're also slowly trying to put together all of the pictures we have of Harry - somewhere between 1500 - 2000. We'll eventually get them all organized and into slideshows to download! I want to make a MyPublisher glossy book of pictures of Harry too. I am trying to write as much as I can - but also have to work on papers from my doctoral thesis for publication!

Have a wonderful, wiggly, day.
Love,
Cynthia

Six Months

Harry died six months ago today.

He has now been gone for longer than the whole journey, longer than the whole time he was sick. It has passed in a flash. It doesn’t seem possible. How can it be six months since he died? From February 22nd to August 3rd seemed like the longest of times, a lifetime. August seems like almost yesterday, yet not almost yesterday. Time has moved in such strange ways this past year.

Would you believe that when I woke up this morning I didn’t automatically realize what day it was?

In bed, Lydia had asked us if it was a special day today. Was it anyone’s birthday, anyone who we knew? February 3rd? In my groggy, half-awake state, I knew that the day was important, but I couldn’t quite yet grasp why. The significance hid behind the cobwebs of my not-yet-awake mind. Who did we know who was born on February 3rd? I told Lydia,” I am sure it is someone’s birthday somewhere in the world”.

Looking at the clock, pushing 7:30, I quickly got out of bed, “We have to be on the ball today ‘Tuda. It is a work day for Mummy”. And Lydia’s comment was quickly forgotten in the sweep of the morning rush of getting dressed, making beds, eating breakfast, making lunch, and getting Lydia and I out the door in time for school and my bus.

It is someone’s birthday. Lydia’s school friend Callum turns five today. We’re going to his birthday party on Sunday.

It was when I was riding the bus to the University that it hit me. I guess I have been so pre-occupied with dreading all the other anniversaries in February that I had completely overlooked this one. February 3rd, oh, yes, of course, now I know. February 3rd. How could I possibly have forgotten so soon? It has now been six months, a whole half-year, a whole impossible half-year since Harry died.

The tears streamed down my face as I sat riding the express bus to the university and the cobwebs were torn and washed from every corner of my mind. Every moment of the last year flashes through my memory and I think of the last time I held my wee Harry. So skinny, his wee body ravaged from the chemo and the cancer. The last time I kissed his impossibly smooth, papery soft skin. The last time I felt his wee hand grasp my fingers and I weep.

God, I want him back. God, it feels so fucking unfair that he should be gone. Today I can’t pull out my philosophical balms and soothe myself with thoughts of the meaning of his life. Right now, in this moment. I just think about how much I miss holding him in my arms. The perfect weight of him in my arms, always balanced on my left hip. His right arm draped around my shoulder and his left hand tucked protectively down the front of my top, resting just at the top of my left breast, over my heart. As if he just needed one hand on Mummy’s flesh, to make sure I was real.

How can I even begin to put into words the ache I feel? The loss? The sorrow? I cry for me, for Henry, for Harry, for Lydia. I cry and shake my head at the impossibility of it all. How? How? I always ask myself. How did this happen? Why did this happen? How can it be possible that my dear sweet boy has died? And not just died, but died of cancer. How could it have taken my son? Wasn’t it enough that it took my Dad? Did I have to give it my son too??? This isn’t supposed to happen. I am not supposed to have to deal with this.

I know, I know. I can hear Henry’s voice already in my mind. When you get out of your ‘woe is me, victim-mode’ you can come and talk to me. You are not a victim. You are not being punished. Everyone suffers. I could have been born in central Africa, an innocent caught in the cross-fire in the Middle East, poverty-stricken, famine-stricken, family ravaged by AIDS … choose your sorrow. But yet, some days, the weight of my own particular sorrows feels so unfair. And oh, but some days it is so easy to believe in a vengeful god, sitting on his throne up in heaven, raining down another lightening bolt of punishment.

What sin could I have possibly committed to warrant this?

But as soon as I say all this, I stop. I don’t really feel better, fuming and raging this way. It helps for an instant. But when I stop, nothing has changed. The past is still the past and Harry is still gone. It doesn’t do any good to sit and ask questions that can’t be answered. It doesn’t do any good to wallow in self-pity. It gets me nowhere. It doesn’t change a thing and it doesn’t really help. It mostly just leaves me feeling empty and alone.

As we’ve known from the very beginning, the only thing we can control, the only choice we really have, is how we are going to respond in this moment. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like much. But it is perhaps the most powerful choice of all. If I look into the past, I can’t change what happened. If I look too far into the future I feel overwhelmed at the thought of enduring day after day, year after year without Harry.

So I try to do what Harry taught me best. I try to live just today, to only think of today, this moment, this instant. Just breathe and be. Try to just be happy in this instant. It is so hard. But, as Henry says, it is the only thing that we can do to honour Harry’s memory.

So that is what I try to do, to try to get through today. Enjoy the moments of today. But on a day like today, it is harder. Because through every happy thought I can’t help but let through the sad, sad, sad thought:

Harry died six months ago today.

We Are Seven by William Wordsworth

Henry's cousin Miriam sent us this poem the other day, after reading the "February" blog posting. The third stanza so reminds me of Lydia, "she was wildly clad; Her eyes were fair, and very fair; Her beauty made me glad". It is with the same determination and spirit that Lydia insists we are still a family of four and that she is, was and will always be, Harry's big sister.

How strange it is to me. When a parent dies, we don't suddenly say, "oh you are no longer a daughter or a son". So why, when a child dies, do we wonder whether someone is still a mother, father or sister?

Henry and I thought the poem was so lovely and wanted to share it. Here it is.

We Are Seven
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

-A Simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.

"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."

"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be."

Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."

"You run above, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little Maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.

"My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.

"And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

"The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.

"So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.

"And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."

"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply,
"O Master! we are seven."

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

A Dream - From January 31 2009

I had a dream last night. It wasn’t about Harry, though I do dream of him often. It was about my childhood home in Guelph.

Many of you will know that my childhood home, my Mum’s house, burnt almost to the ground in a house fire in 2005. August 1, 2005 actually. Apparently, that weekend holds a huge energy of significant change for my family. We had just moved into our first home, our current home, on 2 August. The first phone call we received, as the movers were still bringing in the boxes, was from my Mum, informing us that her house had burnt down the day before.

If anyone has ever wondered where I get my strength from, they have not yet met my Mum. She is such an incredibly sweet and kind woman. She waited a day to call me to let me know her home of 35 years had burnt down, because she knew I was moving on the 2nd and she didn’t want to ‘bother’ me when she knew I would be stressed out with moving the next day. It was yet another surreal moment in my life, the first phone call we received in our first home was my Mum telling me my childhood home was gone. It was like the universe said, “Sorry, but you’re only allowed to have one home in the family at a time, so we had to take one away.”

Since the fire, I have had a number of dreams about the house. For at least half a year after the fire, I dreamt about the house as it looked right after the fire, when we were sorting through the remains, figuring out what could be saved and what couldn’t. (Most of the really precious things, pictures & special family mementos could be saved). My re-occurring dream was of sorting through things in the house, looking for something we wanted to save and not being able to find it. In another variation, I would wonder where something was, I would be searching frantically for it, ending up angry that I couldn’t find it. I would wake up and wonder, where was that thing, did we save it, was it lost? I was learning to let go of all of the things that really weren’t all that important. Things that might be nice to have saved, but that, really, in the grand scheme of life, were not so necessary to my ongoing happiness.

After a while the house dream morphed into something else. Next, I would dream that I was coming back to visit Guelph and was just passing by to see the house one last time. I would be astonished to see a light on in the house. I approached, and saw that my Mum was inside. I went in and found, much to my absolute astonishment that my Mum had decided that she could still live in the house. She had swept things up and put up new curtains. She told me, “It isn’t so bad, really, the upstairs was really only smoke-damaged. As long as I don’t go into the basement (where the fire had started and what was really completely destroyed) it will be quite alright, quite livable.” In my dream, I tell her she is crazy, “Mum, you can’t possibly live here! The house is BURNT”.

Sometime in the past year. I am not sure exactly when, the dream changed yet again. This time, when I went to visit the house, (fortunately) my Mum was NOT living there, instead, when I went inside, it turned out that someone had gutted the inside and they were starting to renovate it. From the outside the house looked the same as it always had. But on the inside, it was much bigger. It looked like the inside of an old castle, stone walls, earthen floor, wooden beams, a large fireplace with a huge stone hearth at one end. I was annoyed with the people for renovating the house. Indignantly, I told them that they had no right to renovate the house - we still owned it!

Last night I had a new dream about my Mum’s house. It was like it was sometime in the future. The house was once again, largely the same on the outside, but the side-street (the house was one house away from a corner) was a much busier through-fare than it is now. (It is a residential neighbourhood near the University of Guelph). The house had obviously been renovated. I approached the house from the side - up what would have been the driveway, but there was a new sunroom stretching across the whole side of the house. As I entered, I was in awe, the house had been totally renovated - but turned into a fabulous English Pub. The new owners had imported all of this gorgeous woodwork from England. I wandered through the house/ pub and was thrilled to see the transformation. I remember crying in my dream, “Oh my Dad would have loved this, Mum always said his dream was to retire and run an English Pub”. I left the house and was riding on a bus, not sure where I was going, but I was on my cell phone, telling my Mum she had to see the house now and how wonderfully it had been transformed.

Okay, then the dream got weird, next thing I knew I was sitting with Michael Ignatieff and three other political leaders (though in the dream I don’t know who they were), and Michael is explaining how logical it is about the transformation about the house.

This is the first dream I have had in which the house is ‘okay’ and transformed into something new and good.

It felt significant that I should have this dream on the eve of February 1.

I take it as a sign that, maybe, just maybe, in February we will realize that we are transformed too, but that it is okay, it is something new and good.

Love,
Cynthia

p.s. My mum sold the property to a developer in early 2007 and the house was demolished later that year. The property was severed, with a neighbour purchasing the back half of the lot and as of yet, I don’t think anything has been built on the remaining frontage.