March-ing On

March feels so much easier than February.

I am sure that the weather has something to do with it. Although, March roared in like a lion here in Winnipeg - one of Lydia's last hockey Tuesday nights in early March was cancelled - not due to melting ice - but due to a -30C wind chill - once we moved the clocks forward one hour on March 8th, Mother Nature seemed ready to give us a break to accompany the evening sunlight.

It is difficult to describe just how overjoyed we are to welcome Spring back to our midst - winter settled in here the first week of November and we have had snow on the ground and unusually cold temperatures for four months straight! This past week we have FINALLY recorded above 0 C daily temperatures, the snow is starting to melt and the sidewalks are a treacherous mess of melting ice and puddles. Splash pants are a must, as are rubber boots, but walking is a dangerous activity - Lydia and I took two tries to make it to the park Monday afternoon - she fell into two puddles and soaked her mitts and the back of her shirt (which was not properly tucked into said splash pants) on our first attempt. But spring is really in the air and there is a feeling of anticipation in the air, there is no holding it back now, while we may get some cold days yet, real winter is behind us.

March last year was consumed by Harry's first two rounds of chemotherapy and everyday life in Rm 535 on CK5, or as everyday as life could have been on an oncology ward with your wee son hooked up to at least four different IV lines pumping a cocktail of lethal drugs into his wee body via a thin white line entering directly into his chest. But my memories of March match the sunshine. March was a month filled with optimism and hope. Harry was ALIVE - a major gift just in and of itself. He was responding brilliantly to the chemotherapy, he was his joyful, happy, contented self again. Each day with Harry was filled with so much love and laughter, it is impossible not to look back on last March and smile.

I am trying so hard to hold onto that feeling of light and optimism that I felt last March. It was a gift to feel that - to know so truly what it feels like to live in joy and love today, just today, not worrying about tomorrow, but truly living in and for today.

That was one of the true gifts of this journey with Harry - to be given the opportunity to experience fully what it means to live in the moment - and to live in JOY in the moment. Many people search their whole life to find this experience. And while I would rather that the journey with Harry had taken a different path, one that left him here with us, I am so grateful to have had that experience. I can look back on our past year with Harry and be so thankful for all of the wonderful moments of that experience.

We miss our little Prince so much. He is never out of our thoughts, though sometimes just below the surface, he is always in our hearts. I think we are coming to a place of acceptance in our journey with Harry, accepting this new configuration of our family. Although, our family will always be a family that includes Harry. Lydia so easily and purely captures this - nearly every day at school or daycare she draws a family picture - and it is always Mommy, Daddy, Lydia and Harry. His physical absence will be felt forever. I realize that will never go away, though it might dim a bit with time. Right now, I still always think, in every moment, how the moment would be different if Harry were here in his physical body with us. I don't know that I will every stop doing that.

I think I understand why somewhere between 75 and 90% of couples divorce or spilt-up following the death of a child and why all of the grief books I have read talk about the grief over the loss of a child as the most difficult of all grief journeys to walk. If you stay together as a family then that loss, that absence will ALWAYS be present, forever, from this point forward. To try to get away from that feeling of dislocation - that 'something is missing-ness' - I can well imagine feeling that the only way towards healing is to disband that family group, create a new family with someone else, where the absence of the child lost will not be central to the family configuration. I can't imagine that in the end that really helps. But I can full understand the feeling, the need to 'get away' to create an entirely new circumstance, where the child never was, so they might not feel so absent.

All that said, don't worry though, Henry and I are happily in the other 10-15%! I remember in the very earliest days of Harry's diagnosis. Henry was really scared that maybe we would spilt up over this illness, would our marriage be able to withstand the stress? I didn't even have to think about it for an instant. I think we might have still even have been on CK4 or just in the very early days on CK5, when Henry expressed this fear. I dismissed it outright as preposterous, that was a choice I simply was not willing to make. We were sticking together no matter what, end of discussion. It was one of those moments of clarity when we just made the choice - this would bring us closer together, however the journey progressed, end of story. We would not let this destroy us, it was going to make us stronger.

And so in March, we are trying to stay centred in the light - just as we did last March. Centred in joy, love, light and optimism. It feels so much better to be in this place and even though Harry is no longer physically with us. I so clearly know that he resides with us in the light. So as long as we stay centred in the light, we are never really apart from Harry. He is there with us always.

If you see us this month. Don't be afraid to ask us about Harry or talk about Harry. We are always thinking about him and we love talking about him, remembering him. Yes, it is very likely we might shed a tear or two, but tears are the soothing balm of grief. It doesn't make us feel badly to talk about Harry, it makes us feel sad if we feel we have to somehow pretend we are NOT thinking about him!

If you have any happy (or sad) memories of Harry that you would like to share, please do so on the blog. We would love to capture as many memories and stories of Harry as we can.

In love and light,
Cynthia

Updated Harry Venema Memorial Project Vision Statement

Walk On, Indeed!

Since Harry passed over in August I have read a lot. Typically, mostly books on death, grief, dealing with the death of a child, the afterlife, that kind of light fare.

One of my favourite books so far is by the famous american philosopher Ken Wilber. I have never read any of his work. I have always wanted to, but I couldn’t make it directly enough fit into my doctoral work and I was already reading far more widely than was likely advisable, so I had to shelve his work, figuratively and literally, till later.

This book, called “Grace and Grit” Wilber published in 1991. Grace and Grit documents Wilber’s and his wife Treya’s experiences with her five-year long journey and ultimate death from breast cancer, using his own words and her journal entries. I want to write much more about my thoughts on this book, because I have learned so much from it. Although one of the things that has most struck me is how similar their journey was to ours. Strange as it might be that a baby boy’s journey with cancer can resemble that of a women’s in her late 30s!

One the one hand I have to say I found it, rather perversely perhaps, strangely comforting that she died. This might sound cruel. But part of me will always wonder, did we do enough for Harry? What else should we have tried?

It is reassuring to know that the wife of a presumably wealthy American (Wilber had already published over ten books when Treya was diagnosed and was read widely throughout the world), and not just any American, but *the* american philosopher credited with creating the field of Transpersonal Psychology and especially known for his cogent synthesis of eastern and western spiritualism and philosophy, had ultimately died of cancer.

They had access to the best medical treatment in the world. They tried both allopathic chemotherapy and radiation, but also a wide-range of alternative therapies. They were critical and discerning, yet open to it all.

So it makes me feel better to know, in a crazy way, that with all their access and knowledge, even a Zen Buddhist master’s wife could die of cancer.

Very near the end of the book. When Wilber is describing Treya’s very last days. He quotes a famous Zen Koan, which he felt most aptly described Treya’s incredible attitude in the face her journey with cancer. I nearly fell off my chair when I read it.

The Zen Koan goes like this:

A student asked a Zen Master, “What is Absolute Truth?” ...

... and the Zen Master said only, “Walk On!”

That is my little Harry, my pint-sized sage, teaching us in his way the meaning of absolute truth ... walk on my loves, walk on.