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
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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
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
Saturday, February 21, 2009
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
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
Friday, February 20, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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.
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!"
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.
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.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
February
February looms. Time marches inexorably into February. How are we going to get through February? Already a hard month to endure in the endless winter of Winnipeg. It seems doubly so this year.
We passed a threshold last Sunday. Sunday January 25th. Well not the 25th in particular, rather the celebration of Henry's mother's birthday - Harry and Lydia's Beppe's birthday. Her actual birthday is the 24th. Last year we celebrated it on Sunday the 27th. This year we celebrated her birthday together as a family by going out for dinner. We always end up sitting in these little protective groupings, together but not 100% together. A nested holarchy of family? We were seated at a big round table in a nook at the back of the Chinese restaurant in the strip mall out in the suburbs. Sandy and Gary sat like protective sentinels around Gwyn. Grace, then Dave on Sandy's left. Kathleen then Gareth on Gary's right. Three spots, only ever three spots now, for our family of four. I looked at those three spots waiting for us at the table and inwardly sighed, Harry’s absence a huge unspoken presence.
I try to joke with myself, “Angel Harry will have to sit on his Dad's head again”.
It is the weirdest feeling of back to the future. We were a family of three for 3 years, 4 months and 4 days. Then Harry came and we were a family of four. His life passed so quickly, over the threshold of life, over the threshold of cancer, through the spinning door of death, and boom, here we are again, the three of us our heads spinning, the doors whirling behind us. Back to being a family of three. But not ever again a family of three.
But back to last year, last year we had everyone, including several of Grace's siblings, over to our house for tea and cake. Henry and I recall it so clearly: for us this marks the last family event where we remember Harry as truly being healthy.
You might remember, the very first picture of Harry Gareth put up on the blog, was taken on that day. Harry was standing in our living room, holding onto our big wooden chair, with his trademark huge grin on his face. His laughter echoes in my memory. Harry in his world of delight, showing off for all the rellies, pushing around his "hippo car", so close to walking on his own.
For us, it now marks a door. It is the door between two of our worlds - on one side is the world where Harry was just Happy Harry, a healthy, thriving 10 months old baby boy. The other side of the world is the world of cancer. The world where our baby has cancer. It still seems so surreal that we ever walked through that door.
Although Harry had not really been displaying any overt outward signs of illness yet, when I look back at the photo from that day I notice that he looks pale, his skin has a slight yellow tinge, jaundice I suppose. We didn't notice it then. Who isn't pale in Winnipeg in January?
I have gone over and over and over in my mind, wondering what kind of mother doesn't notice that her baby boy is getting sick. Not just sick, but actually, as we would find out, on the very edge of death. How can the rarest and most aggressive of all childhood cancers have been growing in my son and yet he was never sick, never even had a cold?
So how does one get through a day like last Sunday?
The milestone. It is the first thing you think of when you wake up. You know the way your child comes into your room when you are still sleeping and stands right beside your head, trying not to be too noisy, but in the effort ends up breathing heavy in your ear as they whisper, "Mummy, are you awake?". You actually are awake, you awoke the first moment you heard the thud of their feet leaving their bed and hitting the bedroom floor …
… In the way that only a mother wakes up, it starts when your newborn is first placed in your arms, something that gets switched on in your head during childbirth. Doesn't matter how deep of a sleeper you were before you had kids (and I could sleep through an alarm blaring right beside my head for half an hour, minimum, much to the frustration of my housemates in University) you now wake up the instant your baby sighs too heavily, or grunts too deeply - even if they are sleeping down the hall two doors away. In fact, the connection goes so deep, you often find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, not quite sure why you have woken up, but in a moment you know why, because you hear your baby cry for you. Your body knew they needed you even before your brain did ...
… You followed the patter of their feet across their bedroom floor, waited for the sound of their door opening, their movement down the hall, opening your door ... it’s the same thing with the milestone. Something wakes you up, in the first instant you are not quite sure what it was, then in the second instant you know, and there it is, standing beside your bed, whispering in your ear, "A year ago today was the last day that you remember Harry being truly well".
With your child, you reach over and pull them into the middle of the bed, to nestle in between you and your partner, to get a few more minutes of sleep before they realize they are fully awake and demand to be taken downstairs to start their day. With the milestone, you reach over, pull it over your head, and prepare to wear it, a weight around your neck, all day long.
You feel it next to your chest, rubbing. Not entirely uncomfortable, but annoying nonetheless. You resign yourself to it being there all day. Sometimes as you go through your day you don’t even feel it or notice it. You are absorbed in the moment with whatever little thing you are doing. Other times it is so heavy, it takes all of your energy not to sit down on the spot and dissolve into a sobbing, shuddering heap of tears. Some times you do just dissolve into that heap.
That’s usually when a shadow passes over Lydia’s face, anxiety, concern, worry, but something else too. The, “what the heck is your problem Mummy” look that only a child can give their Mum. Lydia will ask, “Why are you crying Mummy (Daddy)?” and we’ll answer, “Sometimes Mummy(Daddy) just feels so sad about Harry and needs to cry”. And Lydia will say, “Don’t cry Mummy, Harry is here with us right now, don’t you see him? Come on Harres-sa-bears-sa, let’s go play in the living room”. Her blond head turns and she skips away.
It often isn’t quite as bad as you imagine it will be in your head, in the days leading up to it. Though sometimes it is worse. Like New Years was, or Christmas. I’ll tell you about them another time.
And so all through Sunday, off and on I thought about that Sunday a year ago. Wondered, what was going through my head that day? Did I hold Harry close enough? Did I give him enough hugs and kisses that day? There was another picture on the blog, of me holding Harry, him nestled in my left arm, perfectly balanced on my hip. I know I hugged and loved him that day.
Struggling through church in the morning. One day, I swear, Henry and I will make it through a church service without one or both of us reduced to tears, just not yet. So struggling through church again, trying not to look at the baby boys (why are there so many baby boys at our church?) bouncing in their mum’s lap, peering over their dad’s shoulder, crying to be nursed, snuggled into a warm breast, their wee body melded to their mum’s, the sound of the rhythmic sucking tugging at my heart. Through coffee hour. Watching the toddler boys chase their older siblings through the forest of adult legs in the Junction at coffee hour. I look in vain for a blond head of curls that should be chasing his big sister off to play at the ‘hidden door’ that leads from the hallway / secret passage into the front of the church. Listen for a giggle I won’t ever hear except in my memory. Put on a brave face as kind friends ask how we are doing.
Home again for lunch. I try to recall, what did we eat for lunch a year ago? I can’t remember. I didn’t know then I would feel such a need to remember now. To try to trace out each step, catch each whisper, each faint ghost. I go and play soccer at 15:30.
I had almost forgotten how much I love playing soccer. I joined a women’s recreational team back in October. One of the mum’s from my mum’s group, has played on the team for years. I’ve wanted to join for a while but never had the time; now I have the time. The first few games I nearly keeled over, I was sucking wind so bad. Didn’t get much exercise in the past year, sitting beside a hospital bed, or holding Harry all day long at home. But it really is incredible what the body does remember. I’ve played for so much of my life that being on the pitch really is second nature. I know how to move, where to run, how to pass, without really thinking about it. I scored my first goal the first time I touched the ball the first game. A nice gift of encouragement from the universe. My attitude has changed, since Harry died. I used to get anxious, was I going to be good enough in the game? Would I let my team down? Would I be benched for not performing well enough?
Some of the anxiety is senseless – in a rec. league where everyone plays – but I am filled with the thrill of the game, love the rush as I go for the ball. The moment I feel tired I remind myself, “remember how much you love doing this, enjoy every minute of this game”. And I do, do in a way I haven’t for years. A gift of learning from Harry. In that hour I am simply in that game. I don’t think of Harry for an hour. I just think of playing and winning.
Well that isn’t quite true. I don’t think of Harry when I am on the pitch. When I am on the pitch I am completely in the game. But as soon as I am on the bench for my breather, Harry jumps back into my head. No one on the team, except my friend, as far as I know, knows anything about Harry. I’m just a woman who comes out and plays for 50 minutes every week. No one asks me about my story. But I play it in my head, especially during breaks.
It is the same story I play in my head when I walk down the street. Or when I know I am going to be meeting someone new. Something I practice saying a million and one different ways in my head. So that when I am asked, it will come out sounding natural, not all rushed, halting, and awkward. That question I am sure someone will ask one of these day. It always comes up in any group of women. “Do you have any kids?” “How many kids do you have?”
I cannot, will not, answer, “One”. To do so would be to deny Harry. Judas-like. To deny that he was born, lived, laughed, loved for sixteen incredible months. He was my son, is my son, always will be my son.
So I practice saying it, over and over in my head, “Oh, two, my daughter Lydia is five, my son, Harry, would be 21 months old, but he died in August of cancer when he was 16 months old”. Or maybe, “Two, Lydia is five and my son, Harry, he is an angel now. He died when he was 16 months old in August”. Does that sound right? How about, “Two, one living, she’s five, and her baby brother died a few months ago, he was 16 months.”
No one on the team has asked yet. So I just run scenarios through my head as I sit on the bench. Different ways it may be asked and different ways I might answer. So that in that moment, the moment I am sure will come, I’ll be able to say it and not break down in tears.
But that moment is not today. We win our game (3-1. I scored one goal and assisted on the other two). Off the pitch, back to the dressing room. Casual chatter. This time about the goalie on the other team that injured herself going up for a header against one of our players in the last minute of the game. Smile on face, pulling on my clothes. The script running through my head, “I have two children, Lydia and Harry, but Harry is an angel now”. Walk to my car by myself. Phew, a mixture of frustration and relief. No one asked ‘the question’. I half want someone to ask it to me, so I can hear how it sounds when I finally say it. But not today.
Today it is back home, to Henry and Lydia. To our house, the house where Harry lived. Time to shower, then head out for dinner. I’ve almost made it through the day.
Dinner. Henry, Lydia and I take our seats at the big round table. Lydia sits between us, me beside Gareth, Henry beside his Dad. We complete the circle of the family. But the circle will never again really be complete. The food comes and I am consumed, as a mother always is, with managing Lydia eat. “Watch your glass” (pull it away from the edge of the table). “Try your broccoli. You love broccoli. No, there are no funny little bits on your broccoli, it is just like home.” (Help her with a spoonful). “Try the chicken. You love chicken. No it is not spicy. Yes, Mummy is telling the truth.” (Help her with a forkful). “How about some rice, you love rice.” “Okay, let me just finish a bite of my food and I’ll take you to the bathroom”. “Lydia, please be careful as you run through the restaurant, watch out for waiters and trays of hot food”. “No, we don’t know those people.” “No, I don’t know what they are talking about.” “NO, I am not going to go over to them and ask them what they are talking about; it is none of our business.” “No, I don’t know who is the oldest in the restaurant.” “Yes that man over there very well could be the oldest in the restaurant”. Sigh. “Yes, I think both of our waitresses are Chinese.” “No, I don’t know if they are 100% Chinese. They could be half-Chinese. No, I don’t know 100% for certain that they are only half-Chinese, and NO, I am not going to ask them. They are Canadian Just Like You”. “YES, I do think we have the biggest family group here”. “No, I don’t know why they seated us at the big table at the back of the restaurant instead of the big table at the front of the restaurant”. …
Would you believe that through all of that I do still have time to wonder what finger foods Harry would be enjoying, were he here with us? Where would his high-chair be? How long would he sit still before we had two kids running through the restaurant and we gave up, gobbled up the rest of our food, called it a night and headed back home?
Home late for Lydia. 20:30. Past her bed time, so it’s straight upstairs to bed. Harry’s room an open door at the end of the hall, matching the open wound in my heart. The bedtime ritual. PJs, pee try, the three of us snuggle in bed for a story or two, Lydia drinks her milk (we’re FINALLY done with bottles with her, her New Year’s resolution). Wipe face, brush teeth, second pee try. (A few months ago she had a very rare accident in the night, hasn’t happened in at least a year, but as a consequence, we now have to do ‘second pee try’ every bloody night. It’s what she needs to feel secure, I tell myself, be patient, smile, breathe). Lights out. Cuddles with Mum and Dad. We say prayers, two prayers one in English, one in Friese. We ask Lydia what was the most beautiful thing in her day. We share with her the most beautiful thing in ours. Then Henry says, as he always says, “Mummy loves you. Daddy loves you. Harry loves you. Good night Lydia.”
And always, in my head, “Good night sweet Prince Harry”. We lie in bed with Lydia till she falls asleep, and every night I think of Harry. What would our bedtime routine be like if he were still here with us? Would I still nurse him to sleep? Would he have weaned himself by now? He and Lydia would be sharing a room by now (or so Lydia wanted). Stop thinking so much.
We tuck Lydia in, and creep out of her room. Downstairs. Henry and I talk about the day. Was it as bad for you as you thought it might be? No, it was okay. Phew. We made it through.
Now the next milestone. February. The whole bloody month of February. It starts in two days.
We passed a threshold last Sunday. Sunday January 25th. Well not the 25th in particular, rather the celebration of Henry's mother's birthday - Harry and Lydia's Beppe's birthday. Her actual birthday is the 24th. Last year we celebrated it on Sunday the 27th. This year we celebrated her birthday together as a family by going out for dinner. We always end up sitting in these little protective groupings, together but not 100% together. A nested holarchy of family? We were seated at a big round table in a nook at the back of the Chinese restaurant in the strip mall out in the suburbs. Sandy and Gary sat like protective sentinels around Gwyn. Grace, then Dave on Sandy's left. Kathleen then Gareth on Gary's right. Three spots, only ever three spots now, for our family of four. I looked at those three spots waiting for us at the table and inwardly sighed, Harry’s absence a huge unspoken presence.
I try to joke with myself, “Angel Harry will have to sit on his Dad's head again”.
It is the weirdest feeling of back to the future. We were a family of three for 3 years, 4 months and 4 days. Then Harry came and we were a family of four. His life passed so quickly, over the threshold of life, over the threshold of cancer, through the spinning door of death, and boom, here we are again, the three of us our heads spinning, the doors whirling behind us. Back to being a family of three. But not ever again a family of three.
But back to last year, last year we had everyone, including several of Grace's siblings, over to our house for tea and cake. Henry and I recall it so clearly: for us this marks the last family event where we remember Harry as truly being healthy.
You might remember, the very first picture of Harry Gareth put up on the blog, was taken on that day. Harry was standing in our living room, holding onto our big wooden chair, with his trademark huge grin on his face. His laughter echoes in my memory. Harry in his world of delight, showing off for all the rellies, pushing around his "hippo car", so close to walking on his own.
For us, it now marks a door. It is the door between two of our worlds - on one side is the world where Harry was just Happy Harry, a healthy, thriving 10 months old baby boy. The other side of the world is the world of cancer. The world where our baby has cancer. It still seems so surreal that we ever walked through that door.
Although Harry had not really been displaying any overt outward signs of illness yet, when I look back at the photo from that day I notice that he looks pale, his skin has a slight yellow tinge, jaundice I suppose. We didn't notice it then. Who isn't pale in Winnipeg in January?
I have gone over and over and over in my mind, wondering what kind of mother doesn't notice that her baby boy is getting sick. Not just sick, but actually, as we would find out, on the very edge of death. How can the rarest and most aggressive of all childhood cancers have been growing in my son and yet he was never sick, never even had a cold?
So how does one get through a day like last Sunday?
The milestone. It is the first thing you think of when you wake up. You know the way your child comes into your room when you are still sleeping and stands right beside your head, trying not to be too noisy, but in the effort ends up breathing heavy in your ear as they whisper, "Mummy, are you awake?". You actually are awake, you awoke the first moment you heard the thud of their feet leaving their bed and hitting the bedroom floor …
… In the way that only a mother wakes up, it starts when your newborn is first placed in your arms, something that gets switched on in your head during childbirth. Doesn't matter how deep of a sleeper you were before you had kids (and I could sleep through an alarm blaring right beside my head for half an hour, minimum, much to the frustration of my housemates in University) you now wake up the instant your baby sighs too heavily, or grunts too deeply - even if they are sleeping down the hall two doors away. In fact, the connection goes so deep, you often find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, not quite sure why you have woken up, but in a moment you know why, because you hear your baby cry for you. Your body knew they needed you even before your brain did ...
… You followed the patter of their feet across their bedroom floor, waited for the sound of their door opening, their movement down the hall, opening your door ... it’s the same thing with the milestone. Something wakes you up, in the first instant you are not quite sure what it was, then in the second instant you know, and there it is, standing beside your bed, whispering in your ear, "A year ago today was the last day that you remember Harry being truly well".
With your child, you reach over and pull them into the middle of the bed, to nestle in between you and your partner, to get a few more minutes of sleep before they realize they are fully awake and demand to be taken downstairs to start their day. With the milestone, you reach over, pull it over your head, and prepare to wear it, a weight around your neck, all day long.
You feel it next to your chest, rubbing. Not entirely uncomfortable, but annoying nonetheless. You resign yourself to it being there all day. Sometimes as you go through your day you don’t even feel it or notice it. You are absorbed in the moment with whatever little thing you are doing. Other times it is so heavy, it takes all of your energy not to sit down on the spot and dissolve into a sobbing, shuddering heap of tears. Some times you do just dissolve into that heap.
That’s usually when a shadow passes over Lydia’s face, anxiety, concern, worry, but something else too. The, “what the heck is your problem Mummy” look that only a child can give their Mum. Lydia will ask, “Why are you crying Mummy (Daddy)?” and we’ll answer, “Sometimes Mummy(Daddy) just feels so sad about Harry and needs to cry”. And Lydia will say, “Don’t cry Mummy, Harry is here with us right now, don’t you see him? Come on Harres-sa-bears-sa, let’s go play in the living room”. Her blond head turns and she skips away.
It often isn’t quite as bad as you imagine it will be in your head, in the days leading up to it. Though sometimes it is worse. Like New Years was, or Christmas. I’ll tell you about them another time.
And so all through Sunday, off and on I thought about that Sunday a year ago. Wondered, what was going through my head that day? Did I hold Harry close enough? Did I give him enough hugs and kisses that day? There was another picture on the blog, of me holding Harry, him nestled in my left arm, perfectly balanced on my hip. I know I hugged and loved him that day.
Struggling through church in the morning. One day, I swear, Henry and I will make it through a church service without one or both of us reduced to tears, just not yet. So struggling through church again, trying not to look at the baby boys (why are there so many baby boys at our church?) bouncing in their mum’s lap, peering over their dad’s shoulder, crying to be nursed, snuggled into a warm breast, their wee body melded to their mum’s, the sound of the rhythmic sucking tugging at my heart. Through coffee hour. Watching the toddler boys chase their older siblings through the forest of adult legs in the Junction at coffee hour. I look in vain for a blond head of curls that should be chasing his big sister off to play at the ‘hidden door’ that leads from the hallway / secret passage into the front of the church. Listen for a giggle I won’t ever hear except in my memory. Put on a brave face as kind friends ask how we are doing.
Home again for lunch. I try to recall, what did we eat for lunch a year ago? I can’t remember. I didn’t know then I would feel such a need to remember now. To try to trace out each step, catch each whisper, each faint ghost. I go and play soccer at 15:30.
I had almost forgotten how much I love playing soccer. I joined a women’s recreational team back in October. One of the mum’s from my mum’s group, has played on the team for years. I’ve wanted to join for a while but never had the time; now I have the time. The first few games I nearly keeled over, I was sucking wind so bad. Didn’t get much exercise in the past year, sitting beside a hospital bed, or holding Harry all day long at home. But it really is incredible what the body does remember. I’ve played for so much of my life that being on the pitch really is second nature. I know how to move, where to run, how to pass, without really thinking about it. I scored my first goal the first time I touched the ball the first game. A nice gift of encouragement from the universe. My attitude has changed, since Harry died. I used to get anxious, was I going to be good enough in the game? Would I let my team down? Would I be benched for not performing well enough?
Some of the anxiety is senseless – in a rec. league where everyone plays – but I am filled with the thrill of the game, love the rush as I go for the ball. The moment I feel tired I remind myself, “remember how much you love doing this, enjoy every minute of this game”. And I do, do in a way I haven’t for years. A gift of learning from Harry. In that hour I am simply in that game. I don’t think of Harry for an hour. I just think of playing and winning.
Well that isn’t quite true. I don’t think of Harry when I am on the pitch. When I am on the pitch I am completely in the game. But as soon as I am on the bench for my breather, Harry jumps back into my head. No one on the team, except my friend, as far as I know, knows anything about Harry. I’m just a woman who comes out and plays for 50 minutes every week. No one asks me about my story. But I play it in my head, especially during breaks.
It is the same story I play in my head when I walk down the street. Or when I know I am going to be meeting someone new. Something I practice saying a million and one different ways in my head. So that when I am asked, it will come out sounding natural, not all rushed, halting, and awkward. That question I am sure someone will ask one of these day. It always comes up in any group of women. “Do you have any kids?” “How many kids do you have?”
I cannot, will not, answer, “One”. To do so would be to deny Harry. Judas-like. To deny that he was born, lived, laughed, loved for sixteen incredible months. He was my son, is my son, always will be my son.
So I practice saying it, over and over in my head, “Oh, two, my daughter Lydia is five, my son, Harry, would be 21 months old, but he died in August of cancer when he was 16 months old”. Or maybe, “Two, Lydia is five and my son, Harry, he is an angel now. He died when he was 16 months old in August”. Does that sound right? How about, “Two, one living, she’s five, and her baby brother died a few months ago, he was 16 months.”
No one on the team has asked yet. So I just run scenarios through my head as I sit on the bench. Different ways it may be asked and different ways I might answer. So that in that moment, the moment I am sure will come, I’ll be able to say it and not break down in tears.
But that moment is not today. We win our game (3-1. I scored one goal and assisted on the other two). Off the pitch, back to the dressing room. Casual chatter. This time about the goalie on the other team that injured herself going up for a header against one of our players in the last minute of the game. Smile on face, pulling on my clothes. The script running through my head, “I have two children, Lydia and Harry, but Harry is an angel now”. Walk to my car by myself. Phew, a mixture of frustration and relief. No one asked ‘the question’. I half want someone to ask it to me, so I can hear how it sounds when I finally say it. But not today.
Today it is back home, to Henry and Lydia. To our house, the house where Harry lived. Time to shower, then head out for dinner. I’ve almost made it through the day.
Dinner. Henry, Lydia and I take our seats at the big round table. Lydia sits between us, me beside Gareth, Henry beside his Dad. We complete the circle of the family. But the circle will never again really be complete. The food comes and I am consumed, as a mother always is, with managing Lydia eat. “Watch your glass” (pull it away from the edge of the table). “Try your broccoli. You love broccoli. No, there are no funny little bits on your broccoli, it is just like home.” (Help her with a spoonful). “Try the chicken. You love chicken. No it is not spicy. Yes, Mummy is telling the truth.” (Help her with a forkful). “How about some rice, you love rice.” “Okay, let me just finish a bite of my food and I’ll take you to the bathroom”. “Lydia, please be careful as you run through the restaurant, watch out for waiters and trays of hot food”. “No, we don’t know those people.” “No, I don’t know what they are talking about.” “NO, I am not going to go over to them and ask them what they are talking about; it is none of our business.” “No, I don’t know who is the oldest in the restaurant.” “Yes that man over there very well could be the oldest in the restaurant”. Sigh. “Yes, I think both of our waitresses are Chinese.” “No, I don’t know if they are 100% Chinese. They could be half-Chinese. No, I don’t know 100% for certain that they are only half-Chinese, and NO, I am not going to ask them. They are Canadian Just Like You”. “YES, I do think we have the biggest family group here”. “No, I don’t know why they seated us at the big table at the back of the restaurant instead of the big table at the front of the restaurant”. …
Would you believe that through all of that I do still have time to wonder what finger foods Harry would be enjoying, were he here with us? Where would his high-chair be? How long would he sit still before we had two kids running through the restaurant and we gave up, gobbled up the rest of our food, called it a night and headed back home?
Home late for Lydia. 20:30. Past her bed time, so it’s straight upstairs to bed. Harry’s room an open door at the end of the hall, matching the open wound in my heart. The bedtime ritual. PJs, pee try, the three of us snuggle in bed for a story or two, Lydia drinks her milk (we’re FINALLY done with bottles with her, her New Year’s resolution). Wipe face, brush teeth, second pee try. (A few months ago she had a very rare accident in the night, hasn’t happened in at least a year, but as a consequence, we now have to do ‘second pee try’ every bloody night. It’s what she needs to feel secure, I tell myself, be patient, smile, breathe). Lights out. Cuddles with Mum and Dad. We say prayers, two prayers one in English, one in Friese. We ask Lydia what was the most beautiful thing in her day. We share with her the most beautiful thing in ours. Then Henry says, as he always says, “Mummy loves you. Daddy loves you. Harry loves you. Good night Lydia.”
And always, in my head, “Good night sweet Prince Harry”. We lie in bed with Lydia till she falls asleep, and every night I think of Harry. What would our bedtime routine be like if he were still here with us? Would I still nurse him to sleep? Would he have weaned himself by now? He and Lydia would be sharing a room by now (or so Lydia wanted). Stop thinking so much.
We tuck Lydia in, and creep out of her room. Downstairs. Henry and I talk about the day. Was it as bad for you as you thought it might be? No, it was okay. Phew. We made it through.
Now the next milestone. February. The whole bloody month of February. It starts in two days.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Walking On
There are so many things we want to write to all of you, our dear friends. So many times over the past months I have composed blog postings in my head. But have never found the energy to actually put fingers to the keyboard. There is so much of Harry's story, of our story, that I feel I need to get down, into actual record. One just has to start.
So here we go.
We have had a good fall. The days passed. Many in tears. But many in laughter too. Milestones (1 month since Harry died, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, 5 months, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Lydia's birthday, New Years ...) loomed, were feared, endured, breathed a sigh of sadness and bittersweet relief when they had passed.
Henry is back at work. I have started my postdoctoral fellowship at U of M. Lydia is thriving in Kindergarten. Not a day goes by that we don't think of our sweet Prince Harry. If I am not actively engaged in thinking of something else, my default mode of existence is to think about him. I wonder if that will ever change?
Grief is an odd thing. It can be so huge, all-consuming. It is something living and breathing on its own, or so it seems. It shrinks and expands all the time. Sometimes it threatens to overwhelm us. Sometimes it is small, manageable, fits comfortably in my pocket.
It is always there, somewhere, hanging around. But I can say with much certainty. I would rather have this grief, than to never have had Harry at all. If fate should offer, "Here, I will take away your grief, but in return, I take away all memory of Harry". I would turn away, reject the offer outright.
The old saying IS true. "It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all."
I need to get back to work. But I wanted to at least start, today. So that tomorrow, I've started up the hill of writing down our story with Harry.
We know with certainty that love never dies. Harry no longer wears "his little overcoat of a body" as my teacher Kimberly says. But he is near, always, just around the corner. Maybe you have felt him too?
Love and light,
Cynthia
So here we go.
We have had a good fall. The days passed. Many in tears. But many in laughter too. Milestones (1 month since Harry died, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, 5 months, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Lydia's birthday, New Years ...) loomed, were feared, endured, breathed a sigh of sadness and bittersweet relief when they had passed.
Henry is back at work. I have started my postdoctoral fellowship at U of M. Lydia is thriving in Kindergarten. Not a day goes by that we don't think of our sweet Prince Harry. If I am not actively engaged in thinking of something else, my default mode of existence is to think about him. I wonder if that will ever change?
Grief is an odd thing. It can be so huge, all-consuming. It is something living and breathing on its own, or so it seems. It shrinks and expands all the time. Sometimes it threatens to overwhelm us. Sometimes it is small, manageable, fits comfortably in my pocket.
It is always there, somewhere, hanging around. But I can say with much certainty. I would rather have this grief, than to never have had Harry at all. If fate should offer, "Here, I will take away your grief, but in return, I take away all memory of Harry". I would turn away, reject the offer outright.
The old saying IS true. "It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all."
I need to get back to work. But I wanted to at least start, today. So that tomorrow, I've started up the hill of writing down our story with Harry.
We know with certainty that love never dies. Harry no longer wears "his little overcoat of a body" as my teacher Kimberly says. But he is near, always, just around the corner. Maybe you have felt him too?
Love and light,
Cynthia
Monday, September 22, 2008
CJOB interview link
Good evening, everyone.
As you know from the Sept 17 post, I had the opportunity to share some of Harry's story on Larry Updike's Morning Show on Winnipeg's CJOB radio station. Of particular interest to the folks at CJOB was the story about the Bus Stop sign. Simon was able to capture the interview and emailed the link to us.
Have a listen, if you wish.
(We're having difficulty establishing a direct link. Please copy and paste the following URL, and you should be able to hear it in Quicktime.)
http://www.homeontheland.ca/cjob_interview.mp3
As you know from the Sept 17 post, I had the opportunity to share some of Harry's story on Larry Updike's Morning Show on Winnipeg's CJOB radio station. Of particular interest to the folks at CJOB was the story about the Bus Stop sign. Simon was able to capture the interview and emailed the link to us.
Have a listen, if you wish.
(We're having difficulty establishing a direct link. Please copy and paste the following URL, and you should be able to hear it in Quicktime.)
http://www.homeontheland.ca/cjob_interview.mp3
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Chattynanny - short address
A number of you have had difficulty finding the long address of S. Kelly's post regarding Harry.
Here's a easier way to get there: http://chattynanny.typepad.com
Harry's post is the second one under "recent posts".
Hope that works.
Thanks again to "Chatty Nanny" for her kind and perceptive words.
Here's a easier way to get there: http://chattynanny.typepad.com
Harry's post is the second one under "recent posts".
Hope that works.
Thanks again to "Chatty Nanny" for her kind and perceptive words.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Discovering Harry's story
We’d like to draw your attention to another blog called Tales from the Tot Tamer. Siobhan reflects on the impact of discovering Harry’s story. Her reflections, filled with grace and gratitude, begin like this . . .
“I have a few posts in draft waiting to be completed, but this post is probably the most special and most important one I will ever post.
This is the story of Harry, and it's a true story, not from my imagination, and I don't believe I would ever have the wits to create a story as beautiful as Harry's.
Last month, I was searching the Free Press archives for an obituary of a friend from Winnipeg. In that search, I came across Harry. I never found the obituary of my friend, but I am incredibly thankful that Harry showed up to tell me about love and hope and the strength of a baby.”
Please read the whole post at
http://chattynanny.typepad.com/tales_from_the_tot_tamer/2008/09/hendrik.html
“I have a few posts in draft waiting to be completed, but this post is probably the most special and most important one I will ever post.
This is the story of Harry, and it's a true story, not from my imagination, and I don't believe I would ever have the wits to create a story as beautiful as Harry's.
Last month, I was searching the Free Press archives for an obituary of a friend from Winnipeg. In that search, I came across Harry. I never found the obituary of my friend, but I am incredibly thankful that Harry showed up to tell me about love and hope and the strength of a baby.”
Please read the whole post at
http://chattynanny.typepad.com/tales_from_the_tot_tamer/2008/09/hendrik.html
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Interview on CJOB 68
Larry Updike, the host of the Morning Show on CJOB 68, heard about the "Bus Stop Sign" story through a colleague of mine. He has contacted me, and scheduled an interview about how the folks at Transit's Customer Services rose to the occasion, and marked Harry's love of the 10 Wolseley bus by producing his own personalized bus stop sign - and did so on very short notice.
You can hear it this morning (Wednesday, Sept 17) at about 8:30 on CJOB 680 on the AM band.
Gareth
You can hear it this morning (Wednesday, Sept 17) at about 8:30 on CJOB 680 on the AM band.
Gareth
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Harry Venema Memorial Fun Fund
The following update from Henry provides further details regarding the Harry Venema Memorial Fun Fund:
The intention of the fund is to honour the major teaching of Harry's life for us, which is to live in joy, thankfullness and community and do so by helping present and future generations of children in the Wolseley community experience the joy of youth.
We envision two components of the HVMFF:
1. a program fund, which would improve the accessibility of underprivileged children to sports programs at RASCC, and
2. a capital fund to help replace the current skating rinks with a modern, safe facility including potentially interior basketball, volleyball, badminton courts etc.
In the event that someone wishes to contribute from abroad, the following information (from the Assiniboine Credit Union) explains how to wire funds to the HVMFF.
Institution:
Assiniboine Credit Union
1033 St. Marry's Road
Winnipeg, MB
CANADA
R2M 3S8
Account Number: 200120212189
Transit Number: 10587
Institution Number: 879
Routing Code (CAD, USD or Foreign): CUCXCATTVAN
The intention of the fund is to honour the major teaching of Harry's life for us, which is to live in joy, thankfullness and community and do so by helping present and future generations of children in the Wolseley community experience the joy of youth.
We envision two components of the HVMFF:
1. a program fund, which would improve the accessibility of underprivileged children to sports programs at RASCC, and
2. a capital fund to help replace the current skating rinks with a modern, safe facility including potentially interior basketball, volleyball, badminton courts etc.
In the event that someone wishes to contribute from abroad, the following information (from the Assiniboine Credit Union) explains how to wire funds to the HVMFF.
Institution:
Assiniboine Credit Union
1033 St. Marry's Road
Winnipeg, MB
CANADA
R2M 3S8
Account Number: 200120212189
Transit Number: 10587
Institution Number: 879
Routing Code (CAD, USD or Foreign): CUCXCATTVAN
Message from Cynthia and Henry
Dearest Family and Friends near and far --
Henry, Lydia and I want to extend our deepest thanks and gratitude to all of you who have held us in your love and care through out these past seven months as we walked our journey with Harry.
Of the many gifts and blessings we received through this journey with Harry, one of the most profound and the one for which I (Cynthia) am deeply grateful was the gift of community. I have so truly learned that we are never alone, we are surrounded by love, and we are all so deeply connected. Thank you all for giving us that gift. We thank Harry too, for without this experience with him, we might never have received such a profound teaching in this life.
Over the past month, we have been slowly decompressing and trying to start to make some sense of Harry's all-too-brief, beautiful, joyful, painful, and intense life. Henry and I know that we need to find the narrative of Harry's life that allows us to treasure the good, honour the beautiful and joyful, understand the pain, and find a place to hold the loss without slipping into the negative or letting it overcome us.
If I may be so indulgent, I hope to continue to use the blog as a place to sort out my understanding of our experience with Harry on his journey of healing. We also hope to post more information about the "Harry Venema Memorial Fun Fund". As well, we have learned a great deal, especially in the last month of Harry's life, about complimentary natural healing approaches to treating cancer, which we would like to share with as many people as possible.
Love, light and blessings,
Cynthia
Cynthia read the following two poems at Harry's cremation service in Aubrey Park:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-- Robert Frost
Do Not Stand By My Grave and Weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there -- I did not die.
-- Mary Elizabeth Frye
Henry, Lydia and I want to extend our deepest thanks and gratitude to all of you who have held us in your love and care through out these past seven months as we walked our journey with Harry.
Of the many gifts and blessings we received through this journey with Harry, one of the most profound and the one for which I (Cynthia) am deeply grateful was the gift of community. I have so truly learned that we are never alone, we are surrounded by love, and we are all so deeply connected. Thank you all for giving us that gift. We thank Harry too, for without this experience with him, we might never have received such a profound teaching in this life.
Over the past month, we have been slowly decompressing and trying to start to make some sense of Harry's all-too-brief, beautiful, joyful, painful, and intense life. Henry and I know that we need to find the narrative of Harry's life that allows us to treasure the good, honour the beautiful and joyful, understand the pain, and find a place to hold the loss without slipping into the negative or letting it overcome us.
If I may be so indulgent, I hope to continue to use the blog as a place to sort out my understanding of our experience with Harry on his journey of healing. We also hope to post more information about the "Harry Venema Memorial Fun Fund". As well, we have learned a great deal, especially in the last month of Harry's life, about complimentary natural healing approaches to treating cancer, which we would like to share with as many people as possible.
Love, light and blessings,
Cynthia
Cynthia read the following two poems at Harry's cremation service in Aubrey Park:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-- Robert Frost
Do Not Stand By My Grave and Weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there -- I did not die.
-- Mary Elizabeth Frye
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Eulogy for Harry
Eulogy for Hendrik Thomas Neudoerffer Venema -- Harry
St. Mary's Road United Church, 10 August 2008
(Cynthia and Henry Neudoerffer Venema)
St. Mary's Road United Church, 10 August 2008
(Cynthia and Henry Neudoerffer Venema)
Cynthia: Harry’s story could be told many ways. The story we choose to tell is one of hope, transformation, and transcendence. A quote that I love tells us that we are not humans having a soulful experience in this life, rather we are souls having a human experience. Henry and I believe that all souls come from God for a particular human experience. Harry was sent from God to be a teacher and a healer and in his short life Harry taught us a lifetime’s worth about joy, happiness, courage, strength, and love. He taught us about living in pure joy in every moment of life, no matter what you are facing. He taught us the true meaning of strength and courage. He taught us about the unbounded nature of pure love.
There are two parts to Harry’s life. The first part of his life is a dream of hope – our hope for him in this world, our unrelenting love for him - the dream of watching him grow up.
Harry’s gifts to me began with his birth. Start to finish from the time my water broke, prophetically at about 9:00 pm on April 3rd, Harry’s birth took no more than four hours. I won’t say it was painless, but it was entirely manageable and exactly the birth experience I had hoped and prayed for.
Harry had many nicknames: “huggy pet,” “hugs-bugs,” “hares,” “hares-bears,” “boinga,” “love-bug”... He liked them all. Harry was quite simply a perfect baby. He was always smiling and happy – he was our Happy Harry. He hardly ever cried and was content just watching the world perched in the crook of his Daddy’s arm. Many of my friends would comment that they would have a third child in an instant if they could guarantee that they would have one like Harry.
Lydia adored her little brother; although she is more than three years older than Harry, she loved playing and cuddling with him and was oddly covetous of his trucks.
Henry: The second part of Harry’s life is also a dream of hope. His unrelenting love for us, his joy and courage and how this transformed our family and so many others who accompanied us on this journey. In late February, Harry was hospitalized with what turned out to be an extremely rare and aggressive Stage 4 cancer of the liver. There was some concern that he would live through the first weekend in hospital, the first round of chemotherapy, and would ever come home. He lived another 5 and a half months and came very close to becoming the first child in the world to ever beat this disease back from a stage 4 diagnosis. Harry had enough time to transform us and so many around us.
There are many words one could use to describe this phase of Harry’s journey – we chose the word exhilarating. The spontaneous outpouring of love and support from our family, friends and colleagues was overwhelming – that was Harry’s doing, his ever buoyant courage and optimism moved people - even people who didn’t know him but could see the infinite love of God in his eyes in the photos on the website so patiently and artfully maintained by his Auntie Kathleen and Uncle Gareth.
Words, meals, information, support, hope always arrived exactly when we needed it, we were held in the arms of a community that bonded around Harry and for that we are eternally and profoundly grateful.
Harry never cried or complained – only when he bumped his head or Mommy or Daddy was out of sight for a split second. Cynthia and I would alternate nights while Harry was hospitalized: you never got much sleep crammed into those narrow pull-out beds in the hospital, but it was easier to be with him there than at home. The closer you were to him, the better he made you feel. Harry’s courage was infectious: he pulled us through all the hard times. I remember saying many times that it was easy to stay so optimistic with Harry in charge; what a brilliant leader he was.
Harry slept through the first round of chemo, laughed through round 2, and danced and bounced through rounds 3 and 4. He learned to walk through rounds 5 and 6, pushing a favorite cart in a loop around the pediatric oncology ward at Children’s Hospital, while we raced to keep up pulling his IV pole – although he never quite gained the full confidence to let go of our hands.
He came home in late March after over 5 weeks straight in hospital, in time to celebrate his first birthday, and then his mommy's and his daddy’s birthdays. He watched many of big sister Lydia’s soccer games, and got to go with her to the wading pool. He loved playing at the Wolseley School playground on the swings and slides. He enjoyed his life and lived it richly, communicating with us through baby signs – "please," "thank you," "bye-bye," "milk," "more," and "where is" -- giving us all kisses, pushing his cars and trucks around, reveling in the sights and sounds of the neighbourhood, the kids, the buses, the playgrounds, the friends constantly dropping by.
We are stunned by the events of these past five and a half months; it’s very difficult to make sense of such an exceedingly rare and deadly disease until you realize that this radiant little angel came into our life to show us how to live.
Today we celebrate the life of our dear, sweet Prince Harry the Handsome. We promise to always honour Harry’s life by living as he taught us, full of hope, living in joy and happiness in each moment. Bless your children -- love them -- exhilarate knowing they love you. Love never, ever dies; Love is endless. God is Love.
Good night sweet Prince. Mommy loves you. Daddy loves you. Lyddie loves you. All your people love you. God loves you.
*********************************
Tribute to Harry’s family
(Kathleen Venema)
(Kathleen Venema)
After the last intense five and a half months, it didn’t seem right to let this afternoon go by without a short tribute to Harry’s parents and his sister. I’m Harry’s Auntie Kathleen, and I’ve known Harry’s father Henry all of Henry’s life and almost all of mine. I was just a little older than Lydia is now when Henry was born and once I got over being annoyed that I wasn’t the baby anymore, I really got to like him quite a lot. I was, to tell the truth, fascinated by him, and I pestered my mother with questions about him from the moment she arrived home from the hospital:
“Mummy,” I’d ask, “what will the baby look like when he learns to walk? What will he look like when he learns to talk?” “What will the baby look like when he’s one?” “What will he look like when he goes to school?” And, “Mummy,” I asked once, astonished at the possibility, “what will the baby look like when he’s twenty?”
Twenty was as far as my little pre-school imagination could travel and I’m grateful for that now: it would have been grievous to have known already then to ask, “What will he look like when his own baby is desperately ill?”
I didn’t meet Harry’s mother Cynthia until much later. I didn’t meet Cynthia until twelve years ago, when she joined the women’s group that I belonged to at the University of Waterloo, but I was equally fascinated with Cynthia because on the afternoon that we met, Cynthia provided me with the single instance I’ve ever had of psychic match-making. It took me just thirty minutes that afternoon to realize that Cynthia was not just the kind of woman my brother should marry, Cynthia was the woman my brother should marry. Among all the reasons I could and couldn’t have put into words that afternoon, I knew that Henry and Cynthia should be together because Henry would need to learn the strength Cynthia had been honing already for years, the strength to walk life’s most harrowing paths holding fast and holding gently to the ones she loves. And Cynthia, it turned out, would need to learn the great, immeasurable, matchless love of the remarkable father that Henry has shown himself to be.
Since the moment Harry’s illness was first diagnosed, Cynthia and Henry and Lydia and Harry have modeled for all of us what it looks like to walk into the future with unbounded courage and unabashed love, holding tightly to one another’s hands, eyes wide open, and, what’s much harder, hearts wide open, as wide open as any of us could hope to be, to mysteries and miracles vaster than our best imaginations.
Henry and Cynthia’s capacity for love and hope, for patience and endurance, for celebration and laughter, for keeping Lydia safe and secure and full of play but not sheltered from the fact of Harry’s illness – that capacity has stretched open all our hearts and our imaginations, has helped us remember and muse and act on the potential for transformation in each of our own lives. Harry arrived among us already dazzled with joy, and in every moment of his living, he reflected back the spacious, capacious, unbounded love in which his family held him. For every moment of the sixteen months he spent with us, Cynthia and Henry and Lydia matched Harry’s courage in equal measure, and because they could and because they did, he was able, when he needed to, to “walk on,” to what some of us call “heaven” and what Lydia simply calls, “the next place.”
To walk on ourselves, we search for and nourish various forms of consolation. Among the consolations I treasure is the conviction that in the “next place,” Harry is driving the transit buses of heaven, Harry’s driving Route 10 in heaven, Harry’s driving with his trademark grin and his thousand-watt smile, and people who had no idea where they were before he arrived are turning to one another with relief and saying,
“Oh I get it now: we’re in heaven!”
Over the last five and a half months, in what we sometimes think of as a blindly materialistic, coldly computerized, friendless, frightening, and fragmented world, Cynthia and Henry and Lydia and Harry have received support from friends and family, colleagues and neighbours, strangers, weavers, doctors, and bakers, list-makers, note-takers, and play-daters, healers, singers, drummers, pray-ers, and many, many others …
They’ve received more support than any of us could have guessed or hoped for, and everyone here is part of that unpredictable and immeasurable circle, choir, and orchestra of love. In the days and weeks and months and years that follow this one, Cynthia and Henry and Lydia will continue to need what you’ve shown are the unfathomable depths of your support, and I thank you in advance, because I know they will find everything that will be necessary.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
