Monthly Archives: March 2002

Missing The Point (But They Were Delicious)

So it was Ostara a couple of days ago – Vernal Equinox to most of you. Spring arrived in Montreal and brought another ten to fifteen centimeters of snow with it. This is funny because all winter we had practically no accumulation. In the past week we’ve seen about five to six times more accumulation than we have since winter began. Mother Nature – she’s so wacky.

Anyway, one of the things about the Vernal Equinox is that it’s one of the two times per year that everything about the Earth is so balanced (axis, gravity, blah blah blah), you can stand a raw egg in the shell on its end.

At work, we didn’t have any real eggs, but we still wanted to experiment. So we tried using Easter Creme Eggs. They didn’t work very well.

So we ate them.

There’s always the Autumnal Equinox…

On Sudden Death

What is it about hearing about someone’s death?

I think it’s the finality. It’s done; it’s over.

I’ve lived through two sudden deaths of people I knew – one a very close friend, one a gaming acquaintance – and both times it was the shock of hearing that undid me. It’s the sudden reversal of reality, the unreality of the statement “he is dead” when you saw him just a couple of days ago, that sounds a sour note.

Now there’s another. One of my best (and definitely my oldest) friends — my maid of honour at my wedding — lost her dad to a sudden heart attack last night. Completely out of the blue. I’ve known this man since I was thirteen. He’s jovial, educated, a musician. My parents’ age. Nowhere near the age you start preparing for maybe, just possibly, expecting to lose someone.

Or, he was.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the is/was problem. It’s all so fresh, so new, that in your mind a person simultaneously exists and does not exist. You crumble little by little as you try to impose the new reality of the death upon the X years of life you’ve experienced with this person. On top of it all, the news about the death throws that person’s reality into sharp relief, making it harder to wrap your mind around the fact that they’ve died.

I heard someone say once that no parent should outlive a child. At the same time, though, I think that the most traumatic thing most children live through is losing their parents. How do you accept the loss of someone who birthed you, guided you, supported you, from day one?

When it’s someone else, you’re all at sea in a different way. Death hits us all pretty hard. Apart from coping yourself, and looking at your own family in a different light, there’s dealing with the bereaved. (Bereaved. What a word. Where does it come from? Riven? Be-riven? Bereft?) You love them desperately, and you want to express your own sorrow, but words just don’t cut it. Especially when someone is torn from you like that. When was the last time they spoke? Was it quick, superficial, both assuming they’d see one another again, that there would be a next time?

Death is part of the whole life experience, not a sudden stop, or an intrusion. It’s an essential part of the cycle. So many people fear it. I don’t think I do; it’s the loss of everyone else that I worry about. The change of pace, as it were. It’s the change that I’m uncertain of. Fear of the unknown, I suppose, which is understandable. We’re creatures of habit. Being Pagan means I accept that cycles continue and that existence transforms into another dimension, maybe this one over again if there’s more to learn, maybe another, maybe back to the beginning to grow young again in the underworld until my essence is prepared for a rebirth to do more good. None of that means I’ll go joyfully to my death – or accept anyone else’s death, family, husband, friends – easily. We all have to deal with loss. We grieve for ourselves, for others. Our freshly riven minds must heal. Our hearts must mend. Our tears must dry. I do still cry for my maternal grandfather each Easter, a gentle man who I knew for all of eleven or twelve years. However, I grieve for not knowing him better. Perhaps we grieve for lost chances, opportunities we’ll never have. So often we don’t rejoice in the good times, laugh at the joy the deceased brought. Death encompasses us all. It brings us freedom. However, at the same time, it cuts us off. Another dichotomy we can’t hold concurrently in our bruised minds.

Death means holding two truth simultaneously: the truth of the shining soul we knew, alive forever, in our hearts and elsewhere; and our crushing loss for which there are no words.

Go gently, Eric.

Life Imitating Art

I walked into the living room last night where my husband was watching the late news, and he said, “The Alliance has a new leader.”

“What?” I said. I’m a Star Wars fan. I’m currently in the beginning of a kick-ass Star Wars RPG campaign that’s the sequel to another kick-ass three-year campaign. I was trying to figure out, in my sluggish, I-worked-all-day-then-fought-with-Bizet-and-treble-clef brain, what political coup someone could have pulled off to have seized control of the New Republic, and why my husband was telling me in the middle of a news broadcast. Was it being reported on local TV?

Oh. He meant the national political party.

I need more sleep. I also apparently need to stop thinking about this campaign so much.

Freedom!

I am free!!

Yes, the claddagh ring finally came off.

And, may I state here and now how much I hate Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite. Treble clef. They want me to sight-read treble clef.

Osteo Update

I had a pretty awful day back-wise yesterday – couldn’t sit at the computer, couldn’t sit on a couch, had to keep lying down on the floor staring up at the ceiling. This is not conducive to data entry, which is my at-home work on Tuesdays. It’s frustrating, because it’s a constant low-level pain that feels like it’s been spread over your back with a knife like peanut butter. So when the clinic called with a 7:30 AM cancellation opening for my osteopath, I said yes.

We found more trouble spots, in my lumbar region. She bent me and stretched me and I’m going to be sensitive today, and pretty stiff tomorrow. I keep telling myself that it’s worth it. It is; I want to be able to move easily. Turning my head from side to side is a new development for me. I like discovering what else my body is supposed to be able to do.

The Lure Of Schnaaps

I have found Nirvana, and its name is Vanilla Schnaaps.

I’m not a drinker. I have a beer now and then, a cider if we go to a pub; some wine if I feel like it and someone’s already opened a bottle. Otherwise, nice cold water or Coke or something is more than fine with me.

We went to a SAQ Select last weekend, though, to pick up some Scotch and some Irish Cream for our Ostara celebration. (Our spin on Irish coffee — mmm.) At the sleepover I’d tasted O’Casey’s, a lighter and smoother Irish Cream than the ubiquitous Bailey’s, so I was searching the store for a bottle of that when I came across the liqueurs section.

Now, I detest peach flavouring. The fresh fruit’s okay, but peach cream or peach chocolates or even tinned peaches are just yucky. So when all my high school friends went crazy for Fuzzy Navels and peach schnaaps in general, I was unimpressed. (Apart from the fact that I couldn’t get past that sharp taste of alcohol.) That general distasteful impression of schnaaps stuck with me until Sunday afternoon when I found myself staring at Dr McGillicuddy’s Vanilla Schnaaps. Suddenly, all I could think of were Vanilla Cokes.

I brought it home.

This stuff is way too easy to drink. A splash in some Coke, a splash in some root beer — divine. You aren’t really drinking, you’re flavouring with alcohol. Evil. Insidious.

I can’t wait to experiment further. Hot chocolate. Ice cream floats with this stuff poured over top. A splash in lime soda.

Mmmm.

I’m so dead.