My Cousin Michael

I was watching a news clip video this morning, at Mad Priest's. It was lovely, a lovely editorial piece, delivered with conviction and passion, about Prop 8 and love and God and everything. Thinking, my cousin Michael will like this and I'll send it to him. My cousin Michael lives 40 miles away. He was born in England, because his mother was English and his parents lived in South America, and his mother wanted him to have an English passport. (I may have mentioned that my family ranges from dysfunctional to off-the-map-lunatic -- nothing milder than that. One WOULD take a long boat trip, heavily pregnant, in 1951, to make sure one's eldest child had the correct passport.) Michael moved to Canada 35 years ago. We would talk on the phone sometimes, but the first time I met him in person was at my first stepfather's funeral in January 1993,


It was funny. He's three years older than me, almost, raised on a different continent, sent to school in England. Our grandmothers were sisters; he was some other order of relative than cousin, but he's my age, and that's how we call 'em in our family. We have very compatible religious and social and political views. We got drunk together one night, very early in our knowing each other, and had a hilarious time, describing the things about which we were totally unjustifiably unreasonable, and finding out that we both said the same horrible things to our life-partners because of them. Genetics, I guess. He's been on my mind and in my prayers a lot recently. In January he fell down stairs at work and busted up his collarbone badly enough that it took three surgeries to repair it. In one of the series of tests, they did a CT scan and found a something, a one-eighth inch something, in the top of his left lung. That was in the summer. We both knew before the test results came back -- he smokes three packs a day. Last week, he had a quarter of his left lung removed. They biopsied some other parts of both lungs. He'll get the results on the 25th.


Michael and my husband get along well, even after my marriage break-up. My husband called me just now at work, and said that Michael had called his place because he's lost (again) my phone numbers at work and for my cell. His father died in the night. Terry had a massive stroke, I dunno when exactly, and got recovered enough that they moved him out of ICU and into a ward. He saw all his kids, and I think all his grandkids. Michael saw him yesterday, and Terry died 15 minutes after he left. His wife and daughter were with him.


We don't know yet when the services will be -- Michael's mother and brother are going today to make the arrangements. Michael asked if I'd phone my mother's one remaining sister, and tell her. I did, but she was just leaving the Sailors' Memorial after the Remembrance Day service, and asked if she could call me back. I said sure -- there's no need to rush this news. I'll talk to Michael tomorrow and find out when and where the service will be. The aunt I called today may not want to go -- most of the family's been fighting with Michael's mother since 1951, when she did something unforgivable -- married Terry. As I just told my sister, "That doesn't mean one wouldn't do the correct thing in difficult circumstances." If she doesn't want to go, I'll take the train.


I'm tired again. Inside tired, not body tired. Thursday was my Mum's birthday; Friday was my husband's; this coming Thursday is the anniversary of my Mum's death. Today's the anniversary of me having her admitted to hospital, which she'd never wanted, but I had no other choice. I had lunch with an old friend last week, and it's shaken up what I thought I knew about myself and my life. Had a misunderstanding with my best friend on the weekend, and that's always an ache. I need to leave my job -- it's lost almost all of what was joyful in it for me, and I show up and endure days at work. I might find that more bearable if I was getting paid TONS of money, but I doubt it. I miss, ferociously, the kitten I left in Texas -- if you're feeling lonely, bruised and overtired (I played on-line Scrabble with a couple of friends way too late last night), a kitten's a cure-all. I miss life in Texas -- feeling like this right now, I could go lie in the hammock and look up into the trees, which always made me say, "Thank you," to the Force in the Universe that makes them, or I could go find something covered with rust and grind it off and maybe make it into something else. That's restorative, meditative too -- although I'd never have thought that makes noise and metal dust and showers me in sparks would feel meditative. It requires total mindfulness, or it'll tear the skin off your fingers. Ask me how I know. I'm sick of dead people.


What I don't feel is any desire to reshape reality -- either by doing my control-freak-drama-queen routine, or by swallowing something that'll alter my inner reality. I'm tired. Not tired, tired OF. The answer to that is to pray for God's will for me to be revealed and for the power to carry out the vision I'm given. And to share. And to be grateful. Because the truth is, if it never gets any better than it is right this minute, that's okay with me. God's giving me so much, it'd just be churlish to assume I need anything else.

Things to Be Grateful For

It says in my profile, “newly thin”, and I keep saying I’m going to say something about that, and I don’t. Twenty-five years ago I was morbidly obese – morbid means you’re gonna die, and obese means fat. I know for sure I weighed 285 pounds, and I didn’t like seeing that on the scale. So I stopped getting ON the scale. (Sigh.) I didn’t stop eating the way I did to get that way, but I only count from 285 because I’m sure of that number.

I’m diabetic too (no surprise, eh?) and I got heart disease as a complication of that. Five years ago, I was on the waiting list for bypass surgery. Then the surgeon said that with my history of post-surgical infection, he wouldn’t DO surgery on me. He failed to mention that there were other options – I thought they only did a bypass if they couldn’t do anything else. I went home that day thinking all I had left to do was die. It was VERY bad coronary artery disease. They found an interventionist cardiologist, who performed a miracle on my behalf. My cardiologists haven’t even felt I warranted a stress test in the past two years.

In December 2006, the month after Mum died and before I’d moved out of the marital home, stress made my diabetes terrifyingly unpredictable. I was waking up at 4 a.m. with life-threatening low blood sugars, and I wanted to lower my insulin dosages, so I wouldn’t be so at risk. I have a friend who manages his eating disorder with a very low-carb food plan. I didn’t want to do his food plan – it’s restrictive and boring and bad for you and onanonanon and I didn’t want to do it. So I’d pray, “God, should I get Bob to teach me how to do that?” And the little voice would say, “Why wouldn’t you do something that would make you better?” Took a month, cuz I really, really didn’t want to do Bob’s food plan.

But I gave up, and asked him to teach it to me. That was January 21^st last year. That was the last day I took an insulin shot. I started eating the way Bob told me on January 22^nd, and thought, “I won’t inject cuz I don’t know how much I’ll need yet. I’ll just test a lot today, and figure it out.” Well, I NEVER needed an insulin shot that day. I was also on pills for diabetes, and they were enough. I went from four shots a day on January 21^st last year, to not one ever since. And in the months since, I’ve lost the last 60 or so pounds I had to lose, and I don’t take the pills daily any more, just when I need them, and they reduced my blood pressure medication too. I got a miracle. And I weigh less than I did at 15. Hot damn!

So I eat very low carb, and it’s NOT boring, and I love my meals. Yesterday because I’d worked hard, I splurged, and bought yogourt from Liberte Dairy in Quebec. All their products are wonderful, but I’d never seen the 10% milk fat yoghourt before, and I bought two containers. One is the amount for two breakfasts. Usually, I buy whole milk yoghourt and drain it in a coffee filter in a sieve overnight to get it thick – this is wonderful. Organic raspberries were cheaper than regular yesterday, and I bought a half-pint of those too. I added vanilla and a little sweetener (I know it’s bad for me, but it’s not as bad as sugar) to the yoghourt.

This picture only has a few berries on top, so you can see the yogourt, but I’m eating them all – while I’m writing this. The pretty blue glass bowl and the yellow placemat are from IKEA, but they’re both discontinued, I think. Blue and yellow together – I love that. They’re sitting on a wooden cutting board my Dad made me one Christmas.

What a life – I woke up happy, and said thank you to God before I got out of bed, and then I get this great breakfast. I’m about to shower with sandalwood soap, and get dressed and go meet friends for the afternoon. We’ll talk about God, and drink coffee, and hug each other a lot, and prolly someone will cry. Then I’ll go out in the sun for a while. Life doesn’t get better than this~

At the End of the Day: A Mirror of Questions

I stole these from Jan, who borrowed them from John O'Donohue (1953-2008). I just wrote the other day that I do a type of examen at the end of the day. I'm going to try answering these questions, in the examen and pondering them in meditation for a while. Thanks, Jan. And, by the way, she has a lovely picture on her post.

What dreams did I create last night?

What dreams did I create last night?

Where did my eyes linger today?

Where was I blind?

Where was I hurt without anyone noticing?

What did I learn today?

What did I read?

What new thoughts visited me?

What differences did I notice in those closest to me?

Whom did I neglect?

Where did I neglect myself?

What did I begin today that might endure?

How were my conversations?

What did I do today for the poor and excluded?

Did I remember the dead today?

Where could I have exposed myself to the risk of something different?

Where did I allow myself to receive love?

With whom today did I feel most myself?

What reached me today? How deep did it imprint?

Who saw me today?

What visitations had I from the past and from the future?

What did I avoid today?

From the evidence—why was I given this day?

NOT a Big, Black Dog

This is Jake. He’s a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. I bet most of you have never even heard of one before!! This is the fourth one I’ve known personally – Dad likes them. First there were Robbie and Charlie, then Sandy, now there’s Jake. They all had much longer, Scottish names.

I spent Wednesday afternoon with Dad and Jake for a while. Jake’s four, and a retriever, and he’s not getting enough exercise cuz Dad’s knee doesn’t allow walking the dog, and his general level of weakness after the crisis at Easter doesn’t let him stand around and throw a ball much. My sister goes up a couple of times a week and does as much as she can.

Wednesday, I threw the ball for half-an-hour. I haven’t played baseball since six years ago. So, I haven’t thrown for that long. My shoulder twinged a little after, and I thought it would hurt like heck the next day, but it didn’t.

And I’ll tell you something. I’ve been thinking about mindfulness. Throwing a ball for a dog is nuthin’ BUT mindful. You focus on how wet and slippery the ball is (it’s not disgusting if you love the dog); and the motion of the throw; and how he finds it when you throw it over that way instead; and how happy he looks bringing it back; and how it’s time for him to stop and drink some water now cuz it’s hot. I TOTALLY recommend it as a practice for staying in the moment and for doing something for someone else.