All She Wants To Do

Posted on November 2, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Sheba dancingLet’s dance!

What emotion do those words trigger in you? Joy? Trepidation? Terror?

On Saturday night, Prez and I went to a Halloween dance. I have not gone out dancing in a very long time. It’s been even longer since I went out to a Halloween party but that has more to do with my hopeless wandering lifestyle than my preference. My recent lack of dancing is something else completely.

I love to dance. LOVE. TO. DANCE. I am not an excellent dancer but I don’t care. Something about moving my body to music has always put me in this weird trance-like state where I instantly stop caring what anyone thinks of me.

I have seen photos of myself mid-dance. Yikes! If ever there is a time in my life when I should be self-conscious it is on the dance floor. And yet, for whatever reason, dancing makes my confidence bulletproof.

Kristene Perron and friends dancing

Dancing with the Estebs

If I was more unpacked, I could share pages of awkward dance photos with you but you’ll have to accept a small sampling of that collection for now.

Kristene Perron dancing

New Year’s Eve, Costa Rica

Eat your heart out, Elaine!

Eat your heart out, Elaine!

Unlike many, I require no special occasion to put on my-my-my-my boogie shoes. Prez will tell you that I frequently host my own solo dance parties and cut a rug between washing dishes or cooking dinner. My friends will tell you about my devilish alter-ego, Sheba, Dancing Queen of the Desert, who has been known to dance until she has sand embedded into her bare feet.

Kristene Perron sandy feet

Owww! Owww! Owww!

When I consider how good dancing makes me feel—physically and emotionally—I am stymied by our dance-averse culture. Yes, we like to watch talented people dance, and we’re not opposed to dance as an “idea” but the vast majority of North Americans—primarily white North Americans, if I am honest—need a heavy dose of liquid “dance enhancer” before they will step out on a public dance floor.

Once we get there, once we are shaking our tail feathers, we become euphoric. Dance does something to us that no other type of movement can do. Dance is release. Dance is physical storytelling. Dance is primitive and tribal. Dance is language.

So why do we hesitate? Who has made us feel shame for dancing?

It’s true few of us actually look good while we’re dancing but that’s not the point. Few of us look good during the act of sex but that doesn’t stop us, does it?

Kristene and Fred Perron dance

WOW!

I haven’t been able to dance for a while now. My feet have been turned to stone, my arms to lead. Dance requires a sense of abandonment I have not possessed lately. I wondered how long it would be until the weight would lift but there were more important things to worry about than dancing.

But then, friends Amy and Derek invited us out to a Halloween party at one of the local pubs. Sis-in-law Becky drove up from Qualicum to join us along with Amy’s parents and we were officially a party.

Saturday night I got up on the dance floor in my Princess Leia costume and shook my buns…both sets. I did the Time Warp and laughed as Prez and I performed our best “pelvic thrust”. I came home thoroughly satisfied (and a little tipsy). And guess what? I had fun. For a few glorious hours all the accumulated stress and sadness of the past year fell away and I was just arms and legs leaping and waving spasmodically. Dance is sweet oblivion.

So the next time you see a dance floor, or the next time you’re home and a good song comes on, why not indulge? Get up from your chair, forget how you look, forget about the collected woes of the world, forget about the shame someone else has placed on you, and just…dance.

Sheba dancing queen of the desert

Sheba, Dancing Queen of the Desert

Let’s get over ourselves. While we can jitterbug and do the Electric Slide, let us do so. Let us join the tribe and tell our story. Let us put on our red shoes and dance the blues away.

Let us, to quote the philosopher Swift, shake it off.

Posted in Baja - Mexico, Entertainment, Health and wellness | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

This First Birthday

Posted on October 28, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Today, October 28th, 2015 marks the first time I will not be able to call my sister and wish her a happy birthday. I feel as if I need to do something meaningful to honour and celebrate her. I also feel as if I’d rather just jump to October 29th and pretend October 28th no longer exists. My own kind of leap year.

In truth, I don’t have a lot of energy left in me to talk about this. I’ve been working diligently to catch up on the months and months of work that has piled up since March, not to mention just, you know, getting through each day without being sad.

But I do want to honour my sister and I want to share how loved she was…and how loved I was by her. I’ve decided to post a few photos and to share with you the speech I made at her celebration of life that was held at the Nanoose Bay community center where she volunteered for decades. There were other speakers that day and I wish I’d had the foresight to record their words. You’ll just have to trust me when I say they were beautiful.

I left in all the boring thank you’s. Feel free to skip over them but I am still thankful and will be so forever.

Well over 200 people attended on that day and the staff of the community center flew the flag at half-mast. That alone says so much about how many people Kelly touched and what an impact she had in her community. I can think of few better legacies to leave than community service.

Happy birthday, big sister. I sure miss you.

Kristene’s speech – Kelly Collins, A Celebration of Life, June 2015

Hello everyone and thank you so much for coming today to celebrate the life of Kelly Collins. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Kristene, Kelly’s sister. It’s my great honour to host this celebration and to speak on behalf of my family about the woman we all loved so much.

It means a lot to see so many of Kelly’s friends and family here. I know that some of you traveled far to get here on very short notice—thank you so much, Kelly would have been very happy. I also want to take a moment to thank the good people of Costco who donated all the platters of food and who have been so supportive and kind ever since Kelly first went into the hospital. I’d also like to thank Eve Flynn and the people of the Nanoose Place Community Center for donating this space for us to use, helping us set up and providing coffee and tea. Your generosity has made a huge difference during this tough time.

There were a lot of other people who helped out while Kelly was in the hospital and I’m sure I’ll miss some names, for which I am very sorry. Please know that every bit of kindness and generosity was dearly appreciated. I want to offer sincere thanks to the following people and organizations who helped cover costs while Kelly was in the hospital:

The Hudson’s Bay Company.

The Nanoose Bay Lions Club.

Ray’s mother Joyce and his brother Douglas.

All of Ray’s friends at Costco.

All the people who came over to visit Kelly while she was alone on the mainland, but especially her friend Dee Touchet, who was with Kelly and Ray right up until 11pm on June 7th.

Kelly’s employers and friends at Home Outfitters

Rod & Karen Dovey, Carla and Emile Bowdin for looking after Kelly’s grand daughter.

Melody McDonnel, Kelly’s HR from Home Outfitters.

Our uncle John Marrington, for taking Kelly into his home while she was an outpatient  in Vancouver.

I would like to thank my mother-in-law Nancy for sharing her home during this time and for the shoulder to cry on. Also my brother and sister, Glen and LeAnna, for coming over to the island to be with me and help with this event.

And one last special thank you to all the hardworking nurses who kept Kelly as comfortable as they could, both in Vancouver and Nanaimo.

There are a few people we have scheduled to speak today and then after that I’ll be opening the microphone to anyone who would like to say a few words. If you’d like to share something about Kelly, please don’t be shy. We’re all friends here and we have lots of Kleenex.

But first I would like to tell you a little bit about Kelly and what made her so special to me.

Kelly Marrington baby photo

Kelly Marrington

Kelly was born in Vancouver in 1959, to Robert and Lorraine Marrington. I wish I could tell you more about the early years of her life but I wouldn’t appear on the scene until ten years later. I do know that she was a happy, spirited young girl. She loved to swim, loved animals, and frequently kept Mom and Dad on their toes.

I was adopted into the Marrington family when I was 22 days old. Kelly took her new role as big sister very seriously, in fact the task of naming me had been given exclusively to her. She wanted my name to have a K, like hers, and she didn’t want it spelled the same as all the other Christine’s, so she gave me an e instead of the second i, thereby guaranteeing that I would spend the rest of my life spelling my name out to every new person I met. Some people might have thought this was strange but that’s how Kelly was. When she knew what she wanted that was it. Only the brave or foolish would try to argue with her.

Kelly and Kristene Marrington

Kelly welcomes her adopted sister

With ten years between us, we didn’t have the same friends but Kelly found plenty of excuses to bring her little sister along whenever she could. From what I remember, what I’ve been told and what I’ve seen in photos, I’m convinced that she must have thought that I was the best doll ever. Kelly taught me how to blow bubbles with my gum and how to swim. She let me hide behind her when we watched scary movies and snuck me free ice cream cones when she worked at the Tastee Freeze in North Delta. In her late teens, she became quite entrepreneurial. Looking back, five dollars a week was pretty cheap for maid service even when your little sister is the maid.

Kelly always wore her heart on her sleeve. You never had to guess where you stood with her or how she felt. Hugs and kisses were offered freely and in all our years growing up I never doubted for even a second that she thought I was the sun and the moon and the stars. It took me a few decades to realize how lucky I was to know that there was always one person, no matter what, who would be standing in my corner. She gave her love fully, completely, and generously, whether or not I deserved it in the moment. I suspect I am not the only person who can say that.

My sister provided another valuable service to me: she broke in our parents. I know you’re only supposed to say nice things about people at a celebration of life but truth be told, my sister had a bit of a wild streak. No sooner had the teen battles ceased in our house then Kelly announced she was moving to Vancouver Island. The Island?! Why not move to the moon, it seemed just about as far away! But, like I said, when Kelly made up her mind…stand back. So she moved to Nanaimo to work at Woodwards and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, Mom and Dad finally adjusted to the fact that their daughter now lived with the heathens at the end of the earth.

THEN!

Kelly and Ray Collins

Kelly and Ray Collins

She met a man on that island. And they moved in together! They weren’t even married! I know that doesn’t mean anything to anyone under thirty but this was quite the scandal even in the early 1980’s. Once again, Kelly had stirred up the Marrington household and there were many heated discussions about this “Ray person”. Who was this Casanova who was leading their innocent young daughter down the garden path?

But, once more, Kelly had made up her mind. This Ray was the man she loved and that was that. A few years later they walked down the aisle, made it all official, and peace was restored. (It also helped when Ray bought a boat to take his new father-in-law out fishing in). I was thirteen when Kelly and Ray married. And now that my wild older sister had moved to the end of the earth to live in sin with some stranger who drove a muscle car and had long hair, there was pretty much nothing I could do to shock Mom and Dad. I was forever in her debt.

I asked Ray if he had any special memories of Kelly he wanted to share. His answer was “Every day. 34 years wasn’t enough.” I second that.

Kelly adored holidays and Christmas was Kelly’s favourite time of year. At seven years old I can remember being woken up VERY early on Christmas morning to my sister jumping on my bed. “Wake up! Wake up! Santa’s been here! Let’s go get our stockings!” Remember, this was a teenager waking up a seven year old, who would have happily slept another hour. That is how excited Kelly was at Xmas. Then there was the Easter she decided, for a change, to hide chocolate Easter eggs all around the house. And I do mean ALL AROUND THE HOUSE. I’m sure Kelly thought tucking chocolate eggs into my parents’ heated waterbed was a very clever idea at the time… I’m not sure Mom ever got the chocolate stains out of the sheets. Two years later, we were still finding those eggs.

Kelly dad and sean

Kelly with her son Sean and her dad, Bob

Christmas and Easter paled in comparison, however, to the births of Kelly’s two sons, Sean and Scott. She was so happy and so proud to be a mom. However delighted she had been to welcome her baby sister, times that by a million with her boys. No matter how old they were, they would always be her babies.

Kelly, Ray and Scott Collins

Kelly and Ray with their son Scott

I want to say that I was as joyful as Kelly about the arrival of my first nephew Sean but I have to confess that I wasn’t happy about being bumped out as the official Baby of the Family. Christmas was the worst because the mountain of gifts that had once been mine now went to the baby. Of course, this was the perfect opportunity for my mischievous sister to have some fun. Christmas morning arrived. The presents were doled out. I looked at my small pile then looked over at Sean’s mountain and whined about how the baby gets all the presents now. “Oh, can you go look behind the curtains by the stereo,” Kelly said. “I think there’s more presents for Sean there.” Grudgingly, I did as asked. I pulled back the curtains, and there was a brand new set of ski gear Kelly had bought for me. She never let me live that down.

Kelly Collins in Baja

Kelly and the whole gang in San Basilio, Baja California. Mexico

Okay, those two boys eventually grew on me, but to Kelly they were her world. She drove them to soccer, baseball, martial arts, fussed over Halloween costumes, fought over bedtime…SCOTT…herded them on and off the ferry to visit their grandparents, and even flew all the way to a tiny beach in Baja, Mexico so that they could spend Christmas with their crazy Aunty Kris and Uncle Fred. She might have grumbled about them once or twice but she would not tolerate criticism from others. Her boys were perfect to her and always would be.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with Kelly here on the island but whenever I came to visit I was amazed at how many people knew her. She loved her community. She loved the people she worked with. She loved how at home she felt. So many of you here today were as much her family as I was.

Kelly Collins and Bob Marrington

Kelly at Dad’s 70th birthday party

Kelly and I were very different people. We didn’t always see eye to eye but we always saw heart to heart. I am so happy that we became friends in our adult years, which was mostly her doing, make no mistake. Every person has something to teach us if we’re willing to learn. My sister taught me that it’s okay to cry—whether out of joy or sorrow. She taught me that family does matter. She taught me that our differences are not as important as our similarities. She taught me that success isn’t measured by the clothes you wear or the car you drive but by the love you give and the friends you earn. She taught me that sisters are forever.

Oh, and Kelly taught my husband Fred to play Bingo, which was about the funniest thing I have seen in a good long time.

Kelly Collins fishing

Kelly lands a big one in Ucluelet, BC

I am so proud to stand here today and tell you all about my beautiful sister, Ray’s loving wife, Sean and Scott’s proud mother, Bob’s baby girl, and Avaline’s doting grandmother. And I want to thank you all again for coming out to share this day with us. I hope that you will take the time to talk to someone new today, and share a little bit of Kelly with each other. We live on through our stories and hers deserves to be remembered.

Once again, on behalf of myself, Ray, Sean, Scott and Bob, thank you all for coming and thank you for being a part of Kelly’s wonderful life. I’d like to leave you with a quote from the late Jay Lake that I think Kelly would have loved:

Kindness is highly underrated. We spend so much time aspiring to or defending our place in life, from how we behave in traffic to how we treat people in the workplace, at home and out in the world. If everybody tapped the brakes on their immediate needs long enough to be kind and pleasant to other people, the world would be a much better place. Sappy? Yes. True? Yes.

The hardest part is being kind to people you don’t particularly want to be kind to. Or being kind at moments when you don’t have much kindness left in you, for whatever reason.

Be kind. It costs you nothing and makes the world around you a better place.

Flag at half mast for Kelly Collins

Posted in Family & Children, Love | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Thinking About Money and Art

Posted on October 21, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Kristene Perron running beside teh ocean

We’ve had this talk before, haven’t we? Money vs Art. You know what side I stand on. You know that I would rather take a “real job” to pay the bills so that I can continue to make the stories I choose to make instead of the stories I think will sell. But I’ve been thinking about this choice a lot lately, considering how it’s not simply art vs money it’s actually everything vs money.

I voted in Canada’s federal election on Monday. My team didn’t win but we—Canadians as a whole—managed to oust Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, so I count that as a win. I have a smattering of friends and acquaintances who were pro-Harper (just a smattering, this is the western-most part of western Canada, after all). When asked about their choice to back Harper, without fail, the reason these folks give is financial. Harper lowered taxes, he’s all about a strong economy, he’s all about business. For me, therein lies the problem.

A country, a province, a city, a municipality, a group of friends, a marriage, all of these require some kind of money management and fiscal responsibility. But every relationship, on a scale large or small, is and should be about more than just money. A marriage that is only happy in wealth is fundamentally flawed. A country that relies on wealth as the sole indicator of its health is likewise flawed.

What has always made me proudest about being Canadian is not that we are wealthy, even though, comparatively, we are. What has made me proud is that we are peacekeepers, not war makers; we are tolerant and inclusive; we care about the land on which we live and the oceans, lakes and rivers that sustain us; we value logic and science and keep our religions and beliefs outside of our government and public institutions; we are imperfect and we are vocal (and apologetic) about it; we welcome immigrants and refugees; we believe that even the lowest member of our society deserves to be cared for; we have lots of space and room to breathe; we can laugh at ourselves and often do; we choose trust over fear.

However brilliant Harper and the Conservatives may have been economically, everything in that list above suffered under their rule. Suffered greatly. For the first time in my life, I began to feel ashamed of my country. I began to lose hope.

Will our new Prime Minister restore what was lost? That remains to be seen. But my hope has been boosted by the millions of Canadians who got out and voted to make change. I am hopeful because this tells me that I am not alone in believing that there are bigger and more important things than money.

I say this as an artist who would dearly love to be paid more to create art. I say this as an artist who knows that she will likely never be able to live off the income from her creations. I say this as artist who will never quit making stories because that would feel like a living death.

I’m thinking about money and happiness because I know people who have loads of the former but little of the latter. People who believe there is a magic number at which happiness will appear. And because I know too well that life laughs at our plans.

My dad always wanted to cruise through the Panama Canal. When I was making the kind of money that would have allowed me to take him on that voyage, well, I was too busy making money to realize the wealth I had. I was too focused on that magic number. But when I cleaned out his place after his death and saw the books I had signed and inscribed and dedicated to him carefully covered in Saran Wrap, my heart was put at ease. I had not given him the Panama Canal but I had given him pride.

I’m thinking about money and love because my husband so often despairs that he can give me an unlimited supply of the latter but not enough (in his opinion), of the former. I want to show him every lonely person in the world, every soul who will go to bed tonight not feeling loved, not feeling wanted and needed. I want to show him all the dreamers who have been shot down by the people who they most needed to hold them up. I want to say that I would live penniless on the street before I would give up his belief in me and his love for me.

I’m thinking about money and art because I have a friend who is on the ledge, about to make that leap of faith. His story is beautiful and he needs to tell it in his own time, in his own way. But I would say to him…jump. Life is too short.

Jump.

I’m thinking about money because I’ve moved to a bigger city with bigger (giant) stores. I walk through these stores, looking for the few items we need to make our home functional, and I see shelf after shelf after shelf after shelf after shelf of things no one really needs. These things that promise to heal the unhappiness you don’t even know you have. These things that require money. These things that require you continue to work at the job you hate in order to buy more of the things you think will fill that nameless void. And I feel angry.

I feel as if someone is up there pulling our strings and making us dance.

I’m thinking about art because I went for a run by the ocean today and for three miles my heart felt strong in every possible way. Beauty matters. No amount of money can do for me what three miles of ocean can.

I’m thinking about death because it has thrust itself into my life. I think that if I died tonight, I would die with a meager bank account but I would die rich—rich in art, rich in love, rich in beauty, rich in stories.

I’m thinking about the ocean. Beauty matters.

I am at peace tonight.

Posted in Environment, Life at Work, Nature & Environment, Ocean | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Goodbye Club

Posted on October 16, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Marching band in parade

A week ago I woke up from one of those dreams that felt so real the transition back to waking life was disorienting for several minutes. In the dream, I was walking down a sunlit street. A parade was going on. Marching bands, floats, crowds of people on the sidewalks cheering and smiling. I wasn’t walking in the parade but I was walking with it—a strange distinction, I know, but dreams are strange.

As I walked with, not in, the parade, I glanced over and saw my sister was now beside me. She was walking with me and she was healthy and smiling. All I could do at first was stare. Then, bewildered, I said, “Kelly, you’re here. How are you here?”

“Why wouldn’t I be here?” she asked.

The second the question left her lips, my memories scattered. I knew she shouldn’t be there but I didn’t know why.

“I don’t know. For some reason, I thought you wouldn’t be here,” I said, perplexed.

She laughed and I threw my arm around her shoulder. We walked on like that for a while—laughing, in the sun, with the parade…but not in it.

Then, I woke up. For maybe a tenth of a second, I forgot that she was gone. That tenth of a second passed and my heart fell to pieces all over again.

The worst part was not remembering my sister was dead, which was like re-opening a barely healed wound. The worst part was when I looked over at my husband, who was also slowly waking, and realized that I could share this experience but to him it would be nothing more than a sad dream. He would, (if it seemed I needed it), hug me, kiss me, tell me everything was okay, but he would not understand because he is not part of the club.

Fred lost his father when he was very young, but he wasn’t there when it happened, did not sit by his hospital bed for that long goodbye. I know he loved his dad but there was also a distance between them that did not exist between me and my dad and my sister. In no way would I diminish his grief, but his experience with the emotion is so much different than mine that we may as well be speaking two different languages when talk of it.

Fred sometimes does not like what I write about him in these Chronicles and I’m guessing he won’t like the previous paragraph. Ordinarily, I make a concerted effort to leave out details about our life that I think he would be upset to have shared with the world at large. I’m going to make an exception here because since Kelly’s death I have felt compelled to write honestly about my grief. And, to be fair, he has not done anything wrong. When it comes to grief, the old saying “You had to be there” has never been more accurate.

I have written that there are no right or wrong words to say to a person who is grieving. It only matters that they know you are there, that you care, that they are loved. I stand by this. At the same time, however, there is a level of empathy needed at times that can only be found among those who have joined “the club”.

Membership to this club has one simple requirement: someone you love dearly must die. It is that simple and that horrible.

The strangest part of this club is that you can recognize fellow members almost instantly. Membership in the club seems to alter your DNA, to endow you with some odd ability to recognize others in the throes of grief. There is no Masonic ring, no code word, no secret handshake; it’s in the eyes.

Joan Didion, in The Year of Magical Thinking, describes it better than I ever could.

“People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist’s office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible.”

Once you are in the club, there is instant shorthand when it comes to communication. If I were to tell a fellow club member about my dream, the parade, Kelly, that moment of waking and that fraction of a second of forgetting, I would not have to explain how it felt. A club member would know. In the knowing, there would be unspoken permission. “This is normal. You are allowed to feel this way. You have permission to wake up three months later and feel it all as if it happened minutes ago.” In a society divorced from mourning, that is what matters most of all: the permission to grieve as long and as deeply as you need.

As for thinking myself invisible, this is often the case. Not in any terrible way, not as if I lack for attention. The invisibility is part of the club. Part of walking through a world that does not exist on the same plane as you for this piece of time. This sensation, on its own, is not unpleasant. It’s only when I look at my husband, on that other plane, that it feels lonely. Two halves of me war. I desperately want him to be with me where I am, to share that shorthand, to empathize but, equally, I do not want him to pay the cost of membership to this club. Most of all, I need him to understand that the void created by loss does not lessen the fullness of love between the living. Paradoxically, in grief, your world can at once be empty and full.

Each day gets easier. There are hiccups—a dream, birthdays, holidays, random memories that blindside—but time continues to do its job. I’m walking with the parade, but I am not in it. But the sun is shining and most days that’s enough.

Kristene Perron at Elk Falls

Posted in General, Grief and Mourning | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Friends Like These

Posted on October 6, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Kristene Perron with friends in Baja

Imagine you are going to throw a party. You make a list of fifty of your friends. You send out invitations to those fifty friends. How many do you reasonably expect will RSVP with a Yes? How many Maybes? How many with a No? And putting all that aside, on the day of the party, how many friends would you expect to actually show up? 45? 30? 20? 10? 1?

I’m going to estimate that most of you, being the modest and humble types you are, would guess around 25-30. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but I think most of us could reasonably count on at least half our friends most of the time.

This isn’t a test of friendship levels; it’s the prologue to a story of mine.

Way back when, in the olden times, when I was twenty-four, I decided to throw a big birthday party for my first husband. Things were not going well in our marriage and I thought that a celebration might raise both our spirits. I made a list of friends and family to invite. The total of friends on that list rounded out at just above fifty.

I began making invitation phone calls. It took a few days to connect with everyone but when I was done I tallied the results. I will never forget that moment.

It was morning. I sat on the living room couch with my bowl of Cheerios—spoon in one hand, party list in the other. The TV was on. Much Music played REM’s “Everybody Hurts”. The camera panned past a collection of despondent, lonely and angry faces. I stared at the paper in my hand, at the columns of names with check-marks for Yes, x’s for No, and question marks for Maybe. Family members all had check marks, as expected. There were several question marks. The rest resembled a very one-sided game of X’s and O’s. There was one check mark.

One Yes.

One.

I dropped the spoon into my bowl, splashing Cheerios and milk onto the coffee table I had painstakingly sanded and repainted in my attempt to make our home look a little less shoddy. I crumpled the paper in my hand and started to cry.

More than any other clue pointing to the dire state of my marriage and the increasingly disturbing behaviour exhibited by my alcoholic husband, this list of x’s and question marks, this list of friends who would not come to our party, illuminated the truth I had worked so diligently to avoid. In three short years, every friend I had was either gone, alienated, or keeping themselves at a safe distance away. I was friendless.

Don’t worry, we won’t linger here in this gloomy past for much longer. But if you’re wondering, I went ahead with the party and our family showed up. That’s it. Not one single friend made an appearance, not even the one with the check-mark next to his name. It was an awful experience but a much-needed wake up call.

These days I often write or talk about my friends. I have a lot of friends. A lot of good friends. When I say that, I’m not bragging or trying to wave my friends around like a status symbol, I am merely stating my overwhelming gratitude. Because I remember, every day, how it feels to be friendless.

I have been pondering friends lately, specifically my abundance of incredible friends. I’ve been trying to boil it down, to figure out how this came to be. How did I go from friendless to friendfull in the past twenty-two years? What’s the secret?

Yesterday, on Facebook (yes, I’m there a lot, I know), an online acquaintance shared an article about the difficulty in making friends in our older years. At the end of the article, I was even more confused. The author posited that after the age of thirty we not only make less friends but also less close friends. But this has not been my experience. Quite the opposite, in fact.

So, as adults with busy lives and little free time, how do we make and keep friends? Good friends? Close friends?

I don’t believe there is a secret. I don’t believe there is one magical thing you can do to create friends. I do believe there are lots of little things you can do to increase the odds of connecting with others. I also believe that adjusting our thoughts and expectations about friendship is equally as important as any action we take.

I’ve decided to inflict my thoughts and theories on you…

It Takes Two

Some friends are handed to us by fate. It happens. But if your plan is to wait for fate then you may be waiting a long, long time. Most of the time, friendship requires us to go out, put ourselves in the path of others, and swallow our pride and fear long enough to reach out with some offering of companionship. Or, at the very least, for us to seize on the offering of companionship from someone else.

When Prez and I had our little beach hut in Baja there were more than a few nights when he would mix a cocktail, fire up our old ’72 Suburban, and say, “Let’s go make some friends!” We would drive over to the beaches right next door and look for people that seemed interesting. I know how creepy this sounds but we made some of our best friends just by walking up, introducing ourselves and inviting people along for a day of hiking or boating or even a game of bocce ball.

Sure, a few people mistook us for timeshare salespeople at first, but that’s a small price to pay for meeting new friends.

Putting yourself out there is frightening. I won’t lie about that. Which brings me to my next point…

Extroverts Are Your Friends

I am not shy but I am an introvert. Given the choice between sitting alone reading or writing and going out in public to be around a bunch of strangers, I will almost always choose the “alone” option. Thankfully, my husband is exactly the opposite. Prez thrives on new people, new experiences, the unknown. I’ve lost count of the number of times he has literally dragged me out to some event I’ve dreaded, only for me to end up having a fabulous time and meeting at least one new and interesting person.

If you’re shy or introverted, you probably hate the idea of parties and small talk and all that “getting to know you” stuff. But chances are you probably have one outgoing extrovert in your life—a spouse, a family member, a friend or co-worker. Let that person be your social tour guide. Vow to give in and allow that person to drag you out at least one out of every four times they offer, no matter how much you want to say no. You’ll make them feel good (extroverts love getting people out of their shells), and you won’t feel quite so alone when you venture out into the big bad busy world of socializing.

I owe at least 75% of my friendships to Prez, either directly or indirectly. Either he has gone out and made the effort to make a friend, (who becomes my friend, who I go on to connect with on a regular basis), or I use the lessons I have learned from him to go out and make friends of my own. In all cases, I wouldn’t have the rich bounty of friends I enjoy now without the help of my favourite extrovert.

Speaking of Introverts

As a self-identified introvert, I love that society is beginning to recognize the difference between being “anti-social” and just enjoying silence and your own company. At this very moment, I am all alone in a quiet house and I could not be more pleased. HOWEVER! Accepting my introvertedness does not mean I should use it as an excuse to avoid all social situations.

Be careful. Don’t miss out on the joy of new friends while hiding behind the introvert label.

Not So Great Expectations

One of the lessons it took me the longest to learn was to let go of my expectations when it came to friends. (Actually, letting go of expectations is kind of a general recipe for happiness in my experience, but that’s fodder for another Chronicle).

The biggest friendship mistake I ever made—sadly with one of my former best friends—was setting an expectation based entirely on my needs and habits. Something very small started a chain effect that continued until there was no friendship left to salvage. A hard lesson to learn.

You have to be pretty jerky to disappoint me, as a friend, these days. I have few expectations of my friends. I am happy when I’m with my friends and I wish them the best when I can’t be with them. I recognize that everyone has the potential to annoy or to let each other down and that shouldn’t be how we define the people we love. If we want forgiveness, we must also forgive.

This is not to suggest you shouldn’t set boundaries or expect basic respect, simply that you should take a good hard look at your expectations. It’s not enough to say, “Well, that’s what I would do and so it’s reasonable for me to expect that from my friend.” Your friend is not you.

Evolution Is Not Just a theory

In his story “The Body”, Stephen King’s character Gordie Lachance writes, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 – Jesus, did you?”

I love that line for so many reasons. Mostly, because it’s true. The friendships we have as children are different than those we have as adults. Those early friendships are raw and honest in a way that can only happen in childhood. There’s so much at work in childhood friendships, so much that is powerful simply because it is novel and because we have not yet learned to censor our feelings.

But here’s the trap: Those early friendships are not better than the friendships we have as adults. Different, not better.

It is too easy to look back and lament for those lost days and to forget about all the benefits we enjoy from our adult connections. I think too many of us get stuck on the idea that friendship must be this all-encompassing entity, that our friends are somehow lesser if they do not measure up to our childhood ideals. Everything else in our life evolves but friendship must not?

No, I will never have friends again like the friends I had when I was 12. Or 16. Or 21. Or 30. Or 46.

And that’s just fine.

What Do You Want From Me?

Intentions are strange creatures. They often exist beyond our comprehension and yet, somehow, other people are able to sense them.

I think it’s no coincidence that when I used to want friends for what they could do for me—keep me company, make me laugh, help me with problems, ease my sadness—I had few friends. When my intentions changed and I started making friends based on my appreciation for whatever made that person unique, I found myself with more friends than I felt (and still feel), I rightfully deserved. Ironically, these friends now give me all the things I used to seek: they keep me company, they make me laugh, they help me with problems, and they ease my sadness.

Intentions and expectations are closely linked. We expect our friends to call us a certain number of times per week because our intention is that we want our friends to keep us company. If you’re not sure what your intentions are, look at your expectations and you can probably find a hint there. Or not. Humans are very good at lying to themselves. You may not see your intention until it is gone. Or, you may see your intention but ultimately fail to change it—intentions come from a deep place. Even so, awareness is a good place to start.

I imagine there are lots of lonely people out there (because I’ve been one), who look at other people surrounded by friends and think, “Wow, I want that.” Lonely people who are constantly frustrated and disappointed because few people respond to their needs. But therein lies the problem: their needs. Our radar picks up on neediness, we sense when someone wants us around to fill a void or perform a service, and we instinctively pull away.

To draw people in, our intention needs to be one of giving not taking: I can make you laugh, I can keep you company, I can help you solve problems, I can ease your sadness. And, as I talked about in the previous Chronicle, this usually means we have to figure out how to meet our own needs, first.

My Bleeding Heart

The last point that I have been pondering is vulnerability. Friendships deepen with trust and trust begins with vulnerability.

Think on a moment when a friend confessed something important to you. Maybe they told you they were having trouble with their spouse, maybe they lamented over money problems they’d been working hard to hide, maybe they questioned their faith, maybe they came out to you about their sexual orientation or identity. Whatever it was, how did you feel in that moment they confided to you? Let’s take that one step further: did you then feel more comfortable about confiding something to them?

We think of vulnerability as weakness but in friendships it is the means by which we strengthen our bond.

Remember that story way back at the beginning of this post? While I was married to my first husband, I worked so hard to put on a brave face and act as if everything was going GREAT! Even with my friends. Especially with my friends. I had been so vocal about how awesome this man was that the idea of coming out to anyone and admitting that everything was awful terrified me.

There I was, that sad young woman crying into her Cheerios, friendless because she could not be vulnerable. And when the marriage ended and I reached out to some of the x’s on that party list, I was shocked at the support I received. The second I was able to speak honestly about my failure to make my marriage work, I was immediately offered comfort and sympathy and friendship where I thought I would only find derision and a lot of “I told you so”.

*

I have so many other thoughts about friendship that evade articulation for the moment. Like so much else, friendship is trial and error and—more often than we’d like—a giant leap of faith.

I still don’t know why I’ve been blessed with all these friends but I’ll do my best to be a good friend in return and to always be grateful for the people life puts in my path.

To my friends who may be reading this, thanks for being you!

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Stuck in the Middle?

Posted on September 24, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Boy and girl fight over toy

Have you ever watched small children argue over something we consider trivial? As a non-parent, casual observer, the argument I see most frequently is over a material possession. Child A has no interest in The Thing. But then Child B starts playing with The Thing. Suddenly, in the mind of Child A, The Thing has become the most valuable Thing in the world and must be played with NOW! Argument ensues. And it’s a ridiculous argument with no logic or reason at its core but both children instantly become so invested in The Thing that neither is willing to negotiate. Thankfully, there are usually adults close at hand to step in and stop the chaos.

There are any number of solutions to the problem of The Thing. The best offer some kind of compromise that allows both children to have access to The Thing for a set amount of time. But because children are, well, children, it takes an adult to make them see the answer that should be so clear.

Increasingly, the arguments between Left and Right, liberal and conservative, remind me of children battling over The Thing. While predominantly an American phenomenon, the sharp divide between Left and Right is spreading and it worries me.

For the sake of transparency, I will let you know that I put myself on the left side of the political spectrum. Not surprising given that I am an atheist, feminist who grew up on the west coast of British Columbia in a strong union (see also: NDP) family. Ironically, it’s the last part of that sentence, specifically my late, union-loving father, that helps me understand and identify with the Right.

I say ironically because so many of the statements I hear from the vocal Right revolve around salt-of-the-earth, hard working, traditional family people and that was my dad–who never voted for a Right wing politician in his life–to a T.

In my dad’s mind, the Left was all about helping the common person, the little guy and even the middle class, whereas the Right was all about helping the rich and powerful. It was as simple as that to him.

Perception is tricky business.

I confessed that I put myself on the Left and when I speak out on issues it’s usually with a Leftward slant, but…stop. Conservatives, put away all your quickly-forming perceptions of me, take a deep breath, and listen to the rest of my story.

I’ve been poor but I’ve also been wealthy—not 1% wealthy but wealthy enough to feel annoyed when the government took a huge chunk of my hard earned dough. I’ve been a union member and an employee, but I’ve also been a business owner and an entrepreneur and have dealt with all the red tape and associated headaches that come with those titles. I’m a tree and sea hugger but I sure do love my internal combustion engines, especially in the form of dirt bikes, boats and jetskis. I support social safety nets and believe firmly in looking after every member of our society but I’m also a hard worker and proud of the fact that only once in my life I had to rely (briefly) on unemployment insurance, (which I pay into anyway, so it’s not as if I was “leeching off the government”). I’m white, heterosexual and married. Oh, and I eat meat, some of which I catch myself.

If you’re a conservative, I’m willing to bet you can see some of yourself, your experiences and your beliefs in the paragraph above. Am I feeling a little more familiar to you? A little more safe?

Yes, there are issues on which we will disagree, but like children with The Thing, there is usually a compromise even if we’re too blind or angry or stubborn to see it.

Conservatives, hold on a moment while I talk to my fellow liberals.

All right, folks on the left, let’s talk about the Right. Media, particularly social media, has shown us some pretty wacky, extreme and even frightening representations of conservatives. Enough to trigger my fear response, even though I consider myself pretty level-headed. But I have a lot of friends, even some extended family, who count themselves as conservatives. Let me tell you about them.

Across the board, they are friendly, kind and generous people. They volunteer their time, skills and money to help the less fortunate. They care about the environment and often go to great lengths to protect it. They are foster parents. They are artists. They fall on all points of the financial spectrum. They are tolerant. They love their families, friends and community. They care about animal welfare. They feel the same way about the crazy extreme Right as we feel about the crazy extreme Left.

Okay, come on back liberals.

Left, Right, let me tell you something, you both scare me sometimes. You both isolate me. Right, I don’t want your Christianity setting rules for me. And Left, I don’t want to worry that everything I say or write must eventually come with a list of trigger warnings. Right, just because some people abuse social programs doesn’t mean those programs aren’t beneficial to society. Left, not everyone is a special snowflake who needs caring for; some people are just lazy whiners who really do need a kick in the butt.

And so on.

Neither side is perfect; I would not be happy in either of their ideas of Utopia. And neither side is “evil”; some people, on both sides, have extreme beliefs and philosophies, that is all.

If we want a productive and healthy society, we need to let go of The Thing long enough to search for compromise. At the very least, we need to acknowledge that we can argue about The Thing and still love each other. The worst thing we can do–and what I see happening too often–is replace people with “sides”. We need to remember that behind Left, Right, liberal and conservative is a lot of flesh and blood.

There are no adults waiting to step in and solve our problems. The adults are us.

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Grief and the Disbeliever

Posted on September 21, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Kristene Perron with dolphins

What is it like to grieve when you don’t believe in heaven or hell, reincarnation, spirits, ghosts or any other form of life beyond the world of the living and breathing?

I imagine some people must wonder if it’s more difficult for atheists to cope with the death of a loved one. There is some truth to that because my belief system means that death is final. There is no epilogue to this story. Gone is gone. Sometimes I think: Wouldn’t it be great if there was something to soften reality and to take the edge off this loss?

Then again… no.

The worst of the shock has passed. Tears have slowed and tend to come in tiny bursts now, like a spring storm. In a few weeks—after the formal memorial for my dad and after the last of the bills have been paid—death will no longer occupy my to-do list and I can get on with getting on. Already, life has taken on an air of normalcy that did not exist even two weeks ago.

My new routine, the new normal, goes like this…

I wake up. A few seconds are spent in limbo between the dreaming world and the real world. And then, like an alarm clock someone has set in my brain, a little voice says, “Remember, they’re gone. Kelly and Dad are dead.” Just as simple as that. I acknowledge my new reality—sometimes with a few tears and sometimes with only a nod to void inside me—and then I go about the business of getting dressed and brushing my teeth and the thousand other mundane chores we humans must do.

That’s the routine. Morbid as it sounds, that’s how I am processing this change. And while thoughts of my father and sister come and go throughout the day, this simple daily reminder is my only ritual. No candles are lit, no prayers are said, no offerings are made, only that brief, stark reminder that life—all life—is finite.

Is it comforting? No. It’s not. It hurts. It’s like waking up to a kick in the teeth every damn day. But it is real and true. To me, that is most important. I do not want this softened. I want to hurt. I want to know, for as long as it takes, that losing the people I love is like losing a physical part of myself. I will let myself feel that pain because it makes me value the living. It makes me value my own life.

I don’t reject the kindness offered by believers, in fact I’m grateful for it, but I do translate it into my own language. Prayers become good thoughts and the afterlife becomes both the life of the atoms that made up those flesh and blood bodies and the memories of those people that will live on with me until my end. My loved ones don’t actually speak to me from beyond the grave, but I have known them so well that I know what they would say in any given situation, and in that way I hear them still and will always hear them. My sister, my dad, my mother, they will always exist in me, inside the crazy, impossible and miraculous brain human beings possess. That’s the gift. For me, that’s heaven: memory.

Memory is the reason I have chosen my unconventional life. I live for making memories, for creating experiences that will weld themselves into my consciousness. When I reach the end of my life, I will not care how nice my couch was, I will care that I swam with wild dolphins and kayaked through bio-luminescence, that I met people from all over the world, that I filled my days creating stories, that I took risks and made mistakes and dusted myself off and kept going.

Life is amazing. No. LIFE IS AMAZING! No epilogue needed.

I want the pain of finality. I would not have it any other way. My disbelief makes me humble, makes me grateful, makes me live more fully and love more completely. Because some day I will also end, forever, and that makes each and every breath in and out a miracle and a blessing.

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Givers, Takers, Emergency Masks and Open Windows

Posted on September 15, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Airplane safety illustration of mother putting on an air mask

I’m taking a break from my grief ramblings to talk about a pet peeve of mine. Though I’ve come across this peeve several times in real life, it’s on Facebook where I see it in its most concentrated form. The peeve, at its core, can be expressed by the following statement:

“I am a really good and giving person and other people take advantage of that.”

There are many variations on the theme. Sometimes it’s purely work related: “I do so much more than everyone else and I am never shown appreciation.” Sometimes it’s a subtle, passive-aggressive test: “I want to see how many people actually read what I post on Facebook instead of just scrolling by. If you read this, please type a reply.” The words “taker” and “giver” are often used. But, always, this is about a person feeling as if they are mistreated, neglected, and taken advantage of.

Why does this bother me? Well, not for the reasons you think.

I used to be that person and I was miserable. For more years than I want to admit, I believed right down into my bones that I was the good guy, I was the selfless person who gave and gave and gave, and the world was populated by terrible takers who took and took and took. Bosses, boyfriends, co-workers, friends, roommates, you name it, I was their victim. Every time someone hurt me with their selfishness, I vowed to build a wall around my heart to protect my poor, selfless self.

Yes, I was that dramatic about it.

I wish I could recall the exact moment when I switched my paradigm but that’s not how things changed for me. The metamorphosis was slow, necessitated by the fall-out of too many bad decisions, and nurtured by the wise people I was fortunate and smart enough to allow into my life. There were painful moments of objective self-critique followed by long periods of conscious change. Recognizing harmful behaviour and thinking is only the first and easiest step, after that the real work begins.

The question I asked myself most frequently, while examining my thoughts and actions, was: Why am I doing this?

More specifically, what did I hope to achieve? If I give, why am I giving? Is it because I want recognition, praise, love, respect, kindness or some combination of all of those?

The next question I asked was: Is this behaviour getting the desired results?

More often than not, the answer was a resounding no.

Then it got tricky. Was there something else I could do to get what I needed? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I needed to stop looking outward to satisfy my needs. And so, slowly and with numerous failures and fumbles, I turned my gaze inward and worked on taking care of me.

Guess what? It worked.

Self care as a path to happiness seems counter-intuitive. Isn’t that selfish? Aren’t “good” people meant to put others first?

Short answer: No.

If you’ve ever flown anywhere, you’ll remember the section in the safety speech about what to do in the event of a loss of cabin pressure. The flight attendants make it clear that when the oxygen masks drop, you should always put yours on first before helping anyone else. The reason is simple—if you run out air before you finish helping the person next to you, then you both die. Self care is no different. Identify your needs and fulfill them before you try to help others or your efforts could hurt everyone.

What happens after you look after yourself is astonishing. When your own needs have been met, suddenly you can give without any expectation of receiving anything—even a simple thank you—in return. People sense this. They sense when kindness has strings attached and when it does not. They sense when your selflessness is neediness in disguise. They sense your motivation and respond accordingly.

And if it’s respect you want, you will get that far more often with a loving “no” than a resentful “yes”. Heavy emphasis on “loving”, by the way. There’s a difference between saying, “No, I’m not going to help you because I know you aren’t going to do anything for me in return” (or some passive-aggressive version thereof) and saying, “I’d love to help you but I have to say no because…I don’t have enough free time/I’m not comfortable doing that/I’m not the right person for that job/etc”.

I’ve written before about the power of “no” and I still firmly believe that you can change your life by learning when and how to say that one little word.

Best of all, when you can do this, when you learn to take care of yourself and set boundaries, suddenly giving does become truly selfless and you never feel taken advantage of. Because your bucket of joy is full, you can give joy freely to others without ever feeling deprived.

People don’t take from you and walk all over you because they are mean, they do it because you let them. As my friend Laura put it, (via Oprah but with some very necessary clarification), “You unconsciously teach people how to treat you.” We do not deliberately set out to teach people to walk all over us but if we don’t set clear boundaries then that’s precisely the lesson they learn.

And about that “wall around your heart”…

Back in the days when I thought I might be an actor, I attended weekly classes with a brilliant instructor named Shea. I was a decently talented stage performer but my foray into film was quickly proving to be an unmitigated failure. You see, on stage you can fake emotions. The audience isn’t close enough to read the minute details of your face and everything needs to be larger than life so that even the audience members at the very back of the theater can understand what’s happening. On camera, you don’t act, you “be”. In a scene for film, you need to really feel the emotions of your character. Something I struggled with mightily.

Shea sat down with me after one particularly dismal class, where I had once again failed to even come close to expressing genuine emotion. “You’re too controlled,” she said. “This is a safe space. You need to let the feelings inside you come out.”

I told her that I couldn’t be that vulnerable. I told her that I was terrified of being weak and getting hurt.

Shea said, “If you don’t want to get hurt, then you need to be an open window. Walls can be smashed, doors can be kicked in, but an open window? Well, everything just passes right through.”

It took me several more years before I understood the wisdom of that advice. Even today, I struggle with being that open window. But when I succeed I feel such a release, such comfort in knowing that the worst the world can throw at me will just pass through harmlessly. There’s more power in that open window than in all the doors and walls imaginable.

I have gone from being a person who constantly felt mistreated, to being a person who is overwhelmed by the love, kindness and respect she receives. From feeling that I must be constantly vigilant and wall off my heart, to knowing that if my intentions are genuine and I’m true to myself that nothing and no one can do any lasting damage. The rest of the world did not magically change, I did.

When I see “I give and everyone else takes” types of posts on Facebook, or hear the sentiment expressed in real life, I am peeved not because the poster or speaker annoys me but because it makes me sad to see a person short-changing themselves. In those words I see a person who has not yet learned to love and celebrate themselves and who is looking in the wrong direction (out, not in) to have their needs met.

I rarely respond to those posts, not because I don’t care but because I’ve learned that when people really want to change they will seek out the help they need. The best thing I can do is be present and ready if someone turns to me the way I once turned to others.

When that happens, I will say, “Stop, put on your own emergency mask, and open the window as wide as you can.”

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Everything is Awesome

Posted on September 9, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Kristene Perron I need hugs t-shirt

Last night was another round of body maintenance with fitness-friend Dana, this time at spin class. The instructor was new, French, and full of Awesome!

“I love this song! This is one of my favourite songs!” she announced, while pedaling madly. “I have a lot of favourite songs! I love music! You can sing along if you want!”

Later: “You’re doing awesome! I forgot how much I love spin!”

Later still, enthusiasm level at 110%: “Ha! My water bottle is bouncing I’m pedaling so fast! You’re all doing so awesome!”

Early in the class, the song “Everything is Awesome”, from The Lego Movie, came on and the combination of the instructor’s glee and the lyrics sent me into a round of laughter.

I finished the class sweaty and with cheeks sore from smiling. It’s hard not smile in the face of someone else’s joy, even if your life is decidedly not awesome.

Everything is not awesome these days but I’ve decided that’s acceptable. I’m learning to be okay with not being okay. If I make it through the day without crying, that’s a banner day lately, but that doesn’t mean my days aren’t also full of good things.

Since March, I have learned a few things about myself, life, and other people. Good things.

I’ve learned that when things are at their worst I can be capable and focused and get the job done.

Somehow I managed to keep my sister positive and occasionally laughing during my visits to the leukemia ward, I helped with the “arrangements” when she died, I emceed her memorial (with the help of emergency wine—thanks, LeAnna and Glen!), and I took care of the billion-and-one tasks after my dad died. Through all this, I have continued to work on the current manuscript, make sure that I maintained a minimum level of fitness, and packed and planned for the upcoming move. All in all, I give myself gold stars for competence.

The flip side of this is that for the first time ever, I’ve given myself permission to be a mess. When I find myself staring blankly into space instead of working, I don’t berate myself for my laziness, I just let myself stare. A few days ago I was determined to get some work done on the manuscript but couldn’t focus. I grabbed a book and read for three hours instead. When I know I should be packing but want to read through the old texts my sister and I sent, and cry, I do.

This may not seem earth shattering but when you’re someone who prides themselves on a solid work ethic and self-discipline, this kind of “self-indulgence” is unthinkable.

I’ve also allowed myself guilt-free vulnerability, which I didn’t even think was possible. When I’ve needed the comfort and company of friends, I’ve reached out or I’ve accepted offers of help made without a request from me. I’ve accepted charity—or as I’ve been told to call it “tangible expressions of love”—from friends and family and strangers. I’ve blogged and talked openly about my grief. I’ve announced to the world, “I’m weak and I’m hurting and will be for awhile”…and much to my surprise the world did not stop spinning.

My eyes have been opened to the importance of community and the value of even tiny acts or words of kindness.

I don’t know if I’m grieving “properly” or if I’ve deluded myself into thinking I’m doing everything right when I’m really just slapping band-aids on a bullet wound. Maybe there will be some monumental fallout down the road and I’ll crack open in new and terrible ways. It could happen.

But I wrote this post because I wanted to explain that even in the saddest time there are moments of awesome, moments when your cheeks hurt from smiling and you are proud of yourself for simply getting through the day. Even the days when you fall apart are awesome because you’re alive, you’re learning, and you remember that you loved someone so much that losing them hurts this bad.

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My Life In Boxes

Posted on September 4, 2015 by clubfredbaja

Moving boxes stackedIn the end, we own nothing.

I’ve been sorting, compressing, and culling all of my worldly possessions in preparation for the latest move. I’m familiar with the procedure; I could pack in my sleep. Even so, I stare at piles of Keep, Sell, Donate, Throw Away and I wonder how all these “things” claim space in our lives and what that means.

In the Keep pile, two stones. Plain, grey, round, no different than a billion other stones except these ones have “Kris” and “Fred” scrawled on them in silver ink. These stones were place holders at the Denman Island wedding of our friends Joe and Willow. I can remember that weekend clearly—the smell of barbecuing salmon, the sound of laughter as two guests performed a skit with flashlights up their noses, the taste of ripe blackberries picked from the vine. I will have the memories without the stones—they are not magic portals—but having the stones makes the memories more solid somehow.

In the Donate pile, a pair of steel-toed hiking shoes I bought at the local thrift store. These shoes have hiked through rainforest and desert, have trudged through piles of drywall and lumber, have given me blisters and protected my fragile toes from rocks and cement. I do not swing a hammer anymore and I bought a new pair of hiking shoes two years ago—lighter, more comfortable shoes.

I throw away, or recycle, much. I am not sentimental.

Sell? What we can and what we can part with. My friend Rita asks how much for the case of 300 CDs. All of them were painstakingly organized, numbered, and labeled. They entertained us from Port Coquitlam to Florida and on to the Bahamas. I say, “$10”. Our music is in the cloud now. CDs take up space. Rita is thrilled. Her husband likes to listen to CDs in his workshop. There’s a Norah Jones CD in there with our wedding song on it.

Come Away With Me.

I am a good organizer. I can fit items inside of items until our packed boxes seem full of Russian nesting dolls. Smooth transitions comfort me.

“You did your best with the time you had,” I tell myself when I remember those chaotic two weeks spent cleaning out my dad’s property. There was so much stuff. I was overwhelmed. In the end, we took seven truckloads to the dump—we couldn’t even give some things away.

Every piece of “junk” had a story, had a memory. I watched Fred toss Pinky and Blue Boy, hand embroidered by my Great Aunt Ness, onto the pile of garbage and felt like a traitor. Where was the honour in this?

There are a few things I wish I’d kept, I tell my friend Wendyle. You can’t go down that road, she says, it never ends.

I regard the growing stack of boxes in my back room. If I died, what would people keep and what would they throw away, and what would any of it matter?

In the end, we own nothing.

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