I wait for the spider to attack its prey. I wait for the sky to fall. I wait for something to happen. Anything that will alleviate this dreadful feeling I have. I’d like some relief from this horrible sensation that possesses my body. Something is about to happen here but I can’t imagine what it will be. All I know is I can feel it in my bones. Wait – forget all that. I know what’s going to happen; it happens every night around this time. It’s the feeling that I’ll once again be part of a weather disturbance that seems to accumulate around our dining room table.

Perhaps you’ve guessed –  it’s dinner time at our house. We live in a tiny little town called Hone (not to be confused with ‘home’). Dinner is always eaten together around our little oak table in the dining room, and no doubt, like every other night before this one, the temperature will rise and you just never know what’s next. I wait for tonight’s climatic changes. It usually starts with my brother Francis. Mom says he’s different. He sure is different, just ask anyone. Sometimes I wish something really horrible would happen, like my brother would choke on his broccoli and die. Or my dad would tell my mom he’s leaving her for Mrs. Bensmold next door. Or that my other brother Benjamin would turn into a frog or something. But nothing thrilling like that ever happens around here. It’s usually just another meal we all eat together – my parents, my brothers and my Aunt Gabby. Yet for some reason, it seems to me, there’s always some kind of charge in the air that causes everyone at the table to go crazy. It seems we can’t eat one meal together without some sort of fight.

The dinner is always prepared by my mother; she’s the Queen of The Kitchen. My mother mostly talks on the phone while she’s cooking, helping some poor soul, as she’d put it. She helps people who have problems. My Mom is like the town shrink. I wish she would shrink Francis. We should have a sign on our front door like that Peanuts character Lucy. My mom’s kinda like her.

My Dad sits in the living room while Mom talks on the phone and gets the dinner ready. He doesn’t mind though, he has his drink and his newspaper to preoccupy him until we’re ready to sit at the table. My dad is home from a long day on the road. That’s what he does, he sells stuff on the road. Not literally, you know, but he travels to different places selling things. I really don’t know what he sells but I’m pretty sure it’s important. My brothers are in their rooms probably listening to the radio. That’s their favorite thing to do. I help my mom with the setting of the table because, well, nobody else will and I worry that I’ll be evicted from my room if I don’t help around the house.

My mother hangs up the phone and grabs a drink as well and makes her way into the living room where my father is relaxing. Her apron flaps as she walks and her nylons make that swish-swish sound. Cigarette smoke, like a shroud, engulfs her as she moves, following alongside her like a constant companion. I hear her trying to get my father’s attention but he’s engrossed in his newspaper. Then I hear them discussing the day’s events – who said what, who went where, that sort of stuff. I listen but usually don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t say anything, I just do my job and keep quiet while they talk. I’m sorta like the maid.

Eventually my father calls everyone for dinner. Nobody moves. Everyone ignores the call, ensconced in their own little projects. My father doesn’t respond well to this reaction from his children so he yells at them to hurry up and get downstairs for dinner. He yells very loud, and then my mother yells at him to stop yelling. At this point I know that the temperature is going to change. I try to ignore my parents’ arguing. I can’t though, it’s too hard. And like I said, the temperature’s rising. My brothers are younger than I am and they forget sometimes that there are rules. I wish my dad would take that into consideration, the fact that they’re young and immature. One of my brothers is also autistic which really adds some heat to the scene. But Dad is a stickler for rules, no matter what. Rule number one is always listen to your father. When he calls you, you’d better be standing in front of him within seconds.

Everyone is at the table. I wish I were somewhere else, frankly. I wish I were dancing with a movie star in the house we own in the Hollywood hills. Dinner always begins with grace. We take turns saying grace and tonight it’s my brother Ben’s turn. He’s ready for the assignment and we manage to get through grace without a scene. It’s not the same when Francis has his turn, believe me, but that’s another story. We listen to the conversation my parents and my Aunt Gabby are having. We’re not to participate. We’re only kids after all. We aren’t asked any questions about our day or what we did in school. Children are to be seen and not heard and sometimes it’s better if they’re not even seen. That would be rule number two I suppose.

Like a tennis tournament, our heads bob back and forth from Mother to Father as their conversation begins to heat up again. I try to ignore it. I try to fantasize about my house in Hollywood but to no avail. The tournament is now in full swing. “Get your elbows off the table, Francis.” “Boys, please don’t chew with your mouth open.” “Benjamin, elbows! How often do I have to say this?”

My brothers are oblivious to what they’re saying. Am I the only one that can hear them?

“Francis, stop that, it’s disgusting. Rita, are you paying attention to how your boys are behaving at the table?”

“Oh James, stop pestering the boys, they’re trying to eat their supper.” Francis and Benjamin have my mother wrapped around their little fingers.

Now the climatic change is about to shift once again. My father slams his hands on the table to show us who’s boss. It usually works too. We usually get it when he does that; the message is loud and clear.

“Oh sure Rita, we’ll just let our kids go out into the world and be pigs. That’s fine with you, is it?”

“Oh James, just stop it, please.” She’s about to start crying. My mother has my father wrapped around her finger. “You see the pattern here, don’t you? I can’t take this every night, I just can’t. Can we not have just one night without this sort of chaos going on? Just stop it, all of you!”

My mother’s screaming at my father, and the rest of us, for that matter. You’re included even though you had nothing to do with it, with what just transpired. It’s your fault that Francis and Ben are pigs, though you played no part in the drama. You may as well have because one wrong look and you can have wrath fall upon you. Apparently everyone sitting at the table is guilty of making Mom cry. Even Aunt Gabby. Does Mom not know that I was sitting perfectly still, minding my own business the whole time? Sitting quietly, making friends with the potatoes and carrots? I didn’t want to be part of this so-called human hurricane in the dining room.

The atmosphere is heavy now and I just want to run and hide. There’s no way out though. You’re stuck in your chair until you’re excused. My mother is still crying. Finally she gets up and leaves the table. By the time dinner is over my body is so tense it feels like a cement block. I’m afraid to look up. I don’t want to catch anyone’s attention, if you know what I mean. What transpires at supper time is enough to make me cringe. I’d like to have a fit like Mom but she’d probably kill me if I did.

“Alright children, you may leave the table. Elly, you’re in charge. Make sure the dishes are done. Aunt Gabby, will you supervise please?” Having given instructions, my father leaves the table and goes upstairs to see if my mother is still crying. I can hear whimpers coming from her room. If I were a weather person I would have called what I just witnessed a substantial hurricane, the atmosphere heavy and tense enough to qualify as a level ten. The storm subsides just as it always does.

“Always rinse before washing, Elly,” my aunt tells me in no uncertain terms. I mean, how hard can it be to wash dishes? Yet every night I get step-by-step instructions on how to wash dishes by my ninety-something-year-old aunt. I can’t bring myself to tell her she’s given this lesson to me a hundred times before.

Aunt Gabby lives with us. She has a small room at the back of the house. She has everything she needs in that room and could manage her own dinners if she wanted to, but she chooses to join the chaos at five o’clock every night. I often wonder why she chooses to eat with us amidst all the fighting and carrying on? I would gladly give up my place if I could. Sometimes I think she enjoys the entertainment every evening. Other than that she pretty much sticks to herself. My friends are afraid of her and so am I, for that matter. She’s like really old. I feel like Cinderella in the house. I seem to be doing all the cleaning and looking after things.

My aunt joins my parents, who are now in the living room watching the news. My parents have made up and I suppose the boys are safely tucked away in their rooms. I embrace the peace and quiet. I find my way up to my room to do my homework.
Often I find myself daydreaming about living a different life, the kind of life that wouldn’t include my wicked brothers Francis and Benjamin. Maybe my parents wouldn’t fight so much if they weren’t around. Life would definitely be simpler without them.
It would be so amazing to be the only child. I wouldn’t have to worry about those kind of fights breaking out all the time. I know if my parents knew what I was thinking about my brothers and about them, they’d kill me. I try to put those thoughts out of my mind. I often wonder if my parents can read my mind.

“Elly, what are you doing?” my mom yells from downstairs.

“Nothing Mom, why?” I didn’t say anything. They CAN read my mind, I knew it.

“Elly, have you done your homework? What are those brothers of yours up to?”

“I’m doing my homework now Mom, and they’re both asleep.”

“Alright, well your father and I are going out for a while. Good night, dear.”

“G’night Mom.” No kiss, no hug, just a ‘good night dear’. Well, it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. 

I feel bad about all the stuff I was thinking about, especially the stuff about Francis and Ben. They’re pretty much dead to the world now, they will have forgotten the storm that passed through this house, that passes through on a regular basis. I haven’t though. That’s why I’m telling you, I guess. I could be considered some kind of family weather-person, predicting disturbances in the family a part of my job. It’s just too bad nobody listens. They don’t understand that unlike the weather channel, I can usually predict with a one hundred percent accuracy when and where the storm will hit. Like tonight, right here in Hone. A hurricane passed through and nobody noticed. Another such storm will pass though here again, and no doubt I will predict the outcome of that one as well. I’m getting pretty good at storm watching. I’d prefer to not have this super power but what can you do. If you have it, you have it.

I keep looking ahead for what will happen next – in a little house, on a little street, in a little town called Hone.

Photo Credit

Photo is by Martha Farley – All Rights Reserved

Love is an emotion. A very powerful one at that. When one thinks of love, all kinds of things come to mind. Movies perhaps, like Casablanca, The Way We Were, Ghost, Pretty Woman, Gone With the Wind. Or maybe a song, like “Baby I Love Your Way” by Peter Frampton, “All Out of Love” by Air Supply, “Best of My Love” by the Eagles. Or memories of the ’60s may evoke feelings of love  – Haight-Ashbury, hippies, flower power, make love not war. Without love, where would we be?

Our early love affair with our parents would’ve had a major influence, one would think, on how we would love in our adulthood. It would also have had an impact on our relationships with our friends, our lovers and later on, our own children. Mother Teresa once said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

Love has the power to move mountains. It can cause great men to weep, and it can bring those same men to their knees. Love can change everything. It can change how you see the world and how the world sees you.

Love has inspired men and women all over the world to create and to spread their wings where once, perhaps, they would not have had the courage. Love has been sought after by great poets, singers, writers and directors.

Love is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties, maternal for a child; attraction based on sexual desire, affection and tenderness felt by lovers; affection based on admiration, benevolence or common interests.

Love is what makes the world go ’round, or so the saying goes. It is one of the most powerful emotions known to man. It encompasses so many different realms, yet is so simple. Love is the one emotion that is difficult to define. In fact, in some cultures, there is no word for love. Therefore it can be said that love has many different meanings for many different people.

What’s love got to do with it? I can only conclude that love pretty much has to do with anything and everything, and anyone who is good and kind and joyful. Love is for those of us who are hopeful and happy. It gives us strength, power and the courage to continue on this journey we call life.

Photo Credit

Photo courtesy of Martha Farley – all rights reserved

I danced through a field of sunflowers
large and full and yellow
running against a deep blue sky
puffs of white scattered here
to remind me of the inconsistency
of nature
the fragility of time
racing by like the clouds
I watched as the flowers
reached
and so did I
though I did not know
what it was
I was reaching for, light perhaps
upon this awakening
the sky in me, the fragility of nature
the inconsistency of time and space
perhaps I danced through
the field of time
and discovered there
that I was
a sunflower

Photo Credit
Photo courtesy of Martha Farley – all rights reserved

My mother was a music aficionado.

She was a woman of many talents.

She was a woman who lived through many horrors during her lifetime.

Prelude

When my mother was a very young girl, her appendix ruptured. It was a life and death situation. Back then, there was no such thing as antibiotics. And so, when peritonitis set in, her family prepared for the worst. But she survived, though the next three years would prove extremely challenging. She was sick and confined to her bed, unable to do any of the things her friends were doing.

When she finally became well, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. My mother looked after her through her illness until she died. My mother was just sixteen. She never complained, just did what needed to be done, which now was to look after her father and siblings. Her father then took to the bottle, so my mother was again left to manage things at home. This was during the depression. He had his own business but it quickly dissolved due to the drinking and gambling that he and his brothers were involved in. In time, the family was evicted from their home in Toronto, left out on the street with only what they could carry. As fate would have it, my mother’s aunts, who were all spinsters and lived together, took the family in. And so, they were saved yet again from another disaster. At least they wouldn’t starve. (The aunts were always a part of my mother’s life – several years later, one of them would move in with my mother and father in Montreal.)

Largo

So this woman, my mother, eventually married my father Arthur and they had six children. Two of them died – one of spina bifida, the other was a stillbirth. Another child, my older brother Paul, was intellectually handicapped.

My mom had many hobbies and talents. Apart from being a wonderful cook, she was a fabulous entertainer and would throw the best parties in town. She could sew and knit, and could grow anything, anywhere. She could also run a business. She was what many would call a woman of courage and determination and was, in so many ways, ahead of her time. She was a woman whose strength helped build many essential services in the West Island community of Montreal. She was given several awards over the duration of her lengthy career, including the distinguished Order of Canada.

She could also be stubborn and opinionated.

Adagio

At 85 my mother fell into the dreadful hands of a very subtle enemy. That enemy was dementia. Or was it Alzheimer’s? It doesn’t matter what you call it, it has the same impact. She was no longer the woman she used to be. And it all seemed to happen so fast, almost like it happened overnight. It didn’t though, it was a slow process over several years. We, the family, (my mother included) just didn’t want to see it.

Because she was afflicted with dementia, my mother could no longer speak to me the way she used to. I cried more often than not when I left their apartment. My father looked sad and lonely though he never left my mother’s side. She was in a world all her own. She believed there were several apartment buildings that she lived in. They all had the same furniture, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out how they got the furniture from one apartment to the other. This was her mind playing tricks on her.
She had supper with her dead father as well, who she feared, though he’d been dead for fifty years or more. She was often visited by those that were long dead. She carried on, telling amazing stories about their demise, stories of suicide and train wrecks. Sometimes she spent her days just thinking, wondering about things like butter tarts and how to make them. She hadn’t cooked a meal in a long time and at this point, wouldn’t know where to find the stove or how to turn it on.

My mother was always running away a lot. She would leave the apartment when my father was resting, and would be brought back home in the dead of night. My father took to putting furniture in front of the door so she couldn’t escape. She would leave the building and go looking for people and things and places that no longer existed. She wandered in the night looking for something, agitated and suffering, her mind playing tricks on her as she walked like a zombie in the night, shuffling along, looking for peace. My father didn’t want to place her in a home, he wanted to look after her. I called, though, and talked to the social worker about getting things in motion, against my father’s wishes. I was depressed, anxious and worried about them both, about what they were going to do. How could they find some peace? This was not how you should live out the end your life. This was not the way it should go.

My father, at 88, continued to take care of my mother, as she was unable to do the things she should’ve been able to do on a daily basis. Without him, my mom would be lost. She would forget to eat or shower or take her pills. She would be lonely without him around, a ship lost at sea. My father would be lost without her too, as she was his life. He knew that he had to get up every day and start all over again because he knew if he didn’t my mother would not be able to handle the day-to-day tasks. My father lived with a woman who repeated things over and over. She confused him and often thought he was someone else. She ran away from him thinking he was a stranger. Yet he comforted her even in her confusion.

We had to bring my mom to the hospital one night because she was up wandering around again. My dad followed her until six in the morning. He couldn’t do it anymore, so he called me. My husband and I went over and took my mom to the hospital but there was nothing wrong with her, just that she was no longer my mother. She was another woman who I didn’t really know very well. She was repetitive, and spoke in low tones about odd things. My mother was gone somewhere. I got glimpses of her; snippets of her personality.

Where would it end? Well, for my parents it ended on July 31st, 2006 when, after a very long and difficult day with my mom, my father had a shower at midnight and fell asleep on his bed. Exhaustion had overtaken him and he crashed, literally, that night onto the floor. It all happened in seconds, and as he lay on the floor in pain he asked my mother to call the ambulance. When he told her to dial 911 she went to phone but then forgot the number. Finally she managed to get help.

Within days their lives changed drastically. My father had broken his hip and underwent surgery. He then had to go to rehab. My mother spiralled further down the rabbit hole as the stress of the situation took its toll on her mental health. We waited for social services to find a bed for her in a nursing home. Sometime later a place became available and my sister and I took her. It was a difficult and emotional ride to that nursing home, one I won’t soon forget. My mom had no idea where she was going, and probably didn’t really know where she was. It was hard to figure out what she understood or knew.

My father did well in rehabilitation and was released six weeks later, back to the apartment he used to shared with his wife. He tried to come to terms with her illness. He felt guilty for falling and for putting the whole placement process in motion. My father was a man who never forgave himself for anything, even though it would no doubt have come to placement eventually. He wouldn’t have been able to look after her for much longer. The stress alone would have done him in.

So they were separated now, emotionally and physically. He visited my mother as often as he could, but it wasn’t the same. It’s not like having your loved one with you ’til death do you part. He missed her. He worried about her. How my mother felt, who could tell. She talked less, and when she did, she asked questions like “how did you cross the ocean? “ She couldn’t put sentences together.

Grave

My mom’s life changed dramatically that night on July 31, 2006. Since that time, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away a year later on April 27, 2007, after a valiant fight on his part. I was told by the nurses that my mother wept that afternoon at 3:15pm, as though she knew on some level that he was gone. But she never asked about my father. She fell deeper into her own world and spent all her time in a wheelchair.

Where did my mother go? I knew she was there, some part of her, frustrated that she couldn’t get the words right. She would look at me with those beautiful blue eyes of hers, searching my face for some sort of recognition as I searched hers, hoping for her to give me one last piece of advice, one last gem of wisdom, one last gift of  “I love you”.

Many are struck with this disease, one that takes your loved one away from you and leaves you with the shell. How do you deal with that? It’s a disease that affects the family and has such an emotional impact. How does the person feel who has the disease I wonder? I guess we’ll never know. But I wish I knew where my mom went. It would be nice to call her and ask her if I can freeze lemon tarts, or is it alright to use a bundt pan instead of a cake pan to make a raisin cake.

My mother lived until July 2011. She was 90-years-old. The last years of her life were not what you would call quality, but she had a good life.

My mother was not one to give up easily!

Photo Credit
Photos courtesy of Martha Farley – all rights reserved

Christmas is coming up in a month and for many it is a time to weep, a time to lie in bed with the covers over your head, a time to scream and yell and wish that
Christmas would just piss off.

It doesn’t, it can’t. Christmas is a time for many to look inward, to find solace and hope. It is a spiritual time of gratitude and thankfulness for many, a time of wonder and childlike magic. Christmas is about babies looking at the Christmas tree for the first time. That look of awe and expectation of all things good.

As a child, Christmas was one of the most glorious times of the year in our house. My parents would spend hours preparing for parties and dinners and guests. A time for those far away to phone and send their Best Christmas wishes.

The one thing all of us children hoped for on Christmas was snow. Because what could be more fun than building forts and having snow ball fights and making angels in a freshly fallen snow. Taking our toboggans to the hill and putting in some good runs, up and down we would go rosy cheeked and so very happy. Shouting with joy and maybe a bit of fear that your sled would crash but mostly it was about the fun.

Christmas was for me as an adult just as fun as it was for me as a child. For what is Christmas about than tradition, those things that were done as a child will repeat themselves as you age. The parties and get-togethers, reaching out to those that are far away. Waiting for that first snowfall so you can finally get the kids outside to play.

Its about baking cookies and cakes and treats of all kinds. Of making gingerbread houses and telling your child their house was perfect even though it had no walls. Christmas was for us a time of joy! My husband was in charge of the tree and the lights. This was a job he loved and he looked forward to sitting in the dark after the lights were up and just taking in the beauty of the tree. I would say our house was full of love.

Christmas to me now has changed in so many ways. I am a senior, sixty-six years old going on sixty-seven. The past few years my husband was ill with cancer and passed away in 2023. This is my second Christmas without him. Each day is tough but holidays are particularly hard. I had so many wonderful Christmas days with my husband that those memories keep me going. I also have awesome children and great friends that bring me so much joy. Time does heal wounds sort of, time makes it feel not so close.

This Christmas my children and I will celebrate with a beautiful tree and lights and my grandson will be with us, a bonus. He is after all one of our gifts having him here with us. My husband will be with us in spirit, in love in how we remember him every day. But on Christmas we will remember how he loved to look at the tree and how it glowed in the night.

I hope you find the meaning of Christmas in your heart. That you don’t fall prey to lying in bed weeping but that you rejoice in the fact that you are alive and that your loved ones who have passed will be grateful that you have found peace. Peace in your heart and soul, that you know deep down they are happy and without pain or sadness that they too are rejoicing that you are alive.

Wishing you all a very Merry and Bright Christmas!

Photo Credits

Photos by Martha Farley – All Rights Reserved

“Martha, are you going to the party or not?” My mom asks me from the chair in the living room.

“I don’t know mom.” I tell her.

I go outside to the patio and stretch out on the chaise lounge trying to tan my ugly white legs.

“Ok God” I say, “need your help here. I don’t know what to do? Should I go to the party or stay home? My mom is upset, her aunt is dying. What should I do?”

I listen intensely for an answer but none comes. Go figure. I go back inside. Dinner is ready, hot dogs and fries. My parents are very preoccupied with my aunt. So I go downstairs to watch TV and eat my dinner.

“Martha” my mom yells from the top of the stairs.

“Yes” I respond.

“ Aunt Gert just died Martha.”

“ Oh mom I’m sorry, oh no.” What else does one say at the time? I stayed in the basement and listened to music while I heard hustle and bustle upstairs. I think about my prayer to God asking him what to do? I think that perhaps there is a God after all. Then there were the phone calls and the doorbell ringing. The priest arrives. My aunt and uncle from in town come over too.

“Martha I would like you to come upstairs now, Uncle Bill and Aunt Rae are here and we are going to give Gert the last rite. Fr. Lynng is here too to perform the service.”

“Ok mom” wiping the tears from my eyes. Aunt Gert and I had what you would call a kind of turbulent relationship. The first recollection of Gert for me is when I stuck my tongue out at her when I was about six. It must have been the year she moved in with us that I did that. I resented the fact that there was another person in the house taking away my moms precious time.

We stood around my Aunt’s bed while the priest performed the last rite. Family members kneeling on the floor praying, it was a very solemn ceremony. I had never seen a dead body before, it kind of left me awestruck. I didn’t get too close though. I was afraid Gert would sit up and start laughing at us all or something.

The ambulance arrived and my aunt was taken to the morgue.

I didn’t go to my party or the prom the year I graduated from high school. Yet that summer was the summer I remember things changed for all of us. With my aunt Gert passed on, my mother had more time to do what she wanted to do.

Now forty years later I look at her lying in the hospital bed. The wrinkles and lines on her face tell a thousand different stories. She is my mom; she is old now the cigarette long gone from between her two fingers, her lungs no longer sucking in smoke but so desperate now to suck in oxygen.

“Hello,” I say to my mother. Another crisis, pneumonia again.

“Hi “she says.

“Do you know who I am mom?”

“No “

“I’m your daughter. “ I have with me on this visit my daughter who is also about to graduate from high school. I think back to that May many, many years ago. My mom so young with her smokes and her Capri’s and feel a sense of loss and sadness.

“Mom, what are you doing here in the hospital? I ask her.

“I don’t know.” She replies

“Where are my mother and father?” She asks me.

“I don’t know mom, but I am sure they will be here soon.”

“Ok, good. Oh my neck hurts, oh my stomach hurts.” My mother complains, she is not weeping yet there is pain in her voice, in her cry for help. With each cry I try to offer some words that will comfort her. That it seems is all I can do for her.

“Where does it hurt mom? Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?”

“No.” she replies.

“You are a conundrum.” I tell my mother.

“I know, I sure am.” She replies.

“Remember when you used to tell me I was a conundrum, mom?”

“Yes, yes I do.”

“And now the tables are turned “I said and laughed but my mom just looked at me blankly.

Her body is twisted from sitting day after day year after year in a wheelchair. She hasn’t been upright in years. She can’t turn her head or straighten her legs. Yet her hands are still soft to the touch and so my daughter grabs one hand and I the other.

She is tied to the bed they have her in restraints. My daughter and I untie her so her hands are free. Immediately she tries to pull out her oxygen tube.

“Mom, you can’t take that out or I am going to have to tie your hands again. You need that so you can breathe.”

“Oh “says mom and then starts to go again for the tube.

“Mom, no you can’t do that.” My daughter and I grab her hands again and hold on tight. My mom then tries to rest but she is agitated, no wonder I think to myself I would be agitated too.

“Where’s my horse? My mom asks me. My daughter and I laugh.

“Out in the barn.” I tell her.

“Oh “my mother replies. Our conversations are not what they used to be. My mother and I spent many days discussing many things before she got sick.

“Did you get the cheese? She asked me. “That is for that guy named Mr. Broth”

“Ok” I tell her wondering what is going on in her brain. Wondering what and how these words have no meaning to me, but surely have huge meaning to my mother.

My daughter and I spend several hours with my mother. The hospital is a horrible place for anyone but it seems for the elderly it is even more horrific.

In my mind’s eye I see my mom again sitting in her favorite chair. Looking out the window, waiting as my aunt lay dying upstairs in her room.

Full circle, we are here again, I suppose we are all waiting to die. Some of us hopefully will be around a lot longer than others. My daughter is seventeen and her life is just beginning. I am now the one sitting in the chair, looking out the window.

It’s my daughter’s party, her prom. I hear the anxiety in her voice. “Is Grandma going to be alright mom? Are you alright mom? I tell her not to worry; that I am alright, that this is life.

“Mom, we are going to go now ok”. I say to her.

“Alright, tell my mother and father to come and get me.” She answers.

“I will mom, I love you” I tell her and so does my daughter.

“I love you too.” My mom replies. And we leave the room.

My Mom and Daughter and I

I think to myself that life is a riddle, a puzzle of sorts; a conundrum. Once long ago I was a riddle to my mother, now she has become a puzzle to me. Does my daughter worry that I too will become afflicted with Alzheimer’s? She tells me she will look after me even if I become a difficult puzzle to solve. I am grateful for that, as my mother I am sure is grateful that she has a family to look after her. I take my daughters hand as we walk back to the car both of us lost in thought.

Photo Credits

Photos by Martha Farley – All Rights Reserved

The month of July was also when we had our first guest. My son’s son arrived from Gaspe to spend the month with us. It worked out so well. He is ten and so we would go to the public pool when we had that crazy heat wave. We’d walk around town or we’d go discover new things. It was great that we could accommodate him for the month and we had a lot of fun!

As I am writing this now it is Thanksgiving weekend. Mid October and the leaves are changing. Those vibrant and beautiful reds and yellows and burnt oranges. The days are cool and the nights are cold. I love this time of year. Mother nature is letting us know that changes are good. That even when it gets cold we can find warmth indoors.

These past few months I have been living in a little town called St. Anne De Bellevue, it is I am sure in its hay day a quaint cottage village. It is also home to a CEGEP John Abbott and University of McGill. It is so quaint that at noon and six at night the church bells ring out. I love that, the bells remind me of an era when things were simple.

Myself and my two adult children share a house. The arrangement has worked out really well. The cost of living has gone up so much that having being able to share rent is a God send. After my husband died it felt good to be in the place where we had lived. It felt like he and I had made an imprint there but as time went on I got very lonely and so with much discussion my children and I decided to try sharing a house. It is an old house with beautiful inlaid floors and woodwork everywhere. There is plenty of room for us to be alone when we need to or to hang out together.

I felt then that the loneliness of losing my life partner was dissipating somewhat. That weight , the loss was becoming much easier to bear. Having dinner with my children again is wonderful. We all chip in when need be.

Another change for me is that I have retired and so my days are spent in this beautiful house now doing whatever I feel like doing on any particular day. It’s wonderful. The stress of work and all its worries is gone and once again I feel a weight has been removed. At this time I am happy to be reading, and walking and enjoying the beautiful area that I live in. I may get bored with it, who knows. One day at a time is my motto.

It’s Thanksgiving this weekend and we will have our turkey and fixings. But for me it will be a time to really look at my life and be thankful for where it has taken me. A friend of mine tells me often “ God will provide Martha “. I believe that is true. There have been so many things in my life that happen and I never understand why until I am shown why after the fact. Synchronicity, it’s a real thing.

Holidays are so very difficult for those of us who have a loved one who has died. Weather it is a spouse or parent or child, not having those people with us to celebrate all the good things life has to offer is very sad, however knowing that those left behind share in your grief and in the happiness that they knew that person and can share with you those memories that never fade but live on in our hearts and minds.

This I am thankful for, my children and my family and friends who have always been guiding lights in the darkness that can sometimes consume me. I am so very thankful for their love and for their laughter and joy in knowing me and in knowing those that I love.

Photo Credits

Photos by Martha Farley – All Rights Reserved

What I am referring to of course is the late night call from the teen that lives in your house. He or she is that ghostly figure that you see once in a blue moon roaming around; you catch a glimpse of them mostly at meal times. We happen to have a son, who is seventeen at the time I am writing this piece. This is sort of a testament to his adolescence not yet an adult but not a child. Physically he resembles the quarterback from the Oakland Raiders. So the event that I am speaking of is the late night call. Last night as my husband and I sawed logs as they say, beat from another day on the treadmill of life. The phone rings at 1:15 am. Oh no, I think to myself, is it my mom? Or is it my Dad? Being in that sandwich generation you never know which topping is going to spill out of said sandwich. This time it is the younger of the toppings, the son! He is calling to ask if he can stay at his friend’s house for the night. No problem I answer him, I know the friend and I also know he is not far from us if there is a problem. I am half a sleep and hear him say “thanks mom”and click he is gone.

Back to sleep I go, like a baby. An hour or so later I think it was 3:08 to be exact we get yet another call. This time my husband answers. Again I go through the list of who it could be. I then hear my significant other say, “Are you all right?” “What happened?” “You did what?” It was beginning to sound like the inquisition. Then I hear “Well, call us back and let us know what is going on but I think you should come home. ” Then I realize it’s not my parents but my seventeen your old son.

That was our son my husband whispers in my ear. Bringing back memories of days long gone when whispering in my ear was romantic, unlike at this moment it is being done in order for me not to panic as mothers so often do. My husband tells me that our son is at the hospital. Here comes the panic “what?” I say not in a whisper either. “He’s at the hospital, he fell down some stairs and is getting stitches in his head” “Stitches in his head?” I said. “Yes, he wasn’t sure if he was going to go back to his friends or come home. I told him to come home. ” My husband informs me. We then try to fall back asleep, wondering if our son was going to survive out there in the scary world with stitches in his head. How would he do it without us?

Then about an hour later we receive yet another call. I must say thank God for cell phones. My husband answers again. “Yes, he’s leaving? Are you ok? Are you going to be sick? Yes I’m coming right now.” At this point we are both pretty much wide awake. My husband gets dressed and tells me he is going to pick up our son at the hospital. Our son’s friend had to leave to go to work. It was 4:18 am at this time. And how silly of us to think our parenting days were over?

By 5:00am both my son and husband are safe and sound at home. My son was fine except for a huge gash in the front of his head. He had six stitches and was given a pain killer. “How are you?” I ask him. “I’m ok now, but you should have seen the blood mom. I went outside it was bleeding so much. I didn’t want to get blood all over my friend’s house.” Well, no God forbid I thought to myself. “Yea so what my friends did mom was to get some flour and put it on the cut to stop the bleeding.” My son tells me this in all seriousness. This is why parents need to talk to their children because who knows where they get their information. “Flour is for making cakes I tell him, not for stopping gushing blood from your head! Were you drinking?” I ask this knowing full well that he had been drinking. “Yes, he tells me, I slipped on the stairs going down to the basement.”

“You were lucky that it wasn’t more serious.” The heart to heart would have to wait till we all had some sleep.

We then tried to find something to put on his head so the bandage would not fall off. All sorts of things were tired until we came up with fitting a toque on his head. All part of growing up I suppose, and it was bound to happen sooner or later. The late night phone call, the one that sends your stomach for a ride. With elderly parents and teenagers on the run one never knows what kind of call you are going to get in the night and from whom.

Ryan and his Dad

So for those of you, who are just beginning the ride, fasten your seat belts. The road of life is long and sometimes can be treacherous. Make sure you’re packing a good sense of humor and a husband who is willing to run to the hospital in the middle of the night to retrieve boys that go bump in the night.

Photo Credits

Photos by Martha Farley – All Rights Reserved

Had that happened today, I’m sure I would’ve been told exactly what was wrong with my brother and perhaps even given some tips from some expert as to how to respond in a situation like that. And I most likely would’ve had some decompression time with either my mom or my dad. But back in the days of ignorance, illnesses like Paul’s were never spoken about. They were a taboo subject. My parents probably presumed it wasn’t my problem and did their best to handle a very difficult and mentally challenged son, all the while trying to keep some normalcy in the household. That, as it turned out, was easier said than done.

As I recall, I didn’t really get what was going on with Paul. It never dawned on me that there was anything really wrong with him, he was just my older brother. I never really thought about how the world saw him. As a teenager, it was difficult to live with Paul. There was always a trauma, it seemed, when it came to him. And he would often say embarrassing things like “Hey Mom, Martha’s growing boobs.” It made me very uncomfortable. I used to wonder what it would be like to have a normal older brother, not one who blurted out stupid things in front of everyone. ‘Retarded’ was a word I became all too familiar with growing up. The neighborhood kids made fun of my brother with comments like “Hey, where’s the retard” and to me they’d say “Yeah, you’re a retard just like your brother.” Kids are cruel, no question about that. Paul suffered years of ridicule from so many people. We all tried so hard to protect him. But I often wondered why, why did my brother have to be ‘retarded’?  Why couldn’t he be normal like everyone else’s brother?

Eventually, as I grew up, I became more aware that Paul was different. Living with an obsessive-compulsive person who was intellectually handicapped was not an easy thing, like the times I’d have friends over. It was embarrassing. But once my friends got used to Paul it became easier for them to visit. I can imagine it must have been a bit scary for them, he could be downright nasty if he wanted to be.

My mother was very involved in several projects in our community in order to help Paul and others like him. Both my parents worked diligently to attain services for their son. My mother was instrumental in organizing the first special education class in a nearby school. I vividly remember going with her and Paul in our little Volkswagen to pick up Paul’s classmates and deliver them to the school, as the school board was not offering a bus service. My mom and I did that for an entire year. I used to ride on the hand brake, as there were at least four other kids, aside from my brother, in the back and front seat. So my brother has enjoyed many privileges and has had a lot of opportunity that other children born like him back in the day may not have had.

I don’t know why Paul is who he is. I’m somewhat positive some of his traits were inherited and others certainly are due to his handicap. He pursued his hobbies, his airplane models, his art work. He enjoyed music and loved to dance. He made friends and walked everywhere and he knew just about everyone in our community. What he lacked in several areas intellectually and socially he sure made up for in spunk. 

Paul was never really diagnosed with any syndrome in particular over the years. Now, it’s presumed he’s autistic, as he has several traits of an autistic person. He loves organization; things have to be in just the right spot. He washes everything twice. He has certain clothes he wears for certain events. He repeats everything, and would say things like, “Life is like hell on earth, eh Marth? Like hell on earth.” And then he’d laugh. I’m not sure what he’d be laughing at but I guess he thought hell was funny. He’s an absolutely wonderful artist. As a young man he used to draw money. I’m not lying, you couldn’t tell the difference if you looked quickly at his drawing of a twenty dollar bill and a real bill, he was that good, that detailed in his work. He doesn’t bother anyone, he just enjoys the simple things in life and manages to do what he likes to do without a problem. 

Paul is older now. He’s sixty years old and lives on his own. He’s mentally challenged, or intellectually handicapped, and he’s a real character. A straight shooter is what you’d probably call him if he were ‘normal’. But I don’t make that distinction anymore. He is who he is and you gotta love him for being that – for just being Paul.

Photo Credits
Photos by Martha Farley – all rights reserved

My husband has been dead now for almost a year. He had lung cancer, which eventually went to his brain. He had been so ill for so long; five years, in fact. He fought the good fight. A soldier, a warrior of death and dying. But it took him in the end, and along with him, a part of me too.

In the beginning, at the first meeting with the surgeon, I thought it would be a piece of cake for Brian. He was strong. We’ll just remove that little sucker, it’s so small, and that will be that. But five years of clinical trials and chemo and immunotherapy did nothing but steal my husband away from me, from his family and friends. He was no longer the man he used to be. I would find myself sobbing, knowing that recovery was not something that would be a part of our future, that our love for one another was not going to save him. It would not save us. Life would forever change. How naïve we were back then.

With each passing day, with each phase of the moon, we fought on. Days became nights and still my husband crawled, pushed and inched his way into the next day, to the next treatment, to the next appointment. This went on for five years. Can you imagine that? I still can’t believe what we went through. The waiting and waiting to see the oncologist. The waiting for results. It was enough to break anyone. It was enough to crush anyone’s soul. And yet he kept going back, and little by little both of us lost our souls in the fight. My husband, in pain and sick and tired, sleeping for hours on end, the endless side effects crippling him. The drugs, the radiation on his brain, killing cells that would never fire up again. A nightmare is what it was. A very sad and dangerous nightmare. He was living his and I was living mine. How will we live, what will happen to both of us? How can I keep doing this? How can he?

Last March, several events led to his being rushed to the hospital. In emergency, the oncologist on-call informed my son and me that my husband had two weeks to two months to live. His cancer was in the brain. Of course, to me it explained everything – his behavior, his loss of words, his balance, his blank stares into space. His own oncologist kept telling me there was no cancer in his brain. Well Doc, go back to medical school because your colleague disagrees and you were so very wrong. My son broke down that night, having heard the words we all hate to hear, that our loved one has little or no time left. There was shock and panic and despair. I had my friend, my lover, my everything, taken from me. I was alone. Yes, I had my children, sure, and wonderful and sympathetic friends. I’m grateful for them and for my children, but they couldn’t fill the void that was left, the loneliness that engulfs you and swallows you whole. Your soul is left in the dark and is unable to see the light. The tears and the screams of pain, the pain that rips your heart open, that leaves you shattered like broken glass. There is no other pain like the loss of the person you loved forever and ever.

And so, after several months of grief and sorrow, I thought I’d go to a medium. That way I could talk to Bri again and we could connect. I found a woman who was recommended to me by a friend. She was lovely, and told me Brian was happy on the other side, that he was fishing and had no pain. I felt a sense of relief, a sense that he was still with me. He is living his best life on the other side. But in some ways it made me sadder because I wanted him to be with me, to really be with me, by my side, home when I got home from work with a kiss and a hug. I wanted him to dance with me again in the kitchen and hold my hand and make jokes and laugh and for us to just be together. And sure, mediums can say all they want that he’s with me, and it’s a comfort, but is he? No, he’s not. He’s dead. I hope his soul lives on. I know he lives on in my heart. I whispered in his ear on his deathbed, a line from It’s a Wonderful Life: “I’ll love you ’til the day I die!” I just wish he could be here with me right now, beside me.

So I cling to what the medium said to me, that my loved one is happy and is with his relatives that have gone before him. I pray that his soul is happy, that his energy is free-floating in the universe and giving positive energy to me and to his kids and to those he loved. Mediums and tarot card readers tell me he’s doing all that. The mystics would say he lives on, and of course he does in my memories and in the memories of my children. He lives on in their dreams.

Perhaps one day I’ll find a medium that will really blow my mind and make me feel like Brian is in the room again. Until then, I have my memories, and that’s enough right now for me to keep him alive in my heart.

Photo Credit

Photo by Martha Farley – all rights reserved