Everyone you know is going to die.

 After watching someone I care about struggle through months of hard work sorting through the life (and stuff) of a loved one, I would like to ask you all to please discuss wills and testaments with your loved ones. 

Especially your parents. But, also your partners and friends. Hell, even your pets need godparents.

We are all going to die someday, and sometimes shit happens.

To this day, my mother is asked for my father's death certificate whenever she make a financial or legal move. Dying is a bureaucratic nightmare FYI.

 Some people leave so much behind - and it is a prepared act of love to leave your loved ones with clear instructions and managed affairs. 

You're gonna die honey, leave your loved ones with as little to worry about as possible, they're already bummed, don't add to it.


♥

A weekend away.

Spent a weekend away in the eastern townships, which was nice. It was different. There's a lot going on these days - it was nice to get away and change the space, change the mood. The trip was a gift for my mother, we went back to her hometown, stayed in a B&B and ate at local spots.

Learn to know yourself. To search realistically and regularly, the processes of your own mind and feelings. 

– Nelson Mandela

We stopped by my brother's house on the way home. It was nice seeing everyone. It's brought up a lot in terms of knowing people, change, and reflection, which was once again poked by the above quote by Nelson Mandela, which was in a newsletter this morning. 

You can't force others into that search, and you can always escape your own, or turn it off. 

What do I know, really? I'm not very good at my life.

It was a long weekend, but it still feels like a Monday. 

Oh brother...

I've made allusions to some drama in my personal life over the last few weeks. I've had a falling out with my brother, which has taken me some time to process.

At first I was in shock at the confrontation, and was very hurt by it.

To preface this exchange, my father (who passed when I was 13) was in federal law enforcement, as is my brother currently.

Click to enlarge.

Then, as it settled in, I became deeply insulted, angry and disappointed.

Immediately after this exchange, I forwarded it to many of my girlfriends, wanting to know their opinions and their reading of the situation. I was overwhelmed. I needed help processing.

At the time I felt like a piece of shit, and they were quick to reinforce my underlying knowledge that I am in fact, not a piece of shit. I am the opposite. I'm pretty kind, and considerate and am trying to do my best.

The intentions my brother assigned to me were hurtful and disrespectful.

Here are some of my friends' reactions - which will allow me to address certain issues.

Calisse, c'est tellement disturbing. I'm sure you are really upset with this. If you want to talk about it, I'm here. It's such a violent interaction.

This little bit includes some French-Canadian swearing. I put this in Blue. It loosely translated to, "Holy shit, this is so disturbing." Her response to me validated my feelings of being attacked, and of his anger and seeming rage were palpable and unwarranted (in my opinion). Even if I was really angry, I would never be so hostile and mean-spirited.

whoa. i am really sorry. this clearly really triggered something for your brother. he obviously does not share the same world view as you about the prison system, and is basing his comments on his own lived experience and probably does not have emotional space (as a protection mechanism from what he experiences at work/has to put up walls to do what he does) to see your perspective.

i wonder if he will ever see your perspective given his own experiences and what he needs to get through his work day. 

he is clearly really upset and in the heat of the moment. it might be best to leave the situation alone for a bit for him to cool down.

I'm sorry that he is bringing your dad into it. that is not cool and he is clearly leveraging that as a way to guilt you into the action he wants. which is super shitty. I'm sorry. 

you are a good person and doing something that you believe in. unfortunately, your family might not believe in it, but that is their shit, not yours. in situation like this with my family i choose to not engage as a form of self preservation. 

i love you lots and am here for you.

I do not negate the fact that I know nothing of my brothers' experience. My main concern, above all else, is how approached me (assuming the worse), his language, and his general tone.

In the case of my above friend, she has a family that's not great. So I know where she comes from with her "not engaging" comment. Most of the initial comments I got were to let it cool off and take some time.

I think in most cases, my friends being really smart and well trained in people and intervention, in empathy and social justice, means we shared similar perspectives. Having said that, I don't know that I'm the participant in this altercation that needed the most help in processing this. Nevertheless, it's my nature.

It took several days and several conversations with friends to help me process it. I also spoke to my mom about it at different times. When it was fresh, and  days later when I had had some time to think about it.

Click to enlarge.

This was the conversation of the night of. Certain friends I spoke to first, knowing their familiarity with me and my family, or specifically of me.

When I re-read these texts, I can see my willingness to work things out in my head. Part of the subsequent conversations with my mother have been about my brother, how he handles stress and confrontation (poorly) and if he's at able to discuss what happened in a way that would be reflective and helpful to him. I don't know that he's able to do that.

We fall into excusing his behavior, "he's bad with his emotions," "he was too aggressive but he was really upset," and having now stepped back, I reject that. He's a grown ass man. He's my brother, and he shouldn't have come at me like that.

The crux of my disappointment is that he also didn't approach me with curiosity or a willingness to understand, he just attacked me. He could have disagreed with me, or even criticize my choices in a more respectful way.

Click to enlarge.

The lowest blow of all is referencing my father, more than once. He couldn't own his own anger so he dug up my dad to project shame and disappointment onto a bigger target. This is clearly his lashing out to hurt me.

I also made a point of saying I thought he was wrong. My father instilled in me a type of humanist philosophy. He challenged me and gave my philosophy books. I remember a conversation with him about the Oka Crisis, once that left me thinking he was sympathetic to the indigenous position and that he felt they had every right to their land and their protest.

My father was capable of nuance. He was able to hold two thoughts at once, and he nurtured and encouraged my pre-disposition to question everything.

My father is dead. He stopped growing and changing in October of 1997. I would like to think that had he lived, he would have been able to keep learning and growing, the way I aim to. If that were the case, his opinions and methods would have been subject to change.

I would like to think the same of my brother - but do not. Not today. He doesn't seem eager to better himself spiritually or intellectually. He doesn't seem to desire challenging himself in any way. He has his life, he has his priorities. And I have mine.

This fight also punctuated thoughts and fears I've had about him but have supressed. Namely his racism and sexism, and the way he speaks to his partner and children.

He no doubt has a lot of opinions about me and how I choose to live my life.

We're very different, and I don't entirely know how to move on from here. For now, it's been space. We haven't communicated.

I don't see my views or my personal moral code changing anytime soon. I still do not think I did anything wrong. I do not think I have anything to apologize for.

The disappointment that I feel in my brother about his assumptions about me and his approach to our discussion also extends to how I feel he's handled the days since.

We're in very different places, and other than my mother, I don't know what links us right now.

He doesn't feel like a brother, he feels like an antagonist.

Two bowls of beans.

It's been a long long-weekend.

I had my nephews for the whole long weekend. Man were they bad. Friday all they did was wrestle / fight / cry / give me attitude. They were so bad I LOCKED THEM OUT OF THE HOUSE - and then the older one shoved the little one through a window to unlock the door! I couldn’t even be mad! 

They're 8 and 6 for crying out loud! They could not stop fighting.

Saturday every child in the neighbourhood was in the yard (my bro has like an acre of wooded land) and there were always, like 4 boys on the trampoline. At one point I looked outside and there were 8 kids, one of which was A FRIGGIN' BABY. Like 2. I had to ask one of the kids, WHOSE FUCKING BABY IS THAT?! And when he said it was a visiting cousin, and I asked where his parents were he seemed totally not worried about it. I, however was worried about it, as my nephews are rowdy as hell and they were having a water-gun fight AROUND A LITTLE (unsupervised) BABY.

We headed back to my place Saturday afternoon - and things got easier there. You have to control the environment. We watched Babe. The older one said, "A movie about a pig? Disgusting." He ended up watching it 3 more times afterwards. Little turd. 

They made their own pizza on Saturday night. Well, the little one did, he made all of our pizzas and then "did the dishes," it was pretty cute. 

Sunday we went for breakfast and they ordered their own plates. I told them to order what they wanted. The little one wanted a waffle and 4 pieces of orange. The older one ordered a bowl of beans, bacon and toast. He ate it all, then asked for a second bowl of beans. Then we shared a small fruit plate with them. The waitress likes us / it’s our local diner so they accommodated us, which was nice. 

I tipped a lot because she was really nice to them. She tried to flirt with the little one and he refused to make eye contact with her he was so shy.

They left Sunday night, after I fed everyone (including their parents). Home made pizza again (kids wanted it again, we didn't fight it), cucumber, beat salad and brownies. It was a success. I passed out Sunday night and woke up Monday in the same position I fell asleep in. 

Yesterday I worked on my patches all friggin' day. I had to cut all the cardboard backing (card stock with the type on it) and bag and tape everything (over 100 items). Then photograph it and put it on etsy - it was a long day. Cutting took forever.

But, I guess it was a productive weekend.

The work-week should be short, which I appreciate. It's Tuesday, the office is mostly empty and there's little work to do. 

I plan on going to bed early tonight, since waking up this morning was hard.

The whole thing was an adventure. The days got preogressively better, as I got sterner with them. I'm not use to dealing with fits and attitude. My approach is to be like, talk about your feelings with me, why are you frustrated?

When really what they need is, if you don't do this right now I'm taking the ipod away for the rest of the weekend. 

My brother was pretty frustrated since he rarely goes away with his girlfriend. He asked the kids if they had fun and they exclaimed yes, with gusto. 

I was pretty surprised, and asked if they were sure since they complained so much, and they smiled and said yes again. Turds. 

I told the truth in my sister’s obituary, so that others might choose to live.

The Washington Post has a great piece up. Entitled I told the truth in my sister’s obituary, so that others might choose to live, the piece is written by a woman whose sister died by suicide due to her struggle with depression. The author, Eleni Pinnow chose to write and speak honestly about the death of her sister in the obituary she wrote for her.

The obituary, brought me to tears. Reading the obituary also moved someone over at the Washington Post, since they decided to contact Pinnow directly.

Read all of it. Read Pinnow's article, then the obituary.

Many feels.

Her call to arms at the end of her piece reinforces by desire to be open and honest about my struggles.

The article then linked me to this, An open letter to the Whole Foods shoppers who consoled me when I learned of my dad’s suicide which also made me cry. It's a testament to kindness and care, and my heart is just exploding right now.

Many, many feels.

Looking back, a little.

I haven't taken the time to write much since the traumatizing amnesia-based hospital visit. It's been updates here and there, and some minor posts, but I've found approaching the subject daunting.

In truth, it's also writing I'm finding difficult. Namely, translating the way my thoughts wander and wonder to narrative that's structured. On any given day I have these flashes of a place I can explore through writing but I'm often unable to take the time-out needed to write it down, or I'm quickly distracted by something else.

Over the holidays I often thought of taking out my laptop and taking the time to write something, but I was just so exhausted. Most of the holiday vacation was spent with family, cooking and partaking in Christmas parties. Then I went home around the 28th and just slept a lot and did my best to re-cooperate from the stress and exhaustion of the amnesia scare which was compacted by then going back to work.

Before I knew it, I was back to work on January 4th. My birthday was yesterday (the 7th), so focus quickly turned to my birthday. And now, in a month's time, I'll be visiting my friend out in Victoria, so my mind is occupied with planning and research. I'm also just looking forward to being away.

Last night I had dinner with my mother and my friend J. She came by the restaurant after work, and we had a drink and some good food. We were able to talk about my mom and catch up. She travels a lot for work, so it can be difficult to see one another. She's also a social butterfly and has a very active social life, so we don't hang out in the same circles anymore. She and I went to high school together. She's still friends with a lot of the guys who trigger some stuff in me that I'm still working on. We stayed friends even though I don't see the other guys.

I'm now 32. I don't really care that much about the number. I did find entering my 30's difficult, because all of a sudden the expectations of maturity and success seem increasingly important. This feeling was well described in an article I recently read in The Atlantic:

Being a Millennial and trying to adult is wildly disorienting. I can't figure out if I'm supposed to start a non-profit, get another degree, develop a wildly profitable entrepreneurial venture, or somehow travel the world and make it look effortless online. Mostly it just looks like taking a job that won't ever pay off my student debt in a field that is not the one that I studied. Then, if I hold myself to the traditional ideal of what it means to be an adult, I'm also not nailing it. I am unmarried, and not settled into a long term, financially stable career. Recognizing that I'm holding myself to an unrealistic standard considering the economic climate and the fact that dating as a Millennial is exhausting, it's unfair to judge myself, but I confess I fall into the trap of comparison often enough. Sometimes because I simply desire those things for myself, and sometimes because Instagram.

On most days I am resolute in knowing the things I don't want so I'm able to stand in my choices. I think the major difficulty for me is the guilt and shame I have of "losing my 20's" - that comes with a kind of mourning. I woke up 30, with little to show for myself in terms of social life, career or romance. My body was a mess. My heart and mind were traumatized, and I had to learn how to manage myself and live in my life. Even though I don't want what some want, and I don't value what some value, it can be difficult to feel zero judgement from self or other.

My birthday has been secondary to the amnesia scare. Seeing my mother disoriented, and initially fearing a stroke or alzheimer's really put me on my ass. My initial fear-reaction was that she was going to die, and that I was now "officially" alone. What if I would have had to be her caregiver? Would I have been able to cope? 

I know this is a normal fear. I feel though, that for me, and for folks who are socially withdrawn or struggling with mental/health issues it's just, more. The well-adjusted people in my life have partners. They have friends. They have plans. They have careers. Savings. I'm not quite there yet. My living at home has kept me in this child-like, dependent space. This experience highlighted my desire to have my own space, so that when my mother passes, my home doesn't fall apart. But, it also got she and I talking about what she wants, and what her fears are. Would she be more comfortable in a duplex with me? Separate but close? We both need to assess what we want, and talk about it.

I feel like 2016 is going to be a big year. There will be a lot of movement. For now I'm still tired and trying to take care of myself as best I can. Being in the emergency room with my mother for nearly 24 hours violently shook the importance of health into me. I'm trying to take things one day at a time, and am really trying to focus on taking care of myself from a kinder, more loving space.

Sabrina Benaim - "Explaining My Depression to My Mother."

"There's something wrong with your mother."

On Thursday of this week I received an Amazon notification about the delivery of one of my christmas gifts. The notice mentioned it was delivered Wednesday. I called my mother to ask if it had arrived, and she said yes, and that she wrapped it and I can't have it until Christmas. I reminded her that people often steal Amazon boxes so that in the future she should confirm with me that we got what we ordered.

Around 2:30 pm I see that I missed a call on my cell phone, from the house (our house) and that my mother had left a message. I took the message and it was my mother's friend Linda. She said to call her at the house, and she was with my mother and something was wrong. I immediately called her, my mother answered and sounded fine, and I asked what was going on, and she said she didn't know. Linda took the phone and she said my mother was repeating herself, confused, and that she thought something was wrong. I left work immediately.

I got home about 45 minutes later. Taking public transport while crying is always a joy. But when you're crying in public the reality that you're crying in public is usually the least of your worries.

My initial reaction was devastation, and the immediate assumption was that she had had a stroke. So, my initial conclusion was that my mother, as I knew her, was gone. I tried to stay calm, to avoid having a panic attack, but it was work. My mind would race to worst-case-scenarios and possible ways things would change. Will she recognize me? Will she be frightened? Is my mother gone? Will I have to sell her house? I don't want this responsibility... All of this while staring out the window of a city bus.

I would be omitting the most primal reaction I had if I didn't mention the initial gasp and sob, while thinking "I don't want to be alone." It's difficult to touch back on now - since it's passed - but I felt like a child. I felt helpless and afraid and could barely think.

I got home and Linda explained to me that my mother didn't remember plans they had made for lunch, and then when Linda called her to make new plans, she forgot those as well. When they spoke on the phone, Linda said something was wrong and came over. That's when she called me. When I walked in, I was distraught and trying my best not to cry.

I told her I was going to take her to the hospital, she seemed slightly worried, and almost childlike, but she recognized me and trusted me. She went upstairs to get a sweater, I got her purse, and as we left the house she noticed a sold sign and asked which of our neighbours had sold their house, and where he was moving. It was my first experience with seeing her amnesia / memory loss. Our neighbour had sold months ago and was moving in with his girlfriend. She knew this, and it has been months in the making, so this pointed me to thinking she had lost months of short-term memory.

The drive was traumatizing. It was around 4 pm, traffic hour and I just wanted to get to a hospital as fast as I could.  The nearly 30-minute drive was spend answering my mother's questions on loop:

"Where are we going?"
"The hospital."
"Who called you?"
"Linda."
"Linda called you? How did she get your number?"
"You gave have it to her, she called from the house."
"Linda was at the house?"
"Yes."
"How did she know to call you?"
"You guys had lunch plans you didn't go to."
"We did?"
"Yes."
"And I didn't show up?" "No, and she called you, and you forgot a second time."
"I did?" "Yes, so she came over."
"I don't remember any of that." "I know, that's why we're going to the hospital."
"I must have scared the shit out of Linda."
"Well, she was worried."
"Oh okay, good for her then."
"We just want to make sure everything is okay."
"The last thing you need is a loopy mother."
"You're not loopy - you're fine, you just don't remember."

I was just focused on answering her questions, that seemed to be on a minute-or-so loop. I was trying not to sob, and trying to be as present as possible since I was also driving.We got into a patterned dialogue, where my answers soothed her and being able to comfort my mother helped me calm down.

Once we got to the hospital, I parked, and we waked into the emergency room. Triage asked a list of questions directly to my mother, she was unable to name the month or year, she said November, and "the 1990's." She wasn't able to tell us what she had done that day, or the night before (dinner with friends) or earlier in that week (she was at my brother's house, babysitting). Triage gave us a priority 3, on 5. Once passed through triage, I texted my brother.

He showed up about an hour later. Things changed a little when he got there. He doesn't like hospitals. He spent the first month of my nephew Nathan's life in the hospital due to some type of intestinal necrosis. And he was with my mother in the hospital when my father died - so he had trouble being in the E.R and would often go outside or go take a walk. 

My mom was often distracted by her worry for him. She often said, "poor Nick" and would fidget around. 

I also felt a weird type of comfort by just answering her questions. She was nervous and when I answered her questions, it reassured her. We got into an almost song-like loop. Repetition. She'd loop around every minute or so, and start asking the same questions. Concerned E.R. neighbours would give me knowing looks, and my brother would often get irritated and leave. I think he found it difficult.

After answering the same questions a few times, I came to know which answers reassured her the most, and so I stuck to those ones. 

We eventually made it to a doctor, who was surprisingly an anglophone, and who ordered a scan and an x-ray, and who did some blood and urine tests. 

We got to the E.R around 4 or 4:30, and my brother showed up around 6. Progressively, around 8 or 9 she started remembering bits and pieces she didn't remember earlier in the night. It was encouraging, and it dulled some of the panic my brother and I were feeling.

We saw the attending doctor around 11:30 pm, and he said all of her tests looked good, and that it seemed, to him, like Transient Global Amnesia, and that we'd need to confirm with the neurologist the following morning. He said to go home, and get some sleep, and that, in all likelihood my mother would wake up with additional memories the next morning. 

We got home around 12:30 am and my brother and I were totally bushed. My brother looked like a zombie and I had lost my voice from talking on loop / repeating all the answers to the questions my mother had been asking. 

We kept asking her to go to bed, and she kept saying, "I want to watch TV!" and then "Holy shit it's 12:30!" so after a few rounds of that she made her way to bed. My brother said his head hit the pillow and he passed out. I did the same. 

The following morning I could hear pitter-patter feet and came upstairs (I'm a basement dweller) to my brother sitting in the living room. He said he woke up my mom and she remembered his being here. She made her way downstairs and we all sat around and asked her questions to see what she remembered. She remembered being in the hospital, and had fuzzy bits, with a large whole of about 6 to 8 hours. BUT, she did remember the hospital, and driving home, and did have bits of memory she did not have the previous day. It was an encouraging start to the day. She said she only fell asleep around 4 am, and was significantly more nervous, now that she was fully aware of her memory loss and of her need for medical care. 

We made our way to the hospital for a 9 am appointment with the neurologist. We were called in around 11 and met with a junior resident (maybe?), I'm not sure what his medical standing was, but he wasn't the guy. He was the student guy. He did a slew of visual tests, muscle tests, tested her reflexes and her ability to snap her fingers and stuff like that. He told us he'd call us in 30 minutes with the other doctor to go over their assessment, so we made our way to the cafeteria to eat a grilled cheese (my mother couldn't tell us what she'd eaten or drank for the last 24 hours so we wanted to make sure she ate something) and my brother and I weren't eating due to nerves. 

We went back up to the E.R and waited for 2 hours. So I made my way to the nurse's station and said the doctor said it would be 30 minutes. The nurses thought this was funny/infuriating and asked what ass of a doctor said that (I added the ass part, but it was implied). Turns out the doctor called us in the 20 minutes we were in the cafeteria. 

My brother, mother and I met with the junior doctor and the head of neurology and the doctor did his own little testing and poking and then asked us our accounts of the last 24 hours. We then talked about Transient Global Amnesia as a group - and my brother said that nearly everything mentioned in the Wikipedia article is spot-on to my mother's experience.

Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a neurological disorder whose key defining characteristic is a temporary but almost total disruption of short-term memory with a range of problems accessing older memories. A person in a state of TGA exhibits no other signs of impaired cognitive functioning but recalls only the last few moments of consciousness, as well as deeply encoded facts of the individual’s past, such as his or her own name. 

A person having an attack of TGA has almost no capacity to establish new memories, but generally appears otherwise mentally alert and lucid, possessing full knowledge of self-identity and identity of close family, and maintaining intact perceptual skills and a wide repertoire of complex learned behaviour. The individual simply cannot recall anything that happened outside the last few minutes, while memory for more temporally distant events may or may not be largely intact. The degree of amnesia is profound, and, in the interval during which the individual is aware of his or her condition, is often accompanied by anxiety. 

This onset of TGA is generally fairly rapid, and its duration varies but generally lasts between 2 to 8 hours. A person experiencing TGA typically has memory only of the past few minutes or less, and cannot retain new information beyond that period of time. One of its bizarre features is perseveration, in which the victim of an attack faithfully and methodically repeats statements or questions, complete with profoundly identical intonation and gestures "as if a fragment of a sound track is being repeatedly rerun."

The prognosis of "pure" TGA is very good. It does not affect mortality or morbidity and unlike earlier understanding of the condition, TGA is not a risk factor for stroke or ischemic disease. Rates of recurrence are variously reported, with one systematic calculation suggesting the rate is under 6% per year. TGA “is universally felt to be a benign condition which requires no further treatment other than reassurance to the patient and his or her family.” 

The doctor said that in most cases, the biggest "issue" is accepting that it's a freak, temporary condition, and that we can just go on "living our lives." We headed home, around 2:30 pm on Friday. It has been roughly 24 hours of total upset. 

My brother stayed with my mom while I did some groceries, and then he had to go back to his family since my nephews and sister-in-law were freaking out themselves. I stayed with my mom, and we were both exhausted and in shock. I made my mother a big dinner, and we ate and showered and went to bed. We both slept for 10-11 hours.

Saturday when I woke up I made my way to her room and crawled into her bed. I hugged her and took a selfie of us, with her hiding her face under her sheet, and me looking like a toddler who'd aged a million years. I sent the photo to my brother, who facetimed us with the grand-kids. We stayed in bed for a while. 

Once we got up, we went for breakfast and ran some errands, she asked me a few questions here and there, trying to fill in certain blanks, bit she was 90% normal. I had a dinner party with some of my best friends that night, so the plan was I'd go and update everyone, all at once. My mom and I were both still exhausted, so we took it easy and watched a movie. My dinner was only at 5pm, so we were able to rest most of the day. 

At one point when we were in her room, laying in her bed, I just kept saying how exhausted I was, but how weird I felt. I felt traumatized and unsure. It just doesn't make any sense to me, that she's back to normal. It was a 6-8 hour period where she didn't know the year, or what was going on, and it just scared the shit out of us, and now everything is fine. It just doesn't compute.

As mentioned in the Wikipedia article:

"The most important part of management after diagnosis is looking after the psychological needs of the patient and his or her relatives. Seeing a once competent and healthy partner, sibling or parent become incapable of remembering what was said only a minute ago is very distressing, and hence it is often the relatives who will require reassurance."

Yes.  

It's an absurd, fake-sounding happening. In the long trek back home (via public transit) I just felt like my life, as I knew it, was over, and that everything was about to get awful. 

The car ride was me internally catatonic, outwardly sobbing and answering questions, and just void of myself. I was doing the best to reassure my mother, and I was just doing my best to keep breathing. To keep my head straight. To try and make the right decisions in something that would no doubt come to define me life, and the life of mother and family. 

It's now Sunday. I'm exhausted. I spent most of the day sleeping and lazing around. At one point my

mother and I watched YouTube videos of baby orangutans for about 45 minutes. I fell sleep in her bed, and she came downstairs to watch television and eat the leftovers I brought her from the dinner party.

There were many moments of absurd levity throughout the 24 hour period. But those came when we were out of the woods. My mother often said "The last thing you need is a loopy Nan," and "If I'm a loopy Nan, I hope I'm a nice one and not a mean one." 

My father's mother has Alzheimer's, and lived with us when I was a child. My memories of her are sweet. I would go down into her room in my nightgown and sit on her in the rocking chair and she'd rock me. My mom tells me she'd steal my halloween candy and I'd get pissed. My brother remembers the darker, more traumatic side of Alzheimer's, as does my mother, so both of them had strong fears in that regard. My brother at one point said if it was Alzheimer's, to "shoot him in the head." 

At one point I jabbed that she was doing this "so I wouldn't move out," and she laughed. And a little bit later she made that joke back to me. Her recycling of my joke was one of the first examples of her remembering little bits and pieces. 

When we went for breakfast yesterday I said I still had Christmas gifts to get, and she asked for whom. 

"For you, mainly. And little things for my friends."
"Oh, you don't have to get me anything."
"For crying-out-loud Karen, you were just hospitalized. You think this is a good time to be cheap?"
"Well you don't have to."
"Well you like when I take you out on day-trips. So the E.R. counts then."

We laughed at that. She and I were able to laugh more so than my brother was. He'd get upset. 

Now it's 9:13 pm Sunday. It took two days to write this since I'm just so tired. I need to shower and get to bed so I can get through this week at work. 

I feel uneasy. I feel unsettled. I feel hazy. It feels too fucking lucky that my mom is fine. It feels like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop - a weird fucking expression to use to describe how I feel this is too good a resolution for something I thought would leave me alone and devastated. 

I am grateful for the luck of it. I'm still in shock. I'm just confused by it. I feel like an orangutan 

who just watched a magic trick. I keep trying to make sense of it, but there is no sense to be made. No matter the illusion I'm still just a fucking ape trying to get the basics. 

This whole experience has thrown me. 

I've been thinking about my own health. Nothing stokes that more than visiting an Emergency Room. 

I've been thinking about the power of kindness. I was in such an empathetic space with my mother I was as kind and as helpful as I could be with the people in the hospital, and I felt it just changed the entire experience for my family and I. The energy changed. The people changed. 

I will try and be as healthy as I can, and as kind as I can, and then, it's fucking luck. 

Yes, it's fucking luck. But kindness matters. It matters in the in between. 

I'm totally disoriented, but I know kindness helps. 

And I know I'm very, very lucky.

The piercing eyes of children.

My nephew is staying with us for a couple of days. Teacher’s are on strike, part of a unified front on the part of social service workers. My nephew is the oldest of two nephews, my brother's kids. He’s in the second grade now. His little brother is in kindergarten, and he's with the other grandparents. My brother often separates them for long-stay babysitting since together they're a cloud of kicks and farts. 

Last night my nephew read to me a little, which was really sweet. He also asked me 101 questions at one point while I was watching a video. The film, Instababy, is about two young women who want to have a baby, and are able to negotiate adoption through Instagram. While watching it, my nephew asked if the video I was watching was "making me sad," I said it wasn't, but that the people in the video were trying to have a baby and sometimes when people can't have a baby, it can be really sad. He asked why they couldn't, and I explained that they weren't able to make one together since they were two girls. He asked why two girls couldn't make a baby, and I tried to explain but I told him it’s a little complicated and gave up. He got distracted and moved on for a minute or two, and then asked me if I was sad that I didn't have a baby, and that I wasn't married, and that I lived with my mother.

He asked it pretty nonchalantly, and I was a little floored by how quickly and easily he asked such loaded questions. I told him I didn't want to get married, and that I was living “at home” so I could save up some money to buy my own place. I told him I didn't want a baby, but I wanted a dog. He said his dog Jack is as good as mine, and I said it wasn't since I don’t see him often. This answer annoyed him.

He then quickly asked why anybody would want a baby, “they’re messy and cry and smell.” I told him he was a baby once, and that he should ask his parents what made them want babies, and that maybe that would help him understand. He then went on to tell me about a boy in his class who has no siblings, and how boring that sounded. I told him to be grateful for his little brother, and he told me to be grateful for mine.

"You're lucky, your brother is only two years younger than you. My brother is eight years older than me. When I was your age he was already in high school, so he was too old to play with me."

"What? Why didn't he play with you?"

"Because he was so much older than me."

"But why wouldn't he play with you?"

"Because I was a kid, and he was a teenager."

"But why?"

"Well we never went to the same schools. He was in high school."

"Am I in high school?"

"No, you're in grade school. There's grade school, until grade 6, then high school, then other types of school depending on what you'd like to learn."

"I like art and gym."

"Well, when you're older you can choose to learn all about art. I did a lot of school. I went for a very long time. I went to a school where you do art on computers."

"WHAT!? That's crazy."

"Yah, it's fun but I don't make any money."

"Money?"

Our conversation went on like that for a little while. Getting him to bed was a real hoot. We read through some of my National Geographic books and then he insisted he take a shower, and when I laughed at his entrenched need to delay going to bed, he got annoyed and yelled: "I played outside today! I'm very dirty!"

I'm on my way back home now, he's with us until Saturday. 

Oh, Mother.

This past weekend I drove out to the Eastern Townships with my mother. We often drive out to see my brother and his family. We get to see the kids and get some fresh air, and then get the fuck out of there when we've had enough. I’d been dog-sitting for him for the last three weeks or so while they were on holiday down in South Carolina. I’d gotten into the habit of furry cuddles and dog-park visits, so it’s not without a twinge of sadness that I returned their dog to them.

The weekend was nice. We arrived Saturday while the family was out visiting friends, so we were able to enjoy the calm before the storm. I napped. We sat outside. We went for dinner at a nearby place my brother recommended. During dinner, my mother commented on how my new medication seems to be making a significant difference in my mood. We talked about my mental health, and my understanding of my struggles, and how things are going now. While we began making our way back to my brother’s house, I asked about whether or not she knew if either of my grandparents had any issues with mental illness.

I was driving (I'm always the one driving) and sitting comfortably. It was the end of a nice evening, and the conversation seemed to be flowing well. “Well,” she said plainly, “there was the nervous breakdown I had when I was 14.”

And just like that, the world shifted into something else.

This is new information to me. I asked my mother about her experience, and she explained that after her father died when she was 13, her mother decided to move them out to British-Columbia to be closer to the family she had out there. It didn't go well for my mother. Already distraught over the sudden loss of her father, her vulnerability was exacerbated by her being away from the friends and comforts she had left. According to my mom, she suffered from anxiety attacks and hallucinations.

When I asked if this is something that continued on throughout her adulthood, she said it was. The anxiety and panic didn't last, but her visions and loose hallucinations occurred occasionally.

This is where things get, muddy. My mom represents these things through a spiritual lens. She said she’s highly sensitive, and she’s always viewed these visions or hallucinations as being the product of a thin veil between her and something else. Another universe? Another plane? Whatever separates the living from the dead? She's vague on that point.

She does not identify these as hallucinations. When I asked her if she’d experienced any of this recently, she said yes. In the past few years she’s had experiences, mainly at night, where she feels someone sitting on her bed, or moving her sheets. She said that through conversations with her best friend (who recently died) she was able to make sense of all of this over the years. Again, through a spiritual reading of the happenings, they would discuss possible symbolism or meaning behind what was happening. She felt these things were not negative, or threatening.

I mentioned my readings on what it is to be a highly sensitive person, and how studies have found that sometimes night-terrors or waking-dreams can be associated with all sorts of pseudo-psychological phenomena. They’re the most likely explanation for alien abduction experiences and other night-time, sleep-based “unexplainable” events.

My mom seemed to stick to the metaphysical.

As we got close to my brother’s house, I asked her why she never thought to mention all of this to me. Her having a nervous breakdown as a teenager is important information for me, since I've been living in a state of mental health crisis for years. Now, granted, I feel the crisis since I live it constantly, and she might not perceive the level of pain I've been in, but this is relevant information to someone like me.

“I never thought about it,” she said innocently. “It’s not something I think about anymore.”

Within that 15 minute car-ride I talked at length about some of my symptoms and experiences, she seemed to relate to my descriptions of feeling dissociated or uprooted.

As I pulled the car into the driveway she began telling me about her more recent experiences with visions, but the kids jumped out of the house. Ready for bed, they were looking for pre-bed hugs. I asked that we continue the conversation during our one-hour drive home.

The weekend passed, as they usually do. My brother’s house is a cacophony of ipad sound effects, French television and snarky comments. In between all of that, there are laughs and moments of sweetness.

Eager to avoid Labour Day traffic and escape the irritability of the children, Monday morning we headed home. As soon as we hit the highway I returned our conversation to my mother’s experiences.

She described her anxiety attacks as fits of crying. She would cry until she slept, like a voiding of stress until the respite of sleep came about. She would see people, hear conversations, like a viewer. She’d be passive, an observer. She was medicated for a short time. She moved back to Quebec with her mother. Her visions become increasingly rare, and were attributed to the metaphysical by she and her friends.

This has been an odd divulgence. It doesn't seem to have been a secret, just an omission that’s nonsensical to me considering the last decade of my life.

I asked my mother why she didn't think to tell me this while I was having panic attacks, in front of her. She said it just never really occurred to her to make that link, and that instead, she rubbed my back to sooth me, knowing that it had helped her once, like a loose memory of another life.

I'm a little stunned by it all. By the story, and by the omission.

As my mother told the story of her experience, I couldn't help but think poor little bird. My mom was a little child, and she was lonely. She gravitated towards the family of her best friend, who came from a family of seven children, and later to my father, who came from a family of six kids. Her brother left home at 17, when she was 9. Her mother, she describes as a woman who “didn't want to be a mother.” And though she speaks fondly of my Nana, there is a missing tenderness there, maybe a little bit of longing in my mother’s voice. I can’t help but see her, small, with tiny wrists and knobby knees, a little bird of a girl.

All of this also reminded me of how little we ever know about the experiences of others. Even those we came out of. I am close with my mother. I live with her. I've lived with her for 31 years. Granted, roughly a decade of the time I was barely sentient, but she and I are not strangers. We've grown closer as I've gotten a hold of myself, and as I wake up, I'm reminded of the importance of learning who she is. Yes, she’s been my mother for 31 years, but she was something else for the 32 years before that. Next year, in 2016, I’ll be the age she was when she had me. Haven’t I been dragged through the coals? Don’t I have stories to tell? If I had children wouldn't I spare them the stories of my trauma? Wouldn't I focus my energy on their new life, and the innocence and positivity that comes with their ignorance?

I don't want children. I never have. So I can also relate to my mother saying that my grandmother seemed to not want to be a mother. And that intrinsic, deep-rooted loneliness that my mother has in her, is something my grandmother gave her. I've never felt that from my mother, I've felt nothing but love and never doubted how much she wanted me and my brother. She tried to get pregnant with me for four years, and I always felt I had all of her attention, support and pride, warranted or not. Unconditional, as the mouths of mothers often state.

It often pains me that I never got to have a conversation with my father as an adult. The memories I have of him are those of a child. My brother was 21 when he died. I was 13. The feelings I have when I think of him are those of a paternal energy, of being protected, of supreme trust for him. The feeling of being asleep in the back-seat while he drives through deep wilderness. I'm always safe. My dad is here. I would like to ask him so much. To really learn about him. To challenge him. To learn from him. He likes playing chess with me. Once I beat him and he got a real kick out of that. Would he be as delighted by my challenging his bias, his fears, his prejudice? Would I continued to have been a daddy's girl? I didn't feel the need to rebel as a teenager, would that have changed had I someone to rebel against?

And what of my grandparents? My Nana was born in 1919. She lived through the second world war, for fucks sake. She lived through desegregation and the women’s movement. What would she think of the world now? How would she no-doubt offend me? How would I offend her?

I'm still letting everything I learned about my mother sink-in, but I wanted to record it here. First, because of it’s importance in relation to my mental health, but maybe more importantly because of the importance of story, and of shared history. I want this to be recorded.

Sometimes important things happen, and eventually they seem so far away. I have so little memory left of my father. What I have of my grandparents is small, and faded. I am lucky for having my mother, and I want to do her, and her stories justice. I want to remember her, and record what I know, and what I feel here, so that one day, when I'm without her, I’ll have tokens to call on.

My mother wasn't always my mother, but she will always be my mother.