We offered to Olivia a supper of takeout-inspired-by-Catherine last night.

Being a completist, Olivia decided that this meant that we needed to get entrees and desserts from both The Old Triangle and from John Brown Grille, two of Catherine’s favourite haunts.

As a result this, after a meal of sweet potato fries with curry sauce, haddock tacos, shepherd’s pie, and bruschetta, we finished off with sticky date pudding (John Brown) and bread pudding (The Old Triangle), both of which came with their own butterscotch syrup add-on. 

It was a heady night.

Despite—or, actually, because of—it being an emotionally charged day yesterday it was an important night to go to improv class. Lisa, bless her heart, cleared the way for me, and managed the household energy while I escaped.

It was a good night at the improvatorium, with a mixture of new people and veterans, and we had fun making scenes, doing a rant, and conducting character interviews.

As the night drew to a close, and my character interview was the last of them, I realized I had an extra dose of emotional sludge to unburden, and so I channeled it into embodying Jerry Coltane, 18 year old rock star.

At some point in the middle I left my body and I became Jerry.

It was exactly what I needed.

Catherine died three years ago today.

The next day, I wrote this email to a good friend, subject line How Catherine Died:

Oliver¹ spent yesterday in the Palliative Care Centre; they kindly set aside the family room for him, put a do not disturb sign on the door, and secured a DVD player. During movie intermissions he would come and visit with Catherine. 

By this point Catherine had been asleep and unresponsive for almost 48 hours. In the middle of the afternoon I was laying down in the recliner beside her; it was quiet, and I didn’t expect anyone to stop in for a while, so I leaned over and told her that we were going to be okay, and that it was okay for her to die. 

It felt strange doing this, both because it feels strange telling someone it’s okay to die, and because it’s strange talking to someone who’s asleep. 

But I felt I had to say it, out loud, so she knew.

Around 5:00 p.m. Oliver got ready to go home for supper with my mother and my brother Mike; he came to see Catherine and gave her a big hug.

After seeing them off, I came back into Catherine’s room, and one of the volunteers brought in supper for me. I picked up my tray, then I heard a subtle change in Catherine’s breathing and put my tray down. Something had changed. I wasn’t sure what. But she was breathing a new rhythm.

I settled down, took my dinner tray, and ended up eating only the dessert, a strange kind of cold pear crisp.

Around 7:30 p.m., the nurses came in to freshen Catherine up, as they did every night she was in palliative care. I waited in the kitchen next door. 

While I was waiting I had a chat with a volunteer, someone I’d met a few nights earlier. She was finishing up her shift, and told me she hoped my mother would be okay. I didn’t correct her. On either front.

I got settled in the reclining chair beside Catherine’s bed, and felt restless. I alternated between trying to have a nap, and reading a book. The book was one given to me by a friend last week about a Hollywood actor who died from lung cancer; it was written by her husband, and made up mostly of the email newsletter he sent out to friends and family every night. 

After 9:00 p.m. I was well past the place in the book where the protagonist died and was several months into the husband’s grieving.

At 9:15 p.m. I looked over at Catherine and her eyes, the the first time since Tuesday, seemed to be open. 

“KD?”, I asked.

She made a sort of cough or a sneeze, grimaced, scrunched her nose, and seemed to stop breathing. But she’d seemed to stop breathing a hundred times over two days and so… 

Then she did breathe a couple of breaths.

And then repeated the cough/sneeze. I think at this point I half expected her to wake up and say “surprise!” 

But she didn’t: after a few more breaths, she stopped. 

And everything was still.

Until I re-read that email, just now, I’d forgotten that I’d told Catherine that it was okay to die.

It’s uncomfortable writing that out loud here.

It remains in the mystical realm whether Catherine heard me, and whether my words had any effect; it was something, I suspect, that I had to say out loud for my own benefit more than for hers.

But, also, we knew she was going to die, if not that day or that night, within the next few, and releasing her from any obligation to hold on seemed important.

We are so collectively terrified of death that it’s something we seldom talk about, and that itself is part of what amplifies the terror. For six years, since she was given an incurable diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, I knew that Catherine was going to die. But I had no idea how or what that would be like, and the world around me seemed aligned in a desire to keep my eye off that ball.

And that’s why I’m repeating here those words I wrote three years ago: I want to help, if not “normalize” death, at least make it more possible, more permissible, to talk about, to write about, to anticipate death without abject terror.

The grief that followed Catherine’s death, three years worth of it, has been the roller-coasterest part of my life to date. I’ve felt my lowest lows, and my highest highs. I’ve had times when I have woken up, for weeks on end, in a cold sweat at 3:30 a.m. and not been able to get back to sleep. I’ve felt the freedom of being able to consider the future again. I’ve imagined being coldly fearfully alone, forever. I’ve tried my best to help Olivia process the loss of her mother. And I’ve found great new love. A way forward. Happiness.

What I’ve arrived at, three years in, is that grief is only on the surface about the things it appears to be about: deeper below is a complicated web of trauma connected to the bottom falling out of everything, maintaining daily life in the face of certain death (at some random point), the exhaustion of trying to buoy everyone else’s spirits, the (unspoken) frustration of not being able to plan anything, of having the future capped. Grief fucked me up, and for many, many more reasons than “I’m really sad that Catherine’s gone.”

And so, more recently, it’s been this that I’ve been quietly confronting, walking through, accepting.

For all of you who knew and loved Catherine, I am thinking of you today, in solidarity, and with the hope that you’re finding your own ways through the forest.

1. Oliver (he/him) now identifies as Olivia (she/her).

From Anna Havron’s Analog Office blog, a suggestion to keep a canonical Where Is It? file, a pointer to where all the things are kept.

I spend 3% of my energy worrying about where the safe deposit box key is (and another 0.5% wondering why I still have a safe deposit box). I worry about where the passports are. And Olivia’s birth certificate. And the spare key to the Kia Soul. So I’ve done as suggested and created a shared Notes folder into which I’m pouring notes about all those things the location of which is not immediately obvious.

I found a vestigial electric outlet inside a cupboard in our library, and thus was born the data closet.

It houses an AmpliFI wireless access point, the Raspberry Pi that feeds our water and electricity consumption data to consuming.ca, and the PoE connection to the Nanobeam in the works that feeds the Internet into the house from across the street.

Brandon writes:

I didn’t realize that we all must make a conscious choice to invest in things or not to. In my mind, once you liked something, you liked it for life. There was no such thing as growing out of something or something serving a purpose. Each hobby or interest was part of your DNA, and you must find time for it.

That’s a freeing revelation. I stopped horseback riding mid-summer, choosing to prioritize summer relaxation; ever since, I’ve had a nagging feeling that I failed at riding a result. But I rode when riding was what I needed, and I’ve simply moved on to other pursuits.

The fog horn blared as we woke up on New Years Day. Outside it was rainy, unseasonably warm. Not ideal leveeing weather, but certainly better than those years when it was minus 20 degrees with snow banks.

We started later than usual, with less breathless rushing. Olivia and I drove to City Hall, attempting to pull off a rare “City Hall first, then Government House,” doing them out of the traditional order. It was not meant to be: lacking umbrellas we were reluctant to join the line at City Hall, so we redirected to Fanningbank and found it pleasantly free of outdoor lines, walking right in and joining a small collection of those waiting to greet Her Honour Antoinette Perry; she is a delightful and engaged vice-regal, and it was the right way to start the day. The apple cider and the Christmas cake that followed were welcome, and we enjoyed them on the less-COVIDy front porch of the house.

From there it was to City Hall, still long-lined, but we’d gathered umbrellas from the Other House en route, and so were better prepared. It was a long 30 minute wait to get from the street up to the third floor council chamber. We passed the time eavesdropping, and doing some last-minute schedule-updating on my phone. Once we’d snaked our way up, we were greeted by the Chief of Police, fire department senior officials, and then by Mayor Brown and councillors. Standing in the hallway outside the council chamber in anticipation, I realized an important thing about the Mayor, something he shares with Councillor Jankov who stood beside him: they truly enjoy being on City Council; they’re almost always smiling. It’s not a bad characteristic to have as a city official. Through the receiving line and into the antechamber, I was happy to find that John Pritchard was doing the catering: there was a healthy spread out, and excellent coffee.

From City Hall we swung round to pick up Lisa and L., and headed to HMCS Queen Charlotte, on the waterfront. We enjoyed excellent chowder, the special feeling that comes from being inside a rarely-visited inner sanctum, and, especially, spotting the game Siege in the Reserve’s collection: it was good to know that naval training involves old school board game action.

Stratford was our next stop, a rare one on my usual levee train, but a special one inasmuch as Lisa’s sister Jill is a newly-elected Councillor in the town. After stopping for photos with Jill, we enjoyed a light lunch in the council chambers, including samosas, an excellent punch, and a healthy collection of sweets. The Stratford levee was arguably the most social of them all, with plenty of friends and familiars in attendance, including my annual levee happenstance meetup with Leo Cheverie.

We returned home for a repos next, and then, thinned out by one, headed to the Premier’s Levee at the Confederation Centre of the Arts. Despite our earlier 2:30 p.m. arrival for a 3:00 p.m. start, the line had already grown to the length of the concourse, with the danger of spilling out onto the street. Fortunately estimable protocol chief Debbie Atkinson was on the job, and barriers quickly assembled to ensnaken the line so all could wait inside.

At 3:00 p.m. the line started moving ahead, and it wasn’t more than 15 minutes until we were shaking hands with the Premier and members of his caucus. The Premier was amiable in his reaction to Olivia’s request (née demand) to have photos taken in all possible configurations (her alone, her with Lisa and I, Lisa alone, me alone). Amiability is one of the Premier’s strong suits, and it was nice to see it live.

The Premier’s levee has traditionally been the most well-endowed with lavish food (one recalls the “make your own mashed potato sundae” at Premier Ghiz’s 2014 levee); this year, however, was clearly an austerity year, with a simpler spread of cookies and squares. They were good cookies and squares, don’t get me wrong. And the coffee was hot and strong. The highlight of the Premier’s levee was getting to chat with Chuckie, personable owner of Chuckie’s Sports Excellence, and a genuinely curious and engaging student of many disciplines, including Charlottetown retail history. 

By 4:00 p.m. we were walking back home along Richmond Street in a now-worse-than-ever mix of rain, sleet, and snow, happy to be able to lock the door, make a fire, and savour the new year in a quieter setting.

Beyond the neighbourly collegiality that the levees always bring, and the pleasure of attending with Lisa, L. and Olivia, my favourite aspect of this year’s levee day was the many positive comments I received about the levee list. One of my goals when I set out to bring slightly more order to the levee calendar 18 years ago was to work to broaden the swath of Charlottetown society who considered themselves eligible for levee attendance, and the evidence suggests that it’s an effort that continues to pay off.

Happy New Year!

This is the 2023 levee schedule for New Year’s Day, January 1, 2023 for Charlottetown and Prince Edward Island.

Show levees that are ages 19+ Show only Charlottetown-area levees

The levee schedule is covered under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike License.

Wouter writes a loving elegy to generalism, terrain I’ve been foraging through my entire life.

My stock self-description is “Writer • Printer • Developer,” a variation of what Wouter references as the “Slasher” (although, by using a dot instead of slashes or commas, I attempt to avoid a ranking).

I’ve earned my living for the last 40 years as a coder, but my zone of genius is not in the writing of code, but in lateral thinking. I love making connections, transferring knowledge learned in one domain to another, introducing people who would never otherwise meet. Perhaps the best description of what I do for a living (and what I do for living too), is I ask questions.

I am, in other words, very much a generalist.

Studying improv, as I’ve related here before, has been a tremendous boon to my life: it’s evolved me in a whole host of ways, and I’m the much better for sucking up my courage and walking up those stairs at the Haviland Club in the fall of 2021 and diving in.

Laurie Murphy’s improv classes are back for a new season starting Monday, January 2, 2023 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Benevolent Irish Society.

I encourage you to try it out, even if—especially if—you turn white at the thought of getting outside of yourself to the degree that improv requires. Laurie is a patient teacher with a great capacity for stretching people. The saving grace of improv, and what makes it possible—indeed, optimal—for introverts is that we’re all in it together: being silly together is nothing at all like being silly alone (or being silly in front of a group, by yourself), and there’s a tremendous feeling of safety that comes from the shared vulnerability of it all.

Classes are $35 each or 5 classes for $150. If you have any questions or concerns, you can ask Laurie.