Today I miss Emily so much I can hardly breathe. My loneliness has been cumulatively adding up over the past many days, and I’ve been doing the worst thing one can do with grief: pushing it down. Much of the time, I surf with it, and Emily comes along on the waves with me, and while bumpy at times, we are together and flowing. I’ve been gifted in finding a way to communicate with my sweetheart that allows me to move forward with a strange, new kind of gratitude that is hard to explain. But that’s for another day because in this moment, I just feel her loss like a piercing and painful cancer, that has spread through all of me, into my bones. 

 

I know how to find relief – talking to her, walking with her, gardening with her – but I feel defiant at this moment. Angry, even. I don’t want to practice my rituals that bring me peace; I don’t want anybody’s pity or sympathy; I don’t want to hear about anybody else’s pain. I just want to submerge in my own.

 

Last week we went to Yellowpoint Lodge, a few hours away from us on Vancouver Island, for three nights. Our friends, Steph and Aman, have been going for years, and once you ‘get a place at the table’ you become part of this community that returns year after year to this stunningly beautiful 147 acres on the sea with cabins, a lodge, bunkies on the beach, rife with nature and companionship. Many folks have been coming for forty or fifty years so we were the virgins of our stay. I loved so many things about our “adult camp” experience, especially spending time with our dear friends, and making a few special new ones. 

 

The most challenging aspect, and one I was not prepared for, was the three meals a day at set times with most tables seating eight people. The folks who have been coming for years have already found their people, and we quickly found ours also, in addition to Steph and Aman. There was Mai and Iain, Neva, Loretta, and George and Eileen. Once it became evident to me that I needed “flanking” and we could save spaces for one another – feel like the high school lunch room much? – I was much more at ease, but it took some time.

 

Small talk abounds at the beginning of each meal, something I am good at as a rule, but don’t love. Because we were strangers to the club, the inevitable, “Where do you live? What brought you there? What’s your story?” chit chat would come up. I don’t know why we hadn’t thought this through, but neither Don nor I were prepared for this level of innocent scrutiny. I felt my heart clenching as I would meet people, speak for a few moments, and find myself off kilter, not knowing how much to share, if anything. Usually I sense who I can share with, but my emotions were unruly and my sixth sense was not kicking in.

 

Our first evening, Don and I came up with a story which we quickly realized we could not maintain: that we had been working with the foreign services in Asia (What does that even mean?) therefore our experiences were not divulgable. The only problem with this was that we actually wanted to make some friends and being clandestine about our experiences to some and not others would make us inauthentic, not something we wanted to be. A few weeks ago, I had bought some gardening equipment from a man off of FB Marketplace. When he saw my Wisconsin license plate, he asked me my story. I began the all-too-familiar, “We’ve been living in China for the past 30 years” and the inevitable, “Oh, were you teaching English?” came up. My ego finds this so diminishing. No, I was not a 20 year old who wandered over with a backpack and just hoofed around Asia teaching English for my entire adult life, though, yes, technically I am an English teacher. And suddenly I had the answer for this man I knew I would never see again. It was, “I’m not at liberty to say.” Adrenaline shot through me as his interest piqued. “Where did you live?” I listed off the countries we had lived in, ending with Korea. “North Korea?” he asked. Again I replied, “Oh, I can’t tell you that.” This ruse was so invigorating for me, such a fun confabulation that really hurt no one and none of the information was untrue, just nothing was divulged; I thought it might just work at Yellowpoint, but these were good folks with whom we’d be spending the next several days and I am open to friendship and the serendipity of meeting the right people to weave into my life, so being a secret agent throughout the week quickly revealed itself to be neither tenable nor enjoyable.

 

Another thing that always comes up in conversation is, “Do you have any children?” Yellowpoint is an adults-only camp and most people were our senior. Of course, people would talk about and ask about children. And so our unique and horrible tragedy would come up far too often, and we would have to decide what to say, and how to talk about it, if at all. 

 

At breakfast on our first morning, I sat at a table with Neva. Stephanie had already told me she’d lost her son 10 years ago and Neva also knew about our loss, so we had a kinship, and I wanted to connect with her – gain insight and perhaps friendship from someone who shared our sad story. Between us at the table was another woman who immediately rubbed me the wrong way. The conversation around our losses arose and we began talking about our grief. (When two souls share a loss like this, one tends not to beat around the bush.) We spoke about expressing our grief, how writing helped along with other forms of artistic expression, and the woman between us began speaking about the her undying grief (excuse the pun) over losing her 96-year-old mother and how she wrote endlessly about her mother. Frankly, I wanted to pick up my fork and stab this woman repeatedly between the eyes. While thinking violent thoughts but nodding politely and sipping my creamed and sugared coffee (which I only allow myself during times of intense stress or celebration these days), I found myself getting up and saying, “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back in a moment.” I left the table coffee cup in hand, thinking I would go for a sweeter, creamier refill, compose myself, and come back, but halfway across the dining hall I realized I had no obligation to go back. Why would I do that? Well, I would do that for the rest of the bacon on my plate, which I quite desperately wanted, but I talked myself down about the bacon, assuring myself I could order double tomorrow. And so I did not return. A good decision indeed.

 

I spent the morning alone at the hot tub and sauna that sat snugly by the sea because I was suffering from a bout of sciatica and also because I knew I would find solitude there on a 30 degree day where only the certifiable would come. There, I healed and thought and spoke with my Emily. I soaked up the sun rays and the hot water soothed my soul, preparing me for the lunch where I had been assured by Steph I would be flanked by only the most sensitive of people.

 

Later, Neva came and found me and invited me to her porch on the sea for homemade maple fudge. We spoke for hours about our children who had passed, about our grief, about how our partners and friends experienced and expressed theirs, and communed at a level that was beyond any that I had experienced face-to-face since Emily’s death. Sitting by the sea, with a friendship offering of fudge from her and cherries from me, we cried and laughed, and Neva showed me her tattoos she thought she would never get until her son died, and told me about the aboriginal tradition of giving blankets upon the death of a loved one. She had hers on her lap. I had brought the blanket my childhood friend Kristi had given me after Emily died, and later that night, I wrapped myself and my new friend, Mai, in it as we sat around the campfire, where we also talked deeply and profoundly. So on that day, I made two new friends; I also knew that I needed protection and that it was okay to get up and walk away when I was uncomfortable. No drama. Just an “excuse me” and an exit taking. I had learned to do that with my children in their teenage years. I found slamming doors or yelling to be profoundly unhelpful when there was escalating drama, but a picking up of my plate and retiring to my bedroom with no words exchanged, was both a signal and a respite. There would always be a calming down period and eventually we would all find one another again when the power of the moment had lost its momentum and all would be well. I can do this with others too. What I do know is that I don’t owe anybody anything, yet for those who are on my wavelength, I will happily give my soul.

 

So much was learned at Yellowpoint. There were orcas and grief, laughter and seals, friendships made over stodgy but nourishing food, freshly baked cookies at 4:30 and 9 pm, and that same enduring Pacific Ocean that Emily files above and floats on and where we can drift together.