It’s been a month now. A month today. This is not something I want to dwell on, but as I see the date – December 24th, Christmas Eve, usually my favourite day of the year – I can’t help but inhale deeply. One month into a lifetime of grieving. One month into a lifetime of healing. One month of collecting no new memories of our Emily.
But…
Now the sadness is over. Not forever. Not for today, even. But for this blog. Today I want to talk about new beginnings and how there are glimmers and sparks of those emerging and becoming our new reality.
Six years ago, we bought a house on Vancouver Island, close to the ocean, surrounded by nature (and a mobile home park for seniors!), and with a little mother-in-law suite along with a large garage in which we have parked our 1989 Itaska RV. The purchasing of this house is serendipitous and miraculous and one I will save for another blog another time, but in an agreement with the renters, on some summers, we have camped out on our own property: Don and I inhabiting the little suite, and the girls sleeping in the RV. We would spend much of our time on the beach, a mere five minute amble from our property.
It’s a gorgeous slip of ocean through which the orcas, the Powell River ferry and the cruise ships sail. The serene community spirit of Little River mirrors the ocean on a calm day. There are a few Adirondack chairs set up along the shore, a sprinkling of picnic tables and always some lawn chairs that people leave for whoever wants to come and ease into the beauty of this magical little beach. It was where Emily built forts and took orders for food. She would run off with excitement, eventually coming back with drift wood plates, adorned with our orders, made from special stones and sticks and kelp, sprinkled with sand and all manner of beach findings – the presentations fit for a five-star restaurant. She has been our chef on beaches around the world, and just this last summer, created sumptuous feasts for our eyes, if not palates, on this, a beach that always delighted her and drew her in.
Our plan had been and still is to leave Beijing after this teaching year. It was to be the year Emily graduated, coinciding nicely with the year that Don is officially too old (by Chinese law) to continue employment. Originally, we thought that we would move to this sweet locale and begin our new lives with our children a few hours away by ferry. As Emily’s depression became more pronounced in recent months, however, we decided we wanted to be closer and would move to Vancouver to live and work, in a city we both loved. Emily was planning to attend UBC (application and essay written and ready to be submitted, with almost certain success of acceptance) and our Charlotte is already happily ensconced at SFU, thriving in her second year of study. Both daughters wholeheartedly endorsed our plans to move to Vancouver, which delighted us. What a gift to have our daughters actually wanting us to be close by enough to pop by for weeknight dinners or to do laundry or to just hang out together in a coffee shop or over wonton soup.
The job opportunities for Don and I would be plentiful here also; we hope to continue teaching, probably adults, and most likely in an EAL role of supporting immigrants and refugees preparing themselves for their new lives in Canada.
When Emily ended her life, all we could think about was that we needed to get to Vancouver to be with Charlotte. The universe worked quickly to arrange everything: friends and family and school aligned to get us packed up, flights booked, time off, a house to live in free of charge during our extended leave of absence, and the loving embrace of community from around the world came to our aid and took care of everything.
For this last month, we’ve had to do so little: just grieve, graze on food, sleep (when we can), go for not enough walks through the forest just steps away, and see those closest to us, when we could bear to be with people. Like a burn, the salve and bandaging of people is necessary, but painful, though it is getting less so with each passing day. As we ease ourselves into bed each night, we reflect on how exhausted we are and then recount what we have done and sometimes, for me, it is little more than circumnavigate the house, drink coffee, write a little, read a little, bathe a little…
That is to say, this past month has been heart work and hard work, but we have been graced with having few other obligations. This is a gift beyond what most anybody is granted in trying times.
I’m getting to my point soon. I am granting myself some wandering in my writing today because it is Christmas Eve and I have nothing to do because we don’t plan to acknowledge this, my favourite of days. We will let it pass just this one year, and, in the next, we will find a way to reinvent our Christmas Eve celebrations with Emily as the star on the tree, if not the child under it.
During our near-month here in the Vancouver area, with Charlotte living with us in this cosiest of houses, we have continued to imagine ourselves here in the city, using public transportation, finding a house to rent or buy, bringing Moondog with us when we commence our new lives in June in a more permanent way. We have grasped at many ideas, many areas, many ways we might live and prosper here in this city that I love and know well. For a few days, we would stumble on an idea and say, “this is it,” only to realise it cannot be it, for a variety of reasons.
And then, after all of our perambulations, we circled back. We have a house. We have a house beside the ocean where we can heal, where Moondog can run free, where we can nest, where Don can putter, where I can garden, where we can find employment, where we can live gently and easily, where we have community and can continue to build more, where our independent daughter can come whenever she wishes and we can hop over to Vancouver with ease and be greeted with welcome by friends and family. And where Emily can come to us on the beach, her favourite beach, with the ebbs and flows of the waves, where we will hear her and feel her and remember her. We can move to Emily’s happy place and make it ours.
Why it took us a month and many dead-end explorations to come back to this, I don’t know. But we are at peace. We are joyful and looking forward.
Two nights ago, Don said he would like to have a recommitment ceremony, to begin again, together. To confirm our ever-deepening love for one another and a fresh start that will ever and always involve our Emily and, of course, our Charlotte. But it will be the two of us creating a new way forward, smelling the sea salt, hearing the undulating waves, walking hand in hand.
The past, the present, the future: they all hold beauty. They all hold Emily. Each is sacred. This is my Christmas Eve gift to myself, this realisation. May you all be blessed with peace, that is my wish for all of you on this special and sacred day.
