I am sitting in a beautiful yellow-painted (the colour I imagine as Italian Sunset) house (owned by two wonderful friends who live in Toronto) in Victoria by the Sea, here to spend some time with Sarah and with memories – in memory – of her childhood.
I asked Sarah a few weeks ago, my lips pressed to her hairless head, what I was going to do without her. And she said, “Mum, you’re going to write. And after you’ve written and written some more, and when you feel a bit better, I want you to write about us.”
No one understood better than Sarah my urgency to find a way to put thought into words. Apart from Don and Mary, no one knew as completely as Sarah all of the reasons I felt and feel compelled to come to the keyboard or to a pad of paper and begin jotting down.
Part of this has to do with a complicated childhood where words were either forbidden or combated. I can’t say how many little girl hours I spent at the Formica desk penciling out poetry, rubbing away the letters with my thumb the second I heard footsteps coming up the hallway.
When Sarah went to work in the pressroom and invited me to come see, no one understood better than she my wide-eyed, gobsmacked expression, the chills I felt as I stood looking upward, gaping at the rolling presses, the newspapers flying faster than I could count.
Of course, these are early days, and it is too soon to write much more than an idea of helping the people (who help me and) who come here to read about her and to remember her and honour that memory. Time is fleeting, as are remembrances, and as much as many people profoundly loved her, their lives will eventually return to some sort of normalcy, while mine will not -- and Sarah's never will.
She was a funny (as in comical, perceptive) girl, too, always aware of falseness and machination, always cottoning on to the minutiae behind – the minutiae that often motivated – the behaviour. She could suss out bullshit better than a bloodhound, often leaving dumfounded people in her wake. And there were a few people she had opinions about over these past few months, which sometimes set her off into a coughing fit, either from rage or from uncontrollable laughter.
Fortunately, Sarah had – as apparently, and gratefully, have I – an abundance of like-minded family and friends, to whom I will appeal for thoughts when the time comes to put longer-winded (and what we hope will be helpful) ink to paper. If there was one thing Sarah and I spoke about more than anything else, it was the nature and the mechanics of relationships, and she felt that by detailing our relationship and its tentacles, in all of its glory and occasional (mutual) stubbornness, together we could – we will – make a difference.
Meanwhile, I am reading the tributes that pour in for her by way of email, the Internet, my blog...and I cannot thank enough the dozens and dozens of you who knew (I mean, really knew) her; knew us; loved her; express that love so well, and who are passionate for all that she was and wasn’t, all that she had, and all that she wasn’t able to complete.
I find it fitting that it is raining, that I have a cold, that George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue – we loved and often listened to this at home, not so many miles from here – is playing on CBC Radio, and that you keep coming back to see how she was, how we are, what can be done to remember her life and even, though her days here seem to be over, improve upon it.
No matter, nothing could improve on who she was; what she longed for; what angered her; what made her happy; what caused her to laugh; her kindness; her sensitive heart, and her passion for those people she loved best (and...now I am laughing...for those people she didn’t). (You know what I mean, and you loved that in her, too.) Nothing could improve on what we had with one another.
Thank you for coming by, compelled to remember. No one is more worth your memories.
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you." A.A. Milne
