Canada Saga 2013 - July 5

 

"Be a lamp, be a lifeboat, be a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house each morning like a shepherd."  (Rumi)

"We are put on this earth to help others.  What the others are supposed to do, I haven't a clue."  (W.H. Auden)

 

And just like that, summer arrived. We went to bed on a cool drizzly Friday evening, and woke up to bright sunshine and the heat of the season, as predicted, just in time for Canada Day weekend celebrations. Michael, still in recovery from both his implant surgery and a very stress-filled week in Louisiana, decided he wanted to spend the day outside. We took the ferry to Newcastle Island, which we knew only from watching the ferries as we ate at the Dinghy Dock, one Island over. At some point as we shared fish and chips or burgers and beer, one of us would occasionally make note of the little ferry boats traveling to the next island, with the observation that we really should check it out.

 

It took us ten years and a few hours to realize we should've done this long ago. From the time we disembarked onto green fields and walked past the totem poles towards the regatta of crayola-colored spinnakers playing out in the distance against snow capped mountains, we were hooked. The map showed that to circumambulate the whole island was only 7.2 kms (roughly 5 miles, not usually challenging for us), and we had the whole day, the whole gorgeous day of brilliant blue skies, soft sea breezes, a wide easy trail all along the water, with access over driftwood and flat slate rock. In the distance, the glacier-capped peaks of the mainland watched over the large white BC ferries gliding over the water. We felt like we were walking in a fairy tale book of magic lands and perfect times.

 

Soon I noticed that Michael was walking much slower than our usual hiking pace; he finally told me that he wanted to take it easy on this one, and not stress himself at this point in his recovery. I soon realized that we would probably not make the first leg of the hike, much less the whole island. At one split in the trail, he found a piece of driftwood in the shade, and rested while I went 'just to the next bend,' to see what was ahead. It was only ten minutes to the next marker, where a panorama of beauty splayed out: sailboats, mountains, two quiet benches, a grassy field with yellow wildflowers curtsying and dancing to the ocean breeze, gnarled and leaning arbutus trees reaching greedily for the sun with their twisted leafy arms, and a landscape of small boulder-filled coves all along the island's Eastern side. When I returned, excited with my find, to see if he wanted to make the short walk, Michael told me he was quite happy where he was, and didn't want to go any further.

 

As we walked slowly back to the ferry, it hit me: this is just a small preview of how life changes. This is what my Mom began to experience as my Dad moved deeper into Parkinson's.  This is what my mother-in-law experienced as my father-in-law lapsed into Alzheimer's. My friend walked the journey with her husband, until his death, of abbreviated trips and more and more visits to doctors and hospitals, putting on hold her art and friends. Michael has put plans on hold to be a sustainer during difficult times for my family. My sister-in-law loved her husband through his terminal illness, wondering why anyone would think she needed a break, when she knew their time together was precious and limited. I saw this time and again with Hospice patients and their families, and see it in the grace of so much giving by so many today. It is not so much people putting lives on hold, as it is embracing or enduring the never-ending changing patterns of lives.

 

Emily Dickinson was talking about those journeys when she said that we never know how high we are until we're called to rise. Most of us have to experience something personally to understand the fullness of another's pain or joy. When we do, the sands shift, and life is forever different. A new normal emerges, and with it a sense of the sacrifice and struggle of those whose lives we've watched as they were changed by the love they gave.

 

We bandy about the concept of getting vs giving: we get when we give; we can't give more than we get; it is better to give than to receive. Perhaps it's less about getting or giving, and more about living in the interchangeable flow of both, that sustains us with its familiarity. The Dalai Lama expresses what he calls the paradox, and what could be referred to as the miracle, of 'wise self-fishness:'  when we give, we become happier. These not-so-minor miracles and moments of unselfish wonder are, to paraphrase Chesterton, the little white handkerchiefs that the Divine drops in daily flirtations with us.

 

The sprinklers turned off just after the sun popped over the mountains this morning, and the tiny droplets of water were shimmering like fairy crystals on each blade of grass and pine needle in the necklace of the new day. They were a reminder that for one brief drop in the ocean of time, we are prisms of divine creation, sparkling and reflecting every hue of Love in our better moments of receiving and giving kindness, until the brilliance and heat of the Divine Sun consumes us back into Being.

 

On Saturday we'll return to Louisiana for a visit, and for the completion of some medical tests, meetings and business for Michael, and to spend time with Mom. We've already decided that we'll be back on Newcastle Island this summer. We may or may not walk the entire path. The journey, after all, is not about the distance, but about dropping handkerchiefs along the way.

YAY GOD