Life is Your Story

If there is one day we all hope will never come, it's the one where our life partner has to be taken from us whether in life or in death. However it is all so common with the increase in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Cancers of every sort, that one of the two has to be hospitalized and evaluated and most always, inevitably the call is made by medical professionals who are doing their best but have far too many aging patients to monitor and evaluate and far too few specialists available to support them and so the call is that the said parent will never return to their home again. This crossroad means so many different and sad things to various family members. So I will use the Dad as an example. Your Dad has been told that he will never regain his independence - perhaps he can no longer walk or go without diapers or oxygen. Maybe he has a progressive disease that is moving at rampant rates. He is already frail, depressed and practically throwing in the towel after months t...

This post was written in dedication to one of the brave and hopeful moms who attended support groups that I facilitated and who did all she could to fight the fight with her son who struggled/battled with mental illness. Unfortunately the illness won. Mental illness is often a secret - a whisper in the air - a mystery - a demon that haunts its victims and destroys their minds. At some point - someone will love someone who suffers from mental illness on one level or another - reach out even if they cannot-  help transform the secret into a shout and the mystery into a discovery. You may just save a life. There is a woman who goes to the same park every day and she brings a kite with her. She draws on the wings with magic markers. She wears a tattered camel-skin coat and her legs are covered in leotards. Her hands are freckled and dance to the rhythm of a tremor. She pauses before flying the kite to write in her journal and sip coffee from her thermos. She eats a croissant out of...

My father broke his back last week. He has since been in the hospital recovering although in much pain and enduring several complications that are particularly scary as he moves closer to 80 years of age. My family came together instantly like a task force or for all my Montreal readers, like a group of students revved up for a demonstration, a unrelenting desire to stand by our beliefs, our moral code, our father. What's sad when you get to this stage of life (that being me and my siblings all in our 40s with families of our own, challenging careers, schedules, our own health issues, financial burdens, etc) you have to stand back and pause and deal with the realization that your parents are aging quickly and as this process mangles whatever quality of life they had, you watch them change and lose their independance. It hurts to see them hurt and it's exhausting to stand by their bed and it's disheartening to know that they cannot feed, bathe, relieve themselves...

When someone we love dies, we want them back. Plain and simple. It's like a crime has been committed. They've been taken - sometimes with warning and sometimes without warning - sometimes expected yet always unexpected. There are those we accompany as far as we can toward whatever comes next. We sit by their bed and we wish we could take the suffering and pain away. We are ready to give ourselves in their place. We are aching and frightened. We know what is coming as the butterflies move at warp speed in our stomachs and photos clips turn into horrid collages of the darkest scenes from the obituary in which we can't say what we really want to say and to the funeral that too many strangers attend and the eulogy that will never do them justice and the burial - the shovel to the dirt, the dirt to the coffin, a final curtain call without ample applause to a life well lived and the love they gave. Then there are the ones that just happen the way things just sort ...

I recently gave up my car and switched to walking and public transport. So I've been taking the subway for the first time in many, many years (enough to say "many" twice). It's fast and convenient and the whole thing has been going quite well until the other day. I was running down one of the many sets of stairs (I forgot how far underground the subway is and how many stairs it takes to get down and back up) and there at the bottom laying on the floor was a homeless man. He was flat on his back, his eye lids twitching furiously with the white of his eyeballs in full view. He had a strong stench to him and I really couldn't tell if he was dying or just really stoned. The amazing thing was that all the other people were just walking around him and heading on their way without even a pause or a concern for this man. Maybe I just wasn't use to seeing this type of thing but it seemed extremely odd that no one cared. I tried to make eye contact with a w...

I just want to start by saying that this post makes no sense whatsoever. Firstly I have never met Anthony Bourdain, although I have read his books, am a big fan and love No Reservations. Secondly because I can't cook and although he can, chances are he will not ever make me breakfast. Now if I was given a choice of two famous people I could hang out with and chat, Anthony Bourdain would be one of them. We'd eat, he'd drink (I don't) and the sarcasm would hit an all time high the more he drank and the more I did not drink. Anthony Bourdain is a worn tire. I mean that in the most wonderful way. If you read Kitchen Confidential and/or if you've ever worked in a kitchen (not yours), you know that it's a whole other culture, one often swimming in drugs and alcohol and "adding" things to the dishes of those customers who complain or are rude or who you simply decide you don't like. The kitchen is hot, busy, tight and the shifts are long an...

So I recently spent 3 days in the ER of a local Montreal hospital with a loved one who was in a ski accident. I myself along with everyone in my family and many friends have spent some time in an ER. It's not a place you want to be and well, chances are you've been there too so that is something you already know. One of the first things I noticed was how many elderly women (majority to men) there were lying in the beds behind or not behind curtains, alone and afraid. Whose mothers, grandmothers, relatives are these people and where are their visitors? Why are they alone in the ER without anyone to offer them support or advocate on their behalf? Maybe I'm just too idealistic and have to come to the realization that not everyone has someone to care for them. There are people who are alone in this world even if they are not actually alone. Montreal is a prime example of a Canadian (as it is so common in the USA) city in which the vast majority of Anglophone child...

So it's a long holiday weekend. A few days off of work - good - missing someone who was around this time last year - not so good.  That's the thing about holidays. They are a respite from work and our daily routines but they are also a reminder of the unexpected changes we have experienced and the people we have lost.   As we sit around the dining room table and enjoy a meal that brings everyone together at one time under one roof. We notice the empty chairs and we hear the voices and the laughter of those who have vanished from our lives.  There are sweet reminders and there are sad ones and somehow they all mix together in our hearts and in our souls and they make the butterflies in our stomachs dance and sway.  And it's not just about those who have passed from this life, no, the memories and the pain of those we have broken up with, divorced/split from come pouring in. They are no longer there beside us. They are no longer part of your part of ...

Regret. It's a tough pill to swallow. It's part of life. It's usually about doing something you shouldn't have done or being with someone you shouldn't have been with or saying something that never should have been said. I have regrets and so do you. As humans we are programmed to make many, many mistakes before we figure things out for ourselves. It's our trial and error, our "I think I'll do this and see what happens next" even though you pretty much know what will happen next. But you know what is worse than regret - not regretting - I mean how much fun is that? What if we did everything right the first time and there were no second, third, fourth, etc tries? What if we met the person we were going to spend our lives with at the start of our lives and therefore never bothered to meet any other potential partners? What if we never drank too much or smoked too much and were never sitting on the bathroom floor staring into the to...

Being alone – most of us have experienced it at one time in our lives or another. I remember the first time I fell in love and had a lengthy relationship. We were together all the time and when we broke up it felt like a part of me had been sliced and removed blender style. It felt like time had frozen and I was stuck on a highway in a blizzard ALONE. That was an awful feeling. Unfortunately many people are alone on a full time basis. It’s how they spend their lives and I’m sure it’s not by choice but by circumstance. Circumstance can change any of our lives in an instant. Where can you find people who are alone? Try a bench in any park. Try a table in a café. Try a bar in the middle of the day. I see them. I feel for them and I wonder, how did they end up alone? Can you imagine spending you entire day not having anyone to speak to? Can you imagine never being touched, hugged or kissed? There should be a café designed just for people who are alone and then they could mee...

People fall apart when they lose a sense of who they are or come to the realization of who they are not. Some people never delve this deep and never really change. They glide through life on a straight line - wax on - wax off. People who lose themselves are also people who look for themselves everywhere and in everyone they meet. They look in all the right places and they lose themselves in all the wrong places. Some of them eventually do find themselves and that allows them to settle down and walk that straight line. While others flip and flop and fly and crash and repeat the process again and again to no avail. They are tired, worn souls and although both they and their loved ones wish they could follow a straight line; they don't know how -mostly because they can't see straight. What makes people fall apart? Well sometimes they feel alone without support, love or empathy and other times they aren’t alone rather they are surrounded by people who care for them deeply; ...

How are you? I mean it - really - how are you? At the end of the day when you are alone in bed or washing up in the bathroom and you see yourself in the mirror and you stay and stare just a little longer wondering how time has changed you and where the time has gone. Do you ever catch yourself not wondering what is next and wonder why you no longer think of what's next? When you go out to run your messages, do you find yourself wondering how much time you spend doing messages and how little enjoyment you gain from them? Do you ever watch the person in bed beside you sleeping and wonder who they really are? What are the secrets they have managed to keep from you and what are they thinking when you are sleeping beside them and they are awake wondering about you? Do you ever stop the car in front of your kids school when you are there to pick them up and even though they are already outside playing or hanging out with friends, instead of honking the horn or calling out thei...

I mean really. Her passing is tragic. She has an 18yr old daughter who will never recover from this loss and will never truly have the answer as to why her mother took her life (if it was not accidental). She was a fabulous singer and performer. She was a beautiful woman and probably a beautiful person who suffered from addiction as so many brilliant artists do. And then there are all of us regular folk. We have our vices, we have our secrets and tragically we all know of someone - close or distant - who has lost their struggle with addiction and in turn their lives. But let's just call it a day. Leave it be. Let her family mourn in private. Stop the constant reports, stories, photos and ridiculous interviews with people who claim to be her friends yet want nothing more than their moments of fame. You know what is really sad about her death and so many others who were in the spotlight? It's the fact that their deaths over shadow their lives in the end. It's their lives we s...

I'm not sure if you have seen this Valentines Day commercial yet - perhaps you are fortunate and it is not playing in your area. This guy runs to a train station with a box of chocolates in hand and he grabs this woman (whom supposedly he knows in a romantic sort of way) and lifts her in the air and kisses and hugs her just before she boards her train. Then he gestures to her and his lips read (and the music plays) "Merci" (that means Thank You in French). Then she opens the box and finds these mini chocolate bars like I use to get in my Halloween bag. She is very, very happy to be on the receiving end of these chocolates (and that the train has pulled away from the guy at the station). That's the thing about Valentines Day - it's expected - it's on purpose - it's cruel for anyone who is single and the worst part is that it use to (I hope this tradition has stopped) begin in grade school when our teachers announced one week ahead that we would be ...

Circa 1990... So George Clooney calls me. He's coming to town (as in Montreal) and he's heard about this fantastic mystical place called The Cavendish Mall. He asks if I can pick him up at the airport and take him there. So I step out into the fine season of winter that embraces Montreal in all its wrath and builds character in our tribe, and I get into my car wondering what I am going to say to George when he walks through those sliding doors at the airport.  Then I think about all the times I walked through those doors returning home from various travels and always having someone waiting for me on the other side - often with a kiss, a hug and sometimes even flowers.  And then I thought of all the times I stood waiting for a loved one to arrive and of all the sad faces on the people who came through those doors having no one waiting for them on the other side. Yeah so I get into my truck and it stalls and then it stalls again and George is on his way in. I can't b...