Life is Your Story

The friendships you create and nurture when you are younger are different than the ones you establish later in life. The friends who grew up with you knew your entire family. They played in your house and sometimes their siblings and your siblings and a whole gang of neighbourhood kids joined together for a game of baseball or hockey or just to hang around in the park doing nothing and doing everything. They also knew things that friends you meet later in life will never know like the smell of your house/family. You know the way every family has their “smell” They also knew if your mom was a good cook and enjoyed her best meals and desserts and they knew what type of food was in your fridge and in your pantry and how much of it they could get away with eating without feeling uncomfortable. There was that one house where everyone hung out either because the parents were away often or they just didn’t care if there were 20 kids in their basement doing whatever they were doing....

Mourning is an odd thing because losing someone you love does not necessarily put you in a constant state of crying and depression. It actually lifts you in ways you have not been lifted before. And in the Jewish religion through the Shiva period, you are surrounded by people who truly care about you and in most cases knew the deceased and how many lives they touched. And anyone who has experienced this week of mourning can attest to the fact that you are so distracted from the fire roaring in your gut that you are able to carry on without falling apart right there and then. But at night after everyone has left and you return home you feel the loss and the pain envelop you and it won’t let you go. And accompanying that are those final images pulling you down under the water gasping for air. Sleep never comes and you feel lost and alone even if someone is right there beside you. There is an immense crevice of emptiness that cannot be filled. Mornings are just as t...

I lost my father this morning and in losing him I lost myself. I watched him suffer for months and I deeply questioned and disagreed with the pain and indignity that was bestowed upon him. You  often read in obituaries that the person fought a valiant battle. My father fought an impossible battle but he still fought it with all the realms of possibility and we were there right beside him around the clock as he was there for us throughout our childhood and later into adulthood. He was a super extroverted person. He spoke to everyone, he spoke to anyone and he listened. He was a radio broadcaster, a DJ, a sports journalist, a talk show host, a radio school teacher, a community man who volunteered and hosted numerous charitable events, the stadium announcer for both the McGill and Concordia teams. At his prime in reporting, he knew all of the Expos, Habs, Alouettees, WWF, jockeys at Blue Bonnets and many celebrities he interviewed on his Sunday radio show for CKVL. ...

I’ve been writing a lot about suffering lately. I realize that there are more cheerful things to write about but few as powerful. The truth is I would rather suffer myself than watch someone I love suffer. After what I have seen in the last 48 hours I would also say that being beside that bed in ER and in ICU is like watching a horror movie in which the images are so disturbing that you have to turn the TV off or change the channel; the obvious difference being that in real life you cannot go backward or forward when time freezes you right there in that awful moment. And anyone who has been through the maze that is our medical system can tell you that there are days when you think they will stabilize and although they will never be back to themselves or on their way home; they are still somewhat okay or as best as can be expected. The light in their eyes is present and their personalities, sarcasm, jokes and all are in full swing. They just don’t feel so well and it becomes this...

What will you remember about your life when all is said and done? Will it be the people who accompanied you on your journey? Will it be the places you explored and traveled to along the way? Will it be a cat or a dog that showed you the meaning of true friendship? Will it be the last word spoken to you by someone you will never get to speak to again? What would you choose to remember if your memory could be wiped clean of just one thing that happened to you in your entire life? Would it be the fist time your parents told you they loved you? Would it be the first time you realized you loved yourself? Would it be the first time you held your child? Would it be the first lips that brushed against yours? Who would you choose to remember? What would you say to them, if you could have them there right in front of you for just a few moments? Isn't it amazing how much detail we are capable of remembering when we shut out all the noise, close our eyes, and feel ...

Our parent’s age and they either go suddenly or slowly – either way is awful. And as much as we prepare ourselves for the obvious inevitability; we are never ready to say goodbye. I would say the worst thing by far is witnessing their demise. When they first become ill, injured or otherwise incapacitated, they are still themselves but as it drags on and drags everyone along with it, the family is left exhausted, spent and staring at a petrified, confused stranger in a hospital bed who use to be their parent. There are medical professionals who are very kind and do all they can.   It’s important to realize that every patient who is admitted to their floor is followed by a long parade of characters consisting of family members all with their own personalities and idiosyncrasies, opinions and demands. They are upset, tired and fed up and that can make for a very unpleasant atmosphere for all. It is hard to remain neutral when you find your loved one curled up, shiveri...

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...