That's a Wrap

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. ~ Lewis Carroll

My term as Chair of West Toronto Community Legal Services came to an end at the Annual General Meeting held tonight. It has been a long and challenging two and a half years. I joined the WTCLS Board as Vice-Chair in June 2009. The previous Clinic Board had resigned en masse leaving my friend Judy, the Executive Director, in a tight spot. She called me late one afternoon to tell me what had happened. She had less than twenty-four hours before she was required to appear at Legal Aid Ontario to present a plan for a new Board or risk defunding of the Clinic. She needed four people to create a Board with quorum. Though it seemed like an impossible task, by ten o'clock the next morning, I accompanied Judy to LAO. Between the two of us, we had managed to put together a Board.

Over the course of the next months, the new Board spent hundreds of hours working to get the Clinic on a solid footing. We recruited additional Board members, implemented new policies and cleaned up old problems. Changes to our Board last June resulted in my shift from Vice-Chair to Chair of the Board. I long ago lost track of the inordinate amount of time I spent on Clinic business.

The end of my term tonight came, admittedly, with mixed emotions. I'm extremely proud of the work we did. I'm honored to have had the opportunity to support housing help and poverty law provision for members of the West Toronto community. I'm happy to be handing over the reins to the very capable team that comprises the new Clinic Board. I'm a little sad that I may not again see a couple of the other outgoing BOD members with whom I've spent so much time these past couple of years. But mostly, I'm relieved. It is done. I was ready for the end.

Merry Mary Poppins

"Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down, the medicine go down. Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, in the most delightful way." - Mary Poppins

It wouldn't be my first choice if I was buying tickets but Merv and I went to see Mary Poppins tonight as part of our Mirvish subscription series. I was facing the evening with dread. Sitting through another children's musical isn't my idea of a good time. But Mary Poppins was actually okay. The music was light and lively and the staging was very clever. The story wasn't what I remember from the movie of my childhood but it was a long time ago so maybe I just don't remember as well as I thought.

While we were at the Princess of Wales, Cath and Stan were at the Royal Alex to see the Beatles musical, Rain. We met after our respective shows to compare notes and enjoy a drink at the bar in the Ritz Carleton. I think Rain was a better prospect than Mary Poppins but it could have been worse. It would have to go a long, long way toward abysmal to be worse than Little House on the Prairie or The Secret Garden, both of which were positively painful. Next month is the Blue Dragon and then Hair just after Christmas. I'm really looking forward to that. I can still remember all the songs, word for word, from playing the vinyl record album over and over again in my teens. I plan to sing along.

'Tis the Season To Be...

"Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy." - Dan Castellaneta

It's been a while since I've written in my blog. The truth be told, I've been struggling with the blues and as it's Christmastime, I didn't want to write about that and be a downer. But my dear friend Sara reminded me yesterday, that this is my blog and I write it for myself so I can write about whatever is on my mind and needn't worry about it. Besides, she thought maybe writing it down would make me feel better. So here I am. And baby, I've got the blues.

The long nights and short days aren't helping but really it's not the darkness that is at the core of my angst. There is just so much sadness around me these past couple of weeks that I guess I haven't been able to keep from absorbing some of it. I was at another funeral visitation on Monday. My friend Mardi's dad passed away. Geraldine's sister Bev's time is fast dwindling. Ger is heartbroken. I'm thinking of my friends Stephen and Nancy who are dealing with the sadness of their own recent losses. Too much death. Too much loss in the start of this holiday season.

No time to wallow though. It is also AGM season for me. Last night was Willow's AGM. Next Wednesday is the AGM for the Clinic. I signed up for another three year term on the Board of Willow last night, but will not be doing the same for the Clinic. My term as Chair will come to an end on Wednesday. It's been a long two and a half years and while I'm very proud of the work I've done for the Clinic, I'm anxious to hand over the reins and move on.

Tomorrow the Christmas Sale is on at my Mom's nursing home. My sister Nan and I have been really busy all week preparing all the white elephant merchandise for sale. Normally, we get a lot of jewelry to sell but there was very little donated this year. As the jewelry is what the residents most look forward to buying, I spent the best part of the morning yesterday making earrings. I expect the three dozen pairs I made to be gone within the first half hour. I couldn't bear the idea of disappointing the residents. I'll sell them for a couple of dollars a pair, though the cost to make them is more than that but it doesn't much matter. They will be happy.

Of course, I know that is the ticket for combating the blues. If I make someone else feel better, I'll feel better too. Works every time.

Days of Trial

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
- Plato

The day brought more sad news when I learned this morning that my dear friend Nancy's father passed away in Moncton. He has been very ill and is finally free of the suffering that has plagued him for so long. But Nancy is a thousand miles away from home and there is little I can do to offer her comfort on this dark day. Even when you know it is coming, the death of a parent is painful. So I send my love, thoughts and prayers into the universe and hope that they reach Nancy and comfort her.

Later in the day, I saw a posting on my friend Stephen's Facebook page. On Monday, at the funeral of Stephen's wife Iris, his sister Helena gave a poignant eulogy. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Helena's 22-year-old son John, was killed in a house fire in Alberta where he had recently moved to work in the oil fields. The family is devastated by this incomprehensible loss.

I've been trying to figure out these last few days, why so many difficult and painful things are happening right now. Every day for the past week or so, I have heard of a new death or a grave illness or a personal trial in the lives of the people around me. Why so much grief? Why so much sorrow? Why so much stress? The world economy is failing. Natural disasters abound. And there seems to be so little joy in the world at a time when in these pre-Christmas days, we are usually living in a season of joy. There are, of course, no explanations. But I keep searching. The best I've come up with so far is that maybe we're in a time of universal stress and the way we will come through it is to get a whole lot better at taking care of one another. A kinder, gentler world might help us all get through. But the only way to achieve that is for each of us to be kinder and gentler. I'm going to give it my very best effort.

Still Senseless

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." - Pericles

I went to the visitation today for Iris. There were a lot of people there. I still didn't know any real details of what happened. Somehow I hoped getting some information would help me make sense of it all. I know I'm not alone in that as more than 200 people visited this blog in just a couple of days after I wrote the last post about Iris.

I realized today how little I really knew about her. We've probably only seen one another a half dozen times. It is Stephen who has been my friend for these many years and I don't see him often. We have lunch and get caught up a couple of times a year. I didn't know, for example, that Iris was an artist. Stephen brought some of her paintings, carvings and sculptures to the visitation today. She was incredibly gifted. I didn't know, until I read her obituary in the paper, that she was a Christmas baby and that she would have turned 50 on Christmas day this year. I didn't want to ask what the cause of her death was, but I listened to Stephen tell someone else that Iris died of a pulmonary embolism.

The tone of the visitation was different than what I expected. Family members all seemed quite composed. They are all probably still numb and pretty cried out by now. There was a slide show playing on a large screen and there were lots of wonderful pictures of Iris with her family. Her art graced the tables. It was sad but not the abyss of despair I was dreading. As it should have been, it was more of a celebration of the life of a special woman.

So now I have some information. I got a chance to hug Stephen and their sons. I know how Iris died. And yet, the very early loss of Iris Schmidt in the prime of her days still doesn't make one whit of sense to me.

Iris

"Life is not always fair. Sometimes you get a splinter even sliding down a rainbow." ~Terri Guillemets

It was one of those weekends when I spent too many hours trying to make sense of the senseless. Geraldine's sister is still hanging in, riddled with cancer and wracked with pain and at fifty-seven, way too young to be spending her last days this way. I spent time with my mom yesterday. She wasn't having a good day. She was vacant and drooling and unable to connect to the event of my presence. Mom will be ninety years old in just a few short months. Physically, she is still strong, the heart of a lion. It's hard to understand why Bev is, so soon, slipping away from the world while my mom continues to survive but I long ago accepted that in these cases, God works in mysterious ways.

What threw me into a tail-spin was an email from my friend Stephen, received in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Stephen and I have been friends for thirty years. He and his wife Iris were guests at our wedding, themselves marrying a couple of years after Merv and I did. They were well suited and happy - both athletic, outdoorsy, beautiful people and the parents of four blonde sons including two from Stephen's first marriage. Stephen sent an email from New Zealand, where he and Iris were flying to for a scheduled stop on their way to Australia to spend a family vacation with one of Stephen's sons who moved there a few years ago and Iris's brother who lives in Brisbane. Iris died on the plane shortly before it landed in Aukland. She seemed to have fainted and was quickly attended to by some doctors on the flight. She showed some improvement but then her condition worsened and attempts to revive her were unsuccessful. So now Stephen is in New Zealand, dealing with all that must be dealt with to bring Iris home.

Iris Schmidt - wife, mother, daughter, sister, employee, athlete. Young. Beautiful. Full of life. Gone.

No matter how hard I try, I can't make sense of that.