Here begins the Canterbury Tales.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, 
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye,

So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

And specially, from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

We have the small birds making melodies, the chickadees at least, and the goldfinches and a few red wing blackbirds. March, however, was not a dry month. No. And we have a lot of snow not goon yete up here, although the town is pretty bare, bar a few piles from ploughing. 

We were longen to wend - not to a straunge stronde but in fact to the city and the book store - but got stopped short by illness. Oh well, it will all still be there when the Ram has run his full course. 

I love hearing this with the right pronunciation, as I still remember it from a class more than half a century ago. And I love looking at the language and wondering things like how we got from soote and swete to sweet. Do not mutter about umlaut and ablate shifts and all that. I wrote a test on that stuff, passed it and promptly erased it from my memory.

Yes, indeed. Going slightly nuts here. Waiting for the mud to stiffen up and the grader to make our road at least passable.

For those of you who were educated in a less hidebound school than mine, 

      Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

                  When April with its sweet-smelling showers        

      The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

                 Has pierced the drought of March to the root,

        And bathed every veyne in swich licour

                 And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid        

    Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

                 By which power the flower is created;

        Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

                 When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,

        Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

                 In every wood and field has breathed life into

        The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

                 The tender new leaves, and the young sun

        Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,

                 Has run half its course in Aries,

        And smale foweles maken melodye,

                 And small fowls make melody,

         That slepen al the nyght with open ye

                 Those that sleep all the night with open eyes

         (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),

                 (So Nature incites them in their hearts),

      Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

                 Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,

        And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

                 And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,

       To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

                 To distant shrines, known in various lands;

        And specially from every shires ende

                 And specially from every shire's end

      Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,

                 Of England to Canterbury they travel,

         The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

                 To seek the holy blessed martyr,

        That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

                 Who helped them when they were sick.

Mind you, soote could also be 'soft', in context. 

Thinking about the men of Sodom - Genesis 19.

 A Facebook friend recently posted a discussion of this Bible story. And I sat shaking my head because I had never put the pieces together. So, here is a response.

Sodomy (/ˈsɒdəmi/) or buggery (British English) is generally anal or oral sex between people, or sexual activity between a person and a non-human animal (bestiality), but it may also mean any non-procreative sexual activity. Originally, the term sodomy, which is derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis, was commonly restricted to anal sex. Wikipedia

Explanation of Definition from Wikipedia.

Two angels are invited by Lot to take refuge with his family for the night. The men of Sodom surround Lot's house and demand that he bring the messengers out so that they may "know" them (the expression includes sexual connotations). Lot protests that the "messengers" are his guests and offers the Sodomites his virgin daughters instead, but then they threaten to "do worse" with Lot than they would with his guests.

King James Version of Genesis 19

 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: 5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, 7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. 8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

9 And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them.

 New International Version

 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

9 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.”

 

More than you ever wanted to know? A lot more than I knew. I do not remember when I learned that the term ‘sodomy’ meant anal sex.  But here’s the weird bit. I did not associate the term with why, in the Bible story of the destruction of Sodom, the action of the men of Sodom was a demand for homosexual activity. Yes, I knew that the term ‘to know’ generally meant sexual activity. But for some reason, I never put the pieces together. Just as a final comment. It amuses me that the men are described as asking for the angels to ‘have sex with them’. But the daughters have never ‘slept with a man’. Euphemism weirdly applied. At least King James is evenly translated.

Fifty nine

 

Fifty nine years ago today was a Saturday and JG and I got married. In the chapel of the university we were both attending, with friends and our parents witnessing. It had taken us a week to arrange, and my mother bought me the dress I am wearing and brought it with her. The hat is a loan from my cousin. The placement of my feet is, um, typical.

A week previous to this event, JG and I were sitting in his apartment on a Sunday morning and I said to him "For two cents I would call my parents and tell them we are getting married next weekend." He handed me two pennies. 

And the rest is history.

Just as a footnote. Our eldest child was born a little over three years after the wedding. JG's mother was happy about that. Probably my mother was, also, but she didn't say so.

Confessions of a Bookworm

 

 This is going to be more than a bit boring. You have been cautioned.

I have a fine new office chair that my nearest and dearest bought me for a Valentine. He wants chocolate, but the local place that makes it will not have his faves for two weeks. So, one way gift. And at present I am sitting in my chair, contemplating books. 

There is a row of books behind my computer, mostly reference books.

There is a set of bookcases to my left, as I sit at my computer desk, full of books and with a row of more books on top. There is a bookcase behind me, full.

There are four bookcases in the basement, ditto. I also have a Kindle, with a fair load of reading material on it, but if I love a book, or want to refer to again after one read, I want a real copy, with pages that I can turn. And so in some cases I have the book in both locations.

 I guess I should also list the bookcase in the living room, although only half the books in it are mine.
The rest are mostly reference. JG has a smaller case in the bedroom to hold some of his mysteries. The rest are in boxes in his closet. Don’t ask. He has several more – bookcases, that is - in the basement TV and his office room, but some of those are mine and I am actually contemplating tossing a few of the books presently in them. There is a whole shelf of travel books, mostly badly outdated. Sad, but I don’t see much more travel in my future. But … wait, someone might enjoy them, outdated or not. Hmm. What to do.

 I hate to get rid of my books.

 In fact, there are three of my childhood ‘Babar’ books in one of the bookcases, plus an extremely battered copy of A Child’s Garden of Verse. And for some years I had my copies of some of the Anne books, plus my aunt’s copies of some of them, making a complete set. I had had them from the time I was a child, having extracted them from my grandparents’ bookshelf. At some point my aunt found this out and wanted her books back, plus she borrowed mine. I think her son still has them, although, sci fi addict that I knew him as, I seriously doubt he has read them. It did not worry me when my aunt took the hardcovers, as my daughters had a complete set in paperback that I could read if I wanted to. Well, they moved out and their copies went with them and I am seriously contemplating getting myself another set. Well, not too seriously. Maybe just my favourites.

 My non fiction hardcovers run from the top left side of the triple bookcase to about half way, loosely sorted Dewey Decimal style, as that is what I learned as a teen, working in a library. Hard cover fiction, sort of in alpha order where the size of book allows it, take over and complete that wall. The containers with labels hold my collection of material and reference stuff from places I have been, a lot of it from Great Britain and the USA, but some African and a bit local. That is a new sorting job, those labels, a thing I did to keep boredom at bay during one of the pandemic lockdowns. There are still several boxes to add to the collection. And one shelf of photobooks.

 The singleton bookcase also holds a lot of photo albums, all my really tall books and trip diaries and journals. The middle shelf of that case is probably the most curated of anything I own, as all the tall books have to go there.

 Some of the books in the reference bookcase in the living room, and on a couple on the reference shelves in here were my mother’s texts. We gave a lot of her really special books to the University of Windsor, where she was a lecturer in English literature. But I kept a few that I knew were ones she loved, a Chaucer edition and some of Dorothy Sayers’ works come to mind. And I have my father’s Nevil Shute novels. How he loved those stories. I, too, love stories.

 There are a few authors whose stories wind from book to book – Gabaldon, Elizabeth Moon, C J Cherryh, to list a few. You can probably spot Cherryh and Gabaldon in the photo.

Gabaldon has one more book in the series planned, but I am not sure where I am going to put it.

 The thing about the bookshelves being full is that if I want to keep a new book, I have to get rid of an old one. This is really, really seriously hard-breathing difficult. Before I get rid of even a battered paperback, I must reread it to make sure I can do without it. Then it sits balanced on the edge of a shelf for a while. If JG is going to an organization he belongs to where there is a book exchange, I can let the books go there. If I can take them to the book exchange at our local landfill or our local hall, I can let them go. I cannot throw a book away. There are even some of my textbooks on my shelves still.

 No, I don’t write on my books, or mostly I don’t. My complete Shakespeare is pretty scribbled up, but it was a text. Nor do I turn down page corners, except in emergencies, such as being stuck in traffic. Um, yes, I have a book in the car, or my Kindle in my purse pretty well every time I go anywhere. JG and I do a Sudoku at breakfast and then read one or both of the two daily papers we take. We get local weekly papers on Wednesday and Thursday. In between, there are the CTV and CBC apps on my iPad. And books on my iPad, mostly manuals but a few story books in case of emergencies. And emergency being a pause in activity where I really, really need to lose myself in a story.

 Stories are my vice, my catnip, my addiction. I reread the really good ones I know about. I tell myself bits of them or work out added strands of them to put myself to sleep at night or comfort myself in 2:00 am wakefulness. I see nature and probably people in terms of things I recall from stories. (That’s a landscape from L M Montgomery. That seems to be a lot like the mess the protagonist got into in Advise and Consent.) There is a lot of modern fiction I have closed the covers on quickly because there is no story line. But I also read non-fiction, maybe one for every two story books. Non-fiction can be engrossing if it teaches, or illuminates or illustrates. I love At Home by Bill Bryson, for instance. And I guess because it can be made into stories.

 I told you, if you have hung in this far, that this would be boring. I am hardly ever bored myself. If you see me standing in a line or sitting waiting for an appointment, if there is not a book in my hand, you can be certain that there is a story playing out in my head. I love my books, and what they give me.

Edit: For AC. This is what the typed version in Word looked like. Note to other readers - this photo is to illustrated something from the comments - I do not know how to paste a photo into a comment form.

Fifty Shades of Romance

Instead of deciding on one book, our book club went a different route this year. We choose one ‘genre’ per month and each member chooses a book of this type and reports on it. We do a summary at the end of the session and have a whole range of choices to explore. This month, the club worked on the romance novel. It was, for me, a liberal education.

I once had a course on the history of the novel in university. That being the direction of my mind, I went looking for a summary of romance novel writing, and found an interesting essay. Here is the URL, influential-romance-novels, if you would like to see the whole thing. (The list is added at the end of this post). What this essay did, essentially, was trace the history of the romance novel, giving an author and one of the author’s books for each type. The essay’s breadth was intriguing, as were some of the synopses and so I decided to read books from the types listed. 

Although her books are too early for the list, the most influential romance writer of our era is, without argument, Jane Austen. Her Pride and Prejudice is a masterwork, both in language and in plot and suspense, ending in a delicate denouement. Feisty and ineligible female scorns tall, dark and handsome man who, rich and endowed, first despises her and then learns to love her. There is a lot of word play between them. There is a problem with her sister that he resolves, and she learns to love him. So popular, indeed, is this plot that two out of every three (and maybe more, I didn’t count carefully) books in the Influential list retell it. And her works are, of course, regency romances since she wrote them during the Regency period.

I have read all of Georgette Heyer’s regency romances over the years. She uses Austen’s plot with a liberal hand. And a lot of her books are to a theme, cut and paste, written quickly for the money. Although she writes well. But, every once in a while, she turns things around. In what I think is her best book, A Civil Contract, a dowdy and hopelessly outclassed girl loves in silence while the man she adores is in love with her beautiful and volatile friend. But then economic disaster strikes the hero and to save his place in society, the dowdy girl marries him, bringing him a dowry of riches. The story then follows their struggles to adapt to one another and ends with her realization that the companionship of married life is her reward. There is a sister in the story who also ends up happily ever after.

Chugging along through the list, I note that I have probably read a Burchell, I own and have read all of Mary Stewart’s well plotted and described ‘love with a problem’ books, and I screech to a stop at Merrick. Gay and lesbian lovers? Goodness me. Right. I find carefully edited and quite proper lovers. Austen could not have been more correct.

And I am off into the ‘bodice ripper’ list, but am soon distracted by the entrance of Americans, blacks, and more lesbians. Then there is Nora Roberts. Everyone has picked up one of her books somewhere and ended up reading it. More scornful and enchanting heroines. More tall, dark and handsome men. A lot more. She brought potboiling to a science. The list continues with sci fi and sports romance. I skip these. And pick up the black protagonist theme again with Indigo. This is a thoroughly good and interesting book, and most of the sex scenes do have some purpose being there. It also has a lot of good data on the Underground Railroad and how it worked, at least in the first part of the story.

But what is intriguing me is that Fifty Shades of Grey is on the list. I had not read it and have always dismissed it as porn and not worth the bother. But most of the books in this list have had a good reason to be there. And so I decide to skip to Fifty Shades. And I find out that a copy of the book is in the house and has been for a long time. Also all three of the movies. Okay. Now I have to read the thing. And I do. 

And it has a plot, and suspense and is pretty well written. Now the plot is this: feisty and ineligible female falls at the feet of tall, red-haired and handsome man who, rich and endowed, learns to love her. There is a problem with his sister that she resolves and she learns to love him. She also gets pregnant, but after the wedding where Austen would have left her. The retelling from his point of view fills another three books, but I am not sure that there are movies about those books. Not yet, anyway. Mostly the hero and heroine communicate by having sex, kinky or otherwise. But there is a point to the sex. Tall and red-haired has an horrific past and PTSD, and sex is his reassurance and way of communicating. Feisty and plain ugly duckling turns into a swan, and can match him in sex play, thus saving  him from a sad and sterile existence. You can read the book for the mild S and M, but there is characterization, suspense and depth to the story. And a purpose to some, at least, of the sex scenes.

It has been, as my father was fond of quoting, a learning experience. I find myself wondering just what kind of book Jane Austen could write if she had the licence the twenty-first century offers authors. Feisty and lusty heroine …

Sad that we will never know. Or is it?

THE 20 MOST INFLUENTIAL ROMANCE NOVELS OF THE LAST 100 YEARS

• THE SHEIK BY EDITH M. HULL (1919)
• This massively popular book created a huge interest in the “desert romance” trope. The Sheik was clearly a trendsetting romance novel at the time, along with serving as inspiration for the rise of bodice rippers in the 1970s.
• REGENCY BUCK BY GEORGETTE HEYER (1935)
• For almost 100 years, Regency romances have dominated the historical romance market
• HOSPITAL CORRIDORS BY MARY BURCHELL (1958)
• No category of romance was more popular at the time than doctor/nurse pairings (although pilot/stewardess romances might have been a close second
• THE MOON-SPINNERS BY MARY STEWART (1962)
• Mary Stewart helped define the romantic suspense genre
• THE LORD WON’T MIND BY GORDON MERRICK (1970)
• At a time when most lesbian and gay characters in books had tragic endings, Gordon Merrick ignored publishers’ advice and gave his lovers, Charlie and Peter, a happy ending
• THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER BY KATHLEEN E. WOODIWISS (1972)
• This novel basically invented the “Bodice Ripper” category of romance. It’s also considered to be the first sexually explicit romance, where sex happens on the page.
• NO QUARTER ASKED BY JANET DAILY (1974)
• Janet Dailey’s No Quarter Asked signaled a big shift from romance novels being primarily British and European to the rise in American romance novels. This was the first novel set in America by an American.
• LOVING HER BY ANN SHOCKLEY (1974)
• This book stands out for several reasons. The happy ending in a queer novel was still quite unusual for this time. It is also the first known interracial lesbian romance which brings intersectionality to the genre.
• ADAM AND EVA BY SANDRA KITT (1984)
• Entwined Destinies by Rosalind Welles is known as the first romance novel by a Black author to feature Black characters. But Sandra Kitt was the first Black romance author to publish with Harlequin and build a romance writing career with over 25 books.
• PLAYING THE ODDS BY NORA ROBERTS (1985)
• She’s kind of in her own class when it comes to influential romance novels. She didn’t create a new category, genre, or trope within romance. But by writing dependably wonderful romance novels in many categories, she expanded the readership greatly
• SWEET STARFIRE BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ (1986)
• Sweet Starfire is known as the first futuristic romance published by a mainstream publisher.
• IT HAD TO BE YOU BY SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS (1994)
• Her Chicago Stars series, starting with this book, brought the idea of sports romance novels into the market.
• DREAMING OF YOU BY LISA KLEYPAS (1995)
• This reversal in class dynamics, the agency of the heroine, and the emphasis on female friendship all represent an influential shift in historical romance.
• INDIGO BY BEVERLY JENKINS (1996)
• her historical romances have been hugely influential within romance history.
• BET ME BY JENNIFER CRUSIE (2004)
• Written by a romance fiction scholar, Bet Me challenged the overwhelming norm of romance novel heroines being thin and conventionally attractive.
• SLAVE TO SENSATION BY NALINI SINGH (2006)
• Nalini Singh began writing paranormal romance before the YA novel Twilight made the genre explode in popularity. It also combined science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal elements in new and innovative ways.
• IRRESISTIBLE FORCES BY BRENDA JACKSON (2008)
• Irresistible Forces marked the first Black romance novel to hit The New York Times Best Seller list.
• BUTTERFLY SWORDS BY JEANNIE LIN (2010)
• Jeannie Lin’s debut novel won the Golden Heart award for historical fiction from the Romance Writers of America. Set in Tang Dynasty China, her books show a move away from historical romance taking place in just Europe and America.
• FIFTY SHADES OF GREY BY E.L. JAMES (2011)
• Some people hate Fifty Shades of Grey or will argue it doesn’t belong in the romance category. But, as evidenced by it selling over 100 million copies, a lot of people love the book too, and its impact on romance novels and the market is apparent.
• THE KISS QUOTIENT BY HELEN HOANG (2018)
• The book is hilarious, sexy, and so romantic. It also marked a turning point for diversity in romance, with an intersectional story combining representation around race, disability, and sex workers with depth and nuance.

Soft Snowfall

We are having the kind of picture perfect snowfall that songs are made of. Big flakes, drifting down, wafted by a gentle wind. The sun is just breaking through, from time to time. As they land, the flakes are making fluffy piles. 

Thicker now, and the sky is a bit more covered, but still a fine picture.

midrange of my Pentax Zoom lens.

 Writing 'Zoom' makes me think of my book club meeting this morning, that took place on the Zoom app. None of us are very good with it, and so extraneous noises intruded, from time to time, including someone's fire alarm getting tested. We do not put up our hands to speak and we tend to break in on one another, at least I do, as I get excited about some idea flitting through my brain. The topic this morning was to bring in a favourite book or book much loved to present to the group. I could not make up my mind and ended up with a pile of books beside my iPad. I did not do well, I think, but some of the members had really done their homework and we had some excellent suggestions. Next month we are presenting on 'Romance' and that ought to be just plain hilarious. All suggestions for a good bodice-ripper gratefully received.

Just now the sun was a glowing disc behind a veil of thin cloud, and the big fat flakes are still drifting down. Maybe, just maybe, it will get deep enough that my poor frustrated husband can play with his shine red new snowblower. He has had it out, mind you, but it has not had a real test. 

Here's a closeup of big fat flakes, as they landed on the deck railing. 

And here are two shots of the peep of sun we got around mid afternoon as I stripped the ornaments off our Christmas tree. Twelve days is not enough to clean up after the Festive Fandango. However, as of this morning, the tree is gone and all I have left to do is clear my festive birdies away and stow all the bags and boxes of Christmas stuff. 

Stuff! Many of us are drowning in it. His friends are at present clearing my brother-in-law's possessions (and his parents' possessions) out of his house and property. The detritus of a life, like the wrack of a storm washed up on the beach. We have all identified a few precious things, and they are mostly picked out. There are probably a lot of things that can be reused, I hope. But the clearing process can be difficult and emotional. I recall clearing after my mother died and coming across a battered hat that she wore to water the lawn and flowers. It was destined for the rag bag, but putting it there was really, really hard for me. Some day my daughters will be for it and I feel as if I should apologise ahead of time for the mess and the pain. 

Guilt! But not quite enough to clear up now myself. For some reason, buried in my brain somewhere, I need to have my grandmother's dishes set and folders with my daughter's school reports. Sorry, girls. 

Random Ramblings, Year's End, All That

 I was alone in the house last night. JG and the daughters were away coping with the aftermath of his brother’s death. It doesn’t happen very often, that I am alone. That I choose my own meal time and bedtime without having to consider anyone else’s schedule. That I can write undisturbed by the ordinary routines of the day. That I am on my own.

What did I do with my unscheduled time? Well, wrote this, for one. I spent most of the day alternately doing laundry and writing the post below this one, a eulogy for the brother who has gone. I wrote it pretty carefully and when I put it up, I only found two errors, one being a wrong date of John’s death. His friend was on the phone about two minutes after I posted, to correct that one, but I had already seen it. Typo. The other was a bad insert erasure. I did a lot of rereading and rewriting before I posted. I wanted it to be good, to be a fair picture of a complicated and somewhat conflicted man. Don’t know if I got it. You never really know how something that personal and subjective will read to someone else.

But most of my writing is subjective. There is not much else going on here, not even in normal times and these are not, for sure, normal times. We did manage to have a Christmas Day with the nucleus of the family, but it was not the gathering we had hoped to have, due to one positive Covid test and one relative who decided, reasonably I thought, not to fly this season. There were gifts and music and a table laden with goodies (and four vegetable dishes, just because). I still have a kitchen full of cookie tins that are full of cookies because the YD baked from the time she arrived until Christmas Eve, non stop. Well, almost nonstop. She took a few naps and walks. It was a fine thing to be together. This is the YD’s first home visit in two years. But she was too late to see her uncle. And that hurt.

I am glad that, from my last visit, my last memory of John is of laughing with him over the completely predictable and totally in character actions of his brother and our ED. We had arranged to have John’s bathroom remodelled to put in a walk-in shower. The work was finished the day before we arrived, and JG, that evening, was talking about getting a shower seat for it. With arms, he thought. The ED demurred. The shower had a good bar that John could use to stand up, she thought. JG said there was no bar there. The ED said yes, there was. The two red-headed opponents rose, in sync, and proceeded to the bathroom to settle the argument. And John and I looked at each other, did an in sync eyeroll and laughed like loons. It was just a perfectly typical thing for them to do. I am glad I can remember him laughing.

It sometimes seems to me that particular bits of memory in turbulent times, get locked into the brain. My last memory of my mother is a sad one – she was in pain and confused. An aunt I cared for deeply, I recall, in her last day of life, sitting in her wheelchair, head at a strange angle, cushioned by morphine. At least she was serene - earlier she had been frightened by reflections in the hospital room window, thinking that they were going to attack her. The end of life, in my experience of helping my parents and aunts through it, is a rough ride sometimes. Not always. My father, I am convinced, died in his sleep, having dozed off while watching his beloved baseball on the television. He was 85 and while he had some pretty major ailments, he was able to his last day to live independently, drive and enjoy a lot of things. I hope that is what is in store for me, but it is not something that can be planned.

The only plan we can legally make is an application for MAID, ahead of debility. Fairly severely restricted eligibility for it, too. John would not have qualified by the time he needed it, as the applicant must be fully competent to agree at the time it is administered. I think this needs to be changed to allow a precondition on the part of the applicant, but I can see that it will be tricky to structure it in a way that protects both the medical people being asked to do it and anyone who is worried that they will be, as it can be said,’ put down’ without their concurrence. 

No one, if they think about it reasonably, wants to die in confusion and diapers and fear, cared for by relative strangers in an institution. But that is how most of us will die because that is how our relationships and medical systems are set up. We live most of our lives in small nuclear families that cannot handle the end- of-life care most of us will need. Our medical system can eliminate or cure a lot of things that used to kill old people. And so, we end our lives in repaired bodies but with minds that no longer function well. And that usually means that we end up in institutions, underfunded and inadequate institutions in many cases. I have thought for a while that Covid may have done a lot of fragile old people a favour by killing them relatively quickly. 

It is now the next day after I wrote this and I am still working on the laundry. I will also try to come up with a plan to feed and/or water the varied G’s when they get back from their quick and frustrating management trip. It is not and will not be easy for JG to clear up his brother’s detritus. He is, in fact, so aggravated by all of it that he says he plans to do a massive clearance of his own ‘stuff’ as soon as he gets home. I am faintly amused. I do not believe it is possible to clear up ahead of death, no matter how much planning and arranging you do.  

Nor do your plans for greeting the returned family, or for posting, last past the first challenge. It is now almost New Year’s Eve. Almost. One day to go. And it was my mother’s birthday and my parents’ wedding anniversary. My father always thought it was clever of him to have arranged to have both events on the same date – he could buy one bunch of yellow roses and cover all eventualities. I am not sure I ever heard my mother comment on this, but she did like yellow roses, so I guess it worked out. 

I am at a greater age now than my mother ever reached, but have six years to go to pass my father. He was lost for a while after my mother died, but he regrouped and made a new life for himself. He moved into an apartment in a retirement complex, made new friends and new interests. He even acquired a lady friend, a retired professor of languages, a wonderful and warm woman not unlike the wife he had lost. Jg and I were engaged in building the house we now live in, and he drove out from the city to supervise our progress. He organized a move for his widowed sister into another apartment in the complex and ran her life for her as well, adding countless codicils to her will, supervising her shopping and generally making sure she did well. I was booked as chauffer for many medical, dental and other appointments, if they were in spots where he did not care to drive. He was busy and he kept me busy too.

I have just glanced out my office window and I viewed an horrid mixture of snow, rain and ice pellets pelting down. I hope it quits before the YD decides to drive out here to spend New Year’s Eve. I hope it quits, period, but since this is December in eastern Ontario, it probably won’t. I was looking for a photo to post for a new year’s greeting and found some from our holiday in Bequia a few years ago. Sun and surf. Sigh.

Hereafter

 

My brother-in-law died early in the morning of December 26^th of the effects of a glioblastoma. If he had lived two more days, he would have been sixty -eight. Too young to go.

In my mind, Johnny will always be the little brother. He was a small boy,

nine years old, when JG and I were married and still a young boy, to my eyes, when we had our children. As a teenager, he lived with us for part of a year when our girls were preschoolers, and has, to an extent, spent a lot of time and holidays with us through the years. An only child, myself, I always was thrilled to have him and Anne, the sister in the family, as accrued siblings. I force fed him through some of his Grade 9 final exams, insisted he learn to touch type, ragged him about our common lack of basic arithmetical skills, enjoyed our common interests in swimming and diving, argued with him, endlessly, about politics. Loved him. Even when he was at his most exasperating, he was lovable.

And, oh my, could he be exasperating. He did not have opinions – he had Opinions. Blazingly intelligent himself, and, as he described himself, an autodidact, he expected equal ability in public office and public service. When faced with what I would interpret as stupidity or carelessness, he often classified an action (or lack of action) as deliberate and culpable. ‘The whole council is corrupt’, he would fume. ‘They are in it for what they can get.’ he would mutter about just about any politician going. Well, he liked Trump. We did argue. Long into the night on occasion. And agreed to disagree.

What impressed me the most about this guy, among many impressive actions and accomplishments, was not the skills he taught himself, many as those were, but rather his innate kindness. He was not afraid to tackle anything. Once when, as a fifteen-year-old he was babysitting our toddler daughters, one of them woke up and was sick. I got a phone call from him and he told me about the accident, that he had cleaned the kid, put her back to sleep and put the dirty linen in water in the basement sink. What the call was to ask was if there was anything else he should have done. He was a teenaged boy. And he had calmly and thoroughly done an adult job.

As an adult, this caring behaviour became one of his signatures. Over the years John cared for his parents as they aged and until they died, and for a childless cousin, also until she died. He was a good companion to his brother-in-law and a concerned and caring brother to his sister. In her final illness, he provided support and companionship to her daughters. He supported his mother as she looked after her sisters-in-law, and found tasks and supporting roles for some of his cousins. And that was just family. He always maintained the friendships established in school days and through his many activities. When he and his brother were planning for his death, those friends were the people he thought of.

His friends thought a lot of him. It was those friends who cared for him in his last illness. They drove him to appointments, brought him food and necessities, sat with him, nursed and supported him. His best friend was with him in his last hours and he died in her arms. A former girlfriend spent countless hours supporting him. His friends were his family, in truth, as we live far away. Yes, his brother has the task of clearing up the residue of his life, but his friendships are his testimonial.

Did I mention that he could be a pain, at times? After his mother needed nursing home care, John lived alone in and had the run of the family home. He established, on top of my mother-in-law’s dining room table, still covered with her cherished crochet lace tablecloth, an electronics working station, piled high with components and, at one point, three disembowelled radios. His kitchen table was little better. When we visited, we ate out. He was a packrat, son of a packrat, brother of another. And most of what he and his father had gathered over long years was stored in the basement. Along with the cat’s litter box, access by the cat to this last having been achieved by cutting a small round hole into the basement door. What is not in the basement is probably in the garage, waiting to be sorted. Gilmours – collectors and a collective pain, actually.

John collected skills as well as stuff. He was an accomplished cold and tropical open water diver. He had a pilot’s licence for small planes. He was a certified auto mechanic. He was a designer, teacher and repair expert on some types of computers, all skills that he taught himself. He was a long-time HAM (VE3NKH) radio operator. He played guitar. He ran and rode, both bicycle and motorcycle, the latter on several cross-continent trips. He was skilled at landscape maintenance and had a stash of cash that he had been paid for doing so. He could weld, estimate and build. He was a top-notch amateur photographer, both regular and underwater. Among the skills he taught himself I can identify brokerage, typing, marksmanship and gun handling, cooking … I am sure only that I have missed some. The tag name JOAT? Jack of All Trades. That was John.

He should have died hereafter. In Macbeth, the quote goes “She should have died hereafter; 

There would have been a time for such a word.” It was not John’s time. He should have had at least another decade or two to practice his skills, hang with his friends, cook a beef roast, play his guitar, bomb up here on his bike.  His father lived past his 90^th birthday. His brother is 82 and still a vital, active man. The tumour diagnosis was made in September. John opted to have it treated, and endured the effects of the treatment until it was obvious that it was not doing enough good. He struggled with the effects of the tumour itself, but even as his illness increased, he could still laugh. He was himself for as long as he could be and then, mercifully, he was gone.

Leaving us with loss. That he left a lot of stuff to disperse is maybe not a bad thing as it provides something to do. I think that a lot of the activities that we do around the death of someone we loved or admired is a displacement of the pain. That is what writing this has been for me. Once I stop writing, once I have, in effect, said the word, time will start again. Without him.

I am putting in a bit of a photo gallery, as time permits and I find the photos.

This is a family shot taken about 1963, at a guess.

From the left, Grandmother Annie Murgatroyd, Jim (Red) Gilmour, father, John in front, left, Anne Hamer, sister, middle rear, her daughter Lori in front, right of John, George Hamer, right rear, Dorothy and Georgia Hamer, front right, Dorothy holding racket down, Georgie holding racket sideways.

This is John with his brother, also Jim Gilmour (the family distinguished by calling this one Jimmy. Year probably 1960- Jim is wearing a Science Faculty jacket from Queen's University and sporting a first year beard. Pity about the colour - the beard was bright red

Here is a young John, probably in his early twenties, helping his brother cut a dead tree - and preventing his nieces from getting under it until it was down.

Around the same time, playing baseball with Jim and the girls.

John and his father often came up from Fort Erie to our land in Lanark to help with the job of getting in the sugar wood. Here are two photos of  firewood working -one of setting the splitter and one of splitting.

Here he is unloading a tractor he helped his brother buy from the float he and a friend brought it in on.

Ans here is another young John, helping his brother construct a garage. It is the window of this building whose frame calculations cost John and Mary a long and painful exercise in arithmetic.

I do not seem to see many photos of older John. I am sure they are in my boxes and boxes of photos, somewhere. 

I found this one of John holding the mother of the baby in the next photo down.

There is one that I really love, however. It is John holding his great niece as a small baby. This is the John that we knew lately. The baby he is holding is now a much changed 18 year old university student, however.

And to finish off for now, this is a middle aged John with his sister - I don't know if this was a serious discussion or if they were both contemplating the dog's state of relaxation.

I am finishing off with a selection of John in his latest iteration - but always himself.

That baby two photos up? That's her in the white sweater. Her father to her left, John's niece, Wendy in the centre with her dog, Shammy, and John in our bush in Lanark.

Last Christmas, dessert time. 

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