One Moment at a Time

I continue on my theme of finishing up 'my year' by looking backwards and forwards - I alternate between the two. I spent this afternoon with my pal Aidan who is nearly nine. We've been plotting and scheming because it's his mother's 50th birthday on Sunday. Some birthday! Her husband is dying of cancer and she doesn't feel like celebrating in the least.

We still wanted to mark it in some way though so we put our heads together and designed a simple treasure hunt. On Sunday mornings Fleur usually takes Aidan to his Tai Kwon Do class down near the local library. Aidan and I have planned that after Aidan's class, we'll start by sending her to a local shop where they make Dutch chocolate on the premises. We've got her a gift certificate so she can choose her own. From there we've sent her to her favourite local cafe run by a Portuguese guy named Joe, where we've paid for a latte for her to have with her chocolates. Next we've sent her to a flower shop partway home. Aidan paid for a single yellow calla lily. Then we'll send her home. We haven't quite decided what will happen when she gets back here. I'm still thinking about that!

Yesterday afternoon we had to write the clues and make little maps to go with them. He's never made maps before so it was a learning process. He's quite pleased with himself actually. We put the clues in envelopes and he wrote on the outside and decorated them. Then he had to budget the money to pay for it all. He's never done that before either. This really has been an education as well as a labour of love. What's so nice about it is how life-affirming it is. Aidan is vital and strong and basically happy, even in the face of his father's impending death.

Geoff's death has come slowly. It reminds me of the machines that the city engineers use to grind down the asphalt before they put a new surface on the road. Geoff has been ground down, back to the bedrock, by his process of dying. Aside from what this has meant for him, it's been a life-changing experience for me. In an odd way, it's a privilege. I don't mean that it's been fun; not at all. I mean that the three of them have allowed me to participate in their experience. I suppose that because they have, it's also my experience.

People in my life have died before now but it has always been at a distance. This is the first time that I've experienced dying on an intimate level. I'm around almost every day. I have been hearing the minutiae of their lives. I see that his dying process that he is living through is very personal. How he discovered the cancer, what it was doing to his body, how he chose to deal with the diagnosis, and the treatment he opted for, was all linked to who he is, how he sees life and how he deals with the unknown. Although I've read many books about the stages of dealing with illness and death, I'm seeing the highly individual aspects.

I have come to know more about Geoff in the last 18 months than have in all the ten years I've been living here. I'm watching him on a journey. Fleur is on her own journey. You could say that she's being tempered, like a strong sword. She is changed permanently. Aidan is changed as he grows up. Because he is so young, he lives largely in the present moment. Relative to the length of his life, a year and a half, which is what it has been so far, seems to go on forever. If I were to draw a line to represent each of their lives, Geoff's illness is at the end of his line, two-thirds of the way on Fleur's, and at the beginning of Aidan's.

As I complete my year, Geoff completes his life. We will incorporate this experience into the fabric of our lives and who knows what Geoff will have the chance to do. He will go around the corner the way they describe UFO's doing when they disappear in the night sky. They make a ninety degree turn and blip, they disappear.

I don't have any conclusions about this - just observations, as I continue to process it. He started taking morphine this week. I don't know if it's because of that, or just because of what the cancer is doing to his brain, but he seems suddenly to have lost his self-possession. Another layer of him seems to have lifted to the 'other' place. We're close to the end but we're still not at the end. It's clear to me that his death isn't a destination, even in the moment of his going. Life unfolds, one moment at a time. It's the moments that count.

Maybe it's time

I had a client yesterday who is facing the results of the business model she created on the computer. She researched and made projections regarding what she could charge for the services she wants to offer and what it would cost to run the business - and no matter how she juggles the numbers, she can't cover her costs. It isn't viable here, with our current economic circumstances.

I think this was something that she has considered might be the case so she wasn't completely surprised. I reinforced for her that she did learn skills that she hadn't thought she could learn and she saved a whole lot of time, worry, money and grief by figuring this out before she risked everything she has, but ... it is still the death of this particular dream in this particular city.

In taking the path that led her to this point, she has to face two things and I mention them here not because she is unique but precisely because she is not.

First, she is up against how we in our culture value the next generation. I think that we're conflicted about how we educate our kids and we're in denial about what this could mean to our futures. I thank God that I'm not a parent this time round and that I don't have to deal with the experience kids have when they go to school. Are schools designed to teach basic skills to make our kids employable, and that's it? And for how long might they be employable? Or are we trying to turn out well rounded adults who can lead our society into our own old age? Will they be equipped?

Some of you are in a better position to answer these questions than I am. I do recognize that education isn't a business and so there is some irony in using a business model to find out if she can run a kindergarten on her own. The operative point here is 'on her own'. No (wo)man is an island and all that!

I know quite a few people inside the educational system who believe that it has a ways to go before it meets their idea of what's nurturing, motivating and interesting for kids. There: I've softened my position from what I really wanted to say because I felt I was being too black and white, without enough facts. I wanted to say that we pretend not to but we treat our kids the way we treat the environment; as if we don't have a future to be concerned about.

I don't know, maybe kids are hardy and they survive in spite of what we do to them in school. Maybe. And maybe not.

Anyway, my second point about my client is that she is also facing the possibility of having to give up her dream about who she is. She has identified herself as a early childhood teacher, and a good one, for most of her career. It's what she loves and what she is really good at. Now she is getting to the age when many people will be considering retirement and financially she can't. Who is she now? What do you do when you have no pension and no savings and you can't do what you believe you are meant to do in your heart of hearts?

What does one do when to do what seems 'practical', what society 'offers', feels like it will destroy one's soul?

The conclusion I'm coming to is that we have to get creative and think outside the box. If thinking outside the box were easy, more people would do it. I think we only do it when the alternatives are soul-destroying. Maybe it's time for our whole culture to think outside the box and see what we come up with. Maybe people like my client, and like me, are on the leading edge of the wave.

Any joiners?