I don’t know where to begin exactly. Aren’t endings supposed to come with their own beginnings? Doors and windows closing and opening…that kind of thing…

When my mum (we called her Phyllis although her name was Elizabeth) died on Friday, a door slammed shut. Well… it closed anyway, firmly and forever. And then I got up and closed all the windows. And despite what I’ve been doing since: arrangements, calls, notes, wandering, staring, I’ve been doing it in this unfamiliar and increasingly airless room. The metaphor feels right and comfortable; no need for oxygen when you’re holding your breath.

But today, not quite a week later, I notice the sun is shining. It shows up the dust that’s accumulated from the ongoing basement reno, which, ironically, we began so that we’d have a place for Phyllis after her stroke. When I told her we wanted her to live with us she smiled, was grateful but said she hoped she’d die first, that she didn’t want to be a bother, that we might not get along. I worried about that too but I thought there might be enough that was good to make it work—and anyway, she’d be useful, she knew things I kept forgetting: how to prune the blackberries, make pumpkin compote, remove burned on stains from pots, cure sore throats and earaches with herbs from the garden—the original nature girl, raised on a farm, she used to milk cows, make butter, spin wool, grow flax, weave her own linen with it for god’s sake. She carried sacks of grain on her head to have them milled into flour. She had no idea any of this was interesting. I had to pry the stories out of her.

I open a window. There’s a breeze. Kite weather.

Not only is there dust everywhere, the house is in disarray, debris all over the kitchen table, a puddle of stationery that would take two seconds to stack, sling an elastic band around, but it’s more time than I care to give. And I’d have to walk to the kitchen drawer for the elastic.

The very idea exhausts me.

So I leave them spread out and messy instead, along with a box of Sifto from the nursing home where the eggs were always bland she said. What am I supposed to do with a box of Sifto?  I prefer sea salt. Should I throw it out? I don’t know. I don’t know… I’ll think about it later. And anyway it’s not hurting anything standing there next to a pair of green gloves from my coat pocket (it’s May, I don’t need gloves; where do they go?) and a new dust mop cover—pale blue, soft like a baby’s washcloth; I may use it soon. Or not. There’s a crossword, a tea stained mug, a basket of seeds, a few pens, a notebook, the Saturday comics with a Pardon My Planet that shows an old woman in her casket and beside her a man—husband? son?—telling the priest he’d like a few minutes alone with her while her mouth is shut. I’m not sure if I should find this funny or not but I leave it there next to the salt and the gloves and a stone from the beach that meant something once, I don’t remember what, and a bill from one of her caregivers and a letter I’d been writing to a friend before all this happened. Should I still send it? The old news is relevant though overshadowed by recent events…

I have no idea how to tidy this mess. The best I can do is ignore it, walk past it a dozen times a day, watch new things appear: sunglasses, lip balm, sixteen dollars and sixty two cents.

It’s the salt that finally gets to me.

I open a 1963 Pocket Book edition of Hints from Heloise—Phyllis thought Heloise was a genius for solving modern day problems such as getting gum out of shag rugs but the only use she offers for salt is to reduce suds from a dishwasher or washing machine. I do a google search. There are, apparently, 44 other things to do with salt.  #18 for instance: “Remove old stains from teacups by rubbing with salt and a bit of water.”

I take a long breath, pour some Sifto into a badly stained mug, add a drop of warm water and presto it’s like new.

That’s one.

It’s a start.

Is there a name for a fear of school buses?

Because I have that.

Whenever I see one I think of an unfortunate grade five field trip to Martyr’s Shrine in Midland, which involved lunch en route. The details are unimportant—let’s just say it was a long time before I wanted another egg salad sandwich.

I blame it entirely on the bus.

I remember heat and diesel fumes and kids screeching and shouting and black leather seats stuffed with something like concrete and how you could feel every pebble and bump on the three hour road trip.

All of which made it difficult to read.

I hadn’t yet learned that reading in a moving vehicle makes me woozy. Or that the whole point of everyone singing was to ward off the woozy in the first place…

There was much ewwwing in my direction after the egg salad. Mortifying of course, but there was also less general shouting and screeching, which at least improved the ambience a titch.

Yin yang.

I remember almost nothing of Martyr’s Shrine. It may be a big white building, it may be orange stripes. I think there are stairs and flower beds and I do recall a pile of canes somewhere and being told they belonged to people who’d come and been ‘cured’ by saying a prayer. I don’t remember doing so but if I’d been smart I would have taken the opportunity to say a little something for the trip back.

It seemed eons before I saw another school bus—or maybe I was just blocking them out. Then a few months ago, I notice I’m on some kind of Laidlaw route—following, passing, waiting behind, at least a dozen school buses each morning—each one a reminder of egg salad gone bad. I braced myself for life in a very uncomfortable world.

Oddly though, as time goes by and, annoying as the bloody things are with their little stop-sign power trips, habit of driving the speed limit, and the way they linger at railway crossings—which is so creepy and only makes everyone else wonder if they know something we don’t—it’s actually turning out to be a good thing, a kind of exposure therapy. The more I see them from the outside the less I think about their butt-numbing acoustically horrible bump bump bumping endlessly stopping and starting and stopping and starting and stopping and starting diesel spewing nausea tub insides.

So, yeah, the more the merrier, I say.

In fact, I can hardly remember the whole Martyr’s Shrine fiasco. Martyr’s Who? What egg salad?

See?

So nice to be moving on.

~