At a safe distance from the road, with a grassy pasture and a long curved drive acting as a soft buffer, there appears to be a quiet horse farm of little note or concern. Upon superficial inspection, it’s idyllic … a perfect property, almost certainly not harbouring any ghosts.

The Estate was called Rothensande which translates to “Red Sands”. Upon arrival, I realized my mother had been here before. She’d taken a photo of this property on a visit to Eutin in the 1960’s. I had a copy of the photo on my phone. Up until that moment, I had thought the photo was of “nothing” – just a farm property of little consequence, a scenic place along the road she passed by when she was a kid. I had totally dismissed it.

Standing in the centre of the estate, reflecting on my mother’s description of this place, I was struck by a rather ominous feeling. She had said, “there were unhappy happenings” here. I’d never known what those words meant until I was standing in the same place as she had stood to capture her photograph. Then I “knew” without a doubt that she had taken that picture as more than just a memory.

She was dealing with ghosts from her past.

You’d have to know my mother to know what I knew. Let me try to explain. She was never one to let rules or formal barriers get in the way of a good picture. I’ve seen her climb over fences, trample into people’s yards and even stand on the edge of a steep cliff (with certain death at the bottom) – just to get “the shot”. She’d been hissed at by snakes and fallen down in craggy rocks, yelling “oooohhh!” all the way back, her knees bleeding, but she got that picture of the desert rose by the cactus – and it’s beautiful.  She’d even climbed through an electric fence to get farther back, trying to get the whole view of an alpine mountain into the frame of her camera. She would do just about anything or go anywhere to accomplish want she had on her mind.

Yet, for this picture, she didn’t get close at all.

The estate is in the distance. Small-looking. She could have climbed over the fence or gone down the drive just a bit to get a better vantage point if she’d wanted to. There were any number of ways to get a better picture. She didn’t even get the name of the estate in the frame – just a few buildings in the far-off distance. Not even a small attempt to get a picture of the big house which she lived in for a short time.

What I imagine, is a woman, so haunted by the ghosts of a place, that she dared not get any closer. She took a quick snapshot and kept on her way.

My mother’s photograph from 1968.

Not so long ago, Rothensande was an orphanage, but it has lived many lives both before and after that time. Perhaps most famously, in the 1950’s, (post-orphanage era) the property was used as the set for filming the “Gut Immenhof” series of movies – you might look at these films as the German equivalent of our Anne of Green Gables films. Rothensande was, and still seems an ideal piece of heaven, built for the purpose of luxury and enjoyment. Such was not my mother’s experience when she stayed there for a short time in 1948.

The Rothensande Mansion

I can only speculate now what those “unhappy happenings” were, but I do think it had my mother pretty rattled, emotionally speaking. So, now, when I think of her going back to that place called Rothensande, I see a broken woman, still sorting through a whole package of emotions. I imagine her circling back to the orphanage, not out of curiosity or fond feelings … but just to “deal’ with it.

I happened to talk to the man who runs the estate now. He said, from time to time, he hears stories from people who used to live there … former orphans who were sent off to South Africa and Canada. He relayed their tales of abuse and punishment to me. If there were any happy stories to tell, he didn’t hear them and he didn’t share any with me.  My mother said the couple who ran the orphanage were “strict”. I also know that my grandmother, lying in her hospital bed a few months from death, went to great lengths to get my mom out of the orphanage quickly. She, a Mennonite, even converted to Catholicism in an attempt to get a local Catholic family to adopt her daughter.

The orphanage had everyone rattled.

I can’t imagine anyone in this world more helpless than a child without a parent. As I was at Rothensande on a tour (they now give tours of the estate on Wednesdays and Saturdays, for the many fans of the Gut Immenhof Films) I noticed, among the group of people,  several small children. They had parents but as the children went off to play on their own, separating from the group, they began to look like orphans to me. I kept my distance and observed their innocence as they poked at the dirt and puddles in the pathway. Without a parent or anybody who cared even just a tiny little bit, these children were like sitting ducks, vulnerable to the slightest abuse. I remember when I was a child, how I relied on the adults in my life to care for me – I believed they had my safety and well-being in mind. That’s what makes children so beautiful and precious. Their blind trust and unspoiled attitude toward life should be guarded by the people around them.

As I watched the children at Rothensande, all I could hear were my mother’s words … “unhappy happenings”.   I saw the truth right in front of me. My heart broke a little bit for her.  I wanted to rush in and protect her from the pain of loneliness or abuse … or whatever happened at the orphanage, which I will never know.

I took some photos of the children as they played in the dirt. A girl, who I guessed to be about 8 years old, walked over to the water with a small stick in her hand. She had a long braid of red hair and a sun dress with one strap fallen off her shoulder. She intrigued me. I imagined she was my mother over 60 years ago.

Careful not to get caught, I photographed the little girl in the sundress, so I could remember the moment and all of the emotion that went along with it. I’m quite certain if her parents saw me stalking their daughter, it would’ve been a messy scene. But I wanted the shot … and so I took the risk.

Months later, I painted that little girl. She is looking out to her imaginary world on the water. As colourful brushstrokes danced on canvas, I thought of my mother and all the other orphans and all of their stories.

They were beautiful, innocent, vulnerable and lonely.

Rothensande was an interesting experience for me. It’s a place that opened my eyes and my heart to see my mother’s story in more than just black and white.  For that, I’m thankful.

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If you’re interested in seeing some Rothensande pictures backed by the Gut Immenhof soundtrack, take a look at the video below!

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Stories a property holds onto, buried under red sand, afloat on blue water or tucked away behind decades of floral wallpaper, layered on layers, will only ever be a kaleidoscope time capsule; fragments and flashes of colour without much order or sense; a curiosity to turn round and view from time to time.  

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A few days before visiting Rothensande, I had been searching through a series of giant books in the Eutin Archive for many hours, desperately scanning each page for two names, Monika Kröker or Maria Kröker. I was looking for any clue, no matter how slight, to unlock stories about my mother’s and grandmother’s lives from the time when they lived in Eutin and surrounding area. They were there during the influx of refugees and displaced persons (DPs) in the time after WW II. In the town of Eutin alone, the population doubled from 10,000 to 20,000 people in a matter of months in 1945. Searching in the DP-related archives was tedious work; many hours are spent for little to no reward. These documents were typed or hand-written in every size and style of paper – all in German – a language that, for the most part, I don’t understand. 
As I turned another page in the mountain of pages, there was a letter dated Sept 24, 1948 with my grandmother’s name in the subject line. I gasped out loud. This was the clue I’d been hoping to find. The letter was lengthy and roughly explained the reasoning for relocating my mother and grandmother from their current dwelling: My grandmother needed to go to a hospice on account of being very ill and my mother (having nowhere else to go to and no one to care for her) was sent to an orphanage. This letter told me the name of the orphanage I’d been hoping to track down. “Rothensande”, a very pretty name which means “Red Sands”.

That she had been there, too, struck me as both strange and beautiful, since none of it had been planned. The moment simply arrived, then fleeted away, leaving me with a deep impression of having travelled around a circle.

Since that moment, I have been reflecting on circles, in a neurotic, obsessive kind of manner. I’ve been writing about them and have started painting circles and swirls on very large canvases in my studio – sometimes in the middle of the night.

The circle has become my muse. No doubt about that.

I had been traveling around a circle, and only now saw it for the first time. Or had the circle had come to meet me, spinning and swirling, revealing all of my life, what had transpired, so far.

Now that it’s so clear, the circle, I mean, I see it everywhere – in the seasons as they spin round from year to year, faithfully returning.  I see the circle in the way the earth moves around the sun, bringing a new sunrise and sunset with each cycle. The moon, hiding and revealing, always circling.

Rainbows are circles, I saw one over a waterfall where the hoop of a rainbow came to meet me at my feet. Where did it begin and where did it end?

I thought of the garden, when a seed goes into the ground to die and becomes a new creation. Each ending is a new beginning. This is the circle of life.

I notice tracks all over these tangled, overlapping circles. I’m aware that I’ve become a part of another’s journey, not just my own. These familiar footprints are my mother’s, I’m sure of it. I see their shape revealed in the dirt, the sand and snow, in the garden, pressed into the green grass. In this way, we share the journey.  I follow, amused and curious to pick up the crumbs and clues she left along the way. But, she’s always one too many steps ahead. I fear I will never catch up.

I now look for her in these circles and wonder what is to be learned?  I feel my heart expanding as the universe does. Molecules moving outward, getting ever more spacious. I am struck with the notion of forgiveness in the stories I encounter along the way.

Circling, spinning, swirling … this is the motion of a circle. Going back, I move forward. Healing, always healing.

These old stories, dusty relics from the past, they offer an invitation.

And, so I open my ears and my heart.

I listen.

I revisit. I redo. I renew.

I circle.

Acadia University 2014

Acadia University 1965 (ish)

We were at Radio Shack, Mommy and I.

The clerk was handing her credit card back. “Sorry ma’am, it’s been declined.” 

“Oh!” Mommy exclaimed. She looked genuinely surprised. 

Not wanting to embarrass us, quite considerately the clerk kept her voice down as we discussed what to do next. I didn’t know much about credit cards, but was about to get a good lesson. I was 16.

Mommy took back the card and handed over a different one from her wallet, where she had plenty others to choose from. “That one should be fine”. I noticed the colour in her cheeks rise to a pretty shade of rose. Things weren’t fine and that was my clue.

Just that afternoon, Mommy declared that we would be getting a computer and would I come with her to the Pen Centre to pick it up? She was taking a business course and a home computer was a must. Us girls could use it for school and, also, she planned to write a book about her life.

The year was 1992 and computers were pretty much cutting edge technology. I thought they were for rich people only, which we were not. Money, or, rather, lack of it, didn’t stand in the way of my mother being an early adopter. She had a life to live, goals to accomplish!

It seemed as if the whole store had paused, listening and waiting, as Mommy’s second card was processed. She did her best to look casual and nonchalant with her square shoulders and proud back, but I could still see that tell-tale pink in her cheeks. Back then there was a lot to do in processing a credit card. In the early Nineties you had to stand and wait at the counter in painful agony as the clerk relayed your number on a landline, as if waiting for permission from the authorities in some far-off official boardroom. The unseen committee would then debate amongst themselves in sombre tones as to whether or not they would grant the money. Meanwhile, back at the store, your small life hung delicately in the balance.

The clerk hung up the phone for the second time and reported the news we’d all been waiting for. I felt the entire store turned their ears in our direction.

Mommy had a new silk scarf tied in her hair that day. Bright pink water colours in a hand-painted design. She’d picked it out at the Lincoln Mall one afternoon after getting her hair cut.  I remember seeing her walk out of the store, immediately tying it in a big bow over her hair, declaring “I’m going to wear silk scarfs from now on!  You should wear one, too, Jennifer. Which one do you want? Let’s pick one out.”

I chose a blue-washed scarf, even though I knew I didn’t need one. Mommy remarked at how it suited me so well. It matched my eyes and complimented my blond hair just right. We were a pair that day, walking out of the mall, each with a scarf in our hair.

She was wearing one of her silk scarfs when she made the declaration “I’ve decided to write poetry! You can illustrate. We’ll make a book together, Mother and Daughter.” I probably didn’t roll my eyes, even though I wanted to. She was so excited and sincere. And honestly, she hadn’t been that happy in well … ever. Truthfully, she had never been happier in my whole life. All her pain had been lifted and she was experiencing the summer of all her summers. I didn’t quite know what to do, except that I knew I wanted to see her stay that way. I agreed to illustrate her poetry.

And so, it was the summer of brightly coloured silk scarfs, poetry and spending money. It was the summer of being young again. It was the summer of sweet happiness.

Along with composing poetry, Mommy had recently written an enthusiastic letter to her oncology doctor thanking him profusely for the most recent concoction of drugs.  22 years later, I found the letter in a stack of memories. It explains so much that I didn’t understand at the time.

The second card was declined and the store fell into a hush. All ears were tuned in to hear what the clerk had to say next. I picture the Radio Shack store looking like that game where someone calls out “FREEZE!” and everyone stands as still as possible. The loser is the one who moves first.

Mommy handed over a third card.

Declined.

As this point, most people would give up. They would let go of  their dream and resign to continuing life they way it was before. The clerk suggested that we consider not getting the computer. To Mommy, stubborn to a fault and an excellent problem solver, this suggestion was ludicrous. Instead of backing down, she thrust all three cards back to the clerk. “Split it into three. That’ll work.”

And so it did.

Cheeks now fully crimson, we left the store with our arms full of boxes, the not-so-proud owners of a brand new computer.

That evening, while Mommy busied herself with setting up the computer, boxes all over the bedroom, M-M and I had a quick meeting by the picnic table in the back yard. Our voices quiet, we reported our latest observations. “Something’s not right” she said. “Yeah”, I said. “She’s been writing poetry and wearing silk scarves. Plus there’s the computer and the credit cards and also, she bought that humongous desk.”

Yeah, something wasn’t right.

Also, why was she so happy? It was all quite suspicious.

The credit cards were full and we had an inkling that the bank account was dry. Mommy was happy and pain free. The madness had to be stopped. After our conversation by the picnic table there were a few phone calls followed by a quick change in drugs.

As the leaves turned from summer green to various shades of orange and red, M-M and I went back to school and our household returned it’s unique state of normal. Bills arrived in the mail. Mommy’s white sweater with the brightly embroidered flowers grew a patch of brown on the front from the constant rub, rub, rub to relieve the pain in her chest.

Yes, everything was back to normal.

She stopped writing poetry.

I sometimes wonder if Mommy knew she was higher than a kite that summer. I’ll never know, but one thing I’m sure about is that, no matter the cost, it was probably worth it.

For her, it was a great summer. Probably the best.

It was the summer and my mom was going through an identity crisis.

Back in the eighties, technology wasn’t what it is today and it was a tricky situation when it came to swimwear and prosthetics. “Tricky” as in, there was little accommodation, particularly for those with limited financial means, which we were. If you were one of the lucky women (such as my mother) with a flat post-mastectomy chest and you wanted to go swimming, you had only a few options.  All of them, well, rather awkward.

Your first option was to buy a women’s bathing suit and go sans filler …  just let the fabric hang limply off the front of the suit. Weird, but it was a cheap and easy fix.

A second choice was to wear your “special bra”, complete with compartments to stuff your silicone lady pieces into.  The bra would be worn under the swim suit. Also a bit weird, but if the suit had enough coverage it worked alright; as long as you turned a blind eye to the set of double straps.

On this beautiful late summer afternoon, Mom was wearing the second option: swim suit and silicone-stuffed bra.  The air was buzzing with cicadas and the trees looked wavy and hazy even though there wasn’t even a wisp of a breeze.  She was sitting on the edge of the pool with her toes dangling in the water; her usual poolside pose. She rarely went in beyond the waist for a good reason. But it’s hard to spend your life on the sidelines watching other people swim – especially when it’s HOT out.

She climbed down the ladder and carefully slipped into the water to cool down. I don’t blame her. The water was refreshing and she loved swimming. Once emerged, she sighed in happy relief and overall, was pleased.

For a few minutes, that was.

We were visiting at a friends house where there was a boy and a girl similar in age to my sister and I. On this hot summer day, everyone was out in the pool.  Mom joined in the fun and became the official “thing thrower”. We were playing the game of retrieval, similar to how dogs are entertained, by finding any type of item that sank to the bottom of the pool or floated on the surface of the water. We delivered it all back to my mother at lightening speed. We would swim out on the count of three in a big flurry of waves and splashes to see who could collect the most items. The game was fairly rowdy but going along perfectly well until the boy found and retrieved a curious item floating on the surface of the water – something he’d never seen before.

In the centre of all the splashing and yelling, he stopped, thrust his hand high out of the water and declared in his loudest voice “Look what I found!” He looked positively victorious.

There was a pale pink silicone blob in his hand.

I recognized the pink blob immediately. The boy had no idea he was holding onto my mom’s boob.

Awkwardness ensued. There was some nervous laughter from Mom who’s hand quickly patted her chest to find which side was empty. I was asked to “Please bring it over to Mommy”… so I yanked the lost lady part from the hand of the boy and delivered it back to her. I was mortified. As far as I could tell, none of my friends had to retrieve their mother’s body parts, floating and bobbing on the surface of neighbourhood pools. Most certainly we were a unique bunch.

After that, all was as well as it could be. We resumed our game and Mom returned to the sideline, rather quiet.

The cicadas continued their buzzing.

I wonder if the experience of the floating boob was the reason for a very curious decision she made later that year. This is when I pause to mention the third bathing suit option, which, on a visit to the Brock swimming pool, my Mom decided to try out for the first time.

She called a spade a spade and walked out of the change room, in her blue polka dot bikini bottoms.

Only.

Honest to goodness.

Technically, a woman’s bathing suit is designed with the top part for sensible reasons.  It’s for covering up her chest. Now, if there’s no chest, we have grey area … and new rules apply (or don’t apply – depending on how you look at it). Practically speaking, she had options similar to what a man would have had when deciding what to wear to a pool party. In fact, a man had more to show off, or rather, cover up, than Mom had.

So, when she came strutting out of the women’s change room wearing only her blue polka dot bikini bottoms, you’d think that would have been alright. It’s certainly less offensive than fake floating boobs bobbing on the surface of a public pool.

Well, it wasn’t. These days, women are free to do what they want, but this was the Eighties – before the legalization of toplessness and the acceptance of public breast-feeding.

Mom was escorted out of the pool area by security and told to wear a full suit or don’t come back.

I’m sure she didn’t come back.

Maybe you would have done things differently.

As for my mother … this was not a stretch for her. She was being herself and doing her best with what options she had in the midst of a very big crisis. True, going topless was an extreme statement, but I’m certain a mastectomy is downright confusing to any well-adjusted woman, particularly when it comes to body image. I won’t even begin to cast judgement on her. I simply have no grasp on how to understand the circumstance or how to weigh out the strange options she had to consider.

I’m remembering this bazaar story on these hot summer days with cicadas buzzing in the backyard and pondering all the ways in which I will never understand the struggles my mother went through. As a kid, I thought my parents had it all figured out. I didn’t ever consider they could be hurting or going through any type of crisis. Now that I’m older, I’m starting to see the humanity in my parents simply because I am beginning to see humanity in myself more and more every day.

The days of thinking I could somehow “get it right” are over. Now, I see my own personal struggles and mistakes, the questions I have …  the lack of answers. The simple black and white days of the past have been painted into a very complicated shade of grey.

I don’t mind. In fact, I’ve come to realize, the world has always been grey;  the black and whiteness of my past was only ever of my own fabrication. It was a child’s make-believe world created to make sense of the uncomfortable and confusing stories  I didn’t understand, such as this one of floating boobs and polka dot bikini bottoms.

Black and white is comfortable; grey is awkward and requires compassion with bucket-loads of empathy. Grey takes work. I must resist the urge to paint black and white overtop of what I don’t understand.  Answers to “Why?” should be less important than learning how to handle the discomfort of the questions. This is what I tell myself … and what I try to do, even though I do a very poor job of it a lot of the time.

Nowadays, as I remember these stories along with all of their summer-time warmth, cicadas and awkwardness,  they help me in the practice of NOT figuring it out and instead, help me in learning to just let it be. 

“If you live in the questions, life will move you into the answers” says Deepak Choprah. I have a suspicion that the answers look a whole lot like acceptance and forgiveness, empathy and understanding …  and they’re not black and white at all, as I used to hope they would be. Answers most certainly don’t come in boxes with labels on them.

Some things can’t be explained and maybe they don’t need to be.

My mother walked into the Brock swimming pool … topless. Go figure.

Me, in my own crisis of identity … sporting a boy’s swimsuit. It seems Mom was consistent with her swim fashion purchases for all us females.

My mother with her two girls.

Mommy loved to entertain my sister and I with her many stories of escape, especially the ones from when she was a little girl in Europe. She would deliver these stories to us as if they were sweet treats saved up for special occasions. Sometimes she would reminisce while we walked on our way to view the sunset on a balmy summer night. We’d stroll along arm-in-arm-in-arm, our steps in rhythm as she took us back in time to a life that our young minds could barely only imagine.

Her first escape occurred was when she was just five years old. September 1943, WWII. The German army ‘escorted’ nearly 35,000 German-Soviet Mennonites from Ukraine toward Poland. They (my mother and grandmother) walked in rain and mud alongside a caravan of wagons 10 kilometers long. When they didn’t walk, they rode in open cattle cars, snow falling on their heads. Many didn’t survive. The Trek (as it is officially known) was a seven month trip and the beginning of escape from many things. Oppression. Communism. Starvation. Death. It was also the start of my mother’s wanderings that would eventually lead her through Poland and Germany, across the ocean and, finally, to a small farm in Grimsby, Ontario.

There were many more stories of escape including schools, hospitals and orphanages in the years following the Trek. My sister and I would listen, wide-eyed, to all of her tales of mischief and adventure. I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of admiration for her tenacity and courage. I wanted to be like her.  I believed that she could do anything and solve any problem. She was a person who knew how to get out of a sticky situation.

Eventually, to my great delight, I had the honour of being my mother’s accomplice in a planned escape. I was sixteen. It was Canada Day weekend and she was in the hospital again. The cancer had returned the year previous and was slowly making it’s way to the far reaches of her body.

The route of the cancer was something like this (you can hum along to the tune of Dem Dry Bones):

The Breast Cancer’s connected to the Bone Cancer …

The Bone Cancer’s connected to the Kidney cancer …

The Kidney Cancer’s connected to the Liver Cancer …  

… and so on until you have included the whole body in the song.

On this particular summer day, Mommy was in the hospital for a reason I can’t recall. Perhaps to drain her kidney of fluid. I remember a few times when she had a tube hooked up, a brown liquid slowly seeping out. On this particular day she was stable and unhooked. Waiting for nothing, as she put it.

Canada Day was the perfect day for an escape. Sunny with blue skies. Not exactly a day to spend inside a prison cell. That’s how Mommy would refer to her hospital room. The sealed window revealed to her exactly how wonderful and beautiful the outside world was.  She was longing for the best kind of healing a girl can get – sunshine and fresh air!

Sitting upright in her bed, eyeglasses on her nose, gown tied loosely in the back, she held the local newspaper open to the events section. Inspired with an idea, she looked up and casually asked the nurse … “So, what’s the protocol on leaving the hospital for a daytrip?”

“Not possible … it’s against the hospital rules” replied the nurse flatly.

“Tell me, what would you do if you discovered a patient wasn’t in their room? Would you assume that they had gone for a stroll in the building. To the cafe on the first floor, for instance, and that they’d be back soon?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Not wanting to waste any more sunshine, mommy immediately picked up the phone beside the bed and called a friend to hatch her plan.  Shortly thereafter, said friend picked me up from home. Mommy had called ahead and instructed that I bring along a small bag filled with escape clothes for her.  As for my outfit, she had a plan for that, too.

“Why don’t you wear your new blue-jean jumpsuit from Sears? And, I like the way you tie the silk scarf in your hair.”  She was always making requests on what I wore.  I didn’t mind at all. I liked to make her happy.

Soon, we pulled up to the automatic doors of the hospital where Mommy was waiting with a giant, mischievous smile on her face. Pointing to the newspaper article “This is where we’re going today!” she said.

Her finger was resting on an ad for “Art in the Park” in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She had a hankering for art, original paintings, the Niagara river, clear sunshine, a gentle breeze and cool, blue Lake Ontario. Mommy had her camera and asked me to pose by the rocks on the river to document our perfect afternoon. I stood amongst all the seagull poop on the cement and tried to smile even though I was a little grossed out. Mommy snapped the photo.

She was content and quite pleased with herself for having executed another great escape. I watched as she turned her face toward the sun. That summer afternoon was a stolen moment of perfection sandwiched between a long row of disappointing days. A consolation prize which helped to soften the slow and steady defeat that was constantly bearing down on her.  This was how my mother coped. This was how she lived. If she didn’t steal moments, there would never be any.

I never thought to take a picture of her. I didn’t know that our moments were running out. 

Here is the picture my mother took of me at the pier in Niagara on the Lake. Clearly, I’m thoroughly disgusted by the seagull poop all over the ground.

A year and a half later, on April 6, the snow fell in large fluffy flakes.  Driving home from the hospital, my sister and I didn’t have much to say. The same quiet that blanketed the snow covered night was filling the space between us. Heavy, but peaceful. We had steep learning curve to navigate ahead of us. Our team of three had just been reduced to two.  I was relying on my sister to take the lead, she being older and wiser by a year and a half. She was 20. I was 18.

The memories of that night come to me now in flashes. The yellow, hollow corridor labelled “Palliative Care”. The wish to look those words up in the dictionary in order to understand their meaning. Busy nurses accustomed to turning their faces away from tears. Questions. Flowers. The pastor. An unending elevator ride. Our white Oldsmobile in the parking lot across the street. The long walk to get to it. The empty thud of the car door. Vacuous silence. Snow. Burleigh Hill glimmering as it always did with headlights reflecting on limestone.  The bump at the end of the driveway.  Our front door clicking open up to a house with an empty bedroom.

When she died, I wasn’t there. I had left for a handful of minutes to run an errand. Arriving back at the hospital, stepping out of the elevator, my sister was standing there. Her face told me the story in an instant.

It was a punch to the gut. All my breath sucked out of me. Jelly legs. A sense of collapse from the inside. Standing, even though it seemed impossible. Walking forward, though I never chose to.

I had no words, no voice. I was ushered inside the room and left alone with what was my mother. Mommy. Alone. Still. Cold. Mouth open, but no breath going in or out. My sister said her eyes opened wide and looked straight at her right before the end. The nurse had put Mommy’s eyelids down by the time I got there.

Just inside the closed door, I stood and looked around the room. A mile between me and the bed. She’s not here. She’s gone. This is just her empty body. A shell.  I spoke these words to myself out loud as though it would force some sense of understanding to what was literally unbelievable to me. My mother. Gone. It happened in a moment and now it couldn’t be undone. Hope fizzled.

I moved a few steps closer to her, next to the bed, my hand resting on the sheet by her feet. I thought about her heart. How it had sustained her feet, kept them warm. I didn’t touch them, didn’t need to. I knew that they would be cold. She was always asking me to rub her feet to warm them up, to get the blood moving. No sense in trying that now.  I mindlessly reached for the flowers on the side table to make a little bouquet. It felt better to be busy with my hands while my head did the heavy work of comprehension.

I ripped apart an arrangement.  A stiff, triangular design in a plastic dish. Traditional. Ugly. Purple liatris, white daisies, september wheat, pink statice, fern, and carnations. These flowers took on new life as I made them into little bouquets. Reincarnation. Placing them on her unmoving chest, closer now, I looked at my mother’s face. Did I see an eyelid flutter? I leaned over her body awaiting another breath. I watched for the faintest rise in her chest or the twitch of a finger. I put my finger under her nostrils.

Nothing.

Permanence began to settle in. I hadn’t considered anything to be permanent until that very moment. She’s gone. This is just her body. She’s not in there. These words were beginning to sound like a mantra as I repeated them. I reached for more flowers. Another bouquet. I placed it in her hands and whispered to her I don’t think you’re in there anymore. A revelation. Words spoken to my mother, but meant for me.

That’s when the tears came. In heaves. I was folded in half, crumpled on the floor. Breath being sucked in faster than what I could let out. Flowers clutched in my hand. Forgotten. Crumpled. Broken.

My head pounded, blood rushed and swirled in my ears as I leaned my head against the bed. A loud buzz drowned out all sound. Memories, like waves, flooded in. I remembered our walk on Saturday, just 5 days previous. Without fail, the sunshine always drew my mother outdoors. I’m a nature-baby!  she would say.  For our walk,  we went around the small block and past the tree-canopied median with all the birdfeeders. I held her arm. The birds sang. She was slow, but still capable. Determined. That was the last day she was able to fit shoes over her bloated, yellowing feet. That was our last walk.

I made a list of other lasts. Last dinner. Last movie night. Last paska. Last bike ride. Last card game. Last time I made her laugh. I couldn’t even remember these moments anymore. Gone and forgotten. Ancient history. My mother was already fading from my memory. It was all happening too fast. She was a jewel dropped in a pond, disappearing from view.

Lifting my head from the bed, I uncrumpled my body and stood upright, heaving and sobbing in exaggerated bursts.

I returned back to the flowers. Another arrangement. Another bouquet and so on. I busied myself until all of the flowers and plants in the room had been made into little flower bundles. Then I placed them carefully, quietly, on top of the blanket and around the short, chemo-curly hair on my mother’s head, in her hands and around her feet. This was all I could do. It became my offering, my temporary solution. The busy-ness was soothing. Addictive, even.

We need to talk.  This is what she said to me on Sunday afternoon, the day after our walk around the block.

About what, I’ll never know. On that day, I didn’t have time for a conversation. I’m very sick was all she said before I went out the door.  I thought we had more time. She probably thought so, too. I thought she’d still be there when I came home.

I should have seen it coming from a thousand miles away. The dust on her dresser was thick. My mother, so tidy, always kept her dresser clean. I didn’t see it until she was gone. While I was out, she called a friend who drove her to the hospital for the last time.

Obvious signs. Missed opportunities. Overlooked conversations. Moments that can’t be returned to or redone. Haunted dreams. Recurring visions. Apologies heaped on apologies.

I wish that I could have done more for you girls. That I could have given you more. Her last words.

These words were spoken on Monday, two days before the end.  An apology. Turns out we both had much to be sorry for.

Unmeasured time passed and eventually all the arrangements were torn apart. Wicker baskets and plastic containers remained, empty and vacant. Green foam. Wet, broken and cracked, holes poked everywhere.

Flower arrangement carcasses.

Foliages strewn about, spilled onto the hospital tables, the floor sprinkled with fern fragments. Discarded blooms tossed to the side.  The distinct scent of chlorophyl and the sweet spice of carnations in my nostrils.

Still, I spoke my mantra. As though the words would be some kind of consolation or provide some comprehension.  These elude me, still.

Often I wonder if she had an awareness of what was about to happen, a moment before she left this world. Perhaps she was afraid and that’s why she opened her eyes. Or maybe she was relieved. Or curious. Did she see God? It’s hard to know how much consciousness someone has when they’re drugged up with morphine. Do they have any say in what happens next?

Since I don’t have any answers to these questions, I have decided to make my own conclusions.  I choose to believe that Mommy knew exactly what she was doing. The moment of transition from life to death was an act of her choosing.  Another of her great adventures into the unknown. That this last and final journey was part of a plan. Her escape plan.

Except in this story, when she escaped from life, she also escaped from me. 

If she were still here today and if she could read my words as I write them on this page, I would assure her that the only thing I wished she’d been able to do more of is stay here with me for a little longer.  The same words she said to me before she died, I would also say to her. I wish that I could have done more for you.  That I could have given you more.  I’m sorry.

I loved to hear her talk to me and tell her stories. Especially the ones of escape. Sometimes I make up a different ending to her story. I imagine she didn’t die.  Instead, in order to tell the story of this last adventure, she lived. I imagine her telling me the story about the time that she was sick, but then found a way to escape, even though it seemed impossible. That time when she found herself in a sticky situation, one that had little hope, but she turned it around and survived, much to our surprise and delight. That time when, instead of escaping life, she escaped death.

Twenty years after my mother’s story came to an end, I still remember much of it – what I saw from my vantage point as a teenager. Now, I have picked up her pen and continue to tell her tales of adventure, heartache, courage and yes … even her death. Some stories, like this one, are difficult and I am exhausted from the telling. The emotions are too raw, too real, even now. My face is stained with tears. Still.

Beautiful memories seem to come in the same package as pain and regret. I think my mother would agree with me on that. I’m too much like her … I still tell the stories anyway.

There’s absolutely no way to know what circumstances surrounded the delivery of this document or what inspired the diagram. Looking at it I realized there was so much I didn’t know about my mother – the experiences that she had, the decisions that she had to make. This fictional story is a way to search for and maybe discover some empathy for my mother’s world and her life.  There’s much to be said for walking in someone’s shoes.

These are the pink papers which inspired this story.

For the moment, the smooth pebble finish of the table has entirely fixated Monica’s eyes. Oddly still, her body feels as though it’s been molded and pressed to the orange plastic chair and then weighed down by a double dose of gravity. She and the chair have become one.

Musak bleeds in from the hallway under the door. She sits across from a social worker who absentmindedly hums along with a saxophone. A sour duet. Monica can’t help but notice the social worker’s lavender blouse buttoned one too few, showcasing a seemingly endless crease of cleavage. Legs crossed, foot bobbing, the woman folds a stick of gum between glossy lips while reviewing the contents of a manila folder.  A quick and insincere flash of a smile is directed at Monica to acknowledge her presence. She goes back to reading, humming and chomping.

Monica scrunches her nose and gives her head a shake as though to shed the sharp-edged buzz presently erupting in her eardrums. These headaches were something new. Pressing fingers to her forehead and temples, she silently recites the words they practiced in the “Power of Positivity” course a few weeks ago. “Silver Linings”– these words were the only take-away for her .  She had read about the course in one of the cancer pamphlets that had been pushed into her hand as she was being wheeled out of the hospital, post-surgery. They were all well-meaning and sincere in their efforts to help. She tried not to judge, but it was hard not to when everyone seemed to think that a brochure or pep-talk was a sufficient solution. A fix-all. That, given the right inner talk or proper mental habits, all of this could be turned into something positive. It was easier said than done. She’d like to know if any of those social workers had been through what she had in this past year. She doubted it.

The woman pulls a set of pink-hued papers from the folder and sets them down with a slight push in Monica’s direction, nodding. “Here’s a few options for you to think about”. Monica tries to maintain the space between her and the woman. Straining through the bottom of her bifocals, her back rigidly straight, she attempts to read the title from a distance.

“Prostheses available in Metropolitan Toronto. Prices as of November 1982

Her clammy hands clutch the wooden handles of her macramé bag. Inside lays her trusty tube of red lipstick which she applied to both lips and cheeks this morning. The frugal wife’s blush. Dressing up seemed like a good idea a few hours ago, but now Monica wonders why she changed out of her gardening clothes at all. Sunday best even though it’s Tuesday.  Lord knows that it didn’t make any difference what she wore — or didn’t wear, for that matter. These days, the only things that caught the attention of a man were to be found on the bodies of other women – younger, two-breasted women like this social worker. Monica’s eyes involuntarily shoot a glance at the display of cleavage in front of her. Why do I keep doing that? She silently chides herself and resolves to stop this bad habit, recently formed.

Monica checks the buttons on her sweater for the third time since sitting down. It still feels strange not wearing a bra. She had pulled one out of the drawer that morning, but quickly tucked it back in.  A hard habit to break. Anyway, without breasts, its purpose was lost. Still, she couldn’t force herself to dump her Wonderbras in the trash. Not yet.

A loud scraping noise momentarily jolts Monica from her daze. Dragging her chair across the floor to get closer to the table, the woman now has a pen in her hand and is pointing to black print on the pink paper. The cleavage has become closer. Larger. She shifts her gaze instead to the woman’s glossy lips making the shape of words and phrases as she reads directly from the paper. Monica adjusts her glasses, pulls her chair closer to read the script. Tries to concentrate. She’s aware that the distance is decreasing. Her nostrils twitch with the scent of fake flowery perfume that emanates from cleavage-lady. Decidedly unpleasant. She holds back a sneeze so as not to offend.

“Pre-molded after the individual is fitted, her skin and nipple colour are matched. $250” 

Monica considers what she would pay to have her used breasts back. The ones so dramatically transformed by the rapid growth and extreme reduction during her two pregnancies. Stretched, but surprisingly perky. Now, post-surgery, she wishes she had nursed her babies with milk from her own body, if only to have another memory.  You’ll get saggy boobs if you breastfeed was the advice from her experienced peers. How trivial the matter seemed now just 6 years later. Had she known they would be unceremoniously lopped off and so quickly … so many things she would have done differently. More swimming. In a bikini. Low-cut tops.  Unapologetic cleavage. Nursing.

She realizes now that a photo, while a bit weird, would have been nice. What would they have thought at Black’s when she picked up the pictures? It would have mattered then … but now it didn’t at all. Post-surgery, she had a very good idea of what breasts were worth. She also had a pretty good idea what she would do to get them back. She’d do almost anything.

The busty social worker is drawing a tiny diagram in the right margin. Monica leans forward in an attempt to focus,  her eyes nearly squinting shut. Two concentric black circles are being drawn, each coloured in with red marker.  A pan-fried sunny-side-up egg springs to her mind.  Monica’s eyes widen in realization. Is this woman drawing a nipple picture for her?

Leaning back, Monica looks at the woman directly, even forcefully. “You know, not too long ago I had my very own breasts that fit quite nicely into a B cup. I still remember what a nipple looks like. You needn’t go through the trouble.” Monica surprises herself with her own rudeness. She also notices that she doesn’t feel bad about it. That’s something new.

“Oh, I’m sorry, um … Monica.  It’s just, I want you to know how realistic they are these days. Even the nipple is offset just a bit. They come pre-molded or made with custom silicone, a rubber shell reinforced with nylon and filled with a ‘unique’ gel. There’s even a concave back complete with a special chamber to reduce weight and allow the circulation of air. Quite lovely, really!”

Her eyes rise from the paper at this last enthusiastic statement and seem to look at Monica’s face for almost a moment. Monica eyes lift up just as the woman returns her gaze to the paper. A small gesture to connect, so small that she nearly misses it. Monica isn’t sure that it actually happened at all. She realizes that she is feeling invisible. This new body of hers had a way of making her feel like that. Had she changed that much? Or do people not notice you when you are half a woman? Monica’s not sure which evil is the lesser.

Something in the woman’s sales pitch reminded her of the dealer at the car lot where she bought her red Mini Morris Minor 15 years earlier. Rambling on about high speed, smooth shifting and other fancy features, he didn’t need to try that hard to sell her on it. Even before he started into his well-rehearsed spiel she knew she’d be driving that Mini off the lot that very afternoon. Those days, she had been so confident. Snappy. Full of spark. She knew that people noticed her. Men turned. She was familiar with the power that came with beauty.

Strap-on boobs seem to be the polar opposite of an adventure on the open road.  The opposite of power. They’re the kind of thing you put on when you merely want to look normal.  Not sexy. Not beautiful. Just average. Monica wasn’t good at doing average.  The awareness of her parity agitates her.  The loss of control is unsettling. As this new reality sinks in, she shifts in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. Anxious, even.  She uncrosses then recrosses her ankles under the chair. Sits up straighter. Her posture doesn’t change a thing.

Still, the woman rambles on, her emotionless speech filling the sterile air between them. Monica attempts to focus on the message but can’t seem to keep up.  Her head still buzzes. The headache pounding and swooshing. The woman’s words are like clouds vanishing a moment after formation, dissipating into wisps.

“Then there is the “Nearly Me” brand in three designs. “Nearly Me Original”, “Nearly Me Too” and “Nearly Me Rest Breast”.  The “Original” is a silicone liquid prosthesis design. A customized fit for a simple or radical mastectomy, left and right sides. All are available in sizes from 30A to 42DD.”

42DD!

Monica’s eyebrows involuntarily jump as a partial smile forms on her lips. Her imagination has been jolted awake. A voluptuous profile featuring her fitted red dress appears in the mirror of her mind. The one with the plunging neckline that she wore on that night in Paris. Paired with those little patent black leather shoes that she bought in Italy. That would catch a few eyes, for sure. After this hellish year surely she deserved a little fun.

Her fingers absentmindedly float across the concave contours of her chest. Another habit she’s formed since the surgery. At first, out of disbelief. Then, after a few months, it was like reaching across the bed for her husband only to feel a void where his body used to be. Her hand reaching out for too long and resting down too late. The emptiness that she felt was a bitter reminder of why she was here in this barren room.

The woman points to a list. “Some of our clients find these items to be very helpful.

Gift Kit for mastectomy visitors consisting of:

1. List where prostheses may be purchased in metropolitan Toronto, and prices
2. Temporary prostheses
3. Exercise rope and ball
4. Book of exercises with helpful hints

Monica’s eyes stopped at item #3.

What kind of crappy gift is a rope and ball?

Perhaps the rope and ball are meant to be a distraction. When a child is having a tantrum, a parent might say “Do you want a candy?” Except in this scenario it’d be “Do you want a rope and ball?”

As though the problem is that simple to solve.

Sleeping or waking, there wasn’t a moment in the day when Monica didn’t vividly remember and wish for her body the way it once was. The vacancy on the front of her was even more visible than her breasts ever used to be. At times, the yearning was so intense that the remaining flesh on her chest actually ached. Not in her imagination, but a real, physical ache. Dull but strong.

If there existed a clever enough distraction that could cause her to forget the pain of loss which was worse than the cancer, she would buy that and pass on the fake boobs altogether. She’d pay the price, whatever it was. And then it occurred to her – perhaps the rope and ball wasn’t such a crappy gift after all. Perhaps distraction was underrated. She decided to keep that in mind.

Yes, she would take a rope and ball along with her boob order. Why not?

Now she just needed to decide which “prostheses” to get. The most frugal were the likely the order-by-mail ones. A bit tricky to order though, sight unseen. Who knows what they would feel like or look like. Custom-made seemed a little excessive. She usually went for top of the line … or rather, she used to. That’s how she chose her Singer sewing machine, the Mini, her bone-china formal dishes and her shoe collection before the wedding, the babies and the budget.

In her mind she chose the custom-made ones called “Nearly Me Original”. This isn’t an occasion to be frugal, she reasoned. Sometimes it’s okay to treat yourself. Mostly, though, she liked the name. It said everything. Nearly Me was exactly how she felt. Most of her was the same, just minus a few fleshy blobs on the front of her. Why did they matter so much, then?

How to become Totally Me once again was something to work on. It would take a long time to figure out … maybe even a lifetime.

———————————————————————————————————————————

“Breast Cancer is Not a Pink Ribbon” –  As written in on the website for the photographic project endeavour called  ’The Scar Project”.  This is a graphic, but eye-opening view some very brave women post-surgery. My heart is broken open once again as I see the faces of these women.

http://www.thescarproject.org

On her first visit to the cemetery in the fall of 1967, Monica had set her eyes on this plot for the very first time. Unmarked for twenty years, she had come back to make things right, to acknowledge the piece of earth that held tightly to her mother’s bones.  In the spring of 1968 she visited once more to witness the installation of the stone which was at her mother’s grave when the picture was snapped.

After a twenty year separation it was a reunion of mother and daughter, I suppose.

Monica with her mother’s new gravestone.

This past summer, 64 years since my grandmother Maria Kröker became a permanent resident of the cemetery and 45 years after my mother’s visit, I found myself in Eutin. I felt fortunate to have found the town and the cemetery, since my mother wasn’t exactly generous when it came to details and information. I had to do a little digging around. My mother had always intended to take her two girls back to Eutin and the cemetery, but money and good health, two items that were scarce for her, prevented that trip from materializing before she died twenty years ago in 1994.

One of the reasons that I flew across the ocean to Germany was to visit the cemetery. I also wanted to say ‘Hello’ to Maria Kröker, my grandmother.

Since embarking on my journey, one thing that I have learned about Germans with regard to cemeteries is that they are not exactly ceremonious or sentimental about them. In fact, I have learned that the plots are only leased, not purchased as is the custom in North America.

That’s right. Leased.

When I visited the cemetery office to inquire about the location of my grandmother’s grave, I discovered that the plots are leased for about 25 years. I did the math. 45 years had passed since my mother had the stone installed. And there hadn’t been a visitor since.

Now I had some serious questions.

“So, if the plot is leased, and the lease has expired, what happens to it?” I inquired.

“Oh, we just use for next person!” The cemetery lady said a little too joyfully.

“Okay … that makes sense – because it’s a lease. Right. Hmmm. So, if you use it for the next person, you have to dig in the ground to, ah, put the new body in?”

“Ja, that is correct.“

“Right … so, you use a shovel?”

“Ja. The workers use shovel to dig the earth.”

“Um … do you ever hit any bones?”

“Oh ja … but it is no worry. We hit bones, we put it back.“

“I see. If you hit a bone, you just sort of place the bone back into the ground. That’s good, I think.”

I had to get over this gruesome detail quickly and move onto other pressing questions.

I continued. “My mother had a stone installed at my grandmother’s grave in 1968. What do you do with the stone once the lease has expired and it’s not renewed?”

“You mean, what do we do with gravestone? Oh, well, how do you say? The stones are … rubbish.“

“Rubbish? Like garbage?“

“Oh no! Not garbage. We use here. We cut up into small pieces and use to pave path and other things.” She looked pleased.

“I see. You wouldn’t want to waste a perfectly good stone.” Germans are so very practical.

And that was that. I eventually managed to find the approximate site of the plot where my grandmother’s bones were buried by comparing the photo in 1968 to the current surroundings. It was now an empty patch of grass, cleared it’s past. No new stone. No mixed bones. Thank goodness.

Without a stone or marker to commemorate the occasion, it was difficult to find a suitable way to complete my visit. In my mind I had pictured placing fresh flowers at the base of the stone, a few whispered words floating into the air, sitting at the foot of the plot for a while with thoughts of the grandmother that I never knew drifting through my mind like the far-off clouds. Without the stone none of these ideas worked. And so, a little unfulfilled, I began my walk out of the cemetery as the sun was worked it’s way west.

The pile of rubbish.

Strolling lazily about, taking the long way out of the the grounds under the canopy of linden trees, I happened on a large yard which appeared to store supplies for the landscaper. It had large piles of things, heaped around. Mulch. Grass clippings. Little stones. Bigger stones. Deep at the back of the yard I could see a burgeoning pile of finished rock that looked a whole lot like gravestones.

“Verboten” said the metal sign at the entrance to the yard. A heavy chain slung between two wooden posts sent a strong message meant to keep intruders out.

I climbed over the sign and the chain into the forbidden yard.

Heading straight toward the pile at the back, I was drawn in. It was as though I was walking overtop of other peoples lives. It felt eerie to climb onto the pile of stones. Names and dates were seldom visible as the stones had been turned face down in a feeble attempt to protect those long-forgotten lives. Seeds, vines, leaves and copper pine needles had blown into the the angular spaces between the smooth-cut edges.

Cresting the top, I surveyed the pile and once again my imagination got ahead of me, playing a picture before my eyes. My internal movie ended in the too-good-to-be-true discovery of my grandmother’s stone and the ensuing beautiful restoration of it at the site of her grave. Fresh flowers, too.

But that’s not how the story went.

The stones were unbearably heavy. I tried moving one. Just out of curiosity, I tugged at a corner with both my hands. Not even a budge. No surprise, but I had to at least try, right? Having come this far, from Canada to Eutin, to the cemetery and then happening upon the pile of so-called “rubbish”. I had to take it to the last step, to know that I had given my all.

Feeling defeated, I stepped down from the pile, crossed through the yard and back over the “Verboten” sign. In my obsessive search for the stone, I had entirely forgotten to keep my eye out for the landscaper!

I hope Rosa and Helene have some friends who will renew their grave lease… it seems that they have been ticketed with a green sticker!

On my way out, I noticed a stone carved with the names “Rosa” and “Helene” which had a bright green sticker stuck to it’s face. It said “Nutzungsrecht abgelaufen. Bitte in der Friedhofsverwaltung vorsprechen.”. Translated the sticker said “Lease is expired. Talk to cemetery management”.

How could it be that nobody in the world remembered these women?

15 years ago, my grandmother’s stone would also have had a bright green sticker stuck to it. Compassion filling me, I felt compelled to talk to the cemetery management on behalf of Rosa and Helene , Geschwistern Kirche,  (Sisters of the Church) to ensure the plot would be renewed.

A few days later, I returned on my bicycle. In my bag I had packed a picnic. Cheese, sliced sausage, chocolate and fresh cherries, all collected at the Saturday morning market. I shook out the blanket and laid my feast on top of my grandmother’s approximate grave site. This felt right somehow.

Cherries were eaten and the pits spit out into the grass surrounding, in vain hope of some future miracle tree. Pine cones were collected and placed in a pyramid where I imagined the stone to be. Branches of fir and cedar were snapped off and smuggled back to Canada, pressed between many papers and notes. I imagined that those tree branches, planted so close to my grandmother, had somehow taken her body up in through their roots and out into their needles and leaves. Taking pieces of them was like taking a piece of her back with me.

Those pine cones, cedar and fir branches cleared security at the airport and, eventually,  I placed all of it at my Mother’s grave in Vineland on a cloudy day. This also seemed right to me.

Another reunion of mother and daughter, I suppose.

My gravesite picnic.

Old linden trees canopied along the pathway in the cemetery