I’m having a good cry this morning, because it should have been Laurel’s (my step-mother) 69th birthday today. She succumbed to her Alzheimer’s a few years ago. Her relatively-young death was what prompted Michael’s and my move to pick up our entire life in Vancouver and strike out to try something new, leading us to Salt Spring Island with a garden, chickens, and a spectacular view where we could both concentrate on our writing. Laurel’s death gave as that push, but it is her life that I always wish to celebrate yet find myself incapable of articulating my … joy … grief …
Because it is the small things I remember, that I miss …
How when I visited in the summers, she would give me the bits of pastry leftover from making a pie, showing me how to sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon, then roll and bake them into tasty morsels.
How she would always talk to everyone in a room … that person who no one else seemed to talk to …
How she would bring me photos of people I didn’t know, who I still don’t know or remember that I’m supposed to know, and she would tell me all about their lives … or a conversation she’d been having with them …
But mostly, there was this thing she did … this way that she twisted her hand when pointing something out – she was left handed – and … I recall that and I weep … just her pointing something out to me. Something she was holding, a flower bud or shiny rock. Or someone in one of the photos she’d brought to talk to me about. It was this simple twist of her wrist, something so unique to her, something I’ve never seen replicated.
It’s easy enough to write about grand gestures and impassioned actions, but when I remember Laurel it’s that twist of her left hand, pointing something out to me that I recall, that I mourn the loss of.
She was kind. There isn’t nearly enough of that in this world.
She was worth the tears.
