Remembering Laurel

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.

Me, age 3, with Laurel. I love this shot – taken February 1977 in Tillicum Park, Victoria BC (according to my Dad’s handwritten notes) – because I imagine I requested the kerchief, wanting to wear one as she did.

On Laurel’s 68th birthday

This lovely human being, my stepmom Laurel, would have been 68 years old today. She passed away just over 2 years ago. I was going to dedicate my monthly newsletter to her today (since I inadvertently scheduled it for the same day as her birthday) but I became a blubbering mess when I tried to write it.

Instead, I shall post one of my favourite pictures of Laurel, celebrating her birthday at the family cabin she loved so much a few years before she left us.

laurelwithbirthdaycake

I miss you terribly, Laurel. Even two years later. My world remains diminished. Lovely, kind-hearted people should never leave … the world is already severely underpopulated by such souls.

Love and light, Laurel.