Rose's Cantina

Embed from Getty Images Like many women my age, I'm part of the sandwich generation, an army of clear-eyed women who are caregivers at both ends. By day, I've been looking after little Squishy, my granddaughter who is nearly two. On nights and weekends, I've been caring for Jennette, the cancer patient. Now that Jennette's gone, I'm feeling a little lighter, like an open-faced sandwich missing the top part of the bread. Of course, there is still much work to do in the short-term. I have a funeral to plan, music and pictures to archive, and as her executor, I have many letters to write and meetings to attend. Still, I've got a lot more free time now that her place is cleared out, and Sundays and evenings aren't spent eating fast food and drinking wine to calm the heck down. Last night, I looked at my PVR and realized that it's nearly full. I must have two months worth of Colbert and old movies to watch. Nope, too much stress. Colbert is already...

My son has been very upset about the passing of Jennette. He saw her on Christmas Day, frail, a whisper of a human being with her head taped up like a mummy. He saw her, but he couldn't see her. By that time, the oral cancer had enveloped her like a thermal blanket. Even I, the person who had spent the most time with her, could only see a glimmer of my friend peeking out of her rheumy eyes. Stef was a little freaked, encountering a person who looked vaguely like Jennette who was being consumed by an alien. His normal little auntie blew us off on Christmas Day; she couldn't talk much, didn't want to talk much. "I don't understand it, mum," he told me after a few drinks on his birthday. "I couldn't live like that. If I was sick like that I'd want to end it all." She had had that discussion with her friend Gudrun who was the only one to raise the subject when not in front of medical professionals. Jennette had been given the spe...

On Friday, Scott finished up moving Jennette from her perch at the Hunt Club Manor. That move took us roughly 10 hours, and was a lot easier than the last two times we moved her. The first move was the most challenging. You see, she might have been all of 4 foot 9, but she lived like four people: her mother, who was a keen collector of jewelry and Royal Doulton; her father who was a spirited collector of paper and coins; Roger who was a curator of all things Blue and Jay; and Jennette herself who liked to keep bills, photos and newspapers until they literally disintegrated. The first move came in 2014, after Roger died. Don't get me wrong, the place was well organized, with small paths that took the couple to the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Everything was covered by a inch of ash, including the birdcage which had sat in the middle of the living room over the two years since the Cockatiel Digger died. The aftermath of Digger's death by second hand smoke at th...

Two years ago, when Jennette began her cancer journey, we made a pact. I would help her through it, and she would let me write about it, warts and all. Today's post is not for the squeamish, but if I'm to tell her story fully, it has to be accurate and truthful. And that means talking about what the doctor's call her "smoker's tumour". Nobody is forcing you to read this blog, so feel free to click the little "x" up on the right hand side of your screen.  Otherwise, welcome to my room. Here we go. Look at this beautiful face. It's the face of the person I looked after for the past two years. Tomorrow, I am going to the funeral home and I won't be able to see that face. The funeral director urged me to allow their restoration professionals to fix her up before I come in to identify Jennette's remains. I said I didn't think that was necessary. I had been with her through palliative care, and I thought I'd seen everyt...

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What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses. -- John Irving I told the doctor that I wasn't that person in Jennette's life, I wasn't the one who would be hugging her, and holding her hand at the end. It's not that I was afraid to stare death in the face, it was that I, like Homer Wells in Cider House Rules, felt my time was better spent "being of use". And so I busied myself yesterday moving Jennette's remainders out of her assisted living apartment. For the past week, I've been spreading the wealth to the deserving: her coat and the brand new clothing she had bought went to Gessie. Gudrun got her collectibles, Marissa got her bedroom set, and we took the electronics and a few tables. It was unbelievable how little was left at the end of her life; as Scott says, "it's the things that fall away". The move finished, we drove to a little h...

The 5th floor of the Bruyere Residence in Ottawa is well known to paupers and princes. Impending death has a way of levelling the playing field like nothing anyone can imagine. Nobody on the 5th floor was making plans for 2018. My friend Jennette is in Room 508. It's a lovely room with a comfy hospital bed and large reclining chairs. The nurses seat her every day, looking towards the door; perhaps they hope that someone will come and see her. She isn't like my friend Viggo who died there recently. Viggo had a gaggle of kids, and his room was always filled with legacy. Jennette doesn't have much family to speak of and so it is up to friends to visit her. We do so with checkered regularity. Most of her friends are elderly, and on the bus, and with the wind chill setting record levels, it's hard for them to get around. Her elderly stepmom, Lois, is determined to come, to hold her and tell her she loves her so, but the fates haven't been kind to Lois of late. ...