During my daily visits my mother was sometimes delusional, believing she now lived in Spain—a country she adored. On other days she thought she’d sold her house and bought the nursing home! The rooms were rather large, she confided, and she hoped the maintenance wouldn’t be too much for her. On days of intense agitation she’d rip down the family photos I’d taped to her wall, empty her clothes out of the drawers and wardrobe and beg me to take her home. “You must help me, Mandy! If you leave me here, I’ll die!”
But the days were running out and I knew I’d have to leave. We watched one last Wimbledon tennis match on TV together as I held her soft hand, knobbly with arthritis. My poor, darling mother was a forlorn sight, with plaster casts on her leg and forearm, her eyes puffy, her expression anxious and bewildered. She wouldn’t let me leave. I had to pretend I was just popping out to the toilet.
I took a deep breath, held myself together somehow and walked out of her room without daring to look back, closing my ears to her plaintive voice calling after me, “Mandy! Darling, where are you going?” The heartache was so agonizing I could hardly breathe.
The rest of my family assured me I’d done the right thing but still I felt guilty and disloyal: I was a bad daughter who had let her mother down. I boarded the aircraft to Vancouver and cried inconsolably as far as Greenland, to the consternation of the flight attendant. Then I dried my eyes, blew my nose and took a deep breath. It was over. I could do no more. My mother was in good hands; the immediate worry was taken care of. I was going home. Eight hours later a tiny propeller-driven Dash-8 carried me from Vancouver to the West Kootenay’s regional airport in Castlegar, towards my beloved husband, Christopher. The date was Tuesday, July 3, 2012.
Christopher picked me up in Nelson. We had five days together in the Landing before he would be leaving for Eugene, Oregon, to visit his mother. He intended to depart on Sunday, July 8, but, as usual, was twenty-four hours behind schedule. He slowly readied himself, packed the car, tidied things away and checked the tasks off his list. He worked methodically up until the last moment and slept little. He didn’t want to leave; neither of us ever liked to step out from our quiet paradise into the bustling larger world. We were enchanted, held bodily under the spell of this place, and leaving took an effort of will.
That weekend Dan Miles and Gerald Garnett, friends from Kaslo, were on a multi-day kayaking trip with their wives. The men decided to kayak over to our bay Sunday morning, and stopped by for a quick visit. Delighted, we invited them in and plied them with tea, toast and eggs. We laughed and chatted in the sunlit kitchen around the old oak dining table.
After they left, one of the last tasks Christopher decided to accomplish was to set the sheets of forest green steel roofing against the side of the house, ready to be lifted into position. This was the penultimate stage of a lengthy project: re-roofing the house. The pieces were long, heavy and delicate. He used our trailer and “George,” the loyal old Chevy pickup truck that belonged to our friend Paul Hunter, to bring them down to the house from the community hall where they’d been safely stored under tarps for several months. One by one we lifted each razor-edged sheet of steel and laid it onto a wooden frame Christopher had constructed, angled up against the side of the house, outside the bathroom. Almost four thousand dollars’ worth of prime roofing material was carefully staged, ready for his return.
On Sunday afternoon Christopher suggested one last boat ride along the shore. We puttered north to Greg Utzig and Donna MacDonald’s cabin and found Greg’s boat inundated and half-submerged, filled with pebbles and driftwood; we hoisted it up the bank, clear of the exceptionally high water. Greg was a hydrologist who kept an eagle eye on Kootenay Lake levels, but even he had not foreseen how high the lake would rise that year.
Back on the water, Christopher identified yet another promising driftwood log that had to be tied to the stern and towed home for the ongoing garden beautification project. We also found a metal first aid kit floating in the water. I wagered a bet that the contents would be wet but I lost: the box was completely dry inside, filled with bandages and ointments of a very dated vintage. It was fun beachcombing at this time of year—no end of interesting things toppled off decks and docks in the spring storms, bobbed northward on the prevailing wind and floated into the Landing bay.
Monday, July 9
We kissed goodbye and Christopher drove off at seven a.m. in our car, “Mitzi.” He carried along fewer tools than usual, a suitcase of smarter clothes for the big city, his passport and some food for the road.
While Christopher was gone I would concentrate on restoring my health and energy; the upsetting time with my mother had exhausted me. And I would make the most of the good weather—it had finally stopped raining after a month of deluges. I’d sit on the deck enjoying the view, putter in the garden, make comforting soups and read. Sympathetic and understanding, Lew McMillan gave me the week off from my part-time job.
I spent hours on the deck, moving my brown lounge chair from sunshine to shade, often placing it close to the far corner post where I could watch the lake. It felt like a ship’s deck, wrapped around the south and west walls, surrounded by water. Like so much else about the house it was unfinished, with treacherous, rotting steps, no railing and faded paint, but it was a glorious place to sit, my ocean liner on the shore, with its colourful fringe of geraniums and herbs along the perimeter.
I was grateful to have this quiet time to reflect and rest before engaging with the normal routine again. Lying back in my lounge chair, feeling just a little self-indulgent when there was so much work to do in the garden, I watched the parent swallows at the nesting box under the eave beside the front door. It was the only local pair to have successfully hatched a family after the cold weather and torrential rains in June.
Back and forth they flew—making a long looping dive to the box, delivering a morsel of food and then swooping away, always taking the same route: across the deck, through the gap between the big fir and the cottonwood tree and out over the lake, gliding and twisting in the bright summer air with endless energy for their vital task. Watching them day after day I drew strength from their seeming confidence, their focus, their mission to complete the reproductive imperative. Their minds held no doubt or anxiety; they simply got on with the business at hand. I was comforted by their positive attitude as I grappled with the worries about my mother, and my guilt at leaving her in the nursing home.
In the late evening one parent (the male, I had decided) often perched on the topmost branch of a dead snag, his white breast flashing in the last rays of sunshine as he surveyed his domain and enjoyed a well-earned rest.
During that period Ozzie was constantly at my side. He was uncommonly attentive, so much so that I remarked to Christopher on the phone, “I don’t know what’s with Ozzie, he doesn’t let me out of his sight.” Normally he wasn’t allowed outside the house in daylight, to protect birds from the great black hunter, but I relented, letting him join me on the deck, and he snuggled in my lap in the lounge chair, purring with delight.
Indoors I would look up, suddenly conscious of being watched, and he’d be gazing at me from across the room with his deep yellow-green eyes. I would tell him how beautiful he was and how much I loved him. Many childless adults live in this way, lavishing parental affection onto a pet. I called him my “furry son,” and my “baby boy.” He clearly adored both of us in his feline way. About nine years old, early middle age for a cat, he had trained his humans well, and everything was right in his world.
In the afternoon I walked up the hill to visit Jillian Madill. The Madills had lived in the Landing since 1985, a retired couple quietly devoted to one another and to Tumbles, their cat. John, seventy-two, had retired seven years earlier from BC Hydro, and had worked at nearby Duncan Dam. Jillian and I had got to know one another while staining the cedar siding of our neighbours’ house and outbuildings and had been friends for more than fifteen years. Hardly a week went by without a get-together for tea and a chat.
That sunny afternoon her open-plan perennial bed was a profusion of colour, a sea of blue delphiniums and campanula, pink and mauve columbine, yellow lilies, burgundy japonica, geraniums and scarlet