Carol Matthews These Days
Wednesday, 1 December 2021
New Web Address
(as a result of this change, subscribers may receive multiple emails on the day it is launched – sorry for this annoyance)
Sunday, 21 November 2021
Grief and Roses
Sunday, 7 November 2021
Remembrance Day
The red and green and tinsel greed and glitter of the next big holiday are now appearing, without bothering to wait for the pumpkins and skeletons to be put away – and without pausing to allow some space for Remembrance Day.
Some people referred to the year
2020 as “The Pause,” and I think it did us some good to pause for a while. Remembrance Day
deserves its own pause, and not just for the two minutes of silence.
Last year at this time, I wrote a post about how different the
observances were because of Covid. This year, many of us are participating in
more activities, but I don’t expect
there will be marches or large crowds milling around at public gatherings on November 11th.
Still, a lot of people are wearing poppies and will participate in the two
minutes of silence.
I'm glad. I believe it's important for us all to pay attention to the
day and take some time to reflect and remember. I’m old enough that I
still think of those two world wars in
which several members of my family served and of the horrors they endured.
According to my weekend newspaper, this year is the hundredth
anniversary of the poppy being a symbol for Remembrance Day. The poppy makes me think of how, in elementary school, we were made to memorize and recite On Flanders
Fields. I remember feeling very moved by the poem and by the image of poppies blowing between the crosses while the larks “still bravely singing. I was inspired by the lines To you from failing hands we throw the
torch. Surely it was a call to action, I thought, although I had no idea
what action I might take.
Years later, I was saddened to learn that Dr. John McCrae,
the author of In Flanders Field, died of overwork and disease during the
war. I find myself now, almost a century later, thinking of the many thousands of courageous health care
workers who have died around the world since the start of the pandemic. In Canada, almost 95,000
health care workers have been infected with Covid 19 and 43 have died as a
result. Yet our health professionals continue bravely to risk their lives to care for the sick,
many of whom are people who have chosen not to get vaccinated. The call to
action now must be for all of us to do everything we can to curb the
transmission of the virus, taking all the precautions we can and trying to
encourage those around us to do the same.
When I think of the word “remembrance,” I always think of re-membering – putting things back together. There'll be a lot to for us put back together when the Covid crisis lessens and we move on to what people are calling “the new abnormal.” One of the most difficult challengers will be in mending the rifts that have been created between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers.
It won't be easy. I'm
frustrated by what seems to me astonishing egotism on the part of people who
think they know more than the vast majority of scientists and health
professionals world-wide, but I'm trying to feel compassion for them. I'm going to try to listen to the fears and anxieties they have. I know that the
information sources they trust are not reliable and that they are victims of the conspiracy theories that spread so easily through social media. They won't be ready to change their minds, but we'll need to find
ways of talking through the conflicts and finding some common ground.
There’s a lot of sadness in the world just now. I feel there’s
a deep and widespread collective grief about the pandemic, climate change,
violence, prejudice and huge inequities. Maybe talking about those things could
be a starting point for some important conversations. Many therapists have written
about the value of speaking about and sharing thoughts about our experiences
with grief and loss.
I’m very honoured to be part of a national virtual conference
about grief at which many professionals will bring varied perspectives and
expertise to the discussion. You can read about it and, if you're interested, register online for sessions between November
19th to 21st at https://lumarasociety.org/kaleidoscope2021/
We all experience loss at various times throughout
our lives. It helps to talk about it. It helps to connect us with each other. It might help us open up our minds and our hearts. Let's hope so.
Sunday, 24 October 2021
Thinking of Trees
Unlike many
people these days, I write letters. Realmail! I’m a great supporter of Canada
Post and, for the most part, I love getting mail.
But in the
last two weeks I’ve received mail from nine very fine charitable organizations,
several of whom I sometimes support financially. These included “free gifts” of three
calendars, two cheap pens, a pair of gloves, three small note pads and several
dozen return address stickers. The calendars are nice enough, but who needs a
lot of calendars these days? I use my Iphone for a calendar and I know I will
have gifts of two very beautiful calendars, one from a friend who is a
brilliant photographer of birds and one from a friend who is a talented artist.
These I will happily use and treasure, but I don’t need any more and I can’t think
of anyone who might want one of these promotional calendars.
I don’t need
these free gifts and I don’t like to have to discard them. I can't think of anyone who
might want the gloves, the little notebooks or the trashy pens. And, even
though I write many more letters than most people I know, I will never even begin
to use the many dozens of return address stickers I’ve collected through the
years.
I really would prefer that the charities to which I donate would spend their time and money on their
important work and not on these outdated forms of promotion and fund-raising.
Sometimes I send a cheque along with a letter back to these organizations, telling them
that I think their marketing people are advising them badly. But I prefer to donate to some of the excellent organizations that don’t choose to fundraise in this
fashion, places like Eco-trust, Kids International and others.
We’re moving
towards the season of loving and spending, which is why everyone is asking for
donations right now. I probably won’t stop sending money to any of these organizations,
but the ones I really admire are those that don’t send me junk I don’t want but
instead simply send a short note or -- better yet -- an email message telling
me what they’re doing and what they need.
I keep
thinking about the trees that are being sacrificed to send out all this
mail. We all need paper, but maybe we could save a few trees if we stopped printing and sending out junk mail.
Monday, 11 October 2021
Thanksgiving
I didn’t get my blog written yesterday, because I was too
busy celebrating thankfulness.
Last year we were a small bubble of a family in lockdown. We didn't know if and when there would be vaccines available. The numbers were alarming. This year, though the numbers are still of concern, we're back to small, traditional gatherings of double-vaxxed friends,
Much to be thankful for, then and now. If there's one thing we’ve learned from
the pandemic it's that we must enjoy and feel grateful for each day.
There's a great deal wrong with our beleaguered world, but today I've been appreciating many things – not just the abundance of the splendid
Thanksgiving dinners, nor the beauty of the surprisingly sunny day, but the sheer miracle of being alive here at this moment.
Every day I feel grateful for my family,
and I think of the long chain of ancestors that brought us here. I say
blessings for my mother and father and for their mothers and fathers, and for all the
great-grandparents I didn’t know. I try
to imagine sending blessings to all my ancestors, but my Google search says
that I have 16 great grandparents, 128 great-great-great-great-great
grandparents, which adds up to 254 ancestors. If I think about my
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents, that
would total 4,096 which would add up to 8,190 ancestors. That’s based on an
average of 25 years per generation. Some generations might be longer or
shorter, And there would likely be some consanguinity, marriages between cousins, and
so on, which would reduce the total number a bit.
I'd like to thank all these people without whom I would not be here, but it’s hard to imagine the lives of some 8,000 people, let alone how to thank them. And then I think about the fact that my daughter would not be here without my husband and all his ancestors which adds another 8,000. And my granddaughter would not be here without my son-in-law and all his ancestors, another 8,000. So it’s probably about 24,000 people whom I should thank, and that's only going back 250 years! There's hundreds of thousands of people lined up before that, but for the moment I'll stop at 10 greats.
I’m grateful to those 24,000 hardy people, all of whom survived
their birth experience, probably lived through childhood illnesses, accidents, injuries, enduring wars and other hardships and had at least one sexual encounter that resulted in
a pregnancy and a live birth. I don’t know much about their lives, but those facts are something
to think about. And my husband and I, and my daughter and her husband, were also lucky
enough to manage to survive all those pitfalls.
It’s astonishing good fortune! A miracle!
But I can’t get my head around it, so I say a group
thank-you to all my ancestors. Mostly I simply focus on the joys and good fortune
of the present moment. A single flower. A sunny day. A colourful little squash.
I remember my mother quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and
I think now of the words she so often recited:
Life is real! Life is
earnest!
And the grave is not its goal:
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”
Was not spoken of the soul…
Let us then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labour and to wait.
There’s much to be doing, and much for which to be thankful, as my father used to say every year on this holiday.
We’re fortunate.
Sunday, 26 September 2021
Ecology
Ecology is the name of this poem by PK
Page:
If a boy
eats an apple
because a bee
collects nectar,
what happens
because a boy
eats an apple?
The ecological connections are many Some dictionaries define “ecology” as “a branch of science
dealing with the relationship of living things to their
environments." .Everything connects. That’s why parents are always
advising their children to make good choices.
Because
it matters. Every choice makes a difference. Why did we buy this versus that?
Why did we choose to buy either? Why do we consume what we do? Where do we get our inforrmation? How does that affect our choices? What would PK say, if she were here.
I’ve been wondering about this:
If an
anti-vaxxer chooses not to be vaccinated
because
he doesn’t believe in science
and he gets Covid, as does
a homeless person who was unable
to find
a place to quarantine
and so they both end up at the hospital,
what
happens when doctors
are forced to make decisions
about
who should be treated
because
the ICU beds are full of anti-vaxxers
who
chose not to be vaccinated?
We all make some choices, but we don't all have the same access to health care and other resources.
If each person who has easy access to vaccines chooses to get vaccinated. and if people who test positive for Covid have places at which to quarantine, then those who are less privileged will have better access to medical care when they are sick.
Sometimes it’s a matter of life or death.
Sunday, 12 September 2021
Friendship and Memory
I woke up this
beautiful morning thinking of the words in Ecclesiastes 11:7
Truly the
light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eye to behold the sun.
These words set me off
on a good track for the day. Lately, I’ve sometimes felt depressed and
discouraged but, really, I should not. There are so many good things in my life. So many
reasons to feel grateful. Simple pleasures. I have enough food, a warm home, good
neighbours, running water, a roof over my head. These things are worth
celebrating every day.
A friend of mine spoke to me about the deep satisfaction she feels after having had a leaky roof for some time to know that her roof is now solid and won’t let the rain in. The repair was coordinated by some of her dear friends, which was another reason for her to feel grateful. Friendship.
Lately I too have had several occasions to deeply appreciate what it means to have good friends. Connections with friends are more important than ever these days and they often offer a different way of looking at things. A long-time friend of mine who is a frequent traveler keeps a lively blog of her various journeys, including reports of her many artistic pursuits, sewing, reading, fashionable outfits, knitting, gourmet cooking, domestic and family activities, and so forth. It’s an impressive read and worth checking out:
https://www.materfamiliaswrites.com/
In a recent blog she
wrote: We’re
going back to Portugal! Grab your appetite and your curiosity, but you won’t
need a passport or a suitcase, nor even a credit card. She’s still
hoping to get to Portugal soon but, in the meantime, she’s used her blog to
share photos and experiences of her past trips. She writes about the idiosyncrasies
of some of the people and places she has encountered, the villages, the meals,
the unforgettable sardines. It’s entertaining for readers to share those
experiences and it must be wonderful for my friend to re-live her experiences
at a time when she can’t travel. (Note In order
to accompany her on her armchair trip to Portugal, you may have to scroll down
to the bottom of the blog post and enter "More Armchair Travel" under the Search line.)
We can all enjoy travel without getting on a plane. Memories offer
a kind of time travel and I find them heartening. As Penelope Lively wrote more
than once, the past is real and the re-living of it can be important. Recently,
someone on Twitter tweeted that his six-year-old daughter had asked, “What
happens to time that has passed?” A good question, I thought. A physicist
responded, proposing that it stays where it is, in space time, while we have moved past it. He compared this to walking down a road but being unable to
go back to where we came from.
Even though we can't re-inhabit the past, there's a way in which we can re-live it and perhaps re-member it -- put it back together -- from a later perspective. That can be instructive and often healing.
Today, among the many things for which I'm grateful, I'm celebrating both memory and friendship. They often go together. Talking with long-time friends about the past is one of the pleasures of old age. And with our deepest friendships, absence never lessens the connection. When we meet again, it is as though time hasn't passed.
Not all memories are happy, but our friendships have the capacity to help us heal old wounds. And that makes me recall Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30:
When
to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I
summon up remembrance of things past.
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.