Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Give the sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break. [William Shakespeare, Macbeth]

A few thoughts today about Lahaina, on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and more to the point, which words I’m glad I didn’t use – but might well have – with the best of intentions.

As you’ve heard by now, there’s been a horrific loss of lives (more than 90 as of Sunday evening) in the beautiful, historic and vibrant town on the west coast of what has always been, to residents and visitors alike, a piece of paradise. Little wonder it was the seat of the Hawai’ian Islands’ royalty in years past.

Razed by a firestorm fuelled by the effects of hurricane winds offshore and the ongoing drought that the island is experiencing, the images of devastation are almost too much to take in. It has become the deadliest natural disaster in US history.

For those of us who have had the great fortune to visit Lahaina, the memories of times spent there are indelible. As news spread of loss and devastation, many people went online to share their thoughts and grief upon seeing images of such a precious place reduced to burnt timbers and ashes.

What surprised me was the backlash from residents of Lahaina and its surrounding areas. People who responded to the hashtag of the town’s name lashed out (understandably in their anger and grief over incalculable personal losses) at those who had posted their memories and sentiments.

Some said words to the effect of, “How dare you make this about you when we have lost everything?” All told tourists to stay the hell away (often in much stronger terms), let unhoused residents take accommodations that visitors had reserved, and just steer clear of the island in general.

The Lahaina disaster has given voice to an already-existing low-key sentiment that hums deep and strong amidst all of the spirit of Aloha! that welcomes you to Hawaii. That is, “Stay Home.” Like so many of our ancestors before us, tourists and settlers (kūwaho, or the stronger pejorative haole) have arrived and spoiled an untouched paradise for the indigenous people of these islands.

It’s not gone unmentioned that so many of the grasses and trees (such as the highly flammable eucalyptus) were brought in and are not native to the area; although climate change has wrought conditions ideal for such a horrific tragedy, there were other man-made elements that added to the potential for the fires to destroy. Many say the islands are now over-developed and the cost of living for those who have called them home for centuries has made even having a roof over their heads nearly impossible.

One may be tempted to say, “But – but – our money is helping your economy!” and although in some ways that is indeed true, this is not the time (if there ever is one) to argue with their anger and anguish. The best thing we can do is give in every way that we can: spatially, financially and with the utmost compassion.

This weekend I learned a word from a friend (Medium Cyndi Tryon) that is about healing, about forgiveness, about acceptance. I’m investigating it more deeply, but this I know: practising it allows us to go back to any transgressions our ancestors may have committed against the ancestors of others or their land, in order to make things right in the here-and-now. It’s Hoʻoponopono – an ancient Hawaiian spiritual practice that involves learning to heal all things by accepting ‘total responsibility’ for everything that surrounds us: confession, repentance, and reconciliation.

As a protocol, Hoʻoponopono is used to squash contention and disputes in a manner that is respectful and thoughtful for all involved parties. This engagement provides an opportunity to acknowledge and take ownership of one’s actions/behaviours so the participants can move forward with honour and integrity. (courtesy University of Hawaii)

In the meantime, CBS News’ website, lists some places, including the US Red Cross, Maui Food Bank and United way, all with links, that will gladly accept our financial support, above and beyond good memories, prayers and well-wishes. You can also donate by visiting the Canadian Red Cross website.

May you have a gentle week.

Just a thought… People don’t take trips; trips take people. [John Steinbeck]

Very few of us talk about having a choice in our deaths, do we?

(Hey, Erin, that’s a cheery start to your journal…what happened to you this weekend?)

Actually, plenty, but my thoughts have been about heading down this road for some time. Come with me for the ride; there’s a cruise at the end!

First some background: there are three things that have set this 60-year-old (to whose obituary my contemporaries and elders would say, “so young…” and a few others would mutter, “has she shut up yet?”) aboard this train of thought.

• A long and detailed visit with our lawyer about our estate plans: who will get what, when, and so on. It took me days to shake a deep sense of sadness. With no children, but two grandchildren and a planned timeline for inheritance, it’s more complicated than many. Of course, like most couples, whoever goes first, Rob or I, will leave everything to the other. I hope to heck it’s not me. I’m not set up for this.

• My dad’s decline. The man was a good father, a wonderful grandad, an upstanding person and, to me, the embodiment of intelligence, kindness and integrity. At 90, he is in the tightening grips of dementia. He’s otherwise healthy, cheerful for the most part, enjoys his meals and the company of family around him and has as good a life as he can (thanks to my sisters who make sure he gets the care he needs, climbing through flaming hoops at times to do so). But it’s still desperately sad to see him need help to shower, to take care of his personal hygiene, and so many practices that any fully able person takes for granted.

• Time. I’m 60. Rob’s nine years older. We look at our little dog and can only hope to share the rest of our lives with her. That’s where we are.

Okay, I’ll pause here. I’m going to get a lot of advice, some of which I’ve found by doing the research: “meditate,” “don’t focus on it,” “live one day at a time,” “set goals,” “life is a terminal illness,” and on and on. In my logical mind, I know that all of this wisdom is sound. (After all, I found it on the internet! LOL.) And please resist any inclination to bring your god into this, whoever She or He may be. My spiritual beliefs are my own.

We don’t discuss our inevitable end enough and I can NOT be the only person dreading it. What happens when we can no longer be like our soon-to-be 98-year-old friend Mira, who lives capably on her own, and we have to move into assisted living or full-time care? Who will make sure we’re protected and cared for properly?

And why do we strive to live so damned long?

The biggest Catch-22 of MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying, of which I am an unabashed proponent where the patient deems appropriate) is that you can’t ask for it unless you’re in your right mind. Terrific. That means when my marbles are plunking out of the gumball machine that is my head, it doesn’t matter if I’ve made it clear I don’t want to live this way.

Sure, I might wake up and eat my Froot Loops, peck at my lunch, enjoy dinner and snacks and the odd baseball game while waiting around for bed between nurse visits to get my knickers changed, but is that living? I’m sure not expecting anyone to take time out of their life to spend a few hours every couple of days with me when I’m 90. And I am damned if I’m going to sit in God’s waiting room, and think to myself: Wait, I gave up carbs and drinking for this?

How about as grown adults we get more choice in how we leave: something like a Bill of Rights when it comes to our own personal exit strategy?

A magic pill would be great, but no MD who wants to keep their license will supply it (unless laws change). Stored in a safe place behind lock and key, it would be quick, quiet, and relatively tidy. I’d go to sleep and not wake up, a dream-come-true for a morning radio person.

Of course there’s room for such a means for a gentle good-bye to be misused by people who stand to inherit and don’t choose or can’t afford to wait, cash-strapped governments that don’t want to pay out old age pensions, and such. I’m not so naïve that I can’t see the ways in which it would be abused.

I’m stuck in this way of thinking these days and, yes, it’s possible my life needs some adjusting. But I’m OKAY. Besides, if you think someone who wrote a bestselling book about surviving loss would end her life and take away the hope that she wanted to instill in the lives of others, you don’t know me. I’ve far too much ego to let that be my epitaph.

In all of this wandering down a dark mental road, I did get one idea that could make me millions that I wouldn’t be around to spend. (Live it up, kids!)

Stay with me here.

Statistically, each year (and this is believed to be a very conservative estimate) at least 200 people in the world board a cruise and don’t get off alive. We’re not talking episodes of Dateline. Look around on a ship at the demographics of the passengers. At least on the ones we’ve enjoyed, passengers are generally older, less steady on their feet, and often hell-bent on getting their money’s worth out of the daily pre-paid bar tabs, those buffets, gourmet restaurants and so on.

So here’s my idea and you’re welcome to it, as long as I get a free passage when I want one: buy your one-way ticket, say your good-byes, and then, a couple of days into a lovely excursion – maybe after a wild fling or two with the dance instructor – you’re quietly given a potent cocktail in your cabin by the most handsome, gentlest doctor on the high seas. Then, when you don’t wake up the next day, you’re wrapped up in your bedding, slid into the water to the strains of Josh Groban and your cabin is cleaned up for the next port of call.

I thought of this initially in a moment of my usual dark humour and I don’t wish to cause any offence if a loved one died on a ship. But the more I consider it, the more I wish that such a cruise existed. Maybe one day, but I won’t hold my breath. Wouldn’t work anyway, in my business plan.

Is it so wrong to wish for a Right to Death movement and go out as we lived: proudly and on our own terms?

Just a thought… The world is now too small for anything but brotherhood. [A. Powell Davies]

Ah, goodbye to July. Here in BC, in our perfect part of a beautiful island, we welcomed two days of sporadic rain last week – our first significant precipitation since June 8. Yes, this is our dry season, while Ontario’s summer is its rainy season (something I didn’t know until researching climate before we moved here). If not for the constant threat and already real damage of forest fires, it would be just so glorious.

August will hold for me the promise of another family reunion: heading to Kelowna later in the month to spend a few days at my sister’s with her family and my dad. My big sis Heather and I have talked Leslie into seeing the Barbie movie together. We’ve all seen Oppenheimer and it was astounding; now time for dessert. Bring on August!

Speaking of family reunions, I have a “small world” story over which I still can’t stop shaking my head. Of course, when you consider that the central character in this tale lives only an hour away, you realize that it’s not like a Bosnia-to-Bornia kind of stretch, but still….

Back in March, we got our sweet Dottie from a breeder in Cobble Hill, about an hour’s drive from home and which, as it happens, is only a stone’s throw from where I went to rehab four years ago. Well, a listener/reader named Lynn wrote to me about her daughter and their fears and experiences over the breastfeeding drug that we strongly suspect caused Lauren’s heart to stop, Domperidone.

To make the story Twitter length, her daughter told the doctors that under no circumstances would she take the drug (which is banned in the US and prescribed with caution in the UK) and yet she was still handed an Rx for it. She did not accept it. UNREAL how this drug is so freely peddled in Canada and shipped online to mothers in the US. But I digress….

In our email exchanges, Lynn told me that she had a sister in my area who had gotten not one but two dogs from the same Cobble Hill breeder as we did. So she connected us and it turns out that sister Laurel lives about two blocks from our house, and her dogs – wait for it – are Dottie’s mother and grandmother!

I couldn’t wait to reunite the family and that happened last week. While I expected a wag fest as the three generations of Havanese girls got reacquainted, there was actually the usual amount of shyness from timid Dottie at the beginning and then the three snuffled, sniffed and kind of shrugged. Did they recognize each other? I can’t say for sure. Dottie has a little resemblance to her relatives, and even though she tried to get them to play with her, they were kind of blasé about it all.

Fortunately, Laurel and I had a very nice visit, eating sandwiches made from crab that she and her husband had caught for themselves, and talking about another shared and even deeper connection: we’ve both lost a daughter. Laurel’s Elise passed away at 17 of cancer in 2015, just a few months after Lauren left us. In fact, in honour of Elise, breeder Bev bestowed Dottie and several other puppies with her name: thus our dog’s official registered moniker is Lily Elise Dot Calm.

I’m grateful for the experience of having had someone open her home but more importantly her heart to me and to our fur baby, and for the greater connection that being out here living in a public way on the internet has brought us. For all of its hellish woes (the web, not life) there are certainly miracles to be found just a click away. And it seems clear to me that no matter how much the distractions of people like Musk and Zuck divide us, they can also unite us (as they did Lynn and Laurel in a story that’s not mine to tell) in oh so many ways.

My wish for you is that August brings a month as sweet as a sun-ripened ear of corn, her bounty as rich in your life as that gracing a roadside produce stand. And thank you for connecting here in all of the best ways.

Remember when I said I was going to pull back on the video journals unless something unusual happened? Today’s story definitely qualifies and I hope you’ll watch it at the link below.

In a nutshell, Rob and I witnessed a most-newsworthy event – I was interviewed as someone who saw it, and my video of its immediate aftermath made it onto CHEK News in Victoria, BC (our home TV newscast) and then on the late edition of Global News BC.

I won’t tell you any more and give away the story; you’ll want to see it, I think! I shot the journal immediately after recording the Zoom interview with Global, thus you’ll see the same outfit. I haven’t run out of dry-cleaning money, at least not yet.

I’m not sure if I get the WKRP Buckeye Newshawk award, or if my next career has at last gotten its launch here on the island (and I’m kidding about both) but it sure did jump-start our day. A shocker for sure.

Take care and thanks for coming by. Click here.