How do you manage relativity?

Earlier this week I texted my brother, Four years ago, you got someone to cover for you at work and flew out so I wouldn’t be alone here. I am remembering your kindness with much gratitude! That was the day my husband died. By evening, my brother had arrived on Pender and was giving me a hug, lighting candles, pouring us wine.

A few hours before I texted my brother that thanks, Kira-dog and I had trudged up the hill to visit the cairn up at Roe Lake that marks where my husband Garney died. It was grey and foggy. I carried a few stems of sarcococca with me; their red berries the only cheerful thing in the landscape. Part of me was grumpy, which I felt badly about. I knew Garney wasn’t there. Going to the cairn was just another bash over the head. But it was the anniversary. I’d go and add a few rocks, tidy up any that had fallen. I even brushed off little bits of dead cedar fronds and fallen twigs, thinking really? I wondered how many thumb-size rocks it took to make a marker that big. It must be four feet long and three feet high. Then I tucked in the sarcococca stems between rocks so they’d look nice. Someone would take them by the next day, I knew that, but it was the thought that counted

.Kira’s favourite part of that walk is swimming in the lake. She has no desire at all to hang around the cairn.

Our pilgrimage felt more desolate than usual this year, though it could just be me. It’s been a crap week. On the way down the hill, I thought of Einstein and his explanation of relativity for the layperson. “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”

I stepped over an alder tree that had fallen on the trail. Kira stopped near a log and looked at me expectantly. “You’ve got to be kidding.” She put two paws on the log. “Four feet!” When she jumped up on the log, equilibrium was restored to the world, and I gave her a treat. The game is called Dog on a Log. We also play Rock Star, where she gets a treat for jumping up on, guess what, a different substance. Earlier in her life, these were important manoeuvres as the games kept her focused on me instead of tracking deer. Now that she’s older and more or less well-behaved, they’re just treat-grabs. But playing amuses us both.

I took a breath and looked up at the mist eddying around the fir tops, still thinking about relativity. When you lose someone close to you, there’s a similar paradox: it happened just yesterday and it happened forever ago. It blows a hole in your life. You have all this time when you are the only person there. Add the dog, if you’re fortunate enough to live with one. So there’s this huge stretch of time occupied by a person singular. You rattle around in it. There’s also the same echoing hall piled high with stacks of chores that need to be done. In that sense, there’s no time left at all. Some days I feel frantic with how much I need to do. I never actually get everything finished. I suspect this is more acute with country living. Is this life? Was it like this when I was part of a couple and I’ve just forgotten?

This has been such a dark year. I never remember so much fog. Staring at the exquisite detail of moss on the alder trees which grows in tiny shapes like a firework or a fountain, it comes to me then: gratitude. Even on the very day my husband died, my brother was so kind and there were others, many others who helped, hugged and supported me. I can feel gratitude for anything, everything: salal, the green of sword ferns smooshed down from the snow, clean air in my lungs. I can breathe in thankfulness all the way downhill to my car

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Pull on it, I tell myself. I imagine yarding on the strength of the fir trees, the peace of the sky, the universe of spirit that I swim through like a fish that can’t see the water. And I swear, the world starts to steady.

Someone in my wonderful writing group started finishing emails with the word, “Onward.” Now often we all do. It’s charming because not only does it impart a sense of momentum, it’s an acknowledgment that we’re all dealing with something and we carry on despite difficulties. I had one friend, bless her heart, dying from three kinds of cancer, who used to say to me, “Well, it could be worse. I’m not in a refugee camp.” She seemed to find it quite comforting. I made her cookies. That was my idea of comforting.

Loss, pain, equilibrium. To return to Einstein, he also said, “People are like bicycles. They can keep their balance only as long as they keep moving.” That’s me. I’m moving. It’s foggy again this morning but the atmospheric river that pounded on the roof all last night has either finished (wouldn’t that be nice?) or paused. Ms Furface and I need to get out early for our walk while the going is good. Yesterday there was eight inches of water on the deepest spots of the trail

Onward!

How do you manage relativity in your life? I’d love to know.

Chris Maddon cartoon