Divindication

More light has been shed on my magical Easter weekend.  It took just a few days for the rest of the information to come.   

Noteworthy background details: Saturday night, I had some time to myself, and I was uncharacteristically antsy about it. I usually can stay in my house for days on end, provided provisions are in place, and only the ring of a Monday morning alarm clock forces me to join the living once again. However, in the pouring rain, I jumped into my truck and ventured out.

The first place I went was Wild Rose Manor, a senior's home that my Grandma lived in for many years. The place was dead quiet (most of the more mobile were out at their families' places for Easter weekend).  I met a handsome tall fellow in the front hallway; he was wearing a suit with a lapel full of some serious regalia. He hadn't been anywhere and he wasn't going anywhere, he said.  When he told me his name, I asked if he was the namesake of a small town near here. He scoffed at me, but only to then correct me that the town was, in fact, named after his mother. Close enough- whatever it took, I said, to have prevented Debolt from being named Yankee Creek. 

I tried to convince him to come to a senior's info session at the Legion next week, and he was only mildly intrigued. I told him that the Alberta government is legislating some new and spooky passages that could infringe on his liberty. He asked me "What liberty?" and as I looked him up and down, this magnificent shell of a man, I couldn't even pretend to flatter him and feign not understanding his point.

I wandered over to three cuties playing whist. I made eye contact with the one that looked most like my grandma and she took me up on that. A chair was pulled up before I got to the atrium they were tucked into. I told them about the info session as well, trying hard not to scare them while still insinuating a revolution could be started if we just go to the god damn Legion. I appealed to them- I'm taking time off work for this, can't you just come and listen? Have some tea and kill a couple hours on a Wednesday afternoon?  I think I'll see two of the three of them there. The one who won't come is having a perm that day, and between you and me, it really is time for the perm.

As I left them to their game, I noticed Mr. Debolt peeking at me from behind a column. I sauntered back over to him and he grumbled at me, "No sense in talking to them. Why don't you come here and do your meeting?  Look at all these damn chairs". I told him I'd see him at the Legion, that I'd be mad if he doesn't come. He tried really hard not to smile and still said no.  

I couldn't help but take a walk down my grandma's wing. Her door was wide open. You have to know that most of me thought she'd be in there, crocheting a kitchen towel handle, watching North of 60, waiting for me. I stood there and looked inside, and there was someone else's grandma instead, sitting in someone else's grandma's recliner, bossing around a care attendant who wasn't doing something right. They were arguing and that alone satisfied me, and reminded me that I was never in trouble when I was doing stuff to make that room run right. That, I was good at.

I was free to leave, and made my way back to the parking lot. It was still raining, and I had no idea where to go or why. I knew not to go home, and that was enough. I had a mixed CD in the stereo and listened to Walking In Memphis about four times through, and started to drive away, taking random turns and thinking eventually I'd know where to go.  

I ended up on my least favorite of all streets, the one that turns into the road I take to get out to work every morning, a road I avoid completely on weekends so as not to be reminded.  An absolute occurred to me- go to my old friend Margaret's house. She lives on that street. I hadn't been to her house since...well, since she babysat me, and contrary to what you might imagine, I didn't need babysitting beyond about 1982. Their lights were on.

I knocked on the back door, and her husband answered. He didn't say much to me, just looked bemused, and went to get his wife. She came tearing out into the kitchen, thrilled at the sight of me. That's an amazing feeling. Without any questions or answers, I was plopped into a chair at her table and she made us some tea. I was in a delicious time warp, recognizing the warm smell of her house, the handles on her kitchen cupboards, the dark bottom of the stairs where her son's room was when I was little.  He was cool, he was a teenager when I was small. He had a paper route and one rainy afternoon, he took me with him to do his deliveries, and on a block just one street over from their house, but a thousand miles away when you're four, I peed my pants.  

I reminded Margaret of how I peed my pants and she laughed and said "Knowing you, you didn't even tell me when you guys got back here", and she was right. She showed me pictures of her grandkids, now teenagers themselves. Good looking boys just like their dad. 

Margaret finally blurted out, "It must be so hard for you kids, Easter, and you don't have a mom!!"  It came out so wrong, but I laughed and made her feel a bit better for how it came out. I agreed that it is certainly weird, but that I am okay. We talked about perspective, and how I have had my reckoning with death and I understand it, I am friendly enough with it. The talk got heavy, in a good way, and I told her about the night my grandma passed away, how I was there, face to face with her as she left, and how it was a beautiful and lucky and mind-altering experience for me, and I have never ever wondered whether or not she was alright after that. She asked if I wasn't also there when my mom died, and that too, I assured her, was fine. It was quiet and serene and perfectly befitting my mom's way, and that as hard as it was, I wouldn't trade being part of it for anything. It helps with that aforementioned perspective. 

Margaret is funny. She says things that only she could say. We were right back on track, same dynamic as thirty years ago, in a couple of hours. I even choked while taking a sip of my tea and it poured all over my face and shirt, and she mopped me up with a paper towel. I didn't even get up, she just came running over and did it. I was no different to her, either. I left there that night feeling incredible, knowing that we'd needed to see each other in the worst way, but not even knowing yet why.

Today, while looking up something completely unimportant online, the local news site I was trying to load just would not work, so I clicked something below it instead, and one of the pages that flashed momentarily had three words on it that stopped my heart. I back-arrowed manically until that page came back and there it was-- Margaret's son, the paper boy, had died on Monday morning. 

Calgary man, 44, truck roll-over...no seat belt. I panicked for a minute or so and then called my mom's phone number. Half a ring in, I wisely hung up and called her friend, the next closest person to Margaret.  Margaret's not okay, and nor should she be. I want to see her, but this isn't about me.  My part, quite clearly, was played beforehand. 

So it is true, I had no idea where I was going on Saturday night, but I think it's safe to say my mom and my grandma knew exactly what to do with me. It is simply trusting, willingly surrendering to the things we can't see, but feel, both that night and today, that makes me know what faith is.