“This woman loves me now as well as then,” he told Judith. “It’s easy to go on loving the person you first met, the image of the beautiful teenager, the divine Beatrice – such love can last a lifetime and lead only to poetry, but to go on loving not the image, but the changing reality – that’s quite another matter. To go with the flow, to change with a changing love, to continue it lifelong is a rare and wonderful experience.”
“Sarah says it leads to a maturing and deepening of the spirit,” Judith told him.
“Agape, philia, karitas, eros,” Jonathan murmured. “Most of the saints knew two or three of them but missed the fourth. It is only when you experience the rare combination of all four that you know life in its most beautiful aspect.”
“Seeing you and Sarah together at this stage is just wonderful for me,” Judith said. “Inspiring. I wonder. Should I ask my son to quit his job and come here to spend a while with us?”
“For young Joshua it wouldn’t be the same,” Jonathan said. “He’s always loved Sarah, but he’s separated from her by two generations. Of course he should see her once more before she dies – just at the end, perhaps – but you couldn’t expect him to draw such inspiration from her as you seem to be able to do.”
“Um … perhaps not.”
“We haven’t discussed any arrangements – for afterwards,” Jonathan said.
“She talked with me about that,” Judith told him. “She didn’t want to distress you any more than you already are distressed. Of the two of us, she thinks I’m the stronger, and that you need to be protected.”
“She may be right. I certainly don’t feel very strong.”
“Yes. Anyway, there’s to be no funeral or memorial ceremony. She doesn’t want any mumbo-jumbo, or any of the usual hypocrisy that happens at the time of death. Her body is to go to the medical school, then to be disposed of in whatever way they dispose of cadavers. We can put a small memorial stone in the cemetery at Brigus, if we wish, simply giving her dates, and stating she was your wife.”
“Yes,” Jonathan whispered. “Yes, of course. That’s the way I’d want it, too. As usual, our minds work together.”
And then one day, very close to the end, Sarah said, “I have something for you, Jonathan. You might call it a last gift.”
“Every day of your life has been a gift to me, Sarah,” he said. But at that point she drifted off to sleep, perhaps failing to hear his reply.
When she awoke, she seemed to have forgotten about it, but a little later she called to him, “Jonathan, I’m sure there’s a bottle of good wine, isn’t there? Let’s have a glass together.”
He brought glasses, with his best claret, and pulled up a chair beside her bed.
“Remember that first afternoon in the Humber Valley – the Rubáiyát, and so on?”
“Of course, I could never forget.”
“Well, this is such an occasion. I have a poem for you. That’s the gift.”
“A poem! But …”
“Yes, I know. I’ve never written anything in my life, except letters and test papers. But suddenly, well, some people get religion when they’re dying, you know. I seem to have got poetry. Writing things down is too much effort for me, but that doesn’t matter. The lines come into my head ready-made during those long trances that are so much like sleep.”
Jonathan poured two glasses of the dark red wine, each two-thirds full, and inhaled the bouquet from one of them. Sarah took just a sip, and rolled it around her tongue.
“Do you have a pen, Jonathan? I want you to write it down. Later you can give it to the archives, or frame it as a family heirloom. It rhymes. I hope that won’t turn you off?”
Jonathan wrote the lines down as she gave them to him, slowly, one at a time:
I think of those who braved the world’s vexation,
to seek for truth like water on a thorn,
that brought them peace and bloody consummation,
glory and shame and scorn.
I fear that we shall never find by searching
the lofty ecstasies of those who trod
the stations of so many crosses, lurching
up the steep stairs of God:
eternal children in a land of wonder,
playing with lily-cup and golden-rod,
eternal pilgrims bowing lowly under
the sky-blue hands of God.
Cold are our days, and marble-cold the chancel
where the dead Christ lies on his gilded bier –
and reason has maternal power to cancel
each hope, or dream, or prayer.
She lay still, with closed eyes, apparently exhausted by the effort. Then she whispered, “Is it any good?”
“It’s beautiful,” Jonathan assured her. “And very bleak – which means that it’s appropriate – and very true with respect to our time. I never would have guessed you could do that sort of thing, Sarah.”
“Me either. Pass me the glass, Jonathan.”
“Yes. A toast. To music at the close?”
“To music.” They drained the wine, and Sarah passed at once into a deep sleep, right in the middle of a sentence: “One glass is …”
A few days later Joshua arrived, a tall, dark young man, looking very clean and sailor-like. If he was shocked by Sarah’s frailty he didn’t show it. He kissed her as someone might kiss a flower, and sat beside her talking of his travels, as long as she remained awake.
“When I have children I’ll give them copies of your poetry,” he said, “and all their lives they’ll be able to refer to ‘my great-grandmother, the poet.’ How do you do it?”
“I don’t really do anything, Joshua. It just comes to me, a line or two at a time, and in a few days the poem is complete. I go over it in my mind and memorize it as it comes to me. I have another shaping itself now, a line at a time. I don’t know if it will ever be complete, of course.”
“You’ll finish it,” he said.
“I suppose so. Maybe the discovery of this strange gift is keeping me alive beyond my time. And now, if you don’t mind, I have to sleep a lot, you know.”
“Yes. Pleasant dreams, Sarah.”
Later he told her of his progress as a seaman: “I’ll have my ticket in navigation by the end of the year. Then I’ll be able to qualify as second mate on a seagoing ship, perhaps sail to Europe and the West Indies.”
“I’m glad you’re following the family tradition, Joshua. You’ll be a captain, like your great-grandfather, the man you are named for.”
“Actually he’d be my great-great-grandfather, wouldn’t he?”
“Oh yes, that’s right. He was my grandfather-in-law.”
“I’m only sorry he isn’t alive. He could have told me so much about the sea.”
“Yes,” said Jonathan, “and I wish he could have seen you doing this. It would have pleased him so much to see you following the sea, the way he expected me to do, and aiming to be a master mariner like himself.”
“I just can’t wait to be in charge of a ship. I want it more than anything.”
“It’s sleep again, for me,” Sarah said, “walking in gardens filled with orchids, walking through stained-glass palaces, stately pleasure domes with caves of …”
“She seems to be really happy in her last days,” Jonathan said. “I hope it lasts. The doctor thinks she’ll just fade out, slowly.”
“How long?”
“No one can tell. Maybe two days. Maybe two weeks.”
“It’s a great way to die, isn’t it?”
“There’s no great way to die,” Jonathan said. “Those around you will suffer, even if you don’t suffer yourself. But of course it’s better to die quietly than to die roaring, as Captain Josh used to put it.”
And then, one day, Sarah ceased to wake, though she seemed to remain semi-conscious in her sleep. Jonathan sat with her, hour after hour, holding her hand, and feeling the faint response to the pressure of his fingers. When he leaned over and kissed her cheek, her lips seemed to
move in the ghost of a smile. And, bit by bit, he was coming to accept it, no longer, like St. Paul, “kicking against the pricks.” During those last hours a sense of peace descended upon him. Perhaps, he thought, this, rather than her poetry, was really her final gift.
Then her breath began to rattle in her throat, coming lightly and slowly, slowly, perhaps not oftener than once a minute toward the end. Her flame of life was burning at the lowest possible flicker, so low that Jonathan felt for a pulse between breaths. And then – he couldn’t be sure exactly when – the breath did not return, and the pulse was no longer there.
He sat for perhaps another hour, tears in his eyes, but healing in his heart, while dawn slowly spread its pearl-gray light over the rooftops. Then he went to call Judith, and to face calmly the years he must face alone.
Forever Worlds
Marjorie Simmins
A true story about two Canadian writers, Silver Donald Cameron and Marjorie Simmins, living on opposite coasts and how they came to weave together their coastal lives. It is an excerpt from Marjorie Simmins’ Coastal Lives: A Memoir, which explores our understandings of home and our deep connections with family, friends, and animals. It also looks at the cultural differences from East to West in Canada.
All right, I said, you can come to Vancouver. It was August, 1996.
What else could I do? He said he was going to fly out to the West Coast, rent a Winnebago, put up a sign on our front lawn that read: “Marjorie won’t go out with me; Marjorie is being mean,” and leave it there for all the neighbours in the townhouse complex to read, day after endless day – until I did go out with him. It would be easy to say he was kidding – but I really don’t think he was. If I’ve learned anything since that first phone call back in April, it’s that Silver Donald Cameron is a cheerful but cussedly stubborn man – who will not, absolutely will not take no for an answer.
And I am glad! This is it, no more shilly-shallying around. After six months of talking, letters, sharing our writings and over eight hundred e-mails, Silver Donald Cameron and Marjorie Simmins are going on a face-to-face date! He’ll be here in a couple of days – so much to do first! We are going to stay down at his family’s cottage in Point Roberts, Washington. Point Roberts, can you imagine! That’s where my friends and I went all the time I was a teenager, to dance at The Breakers nightclub. The music was fantastic, live bands and big names from all over the U.S. Nowadays, I go to The Reef tavern with my girlfriends to play pool on Sunday afternoons. I wonder if Don plays pool. I hope so.
I love rustic and weird Point Roberts. It’s like a fingertip of the United States, surrounded entirely by Canada. When they drew the 49th parallel, they just lopped off the very tip of The Point and declared it was American land. The school kids have to be bussed back through Canada and then back into the States again, at the Peace Arch border crossing, just to go to school each day. More than anything, The Point is Canadian summercottage country. It should be a part of Canada, for heaven’s sake. Instead it’s stuck off by itself, with Canada to its north and Washington State proper across the Salish Sea to the south. Americans and Canadians call Point Roberts “Dogpatch U.S.A.” It’s one of the poorest parts of America, with almost everyone on assistance during the winter and not enough jobs to go around even in the summer. Well, of course, it’s in complete isolation from the rest of the country.
There are some hockey player mansions now, over by the yacht club, but in general, people live modestly. And no industry, of any sort, though there used to be fish canneries there. That’s why it’s so peaceful to drive to on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Anyway, turns out Don’s parents bought a place down there in the ’40s. Don’s youngest brother Ken owns the cottage now. What a perfect place for a first visit. Quiet, green, away from prying eyes and eager ears. All those pretty paths through the woods and the endless tidal flats at Boundary Bay for Leo to run on – Oh, dear. How do I explain that the dog sleeps with me every night? Does he really like dogs – or did he just say that to make polite noises? I am not going anywhere without Leo. No way. If things go strange for any reason, me and my mutt will just hop in my trusty Celica and drive away –
(– one, two, three; three, two, one –)
Yes, I count when I am scared. But I’m not scared – I’m just very nervous and keyed up. I wish both families didn’t know every detail of this story! But there’s no way to hide it after all this time. My oldest sister Zoë actually sent Don an e-mail saying that the whole Simmins family was in favour of a rendezvous between Don and me. All the grown-ups, anyway. I haven’t told my little sisters and my niece much in the way of detail; that can come later, if at all. Heaven knows how this is all going to pan out.
(– five, six, seven; seven, six, five –)
He’s really coming to Vancouver, all the way from Cape Breton Island …
It is twenty-four hours later …
I brought lots of groceries, of course; that’s who I am, someone who likes to cook for other people. My whole family is like that, except poor Mum, who got really tired cooking for all of us for so many years. My oldest sister pitched in for a while and then my brother Geoffrey and I did a fair bit of the cooking through our high school years. Mum loved that! She loves it now, that I do all the cooking for us at home. Least I can do, for the love and sanctuary she’s given me.
Mum, I am scared. I said I wasn’t but I am. I don’t know what to do next – this is all so intimate and overwhelming –
Don enjoyed his breakfast – which wasn’t fancy, only bacon and eggs and toast, with good thick-cut marmalade and a bowl of local raspberries. He’s started right in on the dishes, which is nice. That’s the rule in our family: whoever cooks doesn’t have to clean up. So I am glad he’s good with that.
I was delighted to see him come off the plane with live lobsters in hand. We cooked them last night, for our first evening together here at the cottage. I had no clue how to actually eat a whole lobster; I’ve done this maybe once in my life and that was years ago. Don found some nutcrackers and sharp skinny knives and one way or another, watching how he did it, I managed to get the meat out of the shell. It was delicious. Hope you enjoy your first taste of the Maritimes, he smiled, and we toasted another glass of wine.
All right, I drank too much wine and tequila – Dutch courage and all that – and that’s partly why I feel so off-kilter. But that’s only part of it. So much time being theoretical lovers … and now we are real lovers. Do I look different? I feel different. Really different. Good different. Like spending the night in a curling tropical wave; everything turquoise and rushing and warm all around us. We should have stayed in the wave, not come out to this morning-cold kitchen with polite queries for salt and pepper, please, and would you like more coffee?
(– eleven, twelve, thirteen;fourteen, fifteen, sixteen –)
“I am feeling a bit funny …,” I say to Don.
“Really?” says Don. “Tell me about it.” He has just dried his hands on a tea towel and has retrieved his halffull coffee cup from the counter. He settles himself in the white wicker chair by the French doors, which look out to the front yard. He is dressed in summer cottons, dappled by sunlight. I like looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t want to spoil things. I just feel very vulnerable and on edge.”
Don takes a sip of his coffee. “What can we do about that?”
What can we do about that? Is that what he said – we? What a novel concept. I don’t know what to say. Oh God, you silly girl, don’t start crying.
I clear my throat. “Uh, well, I guess I just have one way of doing these things. When I feel funny I like to be outside … in the sun … with Leo – preferably by the water. Could we do that?” My heart is pounding. If he doesn’t want to do this, I’ll have to go anyway –
He is laughing! Why? “That dog is hilarious! He was right under the covers on your side of the bed last night. Is that where he usually sleeps?”
I nod, rapid
ly.
Don looks around the kitchen. “He’s had his breakfast but he’s not – is that where he is now?”
I nod again.
“He’d stay there all day, wouldn’t he?”
“He’s a whippet,” I say, willing him to understand a breed he knows nothing about, “a sighthound. Two speeds, stop and go.” We are both laughing now.
“All right,” says Don, “then let’s see him go.” He is picking up his camera from the counter by the telephone. “Boundary Bay it is, stateside.”
My heart is hurting with happiness. It hurts just a bit more when I glance outside and see a sun-bright summer morning against an aqua sky. “Watch this,” I say. “Leeeee-oh! Let’s go for a walk!”
Ker-thump. Four tidy whippet paws land together on the floor in the bedroom. Whappety-whap. Two ears are shaken vigorously. Clickety-clickety-clickety. Many claw tips, which should have been clipped last week, or even the week before, are rapidly tapping against the linoleum floors. We turn to see a tan and white hound come trotting into the kitchen. His eyes are the darkest of browns, backlit by humour and life joy. He looks like a small deer. He stretches long and low, his way of “putting on his hat” to go outside. The movements are also similar to an athlete warming up.
I feel a shiver of excitement. Don has never seen a whippet run. Pound for pound, whippets are the fastest animal on earth. This will be just as fun for me to watch. Even though I’ve seen Leo run flat-out hundreds of times, I’ll see it again today for the first time, through Don’s eyes. With luck it will be low tide at the beach. Nothing Leo loves more than caroming through tidal pools, water pluming out on either side of him. We’ll take a tennis racket to smack a ball for him to retrieve. That will really get him flying. I can’t wait to see Don’s reaction to all that speed, grace, and beauty.
Nova Scotia Love Stories Page 15
