Northern Wildflower

by Catherine Lafferty

  My grandparents never did make it to the wedding. My grandma was bedridden by that time and unable to leave the house. There was such commotion on the day of the wedding that I didn’t stop in to visit. I had the full intention of stopping in to visit in my dress, but intentions mean nothing if you don’t go through with them. The fact that I was so selfish still breaks my heart to this day. I have never been more thoughtless.

  While everyone except the two most important people in my life was waiting outside of the teepee for me to walk down the aisle, I realized that I had forgotten the wedding papers back at the house. My maid of honour Kristen’s husband had to drive back into town to get them. The guests waited in the hot, blistering sun, listening to my musician friend play his solo pieces on guitar, a beautiful mix of techno and Spanish flair. After a couple of hours waiting, I was certain some of the guests were probably thinking that one of us had gotten cold feet. Once the papers arrived, I started my walk down the aisle, arm in arm with my estranged father and led by my beautiful daughter throwing pink flower petals in our path. I focused on the future of our family and tried to see past the negatives. I had high hopes that our marriage would be a new beginning for us.

  Jeremy stood under the homemade gate, decorated in twine and flowers, that one of my bridesmaids had made for us. As I walked barefoot on the white aisle runner that led to Jeremy, I could tell that he had had a few drinks, but I was more focused on his hairdo. I wondered why he had chosen to style his hair like a porcupine. His hair was salt and pepper to begin with — he hadn’t bothered colouring it black for this occasion — and he had slicked it back with a comb and some gel, leaving it looking like it had a life of its own.

  We said our nuptials and signed the papers. By then, everyone was anxious to get out of the hot sun and get the party started, so we made our way back to the reception hall in town. The plan was for the wedding party to enter the reception dancing to an upbeat song, but the DJ got the request wrong and played “The Hockey Song,” to Jeremy’s delight.

  The reception was set up beautifully, with large, stargazer flowers everywhere and handmade, candlelit centrepieces. The food was great, and the cake was decorated exactly how I envisioned it. When it was time to cut the cake, link arms and graciously feed it to each other, I mushed a piece of cake onto Jeremy’s face instead and he got me back twofold. River even got some on himself. It was picture perfect.

  Everything was going smoothly, until my dress fell apart at the seams while the groomsmen at the party twirled me repeatedly during the tune, “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll).” I tried telling them to stop spinning me, but they couldn’t hear me and just kept spinning me faster and faster until my aunt Clara noticed and came to my rescue. My dress had slipped down to my bra and the zipper was broken in the back. If she hadn’t gotten to me when she did, my dress would have been down to my ankles.

  One girl showed up as a date of one of the guests and, while everyone was up dancing, she bumped into me and spilt her drink down the front of my dress. I ran to the washroom and my bridesmaids blotted it dry, cursing at how she must have done it on purpose. Thankfully, it was white wine and wasn’t very noticeable. By the end of the night, my dress was a mess and pieces of my pinned-back updo were hanging down around my face. Brooke was fast asleep in my dad’s arms and River was jigging up a storm in his little suspenders for the guests and collecting money just for being cute.

  I was in and out of the back door of the reception hall, sneaking a smoke with the other smokers. By the end of the night, I had had a few too many drinks in me, and I always craved a cigarette when tipsy. Out of nowhere, one of the guests started fighting with one of my bridesmaids. The fight was broken up, but not before my dad got punched in the face trying to save me from getting hit in the crossfire. We all went back inside and forgot about the fight, dancing the night away until my bridesmaid decided to go for round two. From across the dance floor, she stormed up to the same girl to serve her a strong uppercut to the chin, taking her down to the ground. She showed up to the gift opening the next morning looking like a platypus with a fat lip.

  Jeremy and I went back to our hotel room together after the reception. The hotel was our mini-getaway from the kids, a substitute for our honeymoon, since we couldn’t afford to go on one. When we got woke up the next morning, it was like any other day except we were bound together forever. Or so we thought.

  ***

  DURING THE WEDDING PLANNING, I hardly recognized how old and feeble my grandparents were getting. I barely made time to talk to my grandma on the phone. I admit I could have made more of an effort, and for that I have no excuse. My biggest regret is that I didn’t spend enough time visiting with my grandparents in their last days. Those precious hours that I got to spend with them can never be replaced, and the time that I didn’t spend with them will always be wasted time.

  It is so important to spend time visiting with family and friends. In our busy lives, we hardly visit anymore. No matter how busy we are, we should make time in our schedules for our families. When I did visit my grandma after not seeing her for some time, I knew she was not doing well. She had lost so much weight. My aunt Loretta took care of her, for the most part, but she was still lonesome and hardly had any visitors.

  My grandma was in a lot of pain from her arthritis and wasn’t sewing anymore. She had a hard time getting around and mostly lay down because she didn’t have much energy. Just days after the wedding, she was in a bad state and we had to bring her to the hospital. She was in and out of consciousness. Our family took turns being there for her overnight in the hospital. She would talk in her sleep and have full conversations with people in her dreams. One night, I saw her sit up in her hospital bed, in agony, in the middle of the night. With her eyes closed, she called out for her favourite brother, who had died a few years before. She often talked about her brother and missed him.

  My grandma’s will to survive was strong, though, and she wasn’t ready to let go. I made the mistake of telling her that she was old one day in the grocery store parking lot. I said, “Grandma, you can wait in the car if you want.” I figured it might be too hard for her to get around in the grocery store, and I was just grabbing a few things in a hurry. She got mad at me and said, “What do you mean? I’m still young!” I didn’t make that mistake twice. Her mind was young and sharp, but her body was letting her down.

  She was released from the hospital a few days later, and our family had to pull ourselves together to look after her, because by that point she was unable to do most things by herself and needed full-time assistance. Coming from a family where she was the thread that held everyone together, it was very hard for us to keep it together for her. We just couldn’t seem to organize ourselves and take care of her the way she deserved to be cared for during her last days.

  A few weeks later I brought her to the emergency room because she was not well. She was malnourished and dehydrated. She had no appetite and was hardly able to move. I told her that I would be back later; I was busy with the kids and had a few things to do, and I assumed that my aunt would go and be with her in the hospital. As I was leaving the room I turned and waved at her, and a feeling came over me that I couldn’t describe. I should have known right then and there that it would be the last time that I would get to visit with her.

  Later that evening, I called the hospital and the nurse on the other line sounded relieved. “Thank God you called. We’ve been trying to get a hold of a family member,” she said. She had been trying to get a hold of my aunt, my grandma’s next of kin on her medical chart, but she had been getting a busy signal for hours. My grandma had taken a turn for the worse. No one had been at the hospital by my grandma’s side for the entire day. The nurse said that someone needed to get down there right away, because she had had a stroke and was unresponsive.

  I rushed to the hospital, picking my aunt up on the way. When we got to the emergency room,
my grandma looked like she was sleeping. She was in the same emergency room that I left her in earlier that day. We sat by her side for hours, praying and talking to her. It was only a matter of time until she would let go and meet with the loved ones that had gone before her. I only hope that she heard our last goodbyes and knew how much we loved her.

  Our family gathered together for the next three days and prepared her funeral. As is tradition in our culture, we made her a homemade white casket and my uncle made her a cross. We cried and laughed together and told stories of what a remarkable person she was. It was hard to say goodbye to such a wonderful, kind, strong woman who had served others her entire life. She was my mother. Like the delicate glass beads she strung together on the sinew of our moccasins, she was what held our family together. Without her, we were lost.

  ***

  THEY SAY THAT WHEN YOU truly love someone you can’t live without them. My papa stayed at my grandma’s house after she died and, a week to the day, he joined her. He couldn’t live without her. My grandparents showed me what true, genuine love is. Their love persevered through the hard times, and they never gave up.

  Despite his tough demeanor, I think my papa died from a broken heart. Our family gathered around him in the hospital room, where he fought to live. My papa was the strongest person I know, and for him to let go of life gracefully would not be his style. As he lay in his hospital bed he put his arm up in front of his face like he was shielding his eyes, almost like he was being blinded by a bright light. He did this repeatedly and said, “Mom, mom,” the same way my grandma was calling out to her brother the night that I stayed by her side in the hospital. They saw something on the other side, in the spirit world, that we couldn’t see.

  I believe that when someone is close to death, they are in between worlds. That explains why my grandma was reaching out to her late brother the night that I stayed by her side in the hospital. I think that my grandma came for my papa; it was the only way that he would have let go.

  Things were different after they passed on. Our family was lost. No one knew what to do. I had lost the only parents I knew, the best parents, in such a short amount of time with no chance to say goodbye. It’s so true that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I wish I could go back and sit with my grandma while she played solitaire at the kitchen table, or watch her braid six pieces of string at a time off the fridge door handle for a pair of mitts or mould a pair of moosehide moccasins with her teeth. What I wouldn’t give to visit with her again and listen to her tell me stories of her childhood for hours while I helped her roll up endless bundles of yarn.

  I wish that I had more time with my papa. I used to cringe when he would start on one of his rants, complaining about the world with his perfectly combed-over hair, which he styled the same way every morning with a jar of shiny brylle cream, muttering something about the “kids these days” out the side of his mouth. He had the demeanour of Clint Eastwood in one of the old cowboy-and-Indian shows that he loved to watch.

  Shortly after my papa died, our family was going through pictures of him, trying to find one to use for his funeral pamphlet. They were scattered across my kitchen table when the ceiling lights started to flicker. When he was alive, he used to joke that he was going to play tricks on us when he was gone. Somehow, I knew it was him, so I wasn’t afraid.

  I heard a knock at the back door of the house the night before his funeral, and I went to the door to see who could be out there so late. I got up and peered through the window, but no one was there. I’m positive that it was my papa. It was the same time that he would come home through the back door after visiting my grandma every night. Maybe he didn’t know that he had gone to the other side yet and just wanted to get some rest. Maybe he came to say goodbye before his body was laid to rest.

  ***

  MY MARRIAGE LASTED SIX MONTHS. I didn’t want to be one of those housewives that stayed in an unhappy relationship, pretending everything was okay just because I wanted to have a family and a home that looked good from the outside but was broken on the inside. I didn’t want to keep pretending that we were happy anymore.

  Our relationship was abusive. Jeremy didn’t respect me, and I knew River would stop respecting me too; maybe he would even treat me like his dad did when he grew up if he continued to witness the way I was treated. I needed to do something, anything, but my fear kept holding me back, telling me that we had too much invested in our relationship for me to just up and leave. The house, my business, the kids. I knew that I didn’t want to live in the house without Jeremy. It felt wrong living in the home that Jeremy grew up in without him. So, once again, I started exploring education as an option.

  I wouldn’t be able to get by on the spa alone without a second income, and I definitely wouldn’t be able to find a better-paying job because I didn’t have a post-secondary education. My only ticket out was going back to school. At least this time I had a certificate to get me started. There was a beautiful school down south that I wanted to attend, and I put a picture of it on my fridge and envisioned myself going to that school one day with my books in hand. I started to look at my life as a mirror that attracted what I saw in my mind and my heart, as if everything I wanted would come to me at the exact time I needed it to, if I just believed enough in the possibility of miracles. I changed my thinking from negative to positive. I started being thankful for everything, despite my shortcomings, and incredible things did start happening. It’s amazing what a bit of grit and gratitude can accomplish.

  Chapter 11

  I HAD MY MIND SET THAT I WAS going to be the first person in my family to get a degree. There was no reason for me to stay in Yellowknife anymore. My grandparents were gone, and I felt that I had lost my connection to the North. There was nothing holding me back, and I knew they would have wanted me to be happy more than anything.

  With the kids and I leaving town, it gave Jeremy an easy way out of having to be a father. If we didn’t live in the same province as him, then he could just feign innocence in not having to visit his kids because they were too far away. The kids were going to miss him, but I knew in time they would understand why I did the things I did.

  I sold everything. I left my comfortable home and nice things. My house was full of beautiful furniture and paintings that I had collected over the years, but I’ve come to realize that things are exactly that — just things. We don’t take things with us when we leave this world. We only take with us what we have in our hearts. We all enter this world with nothing but love and, if we are fortunate, that is how we leave it. So, I started to look at material things in that way. I was starting a new chapter in life and needed to purge all of the things that I didn’t need anymore. I kept the things that I treasured the most in storage — mostly photos and keepsakes that my grandma made for me — and fit the things I absolutely needed into my little car.

  The last time I dreamt of the house, I was in the basement and there was a man standing in the corner in the dark, staring at me. I couldn’t make out his face. That’s when I knew that I wanted more out of life than to be living in an unhappy home. As grateful as I was for the roof over my head, I still needed to live my destiny and follow my purpose in life. And being with Jeremy was not it.

  The kids ended up staying behind for a few weeks with Jeremy’s mom, while I went ahead to get us set up in our new home down south on Vancouver Island. On my stop in Edmonton, I picked up a friend and we turned my move into a girls’ road trip. It was a blast, but when we reached the mountains I was petrified. I had driven on the highway before but never in the mountains. The grandiose peaks and valleys twisted and turned, and the roads were slippery because of the sleet and snow that fell in spades. All I could imagine was flying off the side of a cliff as I carefully drove, grasping the steering wheel until my hands hurt, trying to see past the windshield wipers and the fog. I was driving super slow, trying to take my time going down each mountain, but t
here were big semi-trucks behind me forcing me to drive faster.

  This was not the first long road trip where I was at the wheel. When Brooke was a baby, I had the brilliant idea of driving to Edmonton for the weekend with my mom and the kids. Brooke cried the entire time, and we tried everything to soothe her. We sang nursery rhymes over and over to calm her down, but nothing worked. I was so distracted by her crying that I took the wrong exit and we got lost for hours. By the end of the trip I was practically banging my head against the steering wheel, dreading the long trip home.

  This road trip was different. Instead of having to listen to Brooke’s holler, I was afraid of dying. When we got out of the mountains and back on level ground, we were making some good speed. We saw something lying in the middle of the road up ahead, but we couldn’t make out what it was. When we got closer, we realized it was a dead deer. I had to make a quick decision. If I slammed on the breaks, I would have caused a pile up, so I had to choose: yank the wheel and slam the car into the side of the semi-truck in my right lane, hit the ditch on my left or brace for impact and drive over the carcass. We braced for impact and ran over the dead deer. It was like hitting a large speed bump and the car went flying. We landed safely, glad to be alive. Before I knew it, I had reached my destination.

  ***

  THE KIDS WOULD BE ARRIVING in a few short days and I had brought our dog Rocky on the road with us. I had to sneak him into the hotel room because there were no pets allowed. Rocky and River had a hard time sleeping without each other and, without River, Rocky was heartbroken. He was so heartbroken that he ran away just hours before the kids arrived. It was an awful way to start the new chapter of our lives. When I picked the kids up at the airport, I didn’t know how to break the news to them. I said, “Rocky missed you guys so much that he must have gone on a long walk to look for you and got turned around. I’m sure he’ll find his way back to his new home.”