Looking back at my journal entries, I see that I always struggle at this time of year. It is grey and cold and rainy and there are 1-2-3 punches of vigils and remembrance for the many many ways that things are not right in the world.

I start with November 11, Remembrance Day in Canada. And I end with December 6, when I always remember watching cbc news coverage of the Montreal Massacre as a bewildered ten-year-old.

and in the middle there is november 18, which I rarely acknowledge anymore, but it nonetheless rests as a heavy weight on my chest for a few days/weeks/months until I manage to lock it down again. This year we were in Maui; my mother and her brother went to mass to remember her parents who were killed fourteen years ago [I wrote "died" and went back to change that]. My father, brother and sister went with them. I did not go. I stayed home and made us breakfast. Packed the cooler for a picnic. I don't know. Didn't feel like opening that box.

Fourteen years. That's how long their murderer got for each of their deaths. Fourteen years to be served concurrently. I think he was out on parole within ten. Last night I was watching tv and there was a bloody bloody visual with a knife and I felt myself hyperventilating and consciously steered my mind away.

But now it's daytime and I'm sitting in my kitchen with a second cup of coffee. I can hear Okra Man driving slowly by on the street, singing his vegetable song over his loudspeaker ("i have carrrrrrrrrots. I have sweet potatoes. I have banaaaaaanas...."). I have the house to myself. I am reflecting on the 1-2-3 punch.

Some years I have a good cry and then I shove it all back into a compartment. Other years it just waits at the back of my mind for months, and re-appears at every good moment to remind me to grab on tight and stay here because the bad can and will hit any second now.

When I feel my chest constrict, I think of slow sunny timeless afternoons in Rishikesh where I daydreamed, wrapped in a blanket, then wandered to the Ganges to watch candles and marigolds float by in the twilight. I think of floating in the ocean, bobbing in giant waves.
Movement and motion. Can't hold on to anything. This is how it goes.

11:35 a.m. - 2009-12-06