breathe and reboot...

When I was in my second year of University, I worked with a guy named Tim at our local video store. One morning, Tim called in sick, saying that he had the flu and later that day, near the end of my shift, Tim’s Mom called saying that he had been hospitalized and that the doctor’s weren’t expecting him to live through the night. Needless to say, it was very shocking for all of us that knew him.

It turned out that Tim had drank a glass of water that had been sitting out and a form of bacteria that would have normally just given the rest of us an upset stomach, ended up attacking Tim’s heart and he developed an infection. At some point in time throughout the night, Tim was being transported by ambulance from the hospital to the heart institute for further treatment. Tim died on the way there. And then he was revived. He had actually flat lined and was considered clinically dead for close to three minutes before his heart was brought back to life and later treated. Tim’s life is the miracle that so many of us hope for.

When Tim returned to work about a month later, he seemed to be a completely different person. Tim was a writer and poet and had always possessed a very philosophical view of life. He was intense; passionate; joy filled and lived life with great intent. While he certainly had moments of happiness, Tim seemed very sad in the months following his illness. One night, a bunch of us went out for drinks after work and I asked Tim how he was feeling now that his life was starting to go back to normal. He said that he was sad and that he had been sad ever since. He said that everyone in his “life after death” support group had discovered this new found appreciation for the beauty and simplicity of life, and he found himself suffering from a depression that he didn’t quite know how to get himself out of. The world was just a sad place to him now. All I could really do for Tim was listen because in no way could I sympathize with what he was going through but, if I could see Tim now, I would look him in the eye and say “Tim…I understand”.

In no way has the outcome of our recent ordeal in any way compared to what he went through but in the three days since my test results came back…I’ve been sad. While I’ve been beyond grateful for the best possible outcome, I’ve also felt a despair that I haven’t quite been able to shake. I’ve felt sad at the realization of just how fleeting life is and at just how little we truly appreciate the subtle moments that pass us by. It makes my heart hurt to know how much time we spend suffering and struggling at the hands of our ego, our pride, our jealousy.

Death is scary. For most of us, its anticipation makes us shutter and despite our best efforts, it will catch up with all of us eventually. Some sooner than others but either way, we all know in the deepest recesses of our mind, that we are no exception. This is hard…at least for me. Just before Steve and I left to go to the hospital on the night we discovered the lump, I was curled up on the floor of our hallway telling Steve that I wasn’t ready yet; I didn’t want to go to the hospital because I wasn’t ready for our life to change this way yet; I wasn’t ready to go through something like this yet and I wasn’t ready to die yet. As long as I stayed on the floor, this wasn’t happening yet. And that’s what the prospect of death does to a lot of us; it paralyzes us in hopes that if we stay very, very still…so will time.

We all know that it doesn’t work this way though…and yet we still go about life as though it does.

I read once in a book that people who live with autism have a very different awareness of time and its passing. Somehow, they are almost always acutely aware that this moment, this minute, this day is eternally over and that you can never get it back. In turn, they are left with a melancholy from one passing moment after another. It’s left me wondering if perhaps getting bogged down in office politics or worrying about money is a human necessity sometimes…a defense mechanism to keep our world and our perspective small enough that it doesn’t scare us so much? Because the hugeness of our potential and our universe and our mortality can be a really scary place when you let yourself consider it for too long.

Perhaps Tim was pushed too far. Perhaps I was pushed too far. While Tim physically experienced death, I spent ten days mentally lingering in its presence. Perhaps we were both taken to places that we were not yet prepared to venture to and it’s left us with a sadness over how quickly the beauty of our world can slip between our fingers and turn to a grief that none of us are quite prepared for. Some people come out of such experiences living their entire life differently and as odd as this sounds; I don’t want to. I don’t want to because I don’t want to be reminded that I was once crying on the floor pleading with God to spare us this terror. I don’t want to be reminded that a moment changed everything. I don’t want to be reminded that my husband once had to worry about losing his wife…and that I had to see it in his eyes. I don’t want to be reminded that our universe can turn its dials that quickly. I don’t want to be reminded that this whole thing could have turned out very differently.

I’m sure that with a bit of time, I will be restored to my usual, if not better, self. But right now I need to acknowledge the fact that I’ve been shaken too hard and it’s changed something about the way I see the world. A good friend of mine and I were discussing yesterday how living life fully and happily is really a very fine line; it’s a delicate balance between appreciating the fragility of life without waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve experienced the other end of the spectrum more than I would have liked as of late and it may take me a little while to find my way back but it’s kind of like what Anna Nalick sings I guess, “You can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable and life’s like an hour glass glued to the table…

…so just breathe.”

two points for us...

I went for an ultrasound this past weekend to start the process of finding out what our next steps are and let me just say that sitting in a dark and dinging lab office for over an hour (because apparently making an appointment doesn’t actually mean having an appointment!) is less than appealing!

To add insult to injury, the only magazines that were left in the waiting room were Canadian Living Magazines from 1984 and ironically enough, they were all October issues hence every article was geared towards promoting Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So every other page was stories of people living with breast cancer and I couldn’t help but look to the heavens and whisper “Really? Are you kidding me?!?!”

An hour later I went in for my ultrasound and then we walked out into the warm summer air with no more answers than what we went in with. I had a little chat with the technician about our health care system and whether or not our waiting periods affect the survival rate when it comes to cancer. He went on to tell me that I shouldn’t worry about that because cancer is determined by weeks and not by days. Funny though given that I had waited a week for the appointment and would wait another week for the results. I didn’t say anything though since I was lying half naked on a table in front of him while he stared at a big black hole on the screen that brought our life to abrupt halt…I thought it was best to stay on his happy side!

So that was Saturday and today at 3pm I received a call from our doctor’s office to tell me that I don’t have cancer. In fact, I’m perfectly healthy and instead, I have a benign cyst that was masquerading as a tumour. Jerk!

I will have to call my doctor again and ask them to re-read the report because I didn’t really hear much after “you’re okay” but I did manage to catch the last thing she said before hanging up the phone…

“You get to win this one!”

Amen to that!

a crab of a time...

When I was in grade school, I used to tell everyone that my birthday was on June 18th (when it’s actually on July 18th). I really disliked having my birthday in the summer because for starters, all of my friends were away at summer camp or on family vacations and secondly, because I was one of the only ones in my class that didn’t get a party or my birthday announced on the PA system on the morning of my big day. For a ten year old…it just seemed like the harshest of punishments.

There was another reason though too; I didn’t particularly like being the sign of Cancer. I love the zodiac signs and the mythical beliefs behind them. While I certainly don’t place much worth to daily horoscopes at all, I have found that throughout my life, zodiac signs have been strangely accurate in describing the type of personality that I am along with those that I love. Take what you like from it but, there are certain elements that simply aren’t transferable among individuals and there is no doubt whatsoever that I am, indeed, a Cancer the crab. I didn’t like this though and I still kind of don’t because I don’t like being the only zodiac signed to share the same name as an often times terminal illness. All in all, I wanted to be as far away from cancer, in every form, as I could be.

I have been unforgivably absent from my blog as of late because cancer has been on my mind a lot lately and it’s a surprisingly exhausting thing to think about. My husband and I are waiting to find out if I have breast cancer. Last Thursday was, by far, one of the worst days of my life, as what should have been a seemingly normal evening at home became a panic-stricken trip to the emergency room.

Last week, I found a lump on my left breast and with that, our world flipped up side down and in some ways…came crashing down. Mere minutes after being in the car on the way to the hospital, Steve had to pull over as I threw up on the side of the road. It was really the only thing that my body knew how to do at the time and I continued to throw up for ten consecutive hours after that. The next morning our doctor confirmed the abnormality and was immediately on the phone to find the earliest appointment for an ultrasound and begin the next steps of God knows what.

To be completely honest, I don’t want to be here writing about this. I don’t really feel like I’m ready to be “talking” about it like this and all the while, I’m not prepared to not talk about it either. From the instant I found out, I was determined not to be that story…that unique case of the thirty-year old wife dying of cancer. I wanted to come here after the fact and tell you all about it once it was over. But it’s not over and I don’t know how long it will be until it is and I don’t like waiting and wondering and pondering all by myself. I want this to be a tiny group of entries on this blog that I will look back at one day and think “geez…wasn’t that sucky at the time?!?!”. I say “at the time” because I very much want there to be a time that doesn’t include this; this anxiety; this waiting; this unwelcome visitor in my body.

Right now, we wait. We wait to get the results of the ultrasound; we wait to hear what the doctor is going to say to us from across the room; we wait to see if we are going to breath a sigh of relief or a stop breathing altogether; we wait to see where life is going to go from here. We wait.

We’re optimistic and aside from the obvious presence of something that indicates otherwise, we have every reason to be. We’re optimistic that this will be a slight glitch in our current journey from here to there and we’re optimistic that whatever the outcome is, it will be manageable. There are still moments though in which our minds wander to the darker places and we find our selves staring at the terror that first flashed before us when this whole thing came into being. I think that it’s human nature to consider the worst and for me, it’s nothing short of my worst nightmare.

There is one thing though that my zodiac description has always failed to mention…

Whatever this thing is that’s in my body…it just fucked with the wrong girl…

the sound of music...

I would be so much less opposed to public transit
if this happened more often!!!

it's almost time...

On this very day last year, Steve and I were in Australia! It seems funny to say that now as a part of my past experiences, especially given how much time we spent preparing for it. But that’s how it goes…we slowly went from “I want to visit Australia one day” to “I’ve swam with a sea turtle in Australia!!” It’s funny how that happens.

I remember how Steve and I were so excited to come home and settle in to our new house and our new routine. The beginning of the year had been so full of new things that we were very much looking forward to spending the second half of the year living the boring suburban life! Even after our return, we found ourselves adjusting to more changes; new pets, new jobs, new colleagues. There just seemed that there was no end to the transitions in our life. By the time everything did settle down, we were so tired that all we could do was let ourselves hibernate alongside the cold weather and hope for the best! We discovered that the decline from that much change is seldom ever subtle. While we had visions of “coming down” gradually, the universe had an entirely different plan!!!

Summer is back though! It’s 16 degrees here in Ottawa today (that’s 60.8 degrees for you Jim!!!!) and you can just feel the warmth approaching! That means that we officially have a second chance to relish in the island of summer that we missed last year due to relentless fatigue! In honour of the first true summer day of the year, I’ve taken it upon myself to declare 2009 the summer of Gen! I don’t mean it in a “summer of Gen and no one else” kind of thing…more so a “summer of all the things that Gen wants to do and hasn’t done during summers past”. I want to spend the summer relaxing and reading…getting a tan and doing yoga…drinking slushy drinks and eating peaches every day! That’s not too much to ask, is it?!?!

Our summers always seem to be so busy in the flurry of the few nice months that we experience in this end of the province that they tend to be gone before they even get started. So far, we’ve managed not to make too many plans for the summer other than some travelling to visit friends and family. And although I have class twice a week, school will be done in early July…just in time to park myself on a park bench with a Jane Austen book in one hand and a frozen drink in the other…!!!

I’m already luxuriating in the loveliness of it all!!! Any one care to join me?!?! There’s plenty of room on my park bench!!

Easter is Cancelled...!!!

fifteen:fifty-one...

So I've been getting threats lately! That's right...THREATS!

People have been threatening me within an inch of my life if I even consider the prospect of leaving writing for photography (seriously...I always took you as more of a pacifist!!). I've been told under no uncertain terms that photography is all well and dandy...just as long as the blog doesn't take a back seat! It's nice to see who's really in control here!!

Well, I'm sure that you've noticed that the neglect has begun and believe me when I say that I've been getting an earful about it! So, in the name of keeping the peace...I'm willing to offer a compromise...

A photo blog!

Now before you get all up in a knot, let me first announce that Fifteen:Fifty-One Photography has officially gone live! My private passion has been "outed" and what was once a personal affair is...well...not anymore! The pictures need their own home now and since I wouldn't dream of abandoning you, Fifteen:Fifty-One {the blog}, is now up and running! I also have a group on Facebook and the official website should be ready in the coming weeks.

I'll admit that it's all a little bit scary and I will take all the encouragement I can get! Having my pictures here...in my own little corner of cyberspace is one thing. Having them "out there"...is a bit terrifying! So please be gentle!!!

So I may not be here quite as often but the story telling will continue...and hopefully, some pretty pictures to go with it!!

Join me...bookmark me...visit me. I could use the company ;)

fifteen:fifty-one photography {the blog}

hot pink dreams...

I’ve been meaning to blog for a few days now but every time I get here, I find myself with writer’s block! Too much has been happening and none of it makes enough sense to write about…yet!

I do have some fun news to share though; my fancy pants designer, Jamie McGlashan, has recently given me the final art work for my new business card! I’ve only ever had two business cards in my life…both left much to be desired, not only in design but in their significance to my life! I’ll admit that it was pretty exciting to have my first business card but this new one isn’t just a business card…it’s my new direction…my new endeavor…my new leap of faith…my new found bravery that arose from an otherwise tumultuous situation.

This is the business card for my soon to be photography company…

Isn't she beautiful...?!?!?!

lady in waiting...

Fear is such a funny thing. I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid of a lot of things but the few things that I am afraid of…I’m deeply afraid of them! Thunderstorms, cancer, the colour yellow…you know, all of the perfectly normal and logical things to fear in life!! Generally speaking, when I’m afraid of something, I just avoid it; I avoid thinking about it, I avoid learning about it and most of all, I certainly avoid confronting it. Not to say that this is the healthy way of managing fear (I’m sure that most psychologist would agree) but I won’t lie…it works for me and you know what they say; “if it ain’t broke…”

There is the odd occasion though, from time to time, when I’m motivated to swallow my fear, take a deep breath and move forward in spite of it. It’s rare but this past weekend was one of them!

One of my good friends is expecting her second child in May and she asked me if I would come over and take some pictures of her and her family before their newest addition arrives. At first thought, I glimmered at the idea of taking pictures for them…but that was before she suggested taking them at her house!! This is the moment in which my irrational fear of indoor photography grabbed hold of me and went directly for the jugular!!! There is certainly no hiding my fear of indoor photography; artificial light can be so daunting and unpredictable, and can often leave you with some pretty mortifying results to show for it {insert dark shadows due to poor angles here!!!} but…there is also no hiding the fact that this is one of my most favourite families in the entire world and there are few things as flattering as being asked to photograph them together as they anticipate the new miracle entering their lives.

So I did it! I walked into their house, bad lighting and all, told my fear to take a hike for a few hours and did my very best to do justice to this fabulous family. And what a family they are…we had so much fun hanging out in the baby’s room, playing with blocks and of course, learning that it pays to tackle your fears head on… even if it is only for a couple of hours!