Sunday, December 2, 2007
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Friday, December 2, 2005
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Christmas 2004
Greetings in the hopeful spirit this season is meant to evoke.As I write this The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favour of same-sex marriage. No matter how much this will, undoubtedly, continue to be a bitter political squabble the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is clearly on side and, while I have not yet experienced a love that I would want solemnized, it nevertheless feels like a personal validation.
From now on forest fires, floods, droughts and really bad mosquito seasons will surely be interpreted – by various Chickens Little - as God’s wrath on Canada.
If there is one thing the world still needs it is hope, no thanks to the pall cast by the re-election of George W. Bush. Of course I had wished that ‘Dubya’ would, like his Dad, be a one-term President. There’s something about an apocalyptic President, who so looks forward to The Rapture (to the point where he might make conditions supposedly right for it to happen), which is deeply unsettling. I can’t help thinking that his policies lend new meaning to his oft-repeated bluster, “Bring It On!” As so many have said since, though, perhaps it is better that Bush is left to clean up his own mess. A better government, for now, is left to the writers of “The West Wing”.
Not that I am into numerology but I had thought it might be a good omen for John Kerry when a blood test, relating to my pancreas, was 1600 (as in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) the night of his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. “Normal” is ten times less. What ended up being a five day visit to hospital was preceded by a night of tossing and turning in unbearable pain, although obviously bearable enough that I was determined not to call an ambulance. It turned out the pancreas was dangerously inflamed due to a jammed gallstone. A nurse later spoke of the pain as being worse than childbirth and, when I quoted untold numbers who have said nothing compares to that, she assured me that she had experienced both. The entire gallbladder was removed during day surgery in September with what seemed, in hindsight, like assembly-line efficiency.
The surprise hospital trip, brought on by the pancreas attack, left me quite disconnected for awhile. The fact that it happened on the eve of the Civic Holiday weekend didn’t help either. Not realizing I would be admitted – let alone stay for several days - I didn’t pack anything so, in addition to being without toiletries and the like, I did not have my list of telephone numbers. It is quite telling, as I mentioned to Karen later, that the only two numbers indelibly etched in my memory were Mom’s and the one for the church office. A call to the church brought two Sunday afternoon visitors (and toiletries) and Karen stopped by another day, found me sleeping, waited awhile, and then left me a note.
Mom spent the first few day of December in hospital after a case of angina that did not respond to the usual combination of “nitro” and rest. She left a few days later, feeling improved and with a better understanding of what it means to be living with a finicky heart and aging blood vessels. It’s not like we can just trade our bodies in like we would with a rusting car. Of course we are all relieved that she’s been given the go-ahead to resume her holiday plans which include having the grandchildren up to Perth for a few days, then returning home with them to Ancaster, where I will join them, to await Santa’s visit. This is all subject to change, however. Mom may prefer to stay at home after having had the commotion around the house for a few days. Either way, I will be with her.
Several construction projects are changing the face of my neighbourhood. A new library and community centre have been built on the former parking lots of the Wellesley hospital, while said hospital and its neighbour – the original, long-abandoned Princess Margaret Hospital – were slowly demolished. Even as demolition crews painstakingly knocked the Princess Margaret in on itself a new long-term care facility rose where the Wellesley had stood. Another part of the property seems destined to become a condominium development with Homewood Avenue being extended north across Wellesley Street. Just down the street on Sherbourne Our Lady of Lourdes School was torn down and promptly rebuilt, this time facing away from Sherbourne. By the looks of it I would say it will be ready for students by next fall. To the south of my building Carlton Street (and College, west of Yonge) have been completely rebuilt, with streetcar tracks now on concrete beds – presumably to make the road last longer. That project pretty disrupted a lot of businesses (imagine trying to eat on a patio while jackhammers were boring holes in the road!)
The year has been book-ended, in America, by moral outrage (with plenty during the in-between months as well). First it was the Janet Jackson ‘wardrobe malfunction’ during the Super Bowl last January. Recently a promotional ad for “Desperate Housewives” during Monday Night Football drew howls of protest. What is it about football that is so appealing to both puritans and those who would – if one buys the criticism - pull another thread in the moral fibre of America?
Then there was Ronald Reagan whose death resuscitated the body politic with a debate over stem cell research and an almost nostalgic wish for the days when the arms race was the main focus of world affairs. This was the same Ronald Reagan who presided over the deaths of the first few thousands of people with AIDS without mentioning the illness publicly until well into his second term – a point driven home in the late Randy Shilts’ book “And The Band Played On”, which came to mind as I watched a DVD of its film adaptation while the news channels were trying to out-flag wave each other on “The Gipper”.
Lest you think I am letting Canada off the hook politics gave us plenty to chatter about here, too. As anticipated at this time last year I was an active political viewer, voter and – in one campaign – a volunteer in 2004. Nothing went my way although a minority federal government, the closest thing we have to “none of the above” as a choice, came pretty close to satisfying me even if the local candidate, for whom I worked hard, ultimately lost. Given the performance of his government so far, I am wondering if Paul Martin regrets having changed careers.
The one year anniversary of my accident came and went in April, and I still find myself tending to divide my life into “before the accident” and “since the accident” segments. There have been some lasting effects, I know, but I remain thankful to have escaped with my life. A year-and-a-day since I was transferred from one hospital to the other the cab driver who hit me was in court this past May for “failing to yield to a pedestrian”. Thanks to testimony from the investigating police officer, and yours truly, said driver was handed a fine of ninety dollars and docked a couple of demerit points. (The civil case against his insurer continues.)
I took on the position of AIDS Editor for AfricaFiles.org this year, something which has given my passions a very interesting, if not always hope-filled, sense of purpose. I have not only learned a lot about Africa; I have also picked up a few pointers about using computers. (Believe it or not I didn’t know how to “cut and paste” before I was shown by Don Nicol, an AfricaFiles volunteer!)
Following the busy days of the federal election campaign in June I retreated somewhat into some writing, which had become such an important part of the winter and spring as I attended a narrative writing group for people with HIV at Mount Sinai Hospital. So far this has not resulted in anything close to an autobiography.
I did manage to write a few letters ‘to the editor’ of a few newspapers and magazines. In one, to a rural paper in Quebec I referred to my high school music teacher in the past tense – as in passed away. The next week the paper ran a correction. He is not dead, so I wrote back with a lame apology, which also was published. No doubt there are some who probably think I’ve been dead a while myself.
While I will never have the writing energy of Pierre Berton his recent passing brings back many fond memories of how my interest in Canadian history was shaped by some of his books.
With so much turmoil in the world, I hope Mother Earth finds a way to get some peace and quiet in 2005!
Monday, December 15, 2003
Christmas 2003
It has been another year in which I was glad that we are unable to see into the future and, while I haven’t double-spaced this, feel free to read between the lines.
The year began ominously enough with yet another George W. Bush war, this time in Iraq – a country now so “liberated” that Air Force One flew into Baghdad for a top secret Thanksgiving with its lights off and window-shades drawn!
My contribution to the pre-war demonstrations – which now seem a life-time ago - included a little bit of drumming, when I wasn’t marching with my church family. I had bought a couple of djembe drums and joined a bunch of fellow hippies, or latter day hippie wannabes, in “Drums of Dissent”.
Now I only use the drums for some physiotherapy on my wrist.
Just after midnight on April 30 I was walking home from a bargain Tuesday movie night (“The Pianist” was certainly deserving of its Oscars) when, at a traffic light close to home, I was struck by a taxi whose driver, while looking left for oncoming traffic, proceeded into the intersection with me folding onto the pavement under his right bumper. Fortunately he wasn’t going too fast, having stopped at his red light, and he soon heard me yelling and jumped out of his car to help me. At that point I didn’t want his help. A police cruiser was a few cars behind in traffic and immediately set about closing off the intersection. It seemed like no time at all before more police, a fire truck and ambulance had arrived – oh and, of course, CITY-TV.
In my state of shock, and after a preliminary diagnosis, I managed to say, “So this is what broken bones feel like!”. I was loaded onto a back-board and taken to St. Michael’s Hospital. I honestly don’t recall much of my time in the Trauma Unit, other than a lot of talk over me about my femur. It turns out my right hip and right radius (that long bone which moves from side to side in the forearm) were fractured and both would require surgery.
This all happened between SARS I and SARS II. Everyone was gowned and masked, from the firefighters, paramedics and police who came to my immediate assistance to the nurses and doctors who treated me at the Trauma Unit of St. Mike’s. Only after I was moved up into a room did the masks begin to come off – for some. I remember lying in Emergency when someone, all gowned and masked, came in to talk to me. He asked me very detailed questions about what had happened – odd, I thought, for someone dressed up like a doctor. He was, in fact, the investigating police officer. It was difficult to know who was who under all that plastic and paper!
Thursday’s surgeries fitted my wrist and hip with metal plates and long support screws, after which my forearm was put in a cast for six weeks. While I was fortunate to be able to have several masked visitors, SARS precautions were lowered and raised fairly unpredictably and there was an outright ban on visits for a good part of my stay at Bridgepoint Health, where I was put through my paces with physiotherapy from May 13 to June 6. (I remember all these dates as if they were extremely important in the grand scheme of things.) As I recall Mom and Uncle George were not required to be masked when they drove up one day. It was not too long, though, until SARS II had hit part of St. Michael’s and everyone there, or recently discharged from there, was being isolated.
In my first few days at St. Michael’s I held out faint hope of using a cane and being able to watch the Pride Parade towards the end of June from somewhere along the route, and my discouragement had nothing to do with SARS. It really seemed like a long-shot during those first few nights of being turned (and doing a fair bit of yelling) in my bed while the linens were changed. Well, I did one better. Instead of watching from the sidelines I rode on a float (with the retired Anglican Archbishop of Toronto, no less.)
It was not too long before I had switched from pushing a very tall walker (so that my forearm could rest elevated) to using only a cane. Despite outpatient physiotherapy until early September I still feel unsteady enough to want a cane with me when I’m outside the apartment. I can make it through the choir processional each week without the cane but there have been a few times when some members of the congregation of Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church may not realize how close I have come to grabbing their arm for support along the way. It is support I could count on, I know, as they showed in so many ways through the spring and summer – and ever since. My wrist remains somewhat locked up, in terms of range of motion, but fortunately I am left-handed so the practical restrictions are minimal. Over-all, the biggest difference I now see is the general fatigue I feel, coupled with - or perhaps caused by - difficulty sleeping at night. It’s almost as if I feel safer being awake.
Into all this drama, in fact not too long before it had begun, came the birth of my first nephew, a younger brother for my niece. This, of course, was a very happy occasion for the family and I look forward to watching him grow – even if some of us can’t keep up to him!
To round out the archives of injury, and so that no one feels left out, my niece broke her arm playing last summer – a bright pink cast not bothering her in the least - and Wesley, the terrier Craig and Claude brought home from Portland eleven years ago, was struck by a car this fall and, after some orthopaedic surgery of his own, has lived to tell about it!
Lynn is back with Corrections Canada after completing a pre-Easter (former Solicitor General Wayne Easter) appointment to the National Parole Board. She and Joslyn are missing their minister, Peter Short, who they were – of course – pleased was elected Moderator.
Mom’s “adult education”, which this year included a series of pastoral care workshops, has taken a new twist since she learned this fall that she is diabetic. This means there ought to be a lot less Christmas baking going on but, somehow, I think I will get more than my fair share – even if I, too, have to try something called moderation.
A fringe benefit of my time rehabilitating was having my apartment re-painted. The most labour-intensive thing I did was go through some colour tabs and wheel some of the paint home in my bundle-buggy. Come to think of it I didn’t even have to do much of that!
When I haven’t been self-absorbed in the healing process and the on-going legal work (the cab driver was charged with careless driving) it has been a terrific year to watch my favourite sport – politics.
My local Member of Provincial Parliament, George Smitherman, became Health Minister when the Tories were finally kicked out of office so, while I voted in the spirit of my grand-uncle Lloyd (the only other New Democrat I can find in the family tree), at least the results overall were positive in that the Conservatives were sent packing. So don’t blame me as the gloss already starts to wear off the McGuinty government.
In November my choice for Mayor and City Councillor both won so, politically, it’s been a pretty good year. The next challenge will be to get Jack Layton elected in Toronto-Danforth.
With Jean Chrétien’s exit, satirists now have something better to mock (and this became the joke of currency early in the year) – the same-sex marriage of the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance.
The “accident” (if that’s truly what careless driving leads to) contributed to my postponing plans I had to study at the Gestalt Institute. I just didn’t feel up to it and, at this point, can only hope I will try again. In the meantime, early next year, I’ll be part of a “narrative” writing group at Mount Sinai Hospital for people with HIV/AIDS. I read about it in a magazine and thought it looked like something I’d like to be part of. I am especially pleased that it will be once a week in the early afternoon, my favourite – or shall I say my most alert – time of day. Truth be told I just don’t have the energy that I used to.
This was the year of SARS, the hottest summer in 55 years, the hydro blackout, a “mad cow” crisis blamed - like the Chicago fire – on one cow, destructive wildfires – and then floods - in B.C., and tree-toppling, road-caving Hurricane Juan down east. The year seemed, at times, like something out of The Revelation. And the death rattle of AIDS continued.
More than 8,000 people worldwide die of AIDS every day – that’s about 30 percent more than the entire population of Perth. Ninety-five percent of the deaths are in the world’s poorest countries. I heard Stephen Lewis speak at the University of Toronto last winter, and he told of visiting a small infirmary in southern Africa for less than an hour during which time three patients died. It’s mind-boggling. The fact that it is now preventable (and I’m living proof that it is treatable), while life-saving action by governments remains so tentative, is scandalous.
I sometimes think it’s my anger that keeps me going. As the U.N.’s Kofi Annan said in an interview, “AIDS is a weapon of mass destruction.” How inspiring it was, then, to watch (live on the internet) Nelson Mandela at his 46664 concert in Cape Town. Mandela lends his prisoner number to a website, souvenirs and worldwide petition in the fight for freedom against AIDS. The message was clear – the solution is political. I can hardly wait for the release of the concert DVD.
The United Church of Canada is trying to have an impact on AIDS worldwide with the Beads of Hope campaign as well as the Signatures of Hope petition - something to think about as we head out to the malls to deplete some of our wealth. I am proud of our family’s traditional snub at consumerism. Except for the children, who we are happy to spoil just a little bit, we draw names among the adults and exchange just one gift.
I am really looking forward to Christmas week in Perth. Lynn was up on government business late this week, and had a visit with Mom, so she will be in New Brunswick, but the rest of us will be there – maybe all at the same time - for at least a few days around the holiday. It seems as though this may change, beginning next year, as my niece and nephew make it easier for Santa (not to mention their Mom and Dad) by having as many of us as possible out to their home.
All the best for 2004!
The year began ominously enough with yet another George W. Bush war, this time in Iraq – a country now so “liberated” that Air Force One flew into Baghdad for a top secret Thanksgiving with its lights off and window-shades drawn!
My contribution to the pre-war demonstrations – which now seem a life-time ago - included a little bit of drumming, when I wasn’t marching with my church family. I had bought a couple of djembe drums and joined a bunch of fellow hippies, or latter day hippie wannabes, in “Drums of Dissent”.
Now I only use the drums for some physiotherapy on my wrist.
Just after midnight on April 30 I was walking home from a bargain Tuesday movie night (“The Pianist” was certainly deserving of its Oscars) when, at a traffic light close to home, I was struck by a taxi whose driver, while looking left for oncoming traffic, proceeded into the intersection with me folding onto the pavement under his right bumper. Fortunately he wasn’t going too fast, having stopped at his red light, and he soon heard me yelling and jumped out of his car to help me. At that point I didn’t want his help. A police cruiser was a few cars behind in traffic and immediately set about closing off the intersection. It seemed like no time at all before more police, a fire truck and ambulance had arrived – oh and, of course, CITY-TV.
In my state of shock, and after a preliminary diagnosis, I managed to say, “So this is what broken bones feel like!”. I was loaded onto a back-board and taken to St. Michael’s Hospital. I honestly don’t recall much of my time in the Trauma Unit, other than a lot of talk over me about my femur. It turns out my right hip and right radius (that long bone which moves from side to side in the forearm) were fractured and both would require surgery.
This all happened between SARS I and SARS II. Everyone was gowned and masked, from the firefighters, paramedics and police who came to my immediate assistance to the nurses and doctors who treated me at the Trauma Unit of St. Mike’s. Only after I was moved up into a room did the masks begin to come off – for some. I remember lying in Emergency when someone, all gowned and masked, came in to talk to me. He asked me very detailed questions about what had happened – odd, I thought, for someone dressed up like a doctor. He was, in fact, the investigating police officer. It was difficult to know who was who under all that plastic and paper!
Thursday’s surgeries fitted my wrist and hip with metal plates and long support screws, after which my forearm was put in a cast for six weeks. While I was fortunate to be able to have several masked visitors, SARS precautions were lowered and raised fairly unpredictably and there was an outright ban on visits for a good part of my stay at Bridgepoint Health, where I was put through my paces with physiotherapy from May 13 to June 6. (I remember all these dates as if they were extremely important in the grand scheme of things.) As I recall Mom and Uncle George were not required to be masked when they drove up one day. It was not too long, though, until SARS II had hit part of St. Michael’s and everyone there, or recently discharged from there, was being isolated.
In my first few days at St. Michael’s I held out faint hope of using a cane and being able to watch the Pride Parade towards the end of June from somewhere along the route, and my discouragement had nothing to do with SARS. It really seemed like a long-shot during those first few nights of being turned (and doing a fair bit of yelling) in my bed while the linens were changed. Well, I did one better. Instead of watching from the sidelines I rode on a float (with the retired Anglican Archbishop of Toronto, no less.)
It was not too long before I had switched from pushing a very tall walker (so that my forearm could rest elevated) to using only a cane. Despite outpatient physiotherapy until early September I still feel unsteady enough to want a cane with me when I’m outside the apartment. I can make it through the choir processional each week without the cane but there have been a few times when some members of the congregation of Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church may not realize how close I have come to grabbing their arm for support along the way. It is support I could count on, I know, as they showed in so many ways through the spring and summer – and ever since. My wrist remains somewhat locked up, in terms of range of motion, but fortunately I am left-handed so the practical restrictions are minimal. Over-all, the biggest difference I now see is the general fatigue I feel, coupled with - or perhaps caused by - difficulty sleeping at night. It’s almost as if I feel safer being awake.
Into all this drama, in fact not too long before it had begun, came the birth of my first nephew, a younger brother for my niece. This, of course, was a very happy occasion for the family and I look forward to watching him grow – even if some of us can’t keep up to him!
To round out the archives of injury, and so that no one feels left out, my niece broke her arm playing last summer – a bright pink cast not bothering her in the least - and Wesley, the terrier Craig and Claude brought home from Portland eleven years ago, was struck by a car this fall and, after some orthopaedic surgery of his own, has lived to tell about it!
Lynn is back with Corrections Canada after completing a pre-Easter (former Solicitor General Wayne Easter) appointment to the National Parole Board. She and Joslyn are missing their minister, Peter Short, who they were – of course – pleased was elected Moderator.
Mom’s “adult education”, which this year included a series of pastoral care workshops, has taken a new twist since she learned this fall that she is diabetic. This means there ought to be a lot less Christmas baking going on but, somehow, I think I will get more than my fair share – even if I, too, have to try something called moderation.
A fringe benefit of my time rehabilitating was having my apartment re-painted. The most labour-intensive thing I did was go through some colour tabs and wheel some of the paint home in my bundle-buggy. Come to think of it I didn’t even have to do much of that!
When I haven’t been self-absorbed in the healing process and the on-going legal work (the cab driver was charged with careless driving) it has been a terrific year to watch my favourite sport – politics.
My local Member of Provincial Parliament, George Smitherman, became Health Minister when the Tories were finally kicked out of office so, while I voted in the spirit of my grand-uncle Lloyd (the only other New Democrat I can find in the family tree), at least the results overall were positive in that the Conservatives were sent packing. So don’t blame me as the gloss already starts to wear off the McGuinty government.
In November my choice for Mayor and City Councillor both won so, politically, it’s been a pretty good year. The next challenge will be to get Jack Layton elected in Toronto-Danforth.
With Jean Chrétien’s exit, satirists now have something better to mock (and this became the joke of currency early in the year) – the same-sex marriage of the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance.
The “accident” (if that’s truly what careless driving leads to) contributed to my postponing plans I had to study at the Gestalt Institute. I just didn’t feel up to it and, at this point, can only hope I will try again. In the meantime, early next year, I’ll be part of a “narrative” writing group at Mount Sinai Hospital for people with HIV/AIDS. I read about it in a magazine and thought it looked like something I’d like to be part of. I am especially pleased that it will be once a week in the early afternoon, my favourite – or shall I say my most alert – time of day. Truth be told I just don’t have the energy that I used to.
This was the year of SARS, the hottest summer in 55 years, the hydro blackout, a “mad cow” crisis blamed - like the Chicago fire – on one cow, destructive wildfires – and then floods - in B.C., and tree-toppling, road-caving Hurricane Juan down east. The year seemed, at times, like something out of The Revelation. And the death rattle of AIDS continued.
More than 8,000 people worldwide die of AIDS every day – that’s about 30 percent more than the entire population of Perth. Ninety-five percent of the deaths are in the world’s poorest countries. I heard Stephen Lewis speak at the University of Toronto last winter, and he told of visiting a small infirmary in southern Africa for less than an hour during which time three patients died. It’s mind-boggling. The fact that it is now preventable (and I’m living proof that it is treatable), while life-saving action by governments remains so tentative, is scandalous.
I sometimes think it’s my anger that keeps me going. As the U.N.’s Kofi Annan said in an interview, “AIDS is a weapon of mass destruction.” How inspiring it was, then, to watch (live on the internet) Nelson Mandela at his 46664 concert in Cape Town. Mandela lends his prisoner number to a website, souvenirs and worldwide petition in the fight for freedom against AIDS. The message was clear – the solution is political. I can hardly wait for the release of the concert DVD.
The United Church of Canada is trying to have an impact on AIDS worldwide with the Beads of Hope campaign as well as the Signatures of Hope petition - something to think about as we head out to the malls to deplete some of our wealth. I am proud of our family’s traditional snub at consumerism. Except for the children, who we are happy to spoil just a little bit, we draw names among the adults and exchange just one gift.
I am really looking forward to Christmas week in Perth. Lynn was up on government business late this week, and had a visit with Mom, so she will be in New Brunswick, but the rest of us will be there – maybe all at the same time - for at least a few days around the holiday. It seems as though this may change, beginning next year, as my niece and nephew make it easier for Santa (not to mention their Mom and Dad) by having as many of us as possible out to their home.
All the best for 2004!
Sunday, December 15, 2002
Christmas 2002
Wow, this is my tenth annual holiday letter! It’s enough to make me both laugh and cry, a little, to remind myself of that - considering how it all began. For any newcomers to my list, and there have been some every single year, a brief history might be in order as it may be a while before I compile them all into book form - if ever!
With the onset of winter 1993 my good friend, Jim, was dying of AIDS-related lymphoma. I wanted to try to put some of my perceived talent with words to good use for him as a holiday season gift. It had already become a bit of a tradition to write my former co-worker, Nancy, a year-in-review letter each Christmas so this seemed like something I might expand upon for a slightly larger audience. While I don’t recall exactly how many copies I sent out, and it was all done by “snail mail” back then, the list has grown to something like eighty names.
The first letter was, to a greater than lesser extent, one of those “in case I’m not around next year” letters. While I haven’t always been maudlin I am the first to admit that AIDS seemed to have me down for the count those first few years and I never failed to let my readers know that I was trying to be aware of that. This gave the letters, I think, a certain urgency about them with humour (hopefully) mixed in - sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. One thing is for sure, the sum total is perspective. This year, for me, has been about alot more than AIDS, particularly as it affects me! At the same time my worldview has continued to grow and I am enthusastically supporting The Beads of Hope Campaign of The United Church of Canada. I wish I could create such beads out of the rainbow myriad of pills and capsules I am privileged to take each day.
The history lesson is now over.
2002 in the Chaplin family has been dominated by the sudden passing of Dad on May 4. There can be no way of minimizing the impact this has had (complete with Mom’s understandable, active symptoms of a broken heart which landed her in hospital in September).
As celebratory as Dad’s memorial service was the reality of his physical departure has been much more difficult to bear. One comfort, which sometimes seems small and yet it endures, is that he died working in his garden on what he had earlier described to Mom as “a grand day!”. Something else we are all thankful for is that the entire family was in Perth for Dad’s 75th birthday on Easter weekend, just a month before. He had fully rehabilitated himself from a “slight” stroke last winter and was in wonderful spirits for the celebration.
It goes without saying that this Christmas just won’t be the same.
Mom has done amazingly well, being true to herself and her feelings as best she could. We have all tried to support each other over these difficult days, and I think we’ve done pretty well - all things considered.
One of the early hurdles on the calendar to cross, which I shared, was their fiftieth wedding anniversary in July. On a day-trip (which only later inspired me to begin the process of reacquiring my driver’s license) Mom drove the two of us to Ormstown and Valleyfield (Quebec). It had been twenty-five years since I’d graduated from high school and, as Mom can attest, we had a whirlwind tour of my infancy, childhood and youth that day - with pictures taken of the hospital where I was born, the church where I was baptized and confirmed, every apartment or house we’d lived in, and every school I had attended - even the monkey bars which hold a special place in my heart.
Mom hasn’t been without one of us “kids” around much more than a few weeks at a time, if that, since April. Speaking for myself, I have needed those extra visits.
My life has simultaneously taken on a whole lot more - or, at least, new - meaning over these months. I was in North Bay when Dad died, staying with friends Donna and Jim while I visited another friend who was in town for some intensive care. That friendship with J.B., the work associated with it, and the ensuing trips to St. Catharines where he was to settle for a few months, has led me to consider the possibility of furthering my education. It had been many years since I had been back to St. Catharines, part of my past which I had preferred not to dwell on. Much to my surprise a happenstance encounter (not really in the big picture) with an old friend, Doug, led me to being invited over for dinner with his wife Marjorie. Several other people from the 1980s also made themselves known to me while in St.Catharines. Obviously I have recently had the opportunity to see “The Garden City” through much clearer eyes. It has been healing on several levels.
J.B., himself a musician, introduced me to the music of Jann Arden. I know she’s been around awhile (I remember her from interviews with Peter Gzowski) but I’ve not been listening to much that could be considered anything close to “pop” for quite some time. Jann’s music, and writings on her website, speak to me. Now I’m a certified, if not certifiable, “jann fann”! Last month I spoke to her on a call-in show on TV (she kissed me through the camera lens) and then she signed copies of her book for me (and my friend) at Indigo the next day. I’ve even been presumptuous enough - heck, brazen might be a better word - to ask her if she’d be interested in reading my past holiday letters, so let me know jann, ‘k?
Mom’s aforementioned heart troubles seemed like a great opportunity for my sister and brother-in-law to tell us that they are expecting a brother or sister for my niece in April of the new year. This will be my second niece or first nephew. My niece is an absolute gem (need I say it) and she, her Mom and I - oh and Yukki the dog - had a terrific August car ride to Grandma’s in Perth for our own special 1st birthday party for her, while Daddy sanded and varnished the floors of their new (for them) home.
Perth seems to get prettier, and more appealing, as I grow older. Given its natural beauty and historic buildings it’s never been a tough place to visit and this year the town has become more familiar than ever. Never too far away from a camera, I have lots of photos of Perth and, for the first time in my life, I sold two such photographs during an arts festival - here in Toronto - at my ever-loving Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church. This has only encouraged me, as a photographer, all the more. Another friend, John, gave me access to a downtown office tower’s roof-top for some unique looks at the city. Who knows, by next year I might have holiday cards from my very own collection of photographs. That’s getting ahead of myself! Perspective doesn’t have much forward vision.
Last year I was beginning a volunteer stint with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. After completing the volunteer training program I co-facilitated a group for gay men who had recently completed a 28-day residential addiction treatment program. For a variety of reasons, and then Dad’s death, I left my position there in the Spring. Yet my restlessness continued as I was involved with a church member’s aptly-named “Discernment Committee” to see what area of ministry she might be led to explore. The irony of my own searching was not lost on me.
All of this appears to be leading me to furthering my education, at least on a part-time basis, beginning next Fall. I have a natural inclination towards Gestalt Therapy, first with my history as a client and, secondly, - the way I see it - as a practitioner of it more and more in my daily life. My love of photography, the ultimate in trying to capture “the present moment”, is just one example. The most attractive part of the program is that it would be part-time studies and practice over the medium-to-long term. I am not enamored with the idea of full-time education again, so this would suit my retirement lifestyle better. I have completed the pre-admission interview and await word on my acceptance into the program.
Friends have been so important along my journey. This has been especially true this year. Friends like J.H., J.B. and T.J. have given my days much meaning simply by letting me into their whole, sometimes troubled, always rich, lives. What a privilege.
This fall I treated myself to a subscription to both Tafelmusik. These will give me a taste of culture over the coming months, some of which I have already enjoyed. My commitment to the choir has also given me a nice musical outlet this year, particularly enjoyable as we’ve prepared for “Carols By Candlelight” in mid-December.
Have I missed anything? Of course I have. But that’s all I’ve got right now.
Please help give peace a chance in 2003!
love,
Kenn
With the onset of winter 1993 my good friend, Jim, was dying of AIDS-related lymphoma. I wanted to try to put some of my perceived talent with words to good use for him as a holiday season gift. It had already become a bit of a tradition to write my former co-worker, Nancy, a year-in-review letter each Christmas so this seemed like something I might expand upon for a slightly larger audience. While I don’t recall exactly how many copies I sent out, and it was all done by “snail mail” back then, the list has grown to something like eighty names.
The first letter was, to a greater than lesser extent, one of those “in case I’m not around next year” letters. While I haven’t always been maudlin I am the first to admit that AIDS seemed to have me down for the count those first few years and I never failed to let my readers know that I was trying to be aware of that. This gave the letters, I think, a certain urgency about them with humour (hopefully) mixed in - sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. One thing is for sure, the sum total is perspective. This year, for me, has been about alot more than AIDS, particularly as it affects me! At the same time my worldview has continued to grow and I am enthusastically supporting The Beads of Hope Campaign of The United Church of Canada. I wish I could create such beads out of the rainbow myriad of pills and capsules I am privileged to take each day.
The history lesson is now over.
2002 in the Chaplin family has been dominated by the sudden passing of Dad on May 4. There can be no way of minimizing the impact this has had (complete with Mom’s understandable, active symptoms of a broken heart which landed her in hospital in September).
As celebratory as Dad’s memorial service was the reality of his physical departure has been much more difficult to bear. One comfort, which sometimes seems small and yet it endures, is that he died working in his garden on what he had earlier described to Mom as “a grand day!”. Something else we are all thankful for is that the entire family was in Perth for Dad’s 75th birthday on Easter weekend, just a month before. He had fully rehabilitated himself from a “slight” stroke last winter and was in wonderful spirits for the celebration.
It goes without saying that this Christmas just won’t be the same.
Mom has done amazingly well, being true to herself and her feelings as best she could. We have all tried to support each other over these difficult days, and I think we’ve done pretty well - all things considered.
One of the early hurdles on the calendar to cross, which I shared, was their fiftieth wedding anniversary in July. On a day-trip (which only later inspired me to begin the process of reacquiring my driver’s license) Mom drove the two of us to Ormstown and Valleyfield (Quebec). It had been twenty-five years since I’d graduated from high school and, as Mom can attest, we had a whirlwind tour of my infancy, childhood and youth that day - with pictures taken of the hospital where I was born, the church where I was baptized and confirmed, every apartment or house we’d lived in, and every school I had attended - even the monkey bars which hold a special place in my heart.
Mom hasn’t been without one of us “kids” around much more than a few weeks at a time, if that, since April. Speaking for myself, I have needed those extra visits.
My life has simultaneously taken on a whole lot more - or, at least, new - meaning over these months. I was in North Bay when Dad died, staying with friends Donna and Jim while I visited another friend who was in town for some intensive care. That friendship with J.B., the work associated with it, and the ensuing trips to St. Catharines where he was to settle for a few months, has led me to consider the possibility of furthering my education. It had been many years since I had been back to St. Catharines, part of my past which I had preferred not to dwell on. Much to my surprise a happenstance encounter (not really in the big picture) with an old friend, Doug, led me to being invited over for dinner with his wife Marjorie. Several other people from the 1980s also made themselves known to me while in St.Catharines. Obviously I have recently had the opportunity to see “The Garden City” through much clearer eyes. It has been healing on several levels.
J.B., himself a musician, introduced me to the music of Jann Arden. I know she’s been around awhile (I remember her from interviews with Peter Gzowski) but I’ve not been listening to much that could be considered anything close to “pop” for quite some time. Jann’s music, and writings on her website, speak to me. Now I’m a certified, if not certifiable, “jann fann”! Last month I spoke to her on a call-in show on TV (she kissed me through the camera lens) and then she signed copies of her book for me (and my friend) at Indigo the next day. I’ve even been presumptuous enough - heck, brazen might be a better word - to ask her if she’d be interested in reading my past holiday letters, so let me know jann, ‘k?
Mom’s aforementioned heart troubles seemed like a great opportunity for my sister and brother-in-law to tell us that they are expecting a brother or sister for my niece in April of the new year. This will be my second niece or first nephew. My niece is an absolute gem (need I say it) and she, her Mom and I - oh and Yukki the dog - had a terrific August car ride to Grandma’s in Perth for our own special 1st birthday party for her, while Daddy sanded and varnished the floors of their new (for them) home.
Perth seems to get prettier, and more appealing, as I grow older. Given its natural beauty and historic buildings it’s never been a tough place to visit and this year the town has become more familiar than ever. Never too far away from a camera, I have lots of photos of Perth and, for the first time in my life, I sold two such photographs during an arts festival - here in Toronto - at my ever-loving Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church. This has only encouraged me, as a photographer, all the more. Another friend, John, gave me access to a downtown office tower’s roof-top for some unique looks at the city. Who knows, by next year I might have holiday cards from my very own collection of photographs. That’s getting ahead of myself! Perspective doesn’t have much forward vision.
Last year I was beginning a volunteer stint with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. After completing the volunteer training program I co-facilitated a group for gay men who had recently completed a 28-day residential addiction treatment program. For a variety of reasons, and then Dad’s death, I left my position there in the Spring. Yet my restlessness continued as I was involved with a church member’s aptly-named “Discernment Committee” to see what area of ministry she might be led to explore. The irony of my own searching was not lost on me.
All of this appears to be leading me to furthering my education, at least on a part-time basis, beginning next Fall. I have a natural inclination towards Gestalt Therapy, first with my history as a client and, secondly, - the way I see it - as a practitioner of it more and more in my daily life. My love of photography, the ultimate in trying to capture “the present moment”, is just one example. The most attractive part of the program is that it would be part-time studies and practice over the medium-to-long term. I am not enamored with the idea of full-time education again, so this would suit my retirement lifestyle better. I have completed the pre-admission interview and await word on my acceptance into the program.
Friends have been so important along my journey. This has been especially true this year. Friends like J.H., J.B. and T.J. have given my days much meaning simply by letting me into their whole, sometimes troubled, always rich, lives. What a privilege.
This fall I treated myself to a subscription to both Tafelmusik. These will give me a taste of culture over the coming months, some of which I have already enjoyed. My commitment to the choir has also given me a nice musical outlet this year, particularly enjoyable as we’ve prepared for “Carols By Candlelight” in mid-December.
Have I missed anything? Of course I have. But that’s all I’ve got right now.
Please help give peace a chance in 2003!
love,
Kenn
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Christmas 2001
What a year!
My delay in getting this letter out is partly due to my difficulty humbly acknowledging how the events of September 11 have brought so many of the world’s horrors close to home. I defer, for the most part, to another “Queen’s Message” to summarize this year from a global perspective although it will come as no surprise to most of you that I don’t disagree with what I have heard reported of John Ralston Saul’s controversial new book.
I’m sure I’m not the only baby-boomer to remember “The Chipmunks” Christmas album. It occurs to me that it is one of the few CDs being re-released this season that doesn’t include a version of “God Bless America”. As horrible as the events of that sunny September 11 morning were – and they certainly were unspeakably horrible – I hope, in the long run, they will have done more than just stir up warmongers. Such troubling times. This seems to be an occasion to at least look at crisis as opportunity. The December 17 edition of Maclean’s has an interesting set of articles on the spiritual fall-out from recent events.
I’ve been so late getting my thoughts down that I decided to email this to as many people on my list so equipped. (If you’re reading this it’s because you’re on the “snail mail” list! I apologize if this arrives after Christmas.) This late edition, however, allows me to report on a very successful “Carols By Candlelight” service, last night as I type this, involving my choir, great congregational singing and a beautiful string quartet.
It’s been another exciting year in the family with the birth of my niece in August. She is the first grandchild for Mom and Dad and, therefore, the first niece for my siblings and me. I am certainly one proud uncle!
As 2000 was wrapping up I faced a big decision about my course of treatment. (In hindsight I should not have hesitated to try what many would consider a “salvage regimen”.) By April, having given the new daily routine of some thirty-two pills or capsules time to start their work, I learned that they had, indeed, had the desired results. The virus, at last check, was the quietest it has been (on paper) in several years. This has not come entirely without side effects – thirty-two of anything every day, even popcorn kernels, would have some – but overall the picture is good. I’ve gained four kilograms and, while a gust of wind can still push me over, I am feeling better than I’ve dared to dream in quite some time. This year I have been part of a couple of interesting hospital studies related to HIV/AIDS which, hopefully, will do the world some good. I wish the relative good fortune here in “the west” could be shared more readily with people with AIDS in southern Africa, Asia and eastern Europe. As expensive as it is for just the deductible on my medications it’s a problem that doesn’t compare with those who have little or no hope of getting effective treatments of any kind.
One of my wishes for the year was to take part in the five kilometer “Pride and Remembrance Run” in June. My goal, when I first started training at the end of April, was simply to make it across the finish line on my own steam. Then I thought it would be nice to do so without stopping. Even with a swollen tendon, pulled while I recklessly dismounted my bicycle, I successfully completed a “fun run” in Central Park in New York in May, non-stop, and so pushed my goal up some more to see if I could cover the course in under half an hour. It’s the first time I can ever recall pushing myself in a way that full-time athletes appear to sometimes. My result, on race day, was 28:44:06 and, thanks to generous pledges, I raised thirteen hundred dollars for charity. Not content with this accomplishment, however, I began preparing for a ten kilometer run almost immediately and would have entered such a race had I not taken the training into my own hands somewhat and re-injured the tendon. I was to learn later that my arches had collapsed as well and I’ve been wearing orthotic insoles ever since. That injury, and needing quite awhile to adjust to the insoles, brought my running to an abrupt end or, at least, suspension. (For the record this happened after running, non-stop, from Hanlan’s Point to Ward’s Island – and back – a distance of slightly more than ten kilometers! As previously stated, however, this had been done without proper training to build me up to such a distance.) More recently my physical activity has been a little more stationary, using dumb-bells and a couple of machines in a gym downstairs.
The trip to New York City (my first) in May was very exciting and, of course, became more meaningful, in hindsight, in the fall. A friend drove three of us down for the Memorial Day weekend. I’m glad we were there before the patriotism industry– and security - got cranked up as thick as it has been since September. I fretted, all the way to the border, that my medications would be found in my luggage but only one of my bags was opened and the pills were not found. Had they been I would have been asked to turn back, since HIV is grounds to bar admission, even of visitors, to the United States. Moreover had they known that I was aware of this prohibition I could have been arrested! Yet another bone to pick with my American friends! Unfortunately a second trip in the fall, this one with the choir, was cancelled. This was a disappointment for the choir, to be sure, but once I knew the borders would be tightened up I was not eager to push my luck one more time. I had pretty much decided I didn’t want to put the choir through unnecessary stress due to any deception I might have had to try at the border.
I saw the city under fog, in drizzle, and finally in brilliant May sunshine – although the changes in weather conflicted almost entirely with plans. For example whenever I was anywhere near the World Trade Center, such as on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, I couldn’t see much more than a third of the way up. Still one of my favourite pictures is one I took of the Chrysler Building’s lights through the fog the evening we arrived. (Later, walking past the public library, I bought a pen-and-ink of the view of the Chrysler from that very vantage point.) Times Square and Broadway, buzzing all night, were the stuff of old song lyrics to be sure. As if to show I hadn’t grown up one iota, since a high school trip to London, I had a just-off-the-turnip-truck adventure involving my camera in Greenwich Village the next morning after taking the subway over to Brooklyn and walking back into the city across the Brooklyn Bridge. Suffice to say that I had to retrace some of my steps on Sunday in order to take a few pictures over again, with a new camera! Central Park is definitely everything – and more – that I had imagined it to be. Just standing where countless wide-shots of the city have been filmed seemed so magical. It is an amazing oasis in an otherwise very busy city. I saw the Dakota Apartments on Central Park West, as well, and – more topical lately since George Harrison’s death – Strawberry Fields, dedicated to the memory of John Lennon.
The year ends with me embarking on a new adventure. Having completed a facilitator training program this fall I’ve just recently begun co-facilitating a weekly group for gay men with substance abuse problems at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. It’s humbling to see the scale of the problem sometimes but I hope I can make even a small contribution towards helping someone find his way out of such despair. The exercise has already helped put some of my own life struggles in perspective. It’s also been one of several things to remind me to make the most of my life. (Some of the other factors included being involved on someone’s “Discernment Committee” at church, helping - in a small way - with the local launch of the Ecumenical Alliance Campaign on HIV/AIDS, and the usual number of increasingly uncomfortable “…So what do you do? ” inquiries.) I’m not sure where I’m being led, but I’m just “putting it out there” – trying to be mindful that my volunteer work is, hopefully, somewhat of a vocation in itself and that my physical stamina is not something I can take for granted every day. Still, it’s a dilemma – something I’ve heard described as being between the dog and the fire hydrant.
Speaking of the animal kingdom, this fall marked the passing of a longtime companion, my Siamese cat “Blue”. She lost a lot of weight quite suddenly and when I took her to the Humane Society to investigate the decision was made to have her put down. She, and her late sister Tiger, had been through a lot with me in some of my toughest years. Blue’s adopted younger sister, Emma, now rules the roost on her own – and has become much more friendly as a result.
Well, with hopes for peace in a warring world I’ll close and wish you all the best in 2002.
My delay in getting this letter out is partly due to my difficulty humbly acknowledging how the events of September 11 have brought so many of the world’s horrors close to home. I defer, for the most part, to another “Queen’s Message” to summarize this year from a global perspective although it will come as no surprise to most of you that I don’t disagree with what I have heard reported of John Ralston Saul’s controversial new book.
I’m sure I’m not the only baby-boomer to remember “The Chipmunks” Christmas album. It occurs to me that it is one of the few CDs being re-released this season that doesn’t include a version of “God Bless America”. As horrible as the events of that sunny September 11 morning were – and they certainly were unspeakably horrible – I hope, in the long run, they will have done more than just stir up warmongers. Such troubling times. This seems to be an occasion to at least look at crisis as opportunity. The December 17 edition of Maclean’s has an interesting set of articles on the spiritual fall-out from recent events.
I’ve been so late getting my thoughts down that I decided to email this to as many people on my list so equipped. (If you’re reading this it’s because you’re on the “snail mail” list! I apologize if this arrives after Christmas.) This late edition, however, allows me to report on a very successful “Carols By Candlelight” service, last night as I type this, involving my choir, great congregational singing and a beautiful string quartet.
It’s been another exciting year in the family with the birth of my niece in August. She is the first grandchild for Mom and Dad and, therefore, the first niece for my siblings and me. I am certainly one proud uncle!
As 2000 was wrapping up I faced a big decision about my course of treatment. (In hindsight I should not have hesitated to try what many would consider a “salvage regimen”.) By April, having given the new daily routine of some thirty-two pills or capsules time to start their work, I learned that they had, indeed, had the desired results. The virus, at last check, was the quietest it has been (on paper) in several years. This has not come entirely without side effects – thirty-two of anything every day, even popcorn kernels, would have some – but overall the picture is good. I’ve gained four kilograms and, while a gust of wind can still push me over, I am feeling better than I’ve dared to dream in quite some time. This year I have been part of a couple of interesting hospital studies related to HIV/AIDS which, hopefully, will do the world some good. I wish the relative good fortune here in “the west” could be shared more readily with people with AIDS in southern Africa, Asia and eastern Europe. As expensive as it is for just the deductible on my medications it’s a problem that doesn’t compare with those who have little or no hope of getting effective treatments of any kind.
One of my wishes for the year was to take part in the five kilometer “Pride and Remembrance Run” in June. My goal, when I first started training at the end of April, was simply to make it across the finish line on my own steam. Then I thought it would be nice to do so without stopping. Even with a swollen tendon, pulled while I recklessly dismounted my bicycle, I successfully completed a “fun run” in Central Park in New York in May, non-stop, and so pushed my goal up some more to see if I could cover the course in under half an hour. It’s the first time I can ever recall pushing myself in a way that full-time athletes appear to sometimes. My result, on race day, was 28:44:06 and, thanks to generous pledges, I raised thirteen hundred dollars for charity. Not content with this accomplishment, however, I began preparing for a ten kilometer run almost immediately and would have entered such a race had I not taken the training into my own hands somewhat and re-injured the tendon. I was to learn later that my arches had collapsed as well and I’ve been wearing orthotic insoles ever since. That injury, and needing quite awhile to adjust to the insoles, brought my running to an abrupt end or, at least, suspension. (For the record this happened after running, non-stop, from Hanlan’s Point to Ward’s Island – and back – a distance of slightly more than ten kilometers! As previously stated, however, this had been done without proper training to build me up to such a distance.) More recently my physical activity has been a little more stationary, using dumb-bells and a couple of machines in a gym downstairs.
The trip to New York City (my first) in May was very exciting and, of course, became more meaningful, in hindsight, in the fall. A friend drove three of us down for the Memorial Day weekend. I’m glad we were there before the patriotism industry– and security - got cranked up as thick as it has been since September. I fretted, all the way to the border, that my medications would be found in my luggage but only one of my bags was opened and the pills were not found. Had they been I would have been asked to turn back, since HIV is grounds to bar admission, even of visitors, to the United States. Moreover had they known that I was aware of this prohibition I could have been arrested! Yet another bone to pick with my American friends! Unfortunately a second trip in the fall, this one with the choir, was cancelled. This was a disappointment for the choir, to be sure, but once I knew the borders would be tightened up I was not eager to push my luck one more time. I had pretty much decided I didn’t want to put the choir through unnecessary stress due to any deception I might have had to try at the border.
I saw the city under fog, in drizzle, and finally in brilliant May sunshine – although the changes in weather conflicted almost entirely with plans. For example whenever I was anywhere near the World Trade Center, such as on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, I couldn’t see much more than a third of the way up. Still one of my favourite pictures is one I took of the Chrysler Building’s lights through the fog the evening we arrived. (Later, walking past the public library, I bought a pen-and-ink of the view of the Chrysler from that very vantage point.) Times Square and Broadway, buzzing all night, were the stuff of old song lyrics to be sure. As if to show I hadn’t grown up one iota, since a high school trip to London, I had a just-off-the-turnip-truck adventure involving my camera in Greenwich Village the next morning after taking the subway over to Brooklyn and walking back into the city across the Brooklyn Bridge. Suffice to say that I had to retrace some of my steps on Sunday in order to take a few pictures over again, with a new camera! Central Park is definitely everything – and more – that I had imagined it to be. Just standing where countless wide-shots of the city have been filmed seemed so magical. It is an amazing oasis in an otherwise very busy city. I saw the Dakota Apartments on Central Park West, as well, and – more topical lately since George Harrison’s death – Strawberry Fields, dedicated to the memory of John Lennon.
The year ends with me embarking on a new adventure. Having completed a facilitator training program this fall I’ve just recently begun co-facilitating a weekly group for gay men with substance abuse problems at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. It’s humbling to see the scale of the problem sometimes but I hope I can make even a small contribution towards helping someone find his way out of such despair. The exercise has already helped put some of my own life struggles in perspective. It’s also been one of several things to remind me to make the most of my life. (Some of the other factors included being involved on someone’s “Discernment Committee” at church, helping - in a small way - with the local launch of the Ecumenical Alliance Campaign on HIV/AIDS, and the usual number of increasingly uncomfortable “…So what do you do? ” inquiries.) I’m not sure where I’m being led, but I’m just “putting it out there” – trying to be mindful that my volunteer work is, hopefully, somewhat of a vocation in itself and that my physical stamina is not something I can take for granted every day. Still, it’s a dilemma – something I’ve heard described as being between the dog and the fire hydrant.
Speaking of the animal kingdom, this fall marked the passing of a longtime companion, my Siamese cat “Blue”. She lost a lot of weight quite suddenly and when I took her to the Humane Society to investigate the decision was made to have her put down. She, and her late sister Tiger, had been through a lot with me in some of my toughest years. Blue’s adopted younger sister, Emma, now rules the roost on her own – and has become much more friendly as a result.
Well, with hopes for peace in a warring world I’ll close and wish you all the best in 2002.
Friday, December 8, 2000
Christmas 2000
May I offer you the fondest greetings of the season!
Being the increasingly undisciplined journalist that I am, this is the only time of year when, since 1993, I have managed to take the time to view the preceding days and record my observations on paper. The exercise is, by its very nature, subjective. While I don’t talk to myself too, too often, this letter tends to be well kneaded in my gray matter – or what’s left of it – beginning in mid-November.
Musing about the possibility of taking a break from the choir, after Christmas last year, became a self-fulfilling prophecy and, while I enjoyed the break, I was sorry not to have been involved in the Missa Gaia(Earth Mass), presented in late spring. It was a beautifully executed work which I listen to again and again, thanks to it having been recorded on CD.
A much less happy occasion, the funeral of a fellow bass-baritone, brought me back to the choir and there I will stay – health permitting. Fred’s dedication to the choir through failing health, remains an inspiration to me.
My involvement with the church – the choir, the Pride Social Group, the Worship and Music Committee, as well as the worship planning group – has been a really important part of my life this year. There were transitions to grow through, with the departures of Frank and Joanne as ministers, in June and the subsequent arrival of Hal and Karen (who tells me Richard may remember her from her Outremont days) at the beginning of October. I have become quite fond of them both already, and I’m also pleased that Frank and Joanne were able to find placements in Toronto.
The Chaplin family’s year might well be summed up as “Four Stents, A Wedding and a Funeral” (It was Mom who actually planted the idea of this title in my mind.)
In reverse order, Grandmother McGinnis (“Gammy” to the grandkids) died in Perth on March 19 at the great old age of ninety-five. While not unexpected, Gammy’s death made for an unscheduled family reunion. Lynn flew in from Fredericton, Craig and Claude drove up from Montreal, while Janice, Randy and I came from Hamilton and Toronto. This remarkable matriarch, who had been widowed in her forties, was remembered in Craig’s eulogy for her strong faith and constitution, her long teaching career, and the value of family she imparted to us. Later she was buried to the strains of “Amazing Grace” and “Going Home”, played by a bagpiper in the shadow of an old stone schoolhouse, next to the Scotch Line cemetery, where she taught in the early days of her career. There was certainly no lack of symbolism in that moment. Although it’s been quite a few years since she was with us all at the Christmas dinner table, Gammy will be missed this holiday season (and there need not be as many chocolates to pass around!)
The weather, that week in late March, is the stuff of legends already. We were grateful that it neither snowed nor rained. As a matter of fact, it was mostly sunny and nearly 25 degrees Celsius (or so it seemed, hence the legend). In any case, it was so warm that Mom’s request to have the limousine’s air conditioning on “high” - going to and from the cemetery – went uncontested.
Mom, who was quite pleased with having kept her cool during the visitation and funeral, found herself in hospital for a good month or so around Mother’s Day. That old familiar “discomfort” in her chest had returned after several years’ grace. Most of the hospital time was spent in Perth, waiting for a bed at the Ottawa Heart Institute where she was successfully treated.
Spring and summer were very busy. In June I enjoyed my customary retreat on Lake Simcoe’s Strawberry Island, offshore from Orillia. This has become an early summer tradition that I look forward to each year. My Father’s Day was spent in Hamilton with Mom, Dad, my sister Janice and her partner Randy (who announced their heretofore secret plans to marry later in the summer). This happy decision made their planned trip-of-a-lifetime to the Mediterranean even more special. Later in the month I volunteered, again, during CJRT-FM’s on-air fundraising drive which – in turn – got me involved with TV Ontario’s campaign, as well as the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival (which followed on the heels of Pride Day). I was happy to be well enough to take part in all that!
It was during Pride Week, the Pride and Remembrance Run in particular, when I resolved to try to get myself into a little better physical condition. Ultimately I’d like to be in the run myself next June, rather than simply work behind the scenes as I’ve done the past few years. Having rejoined the “Y”, however, I have yet to make a regular habit of “training” for this goal! While I know it would be perfectly acceptable to walk or run, I’d really like to make a go of an all-out run now that, thanks to this fall’s AIDS Walk, I know I can walk a fair bit more than 5k. (Thanks to many of you, by the way, I was able to raise $650 at the walk.)
The small, intimate wedding in July was really something special for our family. Janice and Randy had been making plans with Craig for quite some time (he ultimately performed the ceremony). The two families, from points east and west, arrived in Montreal on July 26, Mom and Dad’s forty-eighth anniversary. We all met for an evening reception, hosted by Craig and Claude, then planned to be at the Botanical Gardens by nine o’clock the next morning. In fact, Lynn and Claude were through the gates before the gardens had even opened. There, in the quiet of this really beautiful setting, the marriage took place with plenty of laughter and tears befitting the occasion. The onset of showers rushed us a bit afterwards, but we had plenty of opportunities for great pictures and a tour of some of the gardens.
Following an authentic Japanese meal downtown – not without plenty of its own laughs – some of us retired to our beds until evening, when Janice and Randy hosted a dinner cruise in Montreal Harbour. What a memorable day! Upon their return from Greece some three weeks later (a trip which included jaunts to several of the Greek islands, and a full-scale cruise to Israel and Egypt), the honeymooners were welcomed back to Canadian soil with a McGinnis-Chaplin extended family gathering in Perth.
It wasn’t long after all this excitement that Craig was in hospital in Montreal, the result of a heart attack (these would be the second two of four stents I alluded to earlier!) This was quite a shock to us all. Following a double angioplasty, however, I’m happy to report that Craig is feeling better and was well enough that, as the only Chaplin family member left in Quebec, he was able to represent us at Prime Minister Trudeau’s funeral, albeit standing on the outside looking in!
Just when I thought I might get through the year with unremarkable (and therefore very remarkable) health, a December visit to my specialist has given me quite a bit to think about over the holidays. It seems that, after quite a successful run, I am now experiencing resistance to some of my medications (only obvious in lab reports), which means that the virus is able to be detected replicating itself. While the “viral load”, which measures such things, is low it has been consistently detectable over time and, therefore, the combination of pills and capsules I take is no longer working to its potential. This necessitates a decision – do I make radical changes to my drug regimen (and brace for a fair number of new side effects) or do I stay the course and risk potentially greater problems down the road, should a change in direction become more urgent. I don’t particularly like either option. However, to use the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? vernacular, I don’t really know how many more “life-lines” I can count on. Of course, as is the case with any mortal, there are no such guarantees.
The doctor reminded me – as he has a couple of times before - how close to death I had been seven or eight years ago, and how strong a comeback I have made. On one occasion earlier this year he told a group of visiting Russian doctors (with a growing AIDS problem in their own country) that I had nearly died in 1992-93 but have bounced back. While that sort of perspective invigorates me, I am still left with the present dilemma! Up to this point, my doctor hasn’t pushed me too hard. Even now he admits he doesn’t know which course to recommend (and, knowing him as I do, he doesn’t like being unable to give me a firm “if I were you…”)
I hope that this will not unduly preoccupy me over the holidays, which will probably include a great deal of visiting, eating and lounging in front of the fireplace. Much of the family will be in Perth between Christmas and New Years (since Claude’s nursing position calls on him to be in Montreal working at Christmas this year). This will allow me to participate fully in Trinity- St. Paul’s Christmas season – watching the children’s pageant and singing in “Carols by Candlelight” on the 17th, then two joint Christmas Eve services with Bloor Street United and Christos MCC, respectively.
Here’s hoping the quiet reflection, which I certainly hope to make time for over these holidays, will also be something you can experience amidst the busy times of the season.
Being the increasingly undisciplined journalist that I am, this is the only time of year when, since 1993, I have managed to take the time to view the preceding days and record my observations on paper. The exercise is, by its very nature, subjective. While I don’t talk to myself too, too often, this letter tends to be well kneaded in my gray matter – or what’s left of it – beginning in mid-November.
Musing about the possibility of taking a break from the choir, after Christmas last year, became a self-fulfilling prophecy and, while I enjoyed the break, I was sorry not to have been involved in the Missa Gaia(Earth Mass), presented in late spring. It was a beautifully executed work which I listen to again and again, thanks to it having been recorded on CD.
A much less happy occasion, the funeral of a fellow bass-baritone, brought me back to the choir and there I will stay – health permitting. Fred’s dedication to the choir through failing health, remains an inspiration to me.
My involvement with the church – the choir, the Pride Social Group, the Worship and Music Committee, as well as the worship planning group – has been a really important part of my life this year. There were transitions to grow through, with the departures of Frank and Joanne as ministers, in June and the subsequent arrival of Hal and Karen (who tells me Richard may remember her from her Outremont days) at the beginning of October. I have become quite fond of them both already, and I’m also pleased that Frank and Joanne were able to find placements in Toronto.
The Chaplin family’s year might well be summed up as “Four Stents, A Wedding and a Funeral” (It was Mom who actually planted the idea of this title in my mind.)
In reverse order, Grandmother McGinnis (“Gammy” to the grandkids) died in Perth on March 19 at the great old age of ninety-five. While not unexpected, Gammy’s death made for an unscheduled family reunion. Lynn flew in from Fredericton, Craig and Claude drove up from Montreal, while Janice, Randy and I came from Hamilton and Toronto. This remarkable matriarch, who had been widowed in her forties, was remembered in Craig’s eulogy for her strong faith and constitution, her long teaching career, and the value of family she imparted to us. Later she was buried to the strains of “Amazing Grace” and “Going Home”, played by a bagpiper in the shadow of an old stone schoolhouse, next to the Scotch Line cemetery, where she taught in the early days of her career. There was certainly no lack of symbolism in that moment. Although it’s been quite a few years since she was with us all at the Christmas dinner table, Gammy will be missed this holiday season (and there need not be as many chocolates to pass around!)
The weather, that week in late March, is the stuff of legends already. We were grateful that it neither snowed nor rained. As a matter of fact, it was mostly sunny and nearly 25 degrees Celsius (or so it seemed, hence the legend). In any case, it was so warm that Mom’s request to have the limousine’s air conditioning on “high” - going to and from the cemetery – went uncontested.
Mom, who was quite pleased with having kept her cool during the visitation and funeral, found herself in hospital for a good month or so around Mother’s Day. That old familiar “discomfort” in her chest had returned after several years’ grace. Most of the hospital time was spent in Perth, waiting for a bed at the Ottawa Heart Institute where she was successfully treated.
Spring and summer were very busy. In June I enjoyed my customary retreat on Lake Simcoe’s Strawberry Island, offshore from Orillia. This has become an early summer tradition that I look forward to each year. My Father’s Day was spent in Hamilton with Mom, Dad, my sister Janice and her partner Randy (who announced their heretofore secret plans to marry later in the summer). This happy decision made their planned trip-of-a-lifetime to the Mediterranean even more special. Later in the month I volunteered, again, during CJRT-FM’s on-air fundraising drive which – in turn – got me involved with TV Ontario’s campaign, as well as the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival (which followed on the heels of Pride Day). I was happy to be well enough to take part in all that!
It was during Pride Week, the Pride and Remembrance Run in particular, when I resolved to try to get myself into a little better physical condition. Ultimately I’d like to be in the run myself next June, rather than simply work behind the scenes as I’ve done the past few years. Having rejoined the “Y”, however, I have yet to make a regular habit of “training” for this goal! While I know it would be perfectly acceptable to walk or run, I’d really like to make a go of an all-out run now that, thanks to this fall’s AIDS Walk, I know I can walk a fair bit more than 5k. (Thanks to many of you, by the way, I was able to raise $650 at the walk.)
The small, intimate wedding in July was really something special for our family. Janice and Randy had been making plans with Craig for quite some time (he ultimately performed the ceremony). The two families, from points east and west, arrived in Montreal on July 26, Mom and Dad’s forty-eighth anniversary. We all met for an evening reception, hosted by Craig and Claude, then planned to be at the Botanical Gardens by nine o’clock the next morning. In fact, Lynn and Claude were through the gates before the gardens had even opened. There, in the quiet of this really beautiful setting, the marriage took place with plenty of laughter and tears befitting the occasion. The onset of showers rushed us a bit afterwards, but we had plenty of opportunities for great pictures and a tour of some of the gardens.
Following an authentic Japanese meal downtown – not without plenty of its own laughs – some of us retired to our beds until evening, when Janice and Randy hosted a dinner cruise in Montreal Harbour. What a memorable day! Upon their return from Greece some three weeks later (a trip which included jaunts to several of the Greek islands, and a full-scale cruise to Israel and Egypt), the honeymooners were welcomed back to Canadian soil with a McGinnis-Chaplin extended family gathering in Perth.
It wasn’t long after all this excitement that Craig was in hospital in Montreal, the result of a heart attack (these would be the second two of four stents I alluded to earlier!) This was quite a shock to us all. Following a double angioplasty, however, I’m happy to report that Craig is feeling better and was well enough that, as the only Chaplin family member left in Quebec, he was able to represent us at Prime Minister Trudeau’s funeral, albeit standing on the outside looking in!
Just when I thought I might get through the year with unremarkable (and therefore very remarkable) health, a December visit to my specialist has given me quite a bit to think about over the holidays. It seems that, after quite a successful run, I am now experiencing resistance to some of my medications (only obvious in lab reports), which means that the virus is able to be detected replicating itself. While the “viral load”, which measures such things, is low it has been consistently detectable over time and, therefore, the combination of pills and capsules I take is no longer working to its potential. This necessitates a decision – do I make radical changes to my drug regimen (and brace for a fair number of new side effects) or do I stay the course and risk potentially greater problems down the road, should a change in direction become more urgent. I don’t particularly like either option. However, to use the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? vernacular, I don’t really know how many more “life-lines” I can count on. Of course, as is the case with any mortal, there are no such guarantees.
The doctor reminded me – as he has a couple of times before - how close to death I had been seven or eight years ago, and how strong a comeback I have made. On one occasion earlier this year he told a group of visiting Russian doctors (with a growing AIDS problem in their own country) that I had nearly died in 1992-93 but have bounced back. While that sort of perspective invigorates me, I am still left with the present dilemma! Up to this point, my doctor hasn’t pushed me too hard. Even now he admits he doesn’t know which course to recommend (and, knowing him as I do, he doesn’t like being unable to give me a firm “if I were you…”)
I hope that this will not unduly preoccupy me over the holidays, which will probably include a great deal of visiting, eating and lounging in front of the fireplace. Much of the family will be in Perth between Christmas and New Years (since Claude’s nursing position calls on him to be in Montreal working at Christmas this year). This will allow me to participate fully in Trinity- St. Paul’s Christmas season – watching the children’s pageant and singing in “Carols by Candlelight” on the 17th, then two joint Christmas Eve services with Bloor Street United and Christos MCC, respectively.
Here’s hoping the quiet reflection, which I certainly hope to make time for over these holidays, will also be something you can experience amidst the busy times of the season.
Tuesday, December 7, 1999
Christmas 1999
Another holiday season, another holiday letter, on the eve of what most are calling the new millenium.
It’s really quite incredible to believe this is my seventh annual letter given that the first, in 1993, was – in my mind at least – just barely disguised as a “Well since this could very well be my last Christmas…” tome! Yet I also recall it to be a semi-annual letter to my friend Nance, in Niagara, and a deliberate attempt to brighten the spirits of my close friend Jim, who was to die of AIDS just weeks later. The letter has since become a tradition I, if not others, expect of me each year – a bit of a self-indulgent summary of the past year through the lens of this occasional navel-gazer.
There are many folks on my mailing list for the first time in 1999. The largest numbers among these are friends from Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church, which I joined last spring. I am all the richer for having these new friends from our exceptional choir, the Spong readers’ group, the lesbigay social group and the congregation in general, in my life. It feels so good to again be part of the church denomination of my youth. The choir has been a challenge, particularly as Christmas has drawn closer. I’m not sure I still have the energy required for the task, but I’ll re-examine that in 2000. I’m finding rehearsals long and Sunday morning choir warm-ups very early, considering the time I need to take my medications beforehand.
Perhaps the single biggest milestone for me (and there were others) this year was the odometer on my body clock turning past 40. I can remember wondering, as a kid, what it would be like to reach that old age – not realizing that my definition of “old” would be pushed back the closer I got to it. Mom and Dad don’t even seem old anymore! The fact is, no matter how young I may feel inside, it seems to me we’re all starting to show our age. (“Gammy”, my maternal grandmother, turned 95 in November. Now that is old!)
The grand occasion of my fortieth, last October 26, was marked by a dinner with friends at Mandarin – an all-you-can-eat buffet which I did my best to dent. Who would have thought that there would be a fortieth when many of the same people gathered for my thirty-sixth – with signs of my advanced illness quite apparent. Well there was a fortieth, and I have the picture to prove it.
Shortly thereafter I got a haircut (with the best comments being something along the lines of “It makes you look so much younger!”). I had been growing my locks since a complete shaving of my skull in late 1994, but I grew tired of all the care it required (and it showed!). Considering how important I thought my long hair was, I do not miss it in the least. It never looked as good as I dreamed it should.
I took possession of my first set of bifocals in November. Last year at this time my optometrist had said I was a candidate for them, but I had opted to try to go one more year without. It seemed to be less of an option this year, as the newspaper crosswords were rubbing black ink on my nose with increasing frequency while – at other times – my arms weren’t long enough.
Besides a terrific week or so in Perth with Mom and Dad (during wild orchid season in Purdon), Montreal was about as far as I went on a vacation this year, but it was a great trip. It had been a few years since I had been “home” but I quickly became reacquainted with the city, and quite sentimental as well. In fact, waiting for a bus near the peak of Mount Royal, I told an American tourist – making small talk about my adopted home - that Toronto didn’t have as much of the natural beauty of which Montreal can boast. (I’d much rather see a skyline from the crest of a mountain than from the top of a communications tower.)
Montreal, despite its hills, is very conducive to walking. One morning I took the bus to Mount Royal (for pictures at a different time of day) from the home of Craig and Claude, then walked down the slope to Dominion Square. On another day, though, I walked all the way up Peel – then took a combination of buses and subway from the summit to Outremont, and on back to Craig’s on “Le Plateau”.
It was quite an historic week to be in the city, given the death of the former mayor, Jean Drapeau. I visited the site of one of his greatest legacies, Expo ’67, which is still a beautiful – if not profoundly different – park. (It was quite disconcerting to ask for directions from a park employee so young she hadn’t been born before the 1976 Montreal Olympics, much less Expo ‘67! This is the type of thing that makes me realize how…er…middle-aged I am.)
By the way, and completely off-topic, I’m sure my mind is not the only one boggled to remember it was thirty years ago last summer that humankind set foot on the moon – thirty years! This, as the tangent unwinds, reminds me of Pierre Trudeau’s eightieth birthday this fall. I was amazed to read in the Toronto Star that few high school kids, albeit a small sample, hardly knew anything about the former Prime Minister. Granted I was a history buff in school. Surely, if for no other reason (and there are plenty more), Trudeau was remarkable for his charisma and shenanigans on the world stage. Then again, the kids interviewed used sayings like “like you know” and “so” – as in, “Like, you know, with so much going on in like the world today it seems just so not okay to ‘dis’ us about not knowing who this like old guy was.” (not a direct quote, admittedly). And is it my imagination or do kids talk much, much faster nowadays (not that this would come across in the Star!)? Any doubts I’m getting old yet?
Now I’ll try to get back on track to my Montreal vacation. From Expo, I returned to the city centre by ferry – a new experience, having been driven to and from the fair as a child. The ferry docks are near Bonsecours Church in the old port lands. “Old Montreal” hooked me for a good two days or so of roaming around, taking in the rich history that thrives there – although Craig had warned me that Notre Dame Basilica’s “dumbed-down” history recalls it as the site of Celine Dion’s wedding. Sure enough, Celine’s nuptials were mentioned, along with those of a Montreal Canadiens hockey star.
I spent a week in hospital shortly after returning to Toronto. As alarming as it seemed at the time, this was the first hospitalization I had experienced since my HIV diagnosis in 1989. I had begun to think I might have to be struggling for my last breaths before Mike Harris would ever let me into hospital. Fortunately my specialist pulls more weight than the Premier at Toronto General - when it comes to hospital admissions. As a matter of fact I had the distinct impression that when the HIV clinic doctors want an admission they get it, no matter how far off protocol it may seem. American Express, eat your heart out! HIV/AIDS – membership has its privileges!
I was admitted with symptoms of lightheadedness, brought on by low blood pressure which, in turn, was caused by severe dehydration – the result of cumulative side effects to my medications (not helped, I’m sure, by the aforementioned walking in Montreal or long bike rides in Toronto). As is typical, I didn’t have enough cash on me for a cab to the hospital so I took the streetcar over to University Avenue, then wavered in the gusty breezes like a just-planted willow tree. As I walked into the closest hospital entrance, which was actually an administrative area, I had to lean against the walls until I found someone to help me. Then I was wheeled to the Emergency Department, where I was admitted. (They had seen me the day before, with identical symptoms, but sent me home after giving me two or three bags of intravenous fluids.)
The hospital stay was an interesting experience, to say the least. I shared a room with an older man whose personal sewage system was backed up. Members of his large family (large in every sense of the word) broke all rules, with daily apologies from the man’s wife, when it came to numbers of visitors at one time, length of visits, decibel levels of conversations, etc. It was a mixed blessing to be unable to understand the language they spoke! He was obviously very sick or I might have complained. All the more reason, on the other hand, to insist the guy rest.
It was fascinating to watch the detective work, among the seasoned doctors and residents, which went into finding out what was wrong with me. It felt a bit like a live autopsy. The worst-case scenario had me dealing with more neuropathy, miscommunication from the brain that already makes my feet go unpredictably from numb to tingly to numb again. This time, the doctor theorized, it was in the muscles around the heart. The resulting low blood pressure would explain the lightheadedness. Another squad of very young folks from kidney class worked on scenarios of their own, which included a blood test from an artery, rather than a vein, that I won’t soon forget – drawn by their supervising doctor no less. Physicians should be allowed nowhere near needles!
On the day I was ultimately discharged I was taken for a “tilt table” test, to see why my blood pressure had been dropping so abruptly – earlier in the week - as I moved from a seated to a standing position. Even before all the goo and tape had been removed from me it was quite clear that everything was normal. If anything, the specialist reported, I had high blood pressure. A strange sense of relief came over me as I reclaimed my rightful place in the Chaplin and McGinnis medical history books!
The bottom line, after a whole week of this, was dehydration due to side effects of my medications.
I have experienced similar symptoms since August, but have been able to deal with them at home – first with the help of my friend downstairs, Bill, a.k.a. “Nurse Ratchet”, then on my own. It seems that I am too thin to risk missing a single meal, and I need to constantly re-hydrate as I don’t have a lot of storage space. It’s been a challenge to keep to my medication regimen as well, what with a tug-of-war between side effects and good results. However my specialist gave me a bit of a lecture in November and I’ve been diligent ever since. I’m back to using a beeper to remind me to take my pills and syrup. Self-care, I am finding, is a full-time job and I’m not always at peak performance.
As I reread this I am struck by the similarities to my memories of adolescence - old folks on my newspaper route, usually living alone, with seemingly little else to do but recount their litany of aches and pains to occasional visitors. Chalk it up to another milestone – my first HIV/AIDS-related hospital stay and a reminder of how fragile my health is. Besides, the trauma of it all didn’t begin to really strike me until I had come home.
To my credit, if I do say so myself, I have tried to stay quite active over the year. I have occasionally questioned whether I may be over-extending myself, given my propensity to live in an untidy apartment and eat and drink the necessities of life so minimally. Yet I get a lot out of the church choir, my work with people with AIDS and addictions, volunteering as “monitor” at the computer learning centre in my building, answering the phones during the CJRT-FM fundraising drives and so on. Email has made it easy to write “letters to the editor” to occasionally vent my spleen, too, keeping my nose in the political realm.
For those who don’t know, and be assured I’m paid nothing to tell you this, CJRT-FM is a PBS-style radio station which relies on listeners to pay roughly half its annual budget. Recently very limited advertising has been added to the mix to help defray some costs but listener support remains very important. With such a varied programming schedule, ranging from continuing education classes from Ryerson Polytechnic University to children’s stories to “The Prairie Home Companion” to classical to jazz, it isn’t the sort of media buy that the McDonald’s or Pepsi-Colas of the world would snap up. Besides, CJRT’s license limits the amount of commercial time it can sell. I know there are other people and agencies with far greater financial needs but this telephone volunteering is not physically or emotionally taxing, it’s something I enjoy and – besides - it’s still fun being around a radio station. The music it offers is something that feeds my spirit, too, which ought not be overlooked.
Last summer I saw Scott Turow interviewed and decided I needed to read his mysteries – and read more of anything, with less television. In the same way I like my weekend newspaper to be in order when I read it, as opposed to being in a disheveled pile as I usually find it at my door, I felt I had to read Turow’s books in order. Only recently, however, have I put my mind to it and, therefore, have just finished reading Presumed Innocent.
What a pleasure it was to be at the launch reception, in October, for Jacob’s Blessing: Hopes, Dreams, and Visions for the Church by Donna Sinclair and Christopher White. (Donna, who’s on this mailing list, wrote an article for the United Church Observer a few years ago about we Chaplins and our faith-through-struggles.)
I’ve also been rereading Why Christianity Must Change Or Die by Bishop John Shelby Spong (or “Jack” as he called himself when I heard him speak in Brantford this fall). It has been a great resource as I continue to journey through spiritual questions.
With the holidays upon us, I look forward to being in Perth with as many of the family as can be there. It’s been a while since I had a good feed of turkey, having gone to Swiss Chalet for Thanksgiving, so I’m looking forward to some of Mom’s best work. I jokingly refer to “Walton’s Mountain”. The food, the fireplace, the love of family, the snow in the historic beauty of Perth – what’s not to look forward to? I count myself blessed indeed, considering how emotionally difficult the holidays can be for so many.
As for “the new millenium”, I’ve long been in the now growing camp that finally realizes the twenty-first century doesn’t start until 2001, but I’ll take fireworks whenever they’re offered! This 2000 craze misses the point that there was no Year Zero. As well, our calendar is so arbitrary – in a global sense it’s laughable - yet we virtually dictate to the world what year it ought to be. I wonder what year it is to, say, First Nations’ people or any number of other cultures around the world? The Jewish people are already at the Year 5670 (okay, so I read that in a Jewish newspaper editorial…I’m not that smart!)
It seems passing strange that so much money has been poured into fixing the Y2K problem – money spent by and for the same people who didn’t have the foresight to see that a two-digit year couldn’t last very long in a computer.
Stepping down from my soap-box(es), and beginning to listen to my Charlie Brown Christmas CD, I sincerely wish you all the best in the coming days, whatever the year, in whatever millenium - one sunrise and one sunset at a time!
It’s really quite incredible to believe this is my seventh annual letter given that the first, in 1993, was – in my mind at least – just barely disguised as a “Well since this could very well be my last Christmas…” tome! Yet I also recall it to be a semi-annual letter to my friend Nance, in Niagara, and a deliberate attempt to brighten the spirits of my close friend Jim, who was to die of AIDS just weeks later. The letter has since become a tradition I, if not others, expect of me each year – a bit of a self-indulgent summary of the past year through the lens of this occasional navel-gazer.
There are many folks on my mailing list for the first time in 1999. The largest numbers among these are friends from Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church, which I joined last spring. I am all the richer for having these new friends from our exceptional choir, the Spong readers’ group, the lesbigay social group and the congregation in general, in my life. It feels so good to again be part of the church denomination of my youth. The choir has been a challenge, particularly as Christmas has drawn closer. I’m not sure I still have the energy required for the task, but I’ll re-examine that in 2000. I’m finding rehearsals long and Sunday morning choir warm-ups very early, considering the time I need to take my medications beforehand.
Perhaps the single biggest milestone for me (and there were others) this year was the odometer on my body clock turning past 40. I can remember wondering, as a kid, what it would be like to reach that old age – not realizing that my definition of “old” would be pushed back the closer I got to it. Mom and Dad don’t even seem old anymore! The fact is, no matter how young I may feel inside, it seems to me we’re all starting to show our age. (“Gammy”, my maternal grandmother, turned 95 in November. Now that is old!)
The grand occasion of my fortieth, last October 26, was marked by a dinner with friends at Mandarin – an all-you-can-eat buffet which I did my best to dent. Who would have thought that there would be a fortieth when many of the same people gathered for my thirty-sixth – with signs of my advanced illness quite apparent. Well there was a fortieth, and I have the picture to prove it.
Shortly thereafter I got a haircut (with the best comments being something along the lines of “It makes you look so much younger!”). I had been growing my locks since a complete shaving of my skull in late 1994, but I grew tired of all the care it required (and it showed!). Considering how important I thought my long hair was, I do not miss it in the least. It never looked as good as I dreamed it should.
I took possession of my first set of bifocals in November. Last year at this time my optometrist had said I was a candidate for them, but I had opted to try to go one more year without. It seemed to be less of an option this year, as the newspaper crosswords were rubbing black ink on my nose with increasing frequency while – at other times – my arms weren’t long enough.
Besides a terrific week or so in Perth with Mom and Dad (during wild orchid season in Purdon), Montreal was about as far as I went on a vacation this year, but it was a great trip. It had been a few years since I had been “home” but I quickly became reacquainted with the city, and quite sentimental as well. In fact, waiting for a bus near the peak of Mount Royal, I told an American tourist – making small talk about my adopted home - that Toronto didn’t have as much of the natural beauty of which Montreal can boast. (I’d much rather see a skyline from the crest of a mountain than from the top of a communications tower.)
Montreal, despite its hills, is very conducive to walking. One morning I took the bus to Mount Royal (for pictures at a different time of day) from the home of Craig and Claude, then walked down the slope to Dominion Square. On another day, though, I walked all the way up Peel – then took a combination of buses and subway from the summit to Outremont, and on back to Craig’s on “Le Plateau”.
It was quite an historic week to be in the city, given the death of the former mayor, Jean Drapeau. I visited the site of one of his greatest legacies, Expo ’67, which is still a beautiful – if not profoundly different – park. (It was quite disconcerting to ask for directions from a park employee so young she hadn’t been born before the 1976 Montreal Olympics, much less Expo ‘67! This is the type of thing that makes me realize how…er…middle-aged I am.)
By the way, and completely off-topic, I’m sure my mind is not the only one boggled to remember it was thirty years ago last summer that humankind set foot on the moon – thirty years! This, as the tangent unwinds, reminds me of Pierre Trudeau’s eightieth birthday this fall. I was amazed to read in the Toronto Star that few high school kids, albeit a small sample, hardly knew anything about the former Prime Minister. Granted I was a history buff in school. Surely, if for no other reason (and there are plenty more), Trudeau was remarkable for his charisma and shenanigans on the world stage. Then again, the kids interviewed used sayings like “like you know” and “so” – as in, “Like, you know, with so much going on in like the world today it seems just so not okay to ‘dis’ us about not knowing who this like old guy was.” (not a direct quote, admittedly). And is it my imagination or do kids talk much, much faster nowadays (not that this would come across in the Star!)? Any doubts I’m getting old yet?
Now I’ll try to get back on track to my Montreal vacation. From Expo, I returned to the city centre by ferry – a new experience, having been driven to and from the fair as a child. The ferry docks are near Bonsecours Church in the old port lands. “Old Montreal” hooked me for a good two days or so of roaming around, taking in the rich history that thrives there – although Craig had warned me that Notre Dame Basilica’s “dumbed-down” history recalls it as the site of Celine Dion’s wedding. Sure enough, Celine’s nuptials were mentioned, along with those of a Montreal Canadiens hockey star.
I spent a week in hospital shortly after returning to Toronto. As alarming as it seemed at the time, this was the first hospitalization I had experienced since my HIV diagnosis in 1989. I had begun to think I might have to be struggling for my last breaths before Mike Harris would ever let me into hospital. Fortunately my specialist pulls more weight than the Premier at Toronto General - when it comes to hospital admissions. As a matter of fact I had the distinct impression that when the HIV clinic doctors want an admission they get it, no matter how far off protocol it may seem. American Express, eat your heart out! HIV/AIDS – membership has its privileges!
I was admitted with symptoms of lightheadedness, brought on by low blood pressure which, in turn, was caused by severe dehydration – the result of cumulative side effects to my medications (not helped, I’m sure, by the aforementioned walking in Montreal or long bike rides in Toronto). As is typical, I didn’t have enough cash on me for a cab to the hospital so I took the streetcar over to University Avenue, then wavered in the gusty breezes like a just-planted willow tree. As I walked into the closest hospital entrance, which was actually an administrative area, I had to lean against the walls until I found someone to help me. Then I was wheeled to the Emergency Department, where I was admitted. (They had seen me the day before, with identical symptoms, but sent me home after giving me two or three bags of intravenous fluids.)
The hospital stay was an interesting experience, to say the least. I shared a room with an older man whose personal sewage system was backed up. Members of his large family (large in every sense of the word) broke all rules, with daily apologies from the man’s wife, when it came to numbers of visitors at one time, length of visits, decibel levels of conversations, etc. It was a mixed blessing to be unable to understand the language they spoke! He was obviously very sick or I might have complained. All the more reason, on the other hand, to insist the guy rest.
It was fascinating to watch the detective work, among the seasoned doctors and residents, which went into finding out what was wrong with me. It felt a bit like a live autopsy. The worst-case scenario had me dealing with more neuropathy, miscommunication from the brain that already makes my feet go unpredictably from numb to tingly to numb again. This time, the doctor theorized, it was in the muscles around the heart. The resulting low blood pressure would explain the lightheadedness. Another squad of very young folks from kidney class worked on scenarios of their own, which included a blood test from an artery, rather than a vein, that I won’t soon forget – drawn by their supervising doctor no less. Physicians should be allowed nowhere near needles!
On the day I was ultimately discharged I was taken for a “tilt table” test, to see why my blood pressure had been dropping so abruptly – earlier in the week - as I moved from a seated to a standing position. Even before all the goo and tape had been removed from me it was quite clear that everything was normal. If anything, the specialist reported, I had high blood pressure. A strange sense of relief came over me as I reclaimed my rightful place in the Chaplin and McGinnis medical history books!
The bottom line, after a whole week of this, was dehydration due to side effects of my medications.
I have experienced similar symptoms since August, but have been able to deal with them at home – first with the help of my friend downstairs, Bill, a.k.a. “Nurse Ratchet”, then on my own. It seems that I am too thin to risk missing a single meal, and I need to constantly re-hydrate as I don’t have a lot of storage space. It’s been a challenge to keep to my medication regimen as well, what with a tug-of-war between side effects and good results. However my specialist gave me a bit of a lecture in November and I’ve been diligent ever since. I’m back to using a beeper to remind me to take my pills and syrup. Self-care, I am finding, is a full-time job and I’m not always at peak performance.
As I reread this I am struck by the similarities to my memories of adolescence - old folks on my newspaper route, usually living alone, with seemingly little else to do but recount their litany of aches and pains to occasional visitors. Chalk it up to another milestone – my first HIV/AIDS-related hospital stay and a reminder of how fragile my health is. Besides, the trauma of it all didn’t begin to really strike me until I had come home.
To my credit, if I do say so myself, I have tried to stay quite active over the year. I have occasionally questioned whether I may be over-extending myself, given my propensity to live in an untidy apartment and eat and drink the necessities of life so minimally. Yet I get a lot out of the church choir, my work with people with AIDS and addictions, volunteering as “monitor” at the computer learning centre in my building, answering the phones during the CJRT-FM fundraising drives and so on. Email has made it easy to write “letters to the editor” to occasionally vent my spleen, too, keeping my nose in the political realm.
For those who don’t know, and be assured I’m paid nothing to tell you this, CJRT-FM is a PBS-style radio station which relies on listeners to pay roughly half its annual budget. Recently very limited advertising has been added to the mix to help defray some costs but listener support remains very important. With such a varied programming schedule, ranging from continuing education classes from Ryerson Polytechnic University to children’s stories to “The Prairie Home Companion” to classical to jazz, it isn’t the sort of media buy that the McDonald’s or Pepsi-Colas of the world would snap up. Besides, CJRT’s license limits the amount of commercial time it can sell. I know there are other people and agencies with far greater financial needs but this telephone volunteering is not physically or emotionally taxing, it’s something I enjoy and – besides - it’s still fun being around a radio station. The music it offers is something that feeds my spirit, too, which ought not be overlooked.
Last summer I saw Scott Turow interviewed and decided I needed to read his mysteries – and read more of anything, with less television. In the same way I like my weekend newspaper to be in order when I read it, as opposed to being in a disheveled pile as I usually find it at my door, I felt I had to read Turow’s books in order. Only recently, however, have I put my mind to it and, therefore, have just finished reading Presumed Innocent.
What a pleasure it was to be at the launch reception, in October, for Jacob’s Blessing: Hopes, Dreams, and Visions for the Church by Donna Sinclair and Christopher White. (Donna, who’s on this mailing list, wrote an article for the United Church Observer a few years ago about we Chaplins and our faith-through-struggles.)
I’ve also been rereading Why Christianity Must Change Or Die by Bishop John Shelby Spong (or “Jack” as he called himself when I heard him speak in Brantford this fall). It has been a great resource as I continue to journey through spiritual questions.
With the holidays upon us, I look forward to being in Perth with as many of the family as can be there. It’s been a while since I had a good feed of turkey, having gone to Swiss Chalet for Thanksgiving, so I’m looking forward to some of Mom’s best work. I jokingly refer to “Walton’s Mountain”. The food, the fireplace, the love of family, the snow in the historic beauty of Perth – what’s not to look forward to? I count myself blessed indeed, considering how emotionally difficult the holidays can be for so many.
As for “the new millenium”, I’ve long been in the now growing camp that finally realizes the twenty-first century doesn’t start until 2001, but I’ll take fireworks whenever they’re offered! This 2000 craze misses the point that there was no Year Zero. As well, our calendar is so arbitrary – in a global sense it’s laughable - yet we virtually dictate to the world what year it ought to be. I wonder what year it is to, say, First Nations’ people or any number of other cultures around the world? The Jewish people are already at the Year 5670 (okay, so I read that in a Jewish newspaper editorial…I’m not that smart!)
It seems passing strange that so much money has been poured into fixing the Y2K problem – money spent by and for the same people who didn’t have the foresight to see that a two-digit year couldn’t last very long in a computer.
Stepping down from my soap-box(es), and beginning to listen to my Charlie Brown Christmas CD, I sincerely wish you all the best in the coming days, whatever the year, in whatever millenium - one sunrise and one sunset at a time!
Monday, December 7, 1998
Christmas 1998
Dear Santa:
All I want for Christmas is about twenty centimetres of snow. It can leave any time after January 1!
It has certainly been an odd holiday season, weather-wise. As of writing this, I don’t think a single flake of snow has drifted earthward to Toronto – not that I’ve seen at least. It’s been easy to imagine how people in the mid-to-lower States experience Christmas year after year. There seem to be more outdoor lights than ever – maybe our way of compensating for the lack of white stuff.
My Christmas cactus hasn’t bloomed this year. Alas, I don’t think I can attribute that to the strange weather. I “pruned” it last summer and I think I must have killed it, ironic given the fact that the fellow, from whose giant cactus I spliced it fifteen or twenty years ago, died this year. The original plant was well over forty years old, as I recall.
Another Christmas first for me this year was seeing the Santa Claus Parade live and in person! On a blustery day in November (one of the few) I went with my friends Stephen and Byron and their son Ronan (who’s just about 19 months old now). It was a lot of fun, and I think we picked up a few tips for an even better view next year. Ronan soaked up all there was to see and hear, and I finally got to see those “upside down” clowns face-to-face. Ronan caught a good look at Santa but, wouldn’t you know it, I was reloading my camera and practically missed him!
When I got the photos back from the store there were actually only a few from the parade itself. The rest were what leads me to a New Year’s resolution. I won’t take another picture of Perth streetscapes. As pretty a town as it is – and its fall colours were spectacular at Thanksgiving – I have accumulated so many pictures of the town I could probably publish a coffee-table book. Of course this doesn’t include any future family pictures which may, or may not, have Perth scenes in the background.
As 1998 winds down I’m watching a fair amount of CNN, to see what fate is in store for Bill Clinton. Sometimes it’s been difficult to distinguish the goings-on in Congress, and on the talking-head TV panels, from the Jerry Springer Show. I still get a bit of a rush from the body politic - the to-and-fro, be it in the States or Canada. Once in awhile I walk over to the Ontario Legislature to observe Question Period. There’s free admission and it’s a different sort of sport than, say, a National Hockey League game, where ticket-brokers aren’t above charging seventy-five bucks for the cheap seats. (I actually checked a couple of Saturdays ago walking past Maple Leaf Gardens.) Back to politics with a prediction: Ontarians, at least those outside Toronto, will re-elect Mike Harris.
Another past-time that’s been kind of growing on me is jazz music. For a number of years I’ve been an occasional telephone volunteer at CJRT-FM, a local listener-supported radio station. While its programming has always been a mixture of classical and jazz, the powers that be have recently expanded weekday jazz time from evenings only to afternoon-drive time and evenings. It’s been interesting to learn a little about this music and the eclectic life stories of its artists.
My health has been fairly stable all year; the only ups and downs have been with my weight. I think I’ve stabilized for now, but my 6’3” frame carried as little as 125 pounds earlier this year. I don’t think I’ve been that light since I was well under six feet tall. The viral load tests available this year are “ultra-sensitive” so, while no longer “undetectable”, my v.l. is fairly low – for which I am very grateful, if not occasionally complacent. I’ve been on a combination of steroids and testosterone – a shot in the hip of one or the other every two weeks – in hopes of getting my weight up. My doctor and I are going to give that a three month trial.
Well another Christmas is upon us, and 1999 isn’t too far away. This will be the year we hear – ad nauseum – hopes that the “Y2K bug” doesn’t bite.
All the best of the season!
All I want for Christmas is about twenty centimetres of snow. It can leave any time after January 1!
It has certainly been an odd holiday season, weather-wise. As of writing this, I don’t think a single flake of snow has drifted earthward to Toronto – not that I’ve seen at least. It’s been easy to imagine how people in the mid-to-lower States experience Christmas year after year. There seem to be more outdoor lights than ever – maybe our way of compensating for the lack of white stuff.
My Christmas cactus hasn’t bloomed this year. Alas, I don’t think I can attribute that to the strange weather. I “pruned” it last summer and I think I must have killed it, ironic given the fact that the fellow, from whose giant cactus I spliced it fifteen or twenty years ago, died this year. The original plant was well over forty years old, as I recall.
Another Christmas first for me this year was seeing the Santa Claus Parade live and in person! On a blustery day in November (one of the few) I went with my friends Stephen and Byron and their son Ronan (who’s just about 19 months old now). It was a lot of fun, and I think we picked up a few tips for an even better view next year. Ronan soaked up all there was to see and hear, and I finally got to see those “upside down” clowns face-to-face. Ronan caught a good look at Santa but, wouldn’t you know it, I was reloading my camera and practically missed him!
When I got the photos back from the store there were actually only a few from the parade itself. The rest were what leads me to a New Year’s resolution. I won’t take another picture of Perth streetscapes. As pretty a town as it is – and its fall colours were spectacular at Thanksgiving – I have accumulated so many pictures of the town I could probably publish a coffee-table book. Of course this doesn’t include any future family pictures which may, or may not, have Perth scenes in the background.
As 1998 winds down I’m watching a fair amount of CNN, to see what fate is in store for Bill Clinton. Sometimes it’s been difficult to distinguish the goings-on in Congress, and on the talking-head TV panels, from the Jerry Springer Show. I still get a bit of a rush from the body politic - the to-and-fro, be it in the States or Canada. Once in awhile I walk over to the Ontario Legislature to observe Question Period. There’s free admission and it’s a different sort of sport than, say, a National Hockey League game, where ticket-brokers aren’t above charging seventy-five bucks for the cheap seats. (I actually checked a couple of Saturdays ago walking past Maple Leaf Gardens.) Back to politics with a prediction: Ontarians, at least those outside Toronto, will re-elect Mike Harris.
Another past-time that’s been kind of growing on me is jazz music. For a number of years I’ve been an occasional telephone volunteer at CJRT-FM, a local listener-supported radio station. While its programming has always been a mixture of classical and jazz, the powers that be have recently expanded weekday jazz time from evenings only to afternoon-drive time and evenings. It’s been interesting to learn a little about this music and the eclectic life stories of its artists.
My health has been fairly stable all year; the only ups and downs have been with my weight. I think I’ve stabilized for now, but my 6’3” frame carried as little as 125 pounds earlier this year. I don’t think I’ve been that light since I was well under six feet tall. The viral load tests available this year are “ultra-sensitive” so, while no longer “undetectable”, my v.l. is fairly low – for which I am very grateful, if not occasionally complacent. I’ve been on a combination of steroids and testosterone – a shot in the hip of one or the other every two weeks – in hopes of getting my weight up. My doctor and I are going to give that a three month trial.
Well another Christmas is upon us, and 1999 isn’t too far away. This will be the year we hear – ad nauseum – hopes that the “Y2K bug” doesn’t bite.
All the best of the season!
Friday, December 5, 1997
Christmas 1997
It’s that time again - time to put the year into some sort of perspective. Forgive me if it’s my perspective. For example, I’ll leave extensive comment on the deaths of Diana and Mother Teresa (tragic the former, somewhat inevitable the latter) to more mainstream commentators on those year-end television shows.
My apartment smells of apple-cinnamon, thanks to a scented candle I found at Shopper’s Drug Mart, and I’m feeling quite “Christmasy”. Cards are arriving daily and music of the season - one theme, many variations - seems to be everywhere.
Downtown here I see such disparity between the breath-taking decorations at, say, BCE Place and the homeless folks trying to keep their butts warm on the sidewalk by sitting on cardboard as they “pan”. The beauty of the holiday lights adorning the Allan Gardens pavilion is awesome from the street, belying the dangers of walking through the park when daylight has gone (or even, occasionally, when it hasn’t!)
It’s strange how different childhood memories of Christmas come to the fore one year, then get stored away for goodness knows how many more. Case in point: I’ve been remembering how Mom used to organize the church’s junior and senior choirs to pile into cars on Sunday afternoons in December. We’d head off to two nursing homes out in the Quebec countryside - Mrs. Rankin’s in Huntingdon and the Aubin’s (or was it the Ovans’) in Ormstown - where we’d sing in the living-rooms and then go through the narrow hallways so as not to miss anyone confined to their beds.
Mom used to spend a night or two bundling up bags of red, green and white hard candies for us to give out. Some of the toothless residents must have scared the daylights out of me, although I don’t recall such a fear now. In fact, ever since my newspaper route, I’ve felt a pretty strong affinity with seniors. I was such a good boy!
I would have to say the highlight of 1997 has been my stable health, notwithstanding a three week flu straddling November and December. I achieved the ultimate goal of the AIDS “drug cocktail”, namely an undetectable viral load, in the final quarter of the year. (An even more sensitive test is supposed to be available next spring.) This, in no way, means that I’m AIDS-free but the virus has slowed to a crawl, for now, in terms of replication. The news media lately has reported an increasing drug “failure” rate. Perhaps because my best results with combination therapies were a little delayed I have yet to see any evidence of such “failure”. In any event I haven’t exhausted all the possible combinations available.
Another high point this year was my receiving a wrist-watch and plaque - from Mayor Barbara Hall if you please - for recognition of ten years of service at the AIDS Committee of Toronto. It was an exciting moment and I display both mementos proudly. I’m still quite busy in the community. I’ve just finished a two year term on my housing co-op’s board of directors, I serve on the AIDS Committee’s Advocacy Committee and the Toronto Hospital’s HIV Clinic Advisory Committee. I was recently acclaimed/elected to the Steering Committee of AIDS Action Now!, a local non-commercial, non-governmental activists’ group. In January it looks like I’ll be acclaimed as Communications Chair on the Board of Ruah: a Community of Faith, which I joined this year. (A couple of us have just published our first quarterly newsletter, which I’ll be editing.)
1997 was also the year of the hair! Since shaving my head (shaving cream and all) in September, 1995 I’ve been growing my hair - uninterrupted - to the point where it’s now pony-tail length. I’m feeling quite middle-aged hippie about the whole thing, in a nice way, and look forward to seeing how long this experiment will last (pun shamelessly intended!) A nice thick braid down to my waist kind of appeals to me. Grandma Chaplin and Uncle Homer will be rolling in their graves! I look at it this way. Why did Sir Edmund Hillary say he climbed Mount Everest? “Because it was there!” Same with my hair. Not everyone is as blessed as I am.
Thanks to the two week mail strike I’ve long since missed the deadline for cards leaving the country in time for Christmas. Although I had begun to think about my annual letter in plenty of time the aforementioned cold and flu combinations, which coincided with the postal strike, left me less than highly motivated to start writing.
I’m using a new computer, as opposed to my once trusty word processor-typewriter. To say it’s been a challenge, learning to use all this gear, doesn’t begin to describe some of my frustration. It might not seem so bad to be limping along now had I not experienced the delight of many of the bells and whistles when I first acquired the package in June. Alas, week after week, something seems to have gone wrong - mostly to do with the modem(s) and, therefore, access to the internet (which was really what compelled me to get a computer in the first place).
During my recent time of chills, sniffles and coughs I didn’t get out much other than to stock up on soup, milk and cat food as required. The second full day I was feeling better I eagerly went shopping with my friend Stephen. Shopping, usually “retail therapy” for me, seemed like mad cow disease that day. People, people, people, an inconsolable, whining four-year old in one of the check-out lines and stop and go traffic on every street except Mount Pleasant Road…eek!…and I wasn’t even driving! It was an exhausting afternoon, but exhilarating!
Over the last six months or so I’ve been trying to accept the fact that I may soon need bi-bifocals. I had resigned myself to this rite of passage having discovered - particularly when I had the flu - that I absolutely had to take my glasses off to read the newspaper (or the instructions on cough syrup bottles). Well I saw the eye doc for the second time in six months and she said “it’s up to you”, whether or not to take this step, so I’m waiting. I’ve been trying to age graciously - and, given my health, gratefully - but this eye-sight thing has rattled me, I’m the first to admit. I’m only thirty-eight!
Well I hope you’re having a great holiday season and that 1998 brings health and happiness!
My apartment smells of apple-cinnamon, thanks to a scented candle I found at Shopper’s Drug Mart, and I’m feeling quite “Christmasy”. Cards are arriving daily and music of the season - one theme, many variations - seems to be everywhere.
Downtown here I see such disparity between the breath-taking decorations at, say, BCE Place and the homeless folks trying to keep their butts warm on the sidewalk by sitting on cardboard as they “pan”. The beauty of the holiday lights adorning the Allan Gardens pavilion is awesome from the street, belying the dangers of walking through the park when daylight has gone (or even, occasionally, when it hasn’t!)
It’s strange how different childhood memories of Christmas come to the fore one year, then get stored away for goodness knows how many more. Case in point: I’ve been remembering how Mom used to organize the church’s junior and senior choirs to pile into cars on Sunday afternoons in December. We’d head off to two nursing homes out in the Quebec countryside - Mrs. Rankin’s in Huntingdon and the Aubin’s (or was it the Ovans’) in Ormstown - where we’d sing in the living-rooms and then go through the narrow hallways so as not to miss anyone confined to their beds.
Mom used to spend a night or two bundling up bags of red, green and white hard candies for us to give out. Some of the toothless residents must have scared the daylights out of me, although I don’t recall such a fear now. In fact, ever since my newspaper route, I’ve felt a pretty strong affinity with seniors. I was such a good boy!
I would have to say the highlight of 1997 has been my stable health, notwithstanding a three week flu straddling November and December. I achieved the ultimate goal of the AIDS “drug cocktail”, namely an undetectable viral load, in the final quarter of the year. (An even more sensitive test is supposed to be available next spring.) This, in no way, means that I’m AIDS-free but the virus has slowed to a crawl, for now, in terms of replication. The news media lately has reported an increasing drug “failure” rate. Perhaps because my best results with combination therapies were a little delayed I have yet to see any evidence of such “failure”. In any event I haven’t exhausted all the possible combinations available.
Another high point this year was my receiving a wrist-watch and plaque - from Mayor Barbara Hall if you please - for recognition of ten years of service at the AIDS Committee of Toronto. It was an exciting moment and I display both mementos proudly. I’m still quite busy in the community. I’ve just finished a two year term on my housing co-op’s board of directors, I serve on the AIDS Committee’s Advocacy Committee and the Toronto Hospital’s HIV Clinic Advisory Committee. I was recently acclaimed/elected to the Steering Committee of AIDS Action Now!, a local non-commercial, non-governmental activists’ group. In January it looks like I’ll be acclaimed as Communications Chair on the Board of Ruah: a Community of Faith, which I joined this year. (A couple of us have just published our first quarterly newsletter, which I’ll be editing.)
1997 was also the year of the hair! Since shaving my head (shaving cream and all) in September, 1995 I’ve been growing my hair - uninterrupted - to the point where it’s now pony-tail length. I’m feeling quite middle-aged hippie about the whole thing, in a nice way, and look forward to seeing how long this experiment will last (pun shamelessly intended!) A nice thick braid down to my waist kind of appeals to me. Grandma Chaplin and Uncle Homer will be rolling in their graves! I look at it this way. Why did Sir Edmund Hillary say he climbed Mount Everest? “Because it was there!” Same with my hair. Not everyone is as blessed as I am.
Thanks to the two week mail strike I’ve long since missed the deadline for cards leaving the country in time for Christmas. Although I had begun to think about my annual letter in plenty of time the aforementioned cold and flu combinations, which coincided with the postal strike, left me less than highly motivated to start writing.
I’m using a new computer, as opposed to my once trusty word processor-typewriter. To say it’s been a challenge, learning to use all this gear, doesn’t begin to describe some of my frustration. It might not seem so bad to be limping along now had I not experienced the delight of many of the bells and whistles when I first acquired the package in June. Alas, week after week, something seems to have gone wrong - mostly to do with the modem(s) and, therefore, access to the internet (which was really what compelled me to get a computer in the first place).
During my recent time of chills, sniffles and coughs I didn’t get out much other than to stock up on soup, milk and cat food as required. The second full day I was feeling better I eagerly went shopping with my friend Stephen. Shopping, usually “retail therapy” for me, seemed like mad cow disease that day. People, people, people, an inconsolable, whining four-year old in one of the check-out lines and stop and go traffic on every street except Mount Pleasant Road…eek!…and I wasn’t even driving! It was an exhausting afternoon, but exhilarating!
Over the last six months or so I’ve been trying to accept the fact that I may soon need bi-bifocals. I had resigned myself to this rite of passage having discovered - particularly when I had the flu - that I absolutely had to take my glasses off to read the newspaper (or the instructions on cough syrup bottles). Well I saw the eye doc for the second time in six months and she said “it’s up to you”, whether or not to take this step, so I’m waiting. I’ve been trying to age graciously - and, given my health, gratefully - but this eye-sight thing has rattled me, I’m the first to admit. I’m only thirty-eight!
Well I hope you’re having a great holiday season and that 1998 brings health and happiness!
Wednesday, December 4, 1996
Christmas 1996
I can’t remember ever feeling as far behind at Christmas as I have this year. Usually my letters and cards are mailed in the first two weeks of December.
The Christmas cactus has bloomed and, unfortunately, seems done for 1996. Would that I had been ready so early! I suppose I could have put a string of lights on the plant. It’s certainly big enough. I’ve been growing it for over ten years. The cuttings I planted at that time were from a plant I trimmed in St. Catharines. It was over forty years old then. A sorry slip of a prayer-plant, which I rescued from a Jesuit retreat centre in Guelph last spring, has begun to thrive. “Thrive” is probably overstating it.
“What does it all mean?” he asked rhetorically.
I promised myself that I would tone down the cat talk in this year’s letter. Past notes seemed to bring on a mini-avalanche of cat-related gifts! I no sooner get this typed out and Emma is stretched out, purring, in front of me on a rolled up afghan at the end of my couch (I’m at the other end with my lap-full, i.e. a word processor two times bulkier than a lap-top) and Blue seems to be sharpening her tongue on my right arm. Emma takes a dim view - literally (she’s squinting) - of Blue’s proximity. ‘nough cat talk! I’ve just been reminded of their important companionship and I shouldn’t apologize for that - even if we all know that I was always meant to have a dog!
I have two rather telling year-end stories, both signs of the times. With any luck I’ll still manage to get a couple of chuckles out of you.
First of all, Santa Claus has been evicted from this housing co-op (of which - for now - I am still a board member and, therefore, bound by rules of confidentiality). He was a chubby elf, if not always jolly, who played a prominent role at our Christmas parties past. Unfortunately he had trouble with commitment to his rent, despite two good incomes in the household, and his arrears got way out of hand - which the slackers on the last board should have dealt with. We’re hoping to garnish his supply of “Tickle Me Elmo” dolls! I hasten to add this wasn’t a heartless December eviction. Mr. Claus skipped out in the autumn. He still lives and works in the neighbourhood. See ya in court St. Nick!
The Christmas party in the lobby would have been one of his evenings to shine. We held our first annual dog pageant last week, and had plenty of cider and Christmas goodies to munch on. Everything, from two great danes wearing antlers to a dog and his owner dressed like angels, showed up!
I came back from the soiree and had a choice between watching Kathy Lee Gifford’s Christmas show or the umpteenth PBS fundraising presentation of “Les Miserables - Tenth Anniversary Concert“. (Before I could say “membership break” Channel 17 had snared me.) Kathy Lee didn’t ever stand a chance!
Story Number Two involves the fellow many of us would hold largely responsible for losses of shelter - and jobs - far more tragic than our Santa’s. For the second year in a row I have received a properly addressed fundraising letter from “Mike Harris - M.P.P. - Premier of Ontario”. I don’t know what mailing list he found me on! All I can say is he’s peeking up the wrong kilt sending such an appeal to me. I don’t expect, nor do I plan any attempts, to outdo last year’s response which was to enclose a couple sheets of toilet paper in his postage-paid envelope. Nothing too gross, just an extra little rub! Yet he wrote back this year! Evil? Marbles-deficient? Moi? Save the speculation for my eulogy which - miraculously - I expect much later than ever before in the history of my illness.
Periodic ultrasounds and, more recently, a CT scan of my uncomfortable guts have shown no trouble my doctors and I weren’t already aware of. I had almost forgotten the stress of awaiting test results. It seems to have been a recurring theme this year. Each test raises my anxiety level, to the point where I imagine worst-case scenarios, only to be given the good news that nothing new has been found. Prayer is seen to work most clearly in hindsight! I get more exercise sighing of relief than from any other activity, with the possible exception of walking. Just this week my T-4 count came back showing me at 56, low to be sure but five times greater than October! The increase is significant because it came just a month-and-a-half after I changed from Indinavir - one of the new protease inhibitors - to another, Ritonavir. This seemed to confirm that the new drug “cocktail” is working, and my specialist added Saquinavir to the pot for more effect. (I’d been on it before, and tolerated it, but switched to Indinavir because it was free while experimental. That’s what brought on the kidney “gravel”.)
Breakfast consists of milk, maybe a banana, and - as of last week - seventeen pills or capsules, about half of which are repeated in the evening. When that seems like alot, and it often does, I just remind myself that many folks who couldn’t - or wouldn’t - try new treatments are now dead. Millions more, in Africa and Asia, don’t have acce$$ to these promising medications. That was made clear at the AIDS conference last summer in Vancouver. Simple aspirin isn’t even available and palliative care consists of a warm hand to squeeze. I try to remind myself of that whenever I get discouraged. Goodness AIDS can be self-absorbing!
The trip to Vancouver was one of the highlights of my year. I am so grateful that I had leisure time before, during and after the conference. I can’t imagine flying into such a beautiful city, particularly since it was my first time there, then flying out on the last day of meetings. Many of the delegates did just that.
It’s only been in the last month or so that I’ve managed to put all of the pictures from the trip into one album, some 148 of them. A drawback of travelling alone is that I only managed to appear in a handful of shots, barely evidence that I was there!
Another honour in 1996 was to speak at the church’s AIDS vigil in September - “A Service of Remembrance, Hope and Healing” (or was that the one in Vancouver during the conference? It doesn’t really matter. Both emphasized the hope that’s come to light recently.)
With the hope of new treatments, I must confess, has come a feeling of being less certain than ever of what the future holds (as if any of us are!). I may just have to be prepared to live a lot longer, one day at a time. This may take a lot of adjusting, financial and otherwise. It’s only been the last nine months or so that promising new medicines have been available.
On the other hand the advances being made may be most helpful to the newly diagnosed (notwithstanding the doctor’s good news this week). In any case I’ve lived longer, and better, than I ever would have thought possible seven years ago. I think that’s the fourth year in a row I’ve written that at Christmas!)
The specialist I saw was very pleased with my state of health - the T-4 increase and a weight gain of three kilograms. I can attribute some of the weight gain to the time of year. On the second day of the church’s bazaar I bought six dozen home-made cookies for gifts. Well I have eaten these gifts - every last one of them! Could this be where the three kilos came from?
So many haven’t survived, as was poignantly clear at the Washington showing of the AIDS quilt. I understand it will never be displayed in one location again because of its unruly size. Many panels from it were in Vancouver for the conference, a selection of tributes from all over the world. They were unfolded in seperate panels of four all around the “500″ level of BC Place Stadium. Panels were also hanging in a beautiful atrium at their new public library.
As “The National” and Maclean’s are reporting this week we can only hope something in 1997 lifts us out of this stressful, uneasy mood Canada seems to be in. A little snow on the ground for about three days around Christmas would help for awhile.
Well I hope this finds you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and that the holidays are as happy as we can make them. Thanks for your love and support over the year. May God continue to “bless us every one!”
The Christmas cactus has bloomed and, unfortunately, seems done for 1996. Would that I had been ready so early! I suppose I could have put a string of lights on the plant. It’s certainly big enough. I’ve been growing it for over ten years. The cuttings I planted at that time were from a plant I trimmed in St. Catharines. It was over forty years old then. A sorry slip of a prayer-plant, which I rescued from a Jesuit retreat centre in Guelph last spring, has begun to thrive. “Thrive” is probably overstating it.
“What does it all mean?” he asked rhetorically.
I promised myself that I would tone down the cat talk in this year’s letter. Past notes seemed to bring on a mini-avalanche of cat-related gifts! I no sooner get this typed out and Emma is stretched out, purring, in front of me on a rolled up afghan at the end of my couch (I’m at the other end with my lap-full, i.e. a word processor two times bulkier than a lap-top) and Blue seems to be sharpening her tongue on my right arm. Emma takes a dim view - literally (she’s squinting) - of Blue’s proximity. ‘nough cat talk! I’ve just been reminded of their important companionship and I shouldn’t apologize for that - even if we all know that I was always meant to have a dog!
I have two rather telling year-end stories, both signs of the times. With any luck I’ll still manage to get a couple of chuckles out of you.
First of all, Santa Claus has been evicted from this housing co-op (of which - for now - I am still a board member and, therefore, bound by rules of confidentiality). He was a chubby elf, if not always jolly, who played a prominent role at our Christmas parties past. Unfortunately he had trouble with commitment to his rent, despite two good incomes in the household, and his arrears got way out of hand - which the slackers on the last board should have dealt with. We’re hoping to garnish his supply of “Tickle Me Elmo” dolls! I hasten to add this wasn’t a heartless December eviction. Mr. Claus skipped out in the autumn. He still lives and works in the neighbourhood. See ya in court St. Nick!
The Christmas party in the lobby would have been one of his evenings to shine. We held our first annual dog pageant last week, and had plenty of cider and Christmas goodies to munch on. Everything, from two great danes wearing antlers to a dog and his owner dressed like angels, showed up!
I came back from the soiree and had a choice between watching Kathy Lee Gifford’s Christmas show or the umpteenth PBS fundraising presentation of “Les Miserables - Tenth Anniversary Concert“. (Before I could say “membership break” Channel 17 had snared me.) Kathy Lee didn’t ever stand a chance!
Story Number Two involves the fellow many of us would hold largely responsible for losses of shelter - and jobs - far more tragic than our Santa’s. For the second year in a row I have received a properly addressed fundraising letter from “Mike Harris - M.P.P. - Premier of Ontario”. I don’t know what mailing list he found me on! All I can say is he’s peeking up the wrong kilt sending such an appeal to me. I don’t expect, nor do I plan any attempts, to outdo last year’s response which was to enclose a couple sheets of toilet paper in his postage-paid envelope. Nothing too gross, just an extra little rub! Yet he wrote back this year! Evil? Marbles-deficient? Moi? Save the speculation for my eulogy which - miraculously - I expect much later than ever before in the history of my illness.
Periodic ultrasounds and, more recently, a CT scan of my uncomfortable guts have shown no trouble my doctors and I weren’t already aware of. I had almost forgotten the stress of awaiting test results. It seems to have been a recurring theme this year. Each test raises my anxiety level, to the point where I imagine worst-case scenarios, only to be given the good news that nothing new has been found. Prayer is seen to work most clearly in hindsight! I get more exercise sighing of relief than from any other activity, with the possible exception of walking. Just this week my T-4 count came back showing me at 56, low to be sure but five times greater than October! The increase is significant because it came just a month-and-a-half after I changed from Indinavir - one of the new protease inhibitors - to another, Ritonavir. This seemed to confirm that the new drug “cocktail” is working, and my specialist added Saquinavir to the pot for more effect. (I’d been on it before, and tolerated it, but switched to Indinavir because it was free while experimental. That’s what brought on the kidney “gravel”.)
Breakfast consists of milk, maybe a banana, and - as of last week - seventeen pills or capsules, about half of which are repeated in the evening. When that seems like alot, and it often does, I just remind myself that many folks who couldn’t - or wouldn’t - try new treatments are now dead. Millions more, in Africa and Asia, don’t have acce$$ to these promising medications. That was made clear at the AIDS conference last summer in Vancouver. Simple aspirin isn’t even available and palliative care consists of a warm hand to squeeze. I try to remind myself of that whenever I get discouraged. Goodness AIDS can be self-absorbing!
The trip to Vancouver was one of the highlights of my year. I am so grateful that I had leisure time before, during and after the conference. I can’t imagine flying into such a beautiful city, particularly since it was my first time there, then flying out on the last day of meetings. Many of the delegates did just that.
It’s only been in the last month or so that I’ve managed to put all of the pictures from the trip into one album, some 148 of them. A drawback of travelling alone is that I only managed to appear in a handful of shots, barely evidence that I was there!
Another honour in 1996 was to speak at the church’s AIDS vigil in September - “A Service of Remembrance, Hope and Healing” (or was that the one in Vancouver during the conference? It doesn’t really matter. Both emphasized the hope that’s come to light recently.)
With the hope of new treatments, I must confess, has come a feeling of being less certain than ever of what the future holds (as if any of us are!). I may just have to be prepared to live a lot longer, one day at a time. This may take a lot of adjusting, financial and otherwise. It’s only been the last nine months or so that promising new medicines have been available.
On the other hand the advances being made may be most helpful to the newly diagnosed (notwithstanding the doctor’s good news this week). In any case I’ve lived longer, and better, than I ever would have thought possible seven years ago. I think that’s the fourth year in a row I’ve written that at Christmas!)
The specialist I saw was very pleased with my state of health - the T-4 increase and a weight gain of three kilograms. I can attribute some of the weight gain to the time of year. On the second day of the church’s bazaar I bought six dozen home-made cookies for gifts. Well I have eaten these gifts - every last one of them! Could this be where the three kilos came from?
So many haven’t survived, as was poignantly clear at the Washington showing of the AIDS quilt. I understand it will never be displayed in one location again because of its unruly size. Many panels from it were in Vancouver for the conference, a selection of tributes from all over the world. They were unfolded in seperate panels of four all around the “500″ level of BC Place Stadium. Panels were also hanging in a beautiful atrium at their new public library.
As “The National” and Maclean’s are reporting this week we can only hope something in 1997 lifts us out of this stressful, uneasy mood Canada seems to be in. A little snow on the ground for about three days around Christmas would help for awhile.
Well I hope this finds you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and that the holidays are as happy as we can make them. Thanks for your love and support over the year. May God continue to “bless us every one!”
Monday, December 4, 1995
Christmas 1995
If doing something for three years constitutes a tradition I believe my Christmas letter fits that category, and I’m pleased to include you on my list once again.
What is it that George Burns says about the simple pleasure of waking up? I can relate! Here we are into another festive season – actually I’ve been dabbling in it since last August – and I am filled to overflowing with gratitude for having lived with manageable health to see it come once again. I’d say this is a pretty good starting point as I bring season’s greetings and reflect on 1995 in its twilight.
As I write this I am three weeks past having completed a seminar “At A Journal Workshop – Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability” based on the work of one Ira Progoff, Ph.D. Sounds like “History of the World – Part One”, I know, but it was very inspiring and grounding and I am so glad that circumstances were such that I could participate. While I’m reluctant to sum it up too tightly it’s clear that my creative embers were stirred beneath some dry kindling. Poof! I have a painting to do - I even know where it has to hang - a play to write and a journal that needs fleshing out.
It’s been a year of celebrations – Claude’s exquisite party for my brother Craig’s fortieth birthday on Mother’s Day weekend, Pride Day, Joy’s birthday at the beginning of September, Mom’s sixty-fifth birthday gathering later that month, William’s fiftieth, my Uncle George’s engagement announcement (he’s twice widowed), and the elegant weekend that was pulled together for my birthday in October. These occasions have each served to underline the importance of celebrating togetherness while we can. I feed off such wonderful memories. It’s too bad memories don’t have calories as I could use the weight! I’m feeling a little discouraged that I can’t put on a few kilos.
A letter of tribute to Mom and Dad, which I submitted to the United Church Observer late last summer, has taken on a life of its own and is being expanded to a feature-length story. Rather than surprise them with the letter at Christmas, which was my original intention, the editors thought it was appropriate to interview Mom and Dad in their home and I am proud to say that they have consented. Hopefully the finished product will be out by Easter. (I’d say our family knows a little about resurrection, n’est-ce pas?) Now if only I could convince them how selfless it is to share their experiences of the last few years. They just don’t seem to get how special they are, as if the love and faith they’ve shown isn’t outstanding. Anyway, it’s out of my hands now.
Emma and Blue continue to give me great joy, notwithstanding the fact that Blue – right now – insists on placing her heat-seeking self between me and this word processor. We’re managing. This will be Emma’s first Christmas with me and, as usual, I’m leaving home on Christmas Day. They’ll be well looked after I trust. This is also the first Christmas without the human inspiration, if you could call her that, for Emma’s name – Mrs. Lapointe’s housekeeper, my parents’ next door neighbour.
My Emma’s name is short for Emerald, the colour of the eyes which glare from her black and gold face. It’s interesting how both she and Blue are named for their eye colour, yet Blue came to me already named. Emma moved in last winter when her pet human died upstairs. Imagine me talking about people as pets! There’d be none of that nonsense if I had a dog, but I’m happy not to have to adhere to a schedule of walks.
My rug hooking kit hasn’t seen much action since I started banging out my holiday letters. To think I worried that I would have it done in no time at all. I now have no such worries! It’s a great diversion but it takes alot of stamina for sustained work.
My energy has shifted steadily inward, if not completely indoors, these past few months paralleling the take-it-or-leave-it attitude I’ve developed towards walking – at least on cold and windy days like we’re experiencing as I write this. A few days ago I had a good walk, refilling my jug of cat-litter at the pet store, picking up some prescription renewals at the hospital pharmacy, dropping off a photo to be restored at Black’s and shopping for poster frames. Yesterday I was content to watch television and listen to some CDs (once in awhile at the same time!) Today, while walking home from church, I saw a picture that just had to be taken at Riverdale Farm so I continued home, grabbed my camera, and trudged back across the slush and snow. I ended up shooting an entire roll of film at the farm and in Cabbagetown, which I hope to share by next Christmas! Wow! I can’t remember when I last dared to think there could be a “next Christmas”. This reminds me of a semi-resolution, I made early this year, to try to live as though I might make it through 1995 relatively well. A fortune cookie I ate in Chinatown East last March said, “Good health will be yours for a long time”. That, I thought, was worth taping to the refrigerator door!
I bought a “bundle-buggy” a few days ago. I had one that Jim had given me but I didn’t like it because it didn’t have front wheels and I was forever tripping on it as it hit various things on the sidewalk. This new one has four wheels and would double as a walker with a little engineering. Not that I need a walker yet. The neuropathy in my feet, while disconcerting, has felt better since I traded my Doc Marten boots for walking shoes this summer.
Last week I saw a nutritionist at the Toronto Hospital’s Immunodeficiency Clinic. There are signs in my routine blood-work of too much sugar intake and/or retention. I had an ultrasound on my gut a month or two ago and the cryptosporidium I’ve been treating for over a year now has – not unexpectedly – spread further inwards and is inflaming the plumbing to and from my liver. So far I haven’t turned yellow so I guess we’re on top of things! As I said earlier I’m pleasantly surprised to have done as well as I have for as long as I have. It’s a full-time job – feeling well – but it’s not always intense.
My mood has been quite good this year, at least since the low ebb last January. It surprised me how the one year anniversary of Jim’s death hit me so hard. Like I haven’t done enough grief work to know that nothing should surprise me! I’ll have my guard up this January but I know the pain has changed – for the better - over time. I’m in no rush to follow him, as seemed to be the case in early 1995.
A really valuable new friendship this fall has been with my “buddy” Stephen. He’s a volunteer with the AIDSCare program at MCC Toronto, a real life-line let me tell you. Stephen and I spend every Saturday together chatting, going to movies, just “hangin’ out”. I’m fond of both he and his partner, Byron. They’re both originally from Cape Breton (which, you may know, people from there talk about like an eleventh province!). While circles of friends have died over the years – I stopped counting at about thirty-five a couple of years ago when I wailed about it on television – there is new life. And the folks that have been here for the long haul take on special importance.
My holiday itinerary has been every bit as full as in years past – singing in the choir Sunday mornings, for last weekend’s beautiful candlelight service and at the always special Christmas Eve service at Roy Thomson Hall, with a Sing-along Messiah at Massey Hall thrown in for good measure. What a season!
My sister Janice is coming in from Hamilton for the Roy Thomson Hall service. Then we’ll take the train to Smiths Falls together on Christmas morning. Although Lynn won’t make it up from New Brunswick for Christmas it was a bonus to see her twice – in May and September - this year.
Well, that just about sums up my year, and my state of heart and mind. In a nutshell I’m feeling a whole lot better than I was last year, even if I’ve slid a little physically (Hallelujah anyway!)
I look forward to a wonderful holiday season, full of new and old memories, and some “r & r” while I pig out in Perth!
What is it that George Burns says about the simple pleasure of waking up? I can relate! Here we are into another festive season – actually I’ve been dabbling in it since last August – and I am filled to overflowing with gratitude for having lived with manageable health to see it come once again. I’d say this is a pretty good starting point as I bring season’s greetings and reflect on 1995 in its twilight.
As I write this I am three weeks past having completed a seminar “At A Journal Workshop – Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability” based on the work of one Ira Progoff, Ph.D. Sounds like “History of the World – Part One”, I know, but it was very inspiring and grounding and I am so glad that circumstances were such that I could participate. While I’m reluctant to sum it up too tightly it’s clear that my creative embers were stirred beneath some dry kindling. Poof! I have a painting to do - I even know where it has to hang - a play to write and a journal that needs fleshing out.
It’s been a year of celebrations – Claude’s exquisite party for my brother Craig’s fortieth birthday on Mother’s Day weekend, Pride Day, Joy’s birthday at the beginning of September, Mom’s sixty-fifth birthday gathering later that month, William’s fiftieth, my Uncle George’s engagement announcement (he’s twice widowed), and the elegant weekend that was pulled together for my birthday in October. These occasions have each served to underline the importance of celebrating togetherness while we can. I feed off such wonderful memories. It’s too bad memories don’t have calories as I could use the weight! I’m feeling a little discouraged that I can’t put on a few kilos.
A letter of tribute to Mom and Dad, which I submitted to the United Church Observer late last summer, has taken on a life of its own and is being expanded to a feature-length story. Rather than surprise them with the letter at Christmas, which was my original intention, the editors thought it was appropriate to interview Mom and Dad in their home and I am proud to say that they have consented. Hopefully the finished product will be out by Easter. (I’d say our family knows a little about resurrection, n’est-ce pas?) Now if only I could convince them how selfless it is to share their experiences of the last few years. They just don’t seem to get how special they are, as if the love and faith they’ve shown isn’t outstanding. Anyway, it’s out of my hands now.
Emma and Blue continue to give me great joy, notwithstanding the fact that Blue – right now – insists on placing her heat-seeking self between me and this word processor. We’re managing. This will be Emma’s first Christmas with me and, as usual, I’m leaving home on Christmas Day. They’ll be well looked after I trust. This is also the first Christmas without the human inspiration, if you could call her that, for Emma’s name – Mrs. Lapointe’s housekeeper, my parents’ next door neighbour.
My Emma’s name is short for Emerald, the colour of the eyes which glare from her black and gold face. It’s interesting how both she and Blue are named for their eye colour, yet Blue came to me already named. Emma moved in last winter when her pet human died upstairs. Imagine me talking about people as pets! There’d be none of that nonsense if I had a dog, but I’m happy not to have to adhere to a schedule of walks.
My rug hooking kit hasn’t seen much action since I started banging out my holiday letters. To think I worried that I would have it done in no time at all. I now have no such worries! It’s a great diversion but it takes alot of stamina for sustained work.
My energy has shifted steadily inward, if not completely indoors, these past few months paralleling the take-it-or-leave-it attitude I’ve developed towards walking – at least on cold and windy days like we’re experiencing as I write this. A few days ago I had a good walk, refilling my jug of cat-litter at the pet store, picking up some prescription renewals at the hospital pharmacy, dropping off a photo to be restored at Black’s and shopping for poster frames. Yesterday I was content to watch television and listen to some CDs (once in awhile at the same time!) Today, while walking home from church, I saw a picture that just had to be taken at Riverdale Farm so I continued home, grabbed my camera, and trudged back across the slush and snow. I ended up shooting an entire roll of film at the farm and in Cabbagetown, which I hope to share by next Christmas! Wow! I can’t remember when I last dared to think there could be a “next Christmas”. This reminds me of a semi-resolution, I made early this year, to try to live as though I might make it through 1995 relatively well. A fortune cookie I ate in Chinatown East last March said, “Good health will be yours for a long time”. That, I thought, was worth taping to the refrigerator door!
I bought a “bundle-buggy” a few days ago. I had one that Jim had given me but I didn’t like it because it didn’t have front wheels and I was forever tripping on it as it hit various things on the sidewalk. This new one has four wheels and would double as a walker with a little engineering. Not that I need a walker yet. The neuropathy in my feet, while disconcerting, has felt better since I traded my Doc Marten boots for walking shoes this summer.
Last week I saw a nutritionist at the Toronto Hospital’s Immunodeficiency Clinic. There are signs in my routine blood-work of too much sugar intake and/or retention. I had an ultrasound on my gut a month or two ago and the cryptosporidium I’ve been treating for over a year now has – not unexpectedly – spread further inwards and is inflaming the plumbing to and from my liver. So far I haven’t turned yellow so I guess we’re on top of things! As I said earlier I’m pleasantly surprised to have done as well as I have for as long as I have. It’s a full-time job – feeling well – but it’s not always intense.
My mood has been quite good this year, at least since the low ebb last January. It surprised me how the one year anniversary of Jim’s death hit me so hard. Like I haven’t done enough grief work to know that nothing should surprise me! I’ll have my guard up this January but I know the pain has changed – for the better - over time. I’m in no rush to follow him, as seemed to be the case in early 1995.
A really valuable new friendship this fall has been with my “buddy” Stephen. He’s a volunteer with the AIDSCare program at MCC Toronto, a real life-line let me tell you. Stephen and I spend every Saturday together chatting, going to movies, just “hangin’ out”. I’m fond of both he and his partner, Byron. They’re both originally from Cape Breton (which, you may know, people from there talk about like an eleventh province!). While circles of friends have died over the years – I stopped counting at about thirty-five a couple of years ago when I wailed about it on television – there is new life. And the folks that have been here for the long haul take on special importance.
My holiday itinerary has been every bit as full as in years past – singing in the choir Sunday mornings, for last weekend’s beautiful candlelight service and at the always special Christmas Eve service at Roy Thomson Hall, with a Sing-along Messiah at Massey Hall thrown in for good measure. What a season!
My sister Janice is coming in from Hamilton for the Roy Thomson Hall service. Then we’ll take the train to Smiths Falls together on Christmas morning. Although Lynn won’t make it up from New Brunswick for Christmas it was a bonus to see her twice – in May and September - this year.
Well, that just about sums up my year, and my state of heart and mind. In a nutshell I’m feeling a whole lot better than I was last year, even if I’ve slid a little physically (Hallelujah anyway!)
I look forward to a wonderful holiday season, full of new and old memories, and some “r & r” while I pig out in Perth!
Friday, December 2, 1994
Christmas 1994
It’s the coldest day of the winter so far and my windows are covered with snow. Having mistakenly ditched this letter once already, along the shoulder of the information super highway, I need to try again quickly if I’m going to get it mailed early enough. As if zapping the letter wasn’t bad enough I then started printing this one and found I needed a new ribbon cartridge. I dashed over to Yonge Street to buy one. It did me good to get out. It brought a smile to my day.
I am struck by the big changes that have occurred in 1994, most of which don’t lead me to gales of laughter. So much of the year seems to have been filtered through depression, grief and isolation fa la la la la la la la la. I was one of the last to realize that the tail of depression has, once again, been wagging the dog that is life.
I can see that I withdrew quite a bit this year or, at least, changed directions. It didn’t kill me either although, at times, it seemed like I was buried alive. I left my support group at the AIDS Committee of Toronto just in time for my “care group” at church to fold. (I’m working on getting into another one.)
Committing to the church choir has been good for me. I need human contact with friends once in awhile – who doesn’t? – to take my pulse, figuratively speaking.
When my glass is half empty this is the year that my heart seemed to break when my friend Jim passed away, the same-sex spousal rights debate was lost – although I really enjoyed the work involved – and my beloved Tiger died suddenly two weeks ago. When the glass is half full I’m grateful that Jim didn’t have to suffer any longer, the gay community made our presence felt at the provincial legislature in a mostly respectable way, and Tiger was given another year of life that didn’t seem possible when she was so sick fourteen months ago.
I was among the noise-makers at the legislature the day the vote was taken on whether or not to extend spousal benefits to same-sex partners, as is done in common-law heterosexual cases. The public galleries, filled to the rafters, erupted in chaos when the votes had been tallied (we lost). Some of us managed to get through metal detectors with whistles (plastic) which we blew as we went limp and were dragged outside by security guards, shouting “Shame! Shame!” Actually once the cameras had gone somewhere else, I offered to walk rather than be dragged. Still I was kind of handed over people’s heads until I was outside where I spotted evangelist Ken Campbell. I brow-beat him all the way out to the traffic of Queen’s Park Circle. This had to be among my favourite moments of 1994!
It has seemed to be a struggle, unlike past years, to get into the holiday spirit. Happily it has nudged me this week. My Christmas cactus may not bloom in time but my mood has picked up.
Yesterday I went on a mission to buy Christmas cards. I might as well have been looking for a deal on gold, frankincense and myrrh. In store after store clerks flashed me vacant looks as if to say “Do you mean Hallowe’en boxes?” when I asked for UNICEF cards. I had to settle for some a little less philanthropic.
Yes I’m sad to report that Tiger couldn’t have a tenth life and died in late November. It was the same weekend last year, the American Thanksgiving holiday, that Tiger had gone into the vet’s so terribly ill. I miss her a lot. Blue has missed her too but is also quite happy to muscle in on Tiger’s territory. She really warmed up to me once she figured out that Tiger wasn’t coming back. I’m grateful to have her company. Now if only she would eat in the kitchen. (I used to feed them in separate rooms as Tiger would fight for Blues’ food when she had finished her own.)
Looking back over an entire year makes me realize that my health has slipped a little – and yet I can still look after myself if we overlook eating which continues to be a challenge!) It used to be that whenever my physical condition faltered I made up for it mentally or spiritually, and vice versa. This past summer and fall I seemed to be inconsolable at times, yet resisting treatment for depression again. Unfortunately my stalling meant it took much longer to feel better once I had decided that I wanted to. Even prayer didn’t comfort me at times – especially those times when I refused to pray!
My vocal chords are getting plenty of work these days. Tonight there’s a holiday pageant at church that I’m singing in, choir practices every Thursday, Tafelmusik’s “Sing Along Messiah” is next week, followed by a service of lessons and carols in the evening and Christmas Eve at Roy Thomson Hall. We’ve assembled a choir of more than seventy voices to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. This is the third or fourth year my church has taken over the concert hall for a community Christmas.
I’ll be heading for Perth on Christmas Day. This will be the first time in a few years that we will all be together. Janice will go from Hamilton, Craig and Claude will drive up from Montreal, and Lynn is flying from Fredericton. Hopefully we’ll do lots of eating and sleeping.
Poor Lucien Bouchard! Our family knows what he’s going through. Necrotising Fasciitis is the same bacteria that made it necessary to “fillet” Mom a couple of years ago. She didn’t need anything amputated and scraped out of it with just a hernia after three months in hospital. She’s written him a letter of good wishes but I’m certain she hasn’t been converted to separatist.
It’s been such fun watching a neighbour’s kid playing in the snow for the first time. I hope Santa finds him. Did you hear about the idiot burglar down in the States who got stuck in a chimney? I saw it on “Rescue 9-1-1”. He told cops he figured he could fit down the chimney since Santa always does! They had to break up the chimney to get him out, stereo and all!
Well another year is almost behind us. I hope this finds you and your loved ones healthy and I send best wishes for 1995.
I am struck by the big changes that have occurred in 1994, most of which don’t lead me to gales of laughter. So much of the year seems to have been filtered through depression, grief and isolation fa la la la la la la la la. I was one of the last to realize that the tail of depression has, once again, been wagging the dog that is life.
I can see that I withdrew quite a bit this year or, at least, changed directions. It didn’t kill me either although, at times, it seemed like I was buried alive. I left my support group at the AIDS Committee of Toronto just in time for my “care group” at church to fold. (I’m working on getting into another one.)
Committing to the church choir has been good for me. I need human contact with friends once in awhile – who doesn’t? – to take my pulse, figuratively speaking.
When my glass is half empty this is the year that my heart seemed to break when my friend Jim passed away, the same-sex spousal rights debate was lost – although I really enjoyed the work involved – and my beloved Tiger died suddenly two weeks ago. When the glass is half full I’m grateful that Jim didn’t have to suffer any longer, the gay community made our presence felt at the provincial legislature in a mostly respectable way, and Tiger was given another year of life that didn’t seem possible when she was so sick fourteen months ago.
I was among the noise-makers at the legislature the day the vote was taken on whether or not to extend spousal benefits to same-sex partners, as is done in common-law heterosexual cases. The public galleries, filled to the rafters, erupted in chaos when the votes had been tallied (we lost). Some of us managed to get through metal detectors with whistles (plastic) which we blew as we went limp and were dragged outside by security guards, shouting “Shame! Shame!” Actually once the cameras had gone somewhere else, I offered to walk rather than be dragged. Still I was kind of handed over people’s heads until I was outside where I spotted evangelist Ken Campbell. I brow-beat him all the way out to the traffic of Queen’s Park Circle. This had to be among my favourite moments of 1994!
It has seemed to be a struggle, unlike past years, to get into the holiday spirit. Happily it has nudged me this week. My Christmas cactus may not bloom in time but my mood has picked up.
Yesterday I went on a mission to buy Christmas cards. I might as well have been looking for a deal on gold, frankincense and myrrh. In store after store clerks flashed me vacant looks as if to say “Do you mean Hallowe’en boxes?” when I asked for UNICEF cards. I had to settle for some a little less philanthropic.
Yes I’m sad to report that Tiger couldn’t have a tenth life and died in late November. It was the same weekend last year, the American Thanksgiving holiday, that Tiger had gone into the vet’s so terribly ill. I miss her a lot. Blue has missed her too but is also quite happy to muscle in on Tiger’s territory. She really warmed up to me once she figured out that Tiger wasn’t coming back. I’m grateful to have her company. Now if only she would eat in the kitchen. (I used to feed them in separate rooms as Tiger would fight for Blues’ food when she had finished her own.)
Looking back over an entire year makes me realize that my health has slipped a little – and yet I can still look after myself if we overlook eating which continues to be a challenge!) It used to be that whenever my physical condition faltered I made up for it mentally or spiritually, and vice versa. This past summer and fall I seemed to be inconsolable at times, yet resisting treatment for depression again. Unfortunately my stalling meant it took much longer to feel better once I had decided that I wanted to. Even prayer didn’t comfort me at times – especially those times when I refused to pray!
My vocal chords are getting plenty of work these days. Tonight there’s a holiday pageant at church that I’m singing in, choir practices every Thursday, Tafelmusik’s “Sing Along Messiah” is next week, followed by a service of lessons and carols in the evening and Christmas Eve at Roy Thomson Hall. We’ve assembled a choir of more than seventy voices to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. This is the third or fourth year my church has taken over the concert hall for a community Christmas.
I’ll be heading for Perth on Christmas Day. This will be the first time in a few years that we will all be together. Janice will go from Hamilton, Craig and Claude will drive up from Montreal, and Lynn is flying from Fredericton. Hopefully we’ll do lots of eating and sleeping.
Poor Lucien Bouchard! Our family knows what he’s going through. Necrotising Fasciitis is the same bacteria that made it necessary to “fillet” Mom a couple of years ago. She didn’t need anything amputated and scraped out of it with just a hernia after three months in hospital. She’s written him a letter of good wishes but I’m certain she hasn’t been converted to separatist.
It’s been such fun watching a neighbour’s kid playing in the snow for the first time. I hope Santa finds him. Did you hear about the idiot burglar down in the States who got stuck in a chimney? I saw it on “Rescue 9-1-1”. He told cops he figured he could fit down the chimney since Santa always does! They had to break up the chimney to get him out, stereo and all!
Well another year is almost behind us. I hope this finds you and your loved ones healthy and I send best wishes for 1995.
Wednesday, December 1, 1993
Christmas 1993
It’s dusk. My indoor garden is laced with tiny Christmas lights, some climbing and some right on the floor. Candles are lit here and there, mostly there, while I peck away at this tabletop word processor. Tiger and Blue are snuggling in my mother’s doll-crib, one of The Bay’s loose-eyed 1993 “Charity Bears” is holding a picture of yours truly at the AIDS Memorial, from the Globe & Mail’s front page last summer, and Barbra Streisand’s Christmas album – which I like to call “Babs Does Bethlehem” – is playing in the background. Life is good in this moment.
Thanks to my friend Alana my living room growing area has been transformed into a holiday season garden. I have come to appreciate a lot of perspective that I’ve been sensing over the last several months. To wake up on the same pillow that I hugged going to sleep, hopefully headache-free, with Tiger sprawled out in front of me, and Blue sitting ever so politely at the foot of the bed, makes many days seem like Christmas. This is not to say that I haven’t occasionally been sorry, even angry, on some mornings as I’ve realized that I hadn’t physically left this world overnight (or whenever a few restful moments became a nap). Through my healing process, however, I’m discovering that I’m ready, even excited, to see “the other side”. Yet, on balance, I’ve been so happy on Earth lately that I’m quite prepared to stick around as long as God wants me here. I didn’t realize I was missing that sense of peace until I had found it! Jesus, waking up his friends at Gethsemane – in modern-day, comedic English, would be translated as “Hello! Helllooo!” (Linking Easter with Christmas is hardly coincidental nor overstated at all!)
Most of this letter started out as a quarterly dispatch to a friend, Nancy. However, as the stories lengthened, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to write individual Christmas letters to my many friends – and there are so many! While I appreciate most of God’s gifts, most of the time, I want a vacation not a vocation! When I was down in the laundry room late last month (which, come to think of it, was the last time I did a laundry!) I was pleasantly surprised by a great idea inspired, I admit with thanks, by one family friend named Richard. When Richard, also known at various times as “Rev” and/or “Dick”, was minister of Valleyfield United Church in the mid-1960s (which I’m pleased to remind anyone born before 1959 were among the very first years of my current earthly journey) the Chaplin home began receiving regular letters from him at Christmas. I believe Richard had a message to share widely yet lacked the time, energy, or both, to write individual letters to the people who had meant so much to him in the preceding year. After all Richard was, and still is, human.
Alas, I digress. I hereby acknowledge the potential benefits of an editor but my therapist JoAnne – for one – would know that I’d probably never agree to anyone’s suggested changes. So there!
As difficult as it may be to believe I have, again, digressed. My life has seemed, to me, to have been on “fast forward” for the last little while and I’ve been reluctant to press the “pause” button. Unfortunately I haven’t pushed “record” much either so this letter is doubling as a long overdue journal entry. I could write a book about the last three weeks alone! The VCR analogy is hypothetical in that I don’t, yet, even own one. Luckily some of my crazy friends do!
The illness, necessary recuperation, treatments, and on-going weight loss – which began in earnest last spring (not surprisingly, I don’t even know this Ernest guy – have changed me so much, for the better I would say confidently, that I now celebrate the faith at my disposal to get through, as yet unknown, pain. (Among the many expressions with which I annoy some souls is the often misunderstood “Pain is inevitable, suffering optional”.) Please be assured that, had anyone tried that line on me as recently as Thanksgiving, and I’ll bet some considered it, the “Butterball” would have been the stuffing! At the moment I’m happy to report that, notwithstanding the mini-stresses of life, I cannot recall a period of deeper and more sustained peace. I know it’s quite possible that the days ahead could be every bit as horrible as these ones are wonderful – but they may not. Ultimately God will provide a balance, even if it isn’t clear in this earthly life.
You’ll know that I’m not completely batty if I tell you that often, nearly always these days, I am aware that I may sound/read like I’m one stick of kindling short of a cord! It took most of the summer to learn how to relax through these episodes, and I’m really glad to still be around to enjoy them. A spirit has awakened me, thank God.
As you may be aware Tiger is still recovering from her lengthy illness. Even as recently as three weeks ago I was afraid I would need to have her put down. Thankfully it was not her time and she has bounced back from death’s threshold (what’s this, life seven now?) When she first became sick in early October I was hosting my mother and father for the weekend (the one before Thanksgiving). This was the first time I’ve had the space, and we’ve all had enough health simultaneously, to be together for a whole weekend in my surroundings. It was a very meaningful weekend for me – and almost too much for Tiger! Within a few days she was at the vet’s with a feeding tube in her gut. She walked around for weeks wearing a girdle-style bandage, but didn’t seem to be getting much better. Then a month, or so, ago she needed quick attention from her vet due to a complication with the tube. I left her at the clinic with a clear understanding that she was not very well and may not last too long. As merry as my way could be, under the circumstances, I went on. (My wish to avoid ending the preceding sentence with a preposition while, at the same time, getting a laugh seems out of reach!)
The following morning, after talking to the vet by telephone and learning that Tiger’s hold on life remained tenuous – yet hopeful – I set out for CITY-TV, where I had made plans to watch the live production of “Lunch Television”. I also hoped to be suitably inspired to spout off about AIDS at “Speaker’s Corner”. I was, and the results were shown on CITY – so friends and perfect strangers alike have informed me. Once “L.T.” had gone off the air, I latched onto a school tour of the CITY-TV studios, libraries, and so on. It was really interesting and I would not hesitate to recommend, to anyone, such a tour as a diversion from days when we perceive the world, with one voice, to be telling us to “Get a life!”
From the corner of Queen and John Streets I rushed over to the new CBC Broadcasting Centre, where I was to sit in on a “live taping” of “Disc Drive”, the afternoon classical music show on CBC Stereo hosted whimsically by Jurgen Gothe who was visiting from his customary Vancouver perch. It was in the audience, at this taping, that I met Judy – a “Gothe-ic” first grade teacher from Ohio. Before the day was out we had watched “Disc Drive” and two tapings of the following night’s “Royal Canadian Air Farce” show. Judy offered to accompany me to the vet’s if there was any possibility that I’d have to put Tiger down. I gratefully accepted the support.
When we arrived at the vet’s and saw, in fact, that Tiger was very much alive – and recovering more quickly than we ever could have imagined – we were so wound up that we decided to have tea at my place and allow Judy to meet Blue. Then we went for lunch and the last time I saw Judy she was driving out of her hotel’s garage and I was getting on the subway with the remnants of a three day headache. It had been an exciting few days, which Judy and I both attribute to God’s grace.
The next morning, empowered by a little prayer and caffeine, I took the streetcar to MCC Toronto. The day would be full of evidence of God’s healing presence in my life, from noticing the sun emerging from beneath the recent cloudiness and rain – and realizing that my headache had lifted – to the Reverend Hawkes admitting to have strayed from his prepared evening message (yes I went to both services in case I’d miss something!), the admission coming well after the power of the Holy Spirit/Higher Power/The Force/God had, for me at least, worked through Brent’s impromptu sermon. I need no other evidence of a living, sustaining God – but such evidence seems to be in greater abundance every day!
Tiger came home, full of life, last week. I hope she’s with me for the long haul. I think she could cope with losing me more easily than I could lose her. What me dramatic?? Such matters as sick cats must seem awfully trivial to people who have things other than AIDS or cancer to deal with at Christmas! I’ll read that again slowly, if need be, then remember that no one’s circumstances are any worse or better. Condition: Life. Prognosis: Terminal. To quote Bette (or was it Joan?), “So???” It’s easier, perhaps, for some of us to appear to be more blunt about these things than it is for the people we’re leaving behind.
I may have mentioned, in previous letters, how very ill my dear friend, Jim, has been of late. He’s now in the terminal stages of AIDS-related lymphoma. Yet I have observed in him a nicely balanced mixture of acceptance and hope. It’s a sense of realism that makes the most out of each “well” moment. I will not claim to know precisely, detail by detail, what he is going through but I think, as he and I (or was it him and I?) discussed during a recent tete a tete at the hospital, our journeys recently have covered much of the same territory. There is, after all, more than one way to get to the same place, the same space, the same peace. I wish I could convince everyone who loves me, and is concerned for me, that I will be okay. It’s the ones left in the departure lounge who will have a tough time. I know that I have a new and exciting understanding of what Terry, Andrew and others have told my soul with their eyes – that they, too, were ready and at peace. I hope they know how much I appreciate seeing that.
As we draw the curtains on another year, here’s hoping for the best in 1994!
Thanks to my friend Alana my living room growing area has been transformed into a holiday season garden. I have come to appreciate a lot of perspective that I’ve been sensing over the last several months. To wake up on the same pillow that I hugged going to sleep, hopefully headache-free, with Tiger sprawled out in front of me, and Blue sitting ever so politely at the foot of the bed, makes many days seem like Christmas. This is not to say that I haven’t occasionally been sorry, even angry, on some mornings as I’ve realized that I hadn’t physically left this world overnight (or whenever a few restful moments became a nap). Through my healing process, however, I’m discovering that I’m ready, even excited, to see “the other side”. Yet, on balance, I’ve been so happy on Earth lately that I’m quite prepared to stick around as long as God wants me here. I didn’t realize I was missing that sense of peace until I had found it! Jesus, waking up his friends at Gethsemane – in modern-day, comedic English, would be translated as “Hello! Helllooo!” (Linking Easter with Christmas is hardly coincidental nor overstated at all!)
Most of this letter started out as a quarterly dispatch to a friend, Nancy. However, as the stories lengthened, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to write individual Christmas letters to my many friends – and there are so many! While I appreciate most of God’s gifts, most of the time, I want a vacation not a vocation! When I was down in the laundry room late last month (which, come to think of it, was the last time I did a laundry!) I was pleasantly surprised by a great idea inspired, I admit with thanks, by one family friend named Richard. When Richard, also known at various times as “Rev” and/or “Dick”, was minister of Valleyfield United Church in the mid-1960s (which I’m pleased to remind anyone born before 1959 were among the very first years of my current earthly journey) the Chaplin home began receiving regular letters from him at Christmas. I believe Richard had a message to share widely yet lacked the time, energy, or both, to write individual letters to the people who had meant so much to him in the preceding year. After all Richard was, and still is, human.
Alas, I digress. I hereby acknowledge the potential benefits of an editor but my therapist JoAnne – for one – would know that I’d probably never agree to anyone’s suggested changes. So there!
As difficult as it may be to believe I have, again, digressed. My life has seemed, to me, to have been on “fast forward” for the last little while and I’ve been reluctant to press the “pause” button. Unfortunately I haven’t pushed “record” much either so this letter is doubling as a long overdue journal entry. I could write a book about the last three weeks alone! The VCR analogy is hypothetical in that I don’t, yet, even own one. Luckily some of my crazy friends do!
The illness, necessary recuperation, treatments, and on-going weight loss – which began in earnest last spring (not surprisingly, I don’t even know this Ernest guy – have changed me so much, for the better I would say confidently, that I now celebrate the faith at my disposal to get through, as yet unknown, pain. (Among the many expressions with which I annoy some souls is the often misunderstood “Pain is inevitable, suffering optional”.) Please be assured that, had anyone tried that line on me as recently as Thanksgiving, and I’ll bet some considered it, the “Butterball” would have been the stuffing! At the moment I’m happy to report that, notwithstanding the mini-stresses of life, I cannot recall a period of deeper and more sustained peace. I know it’s quite possible that the days ahead could be every bit as horrible as these ones are wonderful – but they may not. Ultimately God will provide a balance, even if it isn’t clear in this earthly life.
You’ll know that I’m not completely batty if I tell you that often, nearly always these days, I am aware that I may sound/read like I’m one stick of kindling short of a cord! It took most of the summer to learn how to relax through these episodes, and I’m really glad to still be around to enjoy them. A spirit has awakened me, thank God.
As you may be aware Tiger is still recovering from her lengthy illness. Even as recently as three weeks ago I was afraid I would need to have her put down. Thankfully it was not her time and she has bounced back from death’s threshold (what’s this, life seven now?) When she first became sick in early October I was hosting my mother and father for the weekend (the one before Thanksgiving). This was the first time I’ve had the space, and we’ve all had enough health simultaneously, to be together for a whole weekend in my surroundings. It was a very meaningful weekend for me – and almost too much for Tiger! Within a few days she was at the vet’s with a feeding tube in her gut. She walked around for weeks wearing a girdle-style bandage, but didn’t seem to be getting much better. Then a month, or so, ago she needed quick attention from her vet due to a complication with the tube. I left her at the clinic with a clear understanding that she was not very well and may not last too long. As merry as my way could be, under the circumstances, I went on. (My wish to avoid ending the preceding sentence with a preposition while, at the same time, getting a laugh seems out of reach!)
The following morning, after talking to the vet by telephone and learning that Tiger’s hold on life remained tenuous – yet hopeful – I set out for CITY-TV, where I had made plans to watch the live production of “Lunch Television”. I also hoped to be suitably inspired to spout off about AIDS at “Speaker’s Corner”. I was, and the results were shown on CITY – so friends and perfect strangers alike have informed me. Once “L.T.” had gone off the air, I latched onto a school tour of the CITY-TV studios, libraries, and so on. It was really interesting and I would not hesitate to recommend, to anyone, such a tour as a diversion from days when we perceive the world, with one voice, to be telling us to “Get a life!”
From the corner of Queen and John Streets I rushed over to the new CBC Broadcasting Centre, where I was to sit in on a “live taping” of “Disc Drive”, the afternoon classical music show on CBC Stereo hosted whimsically by Jurgen Gothe who was visiting from his customary Vancouver perch. It was in the audience, at this taping, that I met Judy – a “Gothe-ic” first grade teacher from Ohio. Before the day was out we had watched “Disc Drive” and two tapings of the following night’s “Royal Canadian Air Farce” show. Judy offered to accompany me to the vet’s if there was any possibility that I’d have to put Tiger down. I gratefully accepted the support.
When we arrived at the vet’s and saw, in fact, that Tiger was very much alive – and recovering more quickly than we ever could have imagined – we were so wound up that we decided to have tea at my place and allow Judy to meet Blue. Then we went for lunch and the last time I saw Judy she was driving out of her hotel’s garage and I was getting on the subway with the remnants of a three day headache. It had been an exciting few days, which Judy and I both attribute to God’s grace.
The next morning, empowered by a little prayer and caffeine, I took the streetcar to MCC Toronto. The day would be full of evidence of God’s healing presence in my life, from noticing the sun emerging from beneath the recent cloudiness and rain – and realizing that my headache had lifted – to the Reverend Hawkes admitting to have strayed from his prepared evening message (yes I went to both services in case I’d miss something!), the admission coming well after the power of the Holy Spirit/Higher Power/The Force/God had, for me at least, worked through Brent’s impromptu sermon. I need no other evidence of a living, sustaining God – but such evidence seems to be in greater abundance every day!
Tiger came home, full of life, last week. I hope she’s with me for the long haul. I think she could cope with losing me more easily than I could lose her. What me dramatic?? Such matters as sick cats must seem awfully trivial to people who have things other than AIDS or cancer to deal with at Christmas! I’ll read that again slowly, if need be, then remember that no one’s circumstances are any worse or better. Condition: Life. Prognosis: Terminal. To quote Bette (or was it Joan?), “So???” It’s easier, perhaps, for some of us to appear to be more blunt about these things than it is for the people we’re leaving behind.
I may have mentioned, in previous letters, how very ill my dear friend, Jim, has been of late. He’s now in the terminal stages of AIDS-related lymphoma. Yet I have observed in him a nicely balanced mixture of acceptance and hope. It’s a sense of realism that makes the most out of each “well” moment. I will not claim to know precisely, detail by detail, what he is going through but I think, as he and I (or was it him and I?) discussed during a recent tete a tete at the hospital, our journeys recently have covered much of the same territory. There is, after all, more than one way to get to the same place, the same space, the same peace. I wish I could convince everyone who loves me, and is concerned for me, that I will be okay. It’s the ones left in the departure lounge who will have a tough time. I know that I have a new and exciting understanding of what Terry, Andrew and others have told my soul with their eyes – that they, too, were ready and at peace. I hope they know how much I appreciate seeing that.
As we draw the curtains on another year, here’s hoping for the best in 1994!
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