New Westminster

It was actually predictable that there would be a problem with picking up the ashes. My sister made every breath difficult in life; why would anything be different in death?  The police officer spoke to me through bulletproof glass, telling me that their storage space was in the process of moving, and that everything was packaged up for transport, making it impossible to retrieve my property until January 1st.  I explained to her that the officer who called specifically said I should come to get my property and did not mention anything about waiting until January 1.  What is the property? she asked me.  I think I hesitated a little strangely because I had not anticipated discussing it.  Then I told her.  Her demeanor changed.  She asked my name and date of birth, and she stepped away from the glass and went to a computer and began typing.  Tracy said, Breathe.  You're not breathing.  

The officer came back to the little window in the glass and asked me my father's name and birthdate, and my sister's name and birthdate.  More typing.  I asked for a key to the washroom while she typed more things.

Then another officer joined her and they murmured things I could not hear through the glass, and then she asked me to sit down.  Tracy and I sat and I tried to breathe and breathe and breathe some more.  It shouldn't be such a big fucking deal to pick up a box of dirt, but you know what, it is.

Eventually the second officer came out and gave me a business card, telling me he was with Victims' Services.  I'm not sure who the victim was meant to be, my sister or me.  He told me exactly the same thing that the first officer told me, that it was not possible to retrieve my sister's ashes because they would be packed up along with all the stolen bicycles and jewels and fur coats and guns and whatever the hell else is kept in police storage.  (He didn't say any of that; I just made it up.  He just said he couldn't retrieve the ashes.)

I told him I understood, and he stared at me a lot, doing the kind eyes thing that people do when they want you to know that they really see you.  I guess he had to learn that to be able to work for Victims' Services.  He said it would take about a week before he could get them out of the storage area wherever they were currently located, and offered to call me at that time.  I asked him if there was some way he could send the ashes to me rather than having me come back to pick them up.  I explained I had taken the day off work and gave me the kind eyes some more, which I was sort of hating.  He said he would find out if that was possible, and that was it.

Tracy stood on the sidewalk with me while I smoked.  How convenient that I have been carrying a mostly empty stale pack of cigarettes for the last two months since the last time I went to a staff party.  I could not have been more pleased to find these stale gross things in my bag.  I smoked just one, and then gave the remaining four to a guy who walked by us to stop myself from smoking all of them.

And that was it.  A completely unproductive day.  I returned home and opened my work email, which had 46 messages in it that I could not resist dealing with because I am neurotic and determined to burn myself out.


*

legwork

Today I had a bit of a melt at the end of the workday.  I never cry at work.  Which is not to say I never have, but it's a really rare thing.  I think I cried once in the first nine years, and I wasn't crying about work.  I was crying because I was scared my husband was ill, like seriously ill, and for some reason it really hit me when I was at work.

The only other time I remember crying at work was during the Crazy Sue years (the latter 9), when I was about to be force transferred because that crazy woman had decimated my theatre program so it got too small for two teachers.  That didn't end up happening, but it was a hard time.

The thing is that I don't cry at work.  Not normally.  And when I do, it's big stuff, and it's not in front of anyone.  It's just me.

Today I was about to leave when the secretary asked me if I was okay, and it turns out I wasn't.  I ended up sniffling all over myself with the secretary, and then K came over and joined the party.  I hadn't wanted to talk to K about what has been going on because of professional boundaries... but by this point I guess I just didn't care anymore about being professional.  I just kind of let it out.  I don't know if that was a good idea.  But it turns out I am out of ideas.  Seriously out of ideas.  I'm so tired.

Some of this is my own damn fault, my tendency to take on work that isn't mine.  And some of it is just bad luck, that for whatever reason, all the new registrants with severe mental health issues seem to be on my caseload.  And some of it (much of it) is that my counselling colleagues are weak, and don't help when there is need for help (except for N).  And most of it is that we have a new VP who is untrained and not doing his job, which blocks me from doing my job.  And the pressure has been mounting.  I'm just tired.

I had booked tomorrow off anyway because I am owed a few lieu days from working in the summer.  If I hadn't, I would probably have needed to.  I need a day to be away from this mess and go deal with the other mess - the fact that my sister's ashes are hanging out at a police station in a nearby city.  This was something I'd talked myself into doing alone, but T came back and reinvited herself.  So there's that, the fact that I have a dear friend who recognizes that I am the kind of person who sometimes needs to be asked twice.


*

bell

So far I have not retrieved my sister's ashes from the police station, which is okay for now.  They will rest there for 90 days.  There is a little bit of time to decide upon a plan.  It will take up a lieu day, of which I have three to spend.  I do not like NWM city where the police station is located.  My memories of this city have only to do with fighting in court for the custody of J, my sister wearing my old hiking boots and clearly too high to form coherent thoughts beyond telling the judge over and over that she loves her daughter as though it is her capacity for love that is on trial, as opposed to her capacity to provide food, shelter, and safety.  It still makes my stomach hurt.  I do not like this city but I have to go back there to collect my sister's ashes.

Although I appreciate T's kindness so much I wonder if I should just go alone.  Her offer made me wobbly in a way that has since made me ask myself if I should stop being an idiot and go deal with the grown up world like a grown up.  I might just do that.  I haven't decided yet.

D's sister may be dying too - we might have that in common.  When I drove him home (home means foster home) on Wednesday after school he told me I was pretty okay for a white lady.  I side-eyed him while we sat at a traffic light.  I'm not really totally white, I said.  Having none of that, he said, You're actually number one for a white lady.  This kid busts my heart into a million pieces again and again.  Fuck.

*

my sister's ashes

My sister's ashes have me more rattled than I would have expected.  I guess being confronted with her ashes again after thinking they were gone from my world is strange.  It opens up channels that seemed closed, and it stirs up memories that were sleeping quietly.

I meant to tell T on Thursday but Thursday felt too emotionally raw.  Probably because I told J that morning which shook us both a bit.  And T was happy and bubbly and talky and I just didn't want to talk about it.

This morning I had a meeting with the VP about the measles outbreak.  She wanted my advice about how to approach teachers about not being punitive to the students who were not allowed to attend school because they were either unvaccinated or didn't have immunization records.  She was wanting a way to evoke empathy for those students.  And I started to tell her that my belief is that the students who are in the "excluded" category are many of the same students who are already at risk, because the same parents who were too disorganized to keep records or get their children immunized are the same parents who don't help their kids with homework, are the same parents who don't read their kids bedtime stories, are the same parents who are also at risk... and so forth.  And as I was saying this the truth of it was so overwhelming I almost couldn't breathe.  I wanted to tell her my own immunization records were lost and my parents didn't know if I'd been immunized or if I'd had measles, but I suddenly couldn't speak.

I told T about my sister's ashes today instead, shortly after the meeting with the VP.  I did not cry.  But I have realised that T is my person I can cry with.  I have never really had anyone in my life that I could cry with and feel good about it.  I am not a person who cries much or cries easily.  I almost always choose silence over tears.  Which is why I am quiet so often, perhaps.  It is certainly why everyone else in my family spoke at my sister's funeral and I did not.  I appreciate the fact that as I get older I see myself learning to speak through tears when I need to.  And I appreciate that I have made a friend who will be with me when I cry.  T texted me tonight to ask if she could take a day off work with me to go to the police station and get the ashes together.  I was thinking about the day I went to the funeral home to plan my sister's cremation and how alone I felt doing this terrible thing by myself.  And then I was thinking that this moment, the moment I received T's message, was one of the times I have felt most supported in my whole life.


*

or something like it.

The police called my parents to inform them that "human remains" linked to them had been found in the course of a criminal investigation.  By this they meant my sister's ashes had been found.  Her slimy ex-boyfriend had them, and apparently abandoned them, which surprises me not in the least.  Nor does the notion that he would somehow be connected to a criminal investigation.

Now I get to go and pick them up at the police station.  (And do what with them?)  I hope J will want to scatter them rather than keep them, but I won't push her.  It's her mother.  She will have to decide.  She was always annoyed that he had the ashes in the first place, so maybe this will bring her some peace.

*

Roy

Our neighbour's wife had cancer for two years.  She passed away yesterday.  When I try to imagine that kind of loss it feels impossible.  I imagine he had two years to prepare himself for her death; if he is anything like me he thought about it all the time and tried to figure out ways to prevent it, ways to live with it, ways and ways and ways.  But it still seems impossible to me, impossible that a person can lose their life partner and still keep on living their life.  It is my worst fear, truly my worst fear.  Sometimes Shawn tells me he plans to die first so he doesn't have to go through this exact thing, and he assures me that science is on his side.  Statistically women outlive men.  It scares me, and I don't think it's funny.  He thinks he's funny.  Or maybe he really is scared, like me.  Both things could be true at the same time.  Perhaps we need a suicide pact.  Canada has been improving their assisted suicide laws; by the time we are ready maybe we can have a civilized conversation and make an informed decision.  It isn't funny.

*

November 1

That time I said October might not really be as difficult as I tell myself it is, I was mistaken.  October really is the worst.  It's over now.

When my sister was in the first rehab facility, one of her counsellors asked me if I was being an "enabler", because I was bringing her cigarettes.  Not because I was bringing them willingly, but because my sister was threatening to leave rehab if she had no cigarettes, and I was folding into that fear.  It certainly was not the first time I heard the word enabler, but perhaps the first time I had the pointy end of it poked at me.  And it stung a little and  I wasn't sure what to do with it.  In a way I would say it made me angry because I felt, at the time, that the counsellor could not possibly understand my choice and my life and all the complicating factors that went into my decision-making process.  And this, of course, is both true and not true at the same time.

Last week I was in the photocopy room making copies of worksheets from a book I'd purchased for one of my kids, and my new VP stopped to ask me about it, with a few questions about why I had purchased the book, and why I was doing the photocopying, rather than the classroom teacher.  He didn't say the word enabler but I heard it anyway.

Sometimes when I am enabling people I mistake my behaviour for being awesome.  I think I'm being supportive of my colleagues and I think I'm being supportive of my kids.  But maybe what I'm really doing is running myself ragged for the pleasure of people developing the expectation that I will continue to do so.  And maybe I'm disempowering people who may need me to let them find their own power.  But then the kids pay the price while the adults flounder - and I can't stomach it.  I don't know what all this means.  I need to think more.

*

Last week RG called me to tell me that the top HR guy called him to ask if he wanted to come to work at my school, and trade jobs with The Twit.  This is a fascinating development.  RG, unfortunately, did NOT want to trade jobs with The Twit because he likes the job he has, and so the information pipeline closed there.  But it left a million questions whirling through my head.  Is she finally being moved/disciplined?  Will someone else be replacing her?  Or does RG's refusal mark the end of this line?  What is happening?

*