The Coal Miner's Wife

Insanity ruled this week.

On top of all the errands and tasks associated with creating a non-profit organization, there have been animal health issues to deal with (everyone's okay) and family issues to deal with on top of that (everyone's not quite okay).

My maternal grandmother, a sweet little woman who has been fighting cancer for years, was rushed to the hospital in extreme pain a couple of days ago. It was touch and go but she is stable for the moment.

When this happened my poor mother was in the Dominican Republic - my parents were on a vacation they'd been planning for months. They're still there.

I think it's been torture for them for the following reasons:

• Tropical vacation ruined.
• Loved one deathly ill, thousands of miles away, while
• they can't get an earlier flight home, and
• they can't even really get a phone connection out of the country.
  

There they are, sitting in paradise, which is now a prison for them, waiting for the hours to tick down until their regularly scheduled flight, hoping that Nanny's health doesn't deteriorate further while they are waiting, and also hoping there are no flight delays once it's time to fly.

I've been calling my mother multiple times a day to give her updates. She has a lot of trouble phoning out of the country, but incoming calls seem to go through fine, and only get dropped once in a while. Every time we talk, we schedule the next phone call so that she'll be sure to be in her room. Then, when the time comes, I phone her old homestead in Cape Breton, get an update, and then phone the Dominican and relay information.

They'll be home tomorrow morning, and after exchanging bathing suits for snow boots, will be on their way to Cape Breton. I think Mark and I are going sometime next week.


I have memories of arriving at that warm little house as a child and getting to choose from three different kinds of home-made pie to eat. I remember wandering the wild blueberry fields behind the house. If we picked enough blueberries, another home-made pie would be made. It seemed that everyone in town stopped by that house at one time or another, long enough to enter the back door and sit at the kitchen table for a cup of tea or, as appropriate, a drink of moonshine (again, home-made).

It will be good to go back, even under these circumstances. I will enter the door and see my mother and her sisters busy at the kitchen counter, instead of my Grandmother. We'll have tea; we'll talk. Everything will be the same but different.

Photo courtesy of my mother.