Queen for a Night.

I could have been someone young, thin, sexy, hot, a talented singer, dancer, entertainer, just like the people sitting next to me on stage at the Tidemark Theater last Friday night. The world was my oyster. My mind was free to be whoever I chose. In public, on stage and raising money for any cause I could think of.

Tina Turner was up there raising money for people with red roofs. Michael Buble was raising money for the Clothes for Dogs society, PINK was raising money for the fitness of cats, and I am pretty sure it was  Beyonce raising money for the Checkers for Children Foundation.  I didn't pick up what Arnold Schwarzeneggar's mother was raising money for but I can well imagine.

I was sitting next to Jennifer Aniston who spoke passionately about her cause: The ducks, the ducks in central park. They are dying you know, it's the mud. They need a new irrigation system to put air inside the mud so the ducks can live.

I have been short and fat all my life. Smart? Yes. Loyal? Yes. A figurehead in my family? Yes, I think so. Charitable? The first to go to bat for a worthy charity? Absolutely. I even have some nice jewelry and happen to look good in hats. But what the hell was I thinking?  In my deep state of hypnosis, with my imagination on crack apparently, I announced to the entire theatre that I was Queen Elizabeth, in a perfectly crisp upper class British accent, and I was raising money for the men in the British Parliament to be able to have ladies undergarments to wear under their suits (because you know, according to Elizabeth Windsor, they are all cross dressers and terribly mortified to go into  Marks and Spencer's and buy their own brassieres.)

WTF?

Why was I not Angelina Jolie (beautifully sculptured cheek bones, not an ounce of fat on her and gets to sleep with Brad Pitt - dammit) No. I am an 82 year old short plump slightly bad tempered monarch who gets to sleep with Prince Philip every second Thursday and one Saturday a month......come on!!!!

Now my excuse is I don't remember any of this. Well, I sort of do now that the fog of hypnosis is wearing off, and of course everywhere I have gone in the three days since has generated giggles, smirks, whispers, and in Walmart, one man in the cucumber section asking me if I was still "her majesty". An older lady held the door open in the bank today and I thought that wasn't right so I said so. She just bowed and said "Your majesty".  Of course going to work this morning was not helpful. I gather the Queen of England was not above copping a feel when the hypnotist, Wayne Lee, suggested to me that when the music started he would appear to be the hottest, sexiest man alive and I was going to dance with him. There was nothing prim and proper about it. We slow danced.  I grabbed his buttocks. Twice.

Then it got out I guess that Wayne Lee told certain people on stage that whenever he turned his back to us we would believe he was butt naked. My boss decided to try this today at work. Several times. Let's just say he's no Wayne Lee!

I learned later that if I was to ever play in a famous orchestra, I would be the drummer. Somewhere in between Keith Moon and someone with Parkinsons whose meds haven't kicked in yet. I also learned that I suck at being a butterfly and am fairly certain I exacerbated my Carpel Tunnel syndrome while fluttering on stage showing my 'best moves'.

The only reason I was there was because I had written an article about the event for my newspaper, where I am a small town reporter (often reminded of this when angry people phone up because they don't like what I wrote.) So I got two free tickets. I invited Jennifer Aniston aka Jacquie from sales to go with me from the office. Neither of us thought for a second we would "go under" and almost didn't go up on stage until the hypnotist said "you will feel like you have had the best sleep ever". Simultaneously we looked at each other and said 'we're in'. How can you tell we have kids at home.

'Jennifer' was worried she was going to take her clothes off. She asked me time and time again leading up to the night, as if I KNEW, "I am not gonna take my clothes off am I?" She didn't, but she did run her fingers suggestively through the hypnotist's hair after the Queen of England was finished fondling his ass.

We remained in character for the entire intermission with the audience being instructed to not let any of us leave the building. Our job was to go out into the lobby and get donations for our cause. We were also asked for autographs. When word got out that the Queen was raising money for transvestites, well, let's just say I had a line up of subjects waiting to toss me a quarter if I would just repeat - again- what I was raising money for. Reportedly my accent stayed intact. I was stoic, slightly pompous, and refused to sign somebody's arm because, according to her majesty, it was 'impertinent."

When we returned to the stage, Wayne Lee collected the money and said he was donating it to Hospice. A great cause. Especially because I have felt like dying ever since the morning after because I cannot go anywhere without someone referencing my royal heritage. This town is not big enough for me and Liz.

I couldn't sleep that night when I got home because, yes, it's true, I already felt I had put a good night's sleep in. I went to the follow-up seminar the next day with the sole intent of writing about it, but instead I was drawn into the philosophy and spirit behind the concept of the power of suggestion, exploring the unlimited potential of the human mind which is obviously capable of leading us anywhere.

I have had a tough couple of years. Stress. Grief. Disappointment. Fear. Did I already list stress?This guy's sole mission is to help people get from where they are to where they want to be. and achieve that with gusto. I am usually too tired for gusto.

But if it takes the Queen of England banging on a drum and saving all the members of parliament from Victoria's Secret, if it takes her majesty to get to the bottom of things and do so with the voice of my beloved (deceased) mum, then so be it. 

I'm in.

Operation Weasel Removal: AKA the ferret, the sledgehammer and my kitchen.

Sunday is a day of rest, right? I like to think of it as such, especially with my life as I am lucky to rest, alone with my thoughts, free of demands made of my mother status, even whilst on the toilet. In fact, going there must send out a red alert to the previously occupied children that it is time to have a big fight with each other, make the dog yelp, break a window, or tell the Jehovah's witness at the door that "mom is going poo, she will be there in a second."

I have to plan my sleep-in days like a military operation. It requires a great deal of intelligence on "the enemy" (aka my children and pets and even my mother who, as an old person, goes to bed at like 7 pm, is up bright and early at 6 am and likes to call!) When her husband does this it is even worse because he sounds really really cheerful.

I am telling you, it is a war out there! A war against the most basic of human rights.....SLEEP!

                                          That's me third from the right ..marching like a warrior.

Reconnaissance,  counter-insurgency, target acquisition, perhaps a convoy to ensure my peace and quiet in restful, mouth-open slumber for just a couple more hours.

Ya' think????????????

Today is a perfect example of a planned Sunday morning sleep in. The insurgents??? Three teenagers, a ferret, and a sledge hammer and my dogs.

This is how it went down.

Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m. Phone rings. My son is calling me from the soon-to-be-vacant house I am putting up for sale and currently working on FIXING IT UP A  LITTLE!!

"Hi mom? Can I tear the kitchen apart?"

Me, thinking he is looking for something to eat, "No there is no food there anymore."

Him, irritated, like I am supposed to know exactly why he needs to "tear my kitchen apart", "My ferret stuck her head in a hole by the dishwasher, well, sort of a hole. We have to take it apart, we have a sledge hammer."

Me...silence as I try to wake up a little from my intended noon sleep in mission.

"What hole?" I ask.

Capital letters now because he is annoyed and talking to me like I am a deaf dense old lady. |"IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN, WE JUST HAVE TO CHOP OUT SOME STUFF AND TAKE THE CUPBOARD APART."

Me..."Well I guess if yo have to do this to save the ferret's life, ok, but......"

Him, "That's all we needed to know."

Click.

Then I hear my cell phone beep and since I have one eye open anyway, I reach over and look.

Here is the photo he sent me.

(please note all kitchen cupboard doors had been ON yesterday when I was there CLEANING up the kitchen!) And I think that's a drill on the counter next to someone's shoes!!!

 And this is NOT my ferret....I don't care for ferrets...they make me stand on a chair when I see one.....it is not even supposed to be at the house.

So Operation Ferret Recovery was completed with the ferret being alive and well and drinking alot (as I am right now) with, sadly, the cupboard doors "accidentally" splitting in half (I suspect the sledge hammer combined with teenage panic) and the bottom shelf of the under-the-sink cupboard suffering grave injuries.  Not to mention to carved hole in the corner to the left of the ferrets head....I am sure this will all make for glorious selling features!!

My son said that he and his friend would "look for" some wood clue today and try to glue the cupboard back to a whole from two halves.

So, I hung up the phone, rolled over and went back to sleep, hoping to survive the "War on Slumber." Problem is my dogs were determined not to wave the white flag.

My daughter Emma who got into bed to sleep with me suddenly asked " What's that smell?"
I guess one, or five of the dogs decided to drop some "biological" weapons because they had been kept contained too long. Dammit.

So I gave up. And not quietly. I kind of had a tantrum. I threw the covers back dramatically mumbling a profane run-on-sentence that certainly lacked decorum, stomped out of bed and right onto an improvised "land mine" left by one of my loose-boweled canines.

This was not my finest hour.

Happy Birthday to my Mother.

Everything was great until my mother turned 60.

We are a family known for great parties, and we had one planned for her 60th.

But around noon on her 60th birthday we decided to cancel the celebration. It would just seem in such bad taste to celebrate.

Her birthday had become tainted.

It was September 11, 2001.

When I was supposed to be baking a rather lavish, creative and slightly complicated cake, I was sitting in front of the television watching CNN interview women who had been widows for a few hours, watching images so horrific that I couldn't quite comprehend them. The day those planes crashed and thousands of lives ended, life would be joined at the hip by this historic event. 

We had a small celebration a few days later. It made me sad that someone as loving and giving as my mother, a woman whose birth should be celebrated, especially by me, was now overshadowed by evil.

My mother was 18 when she had me. In 1960 that was not something people could quite comprehend either, an unwed mother. So my grandparents sent her off to the United Kingdom to stay in a home until she had me, sparing her the shame and ridicule that would have occurred in her home town. Those were different times back then. You couldn't even say the word "pregnant" on television. T.V. couples had to be shown sleeping in separate beds. The idea of a music video involved Gene Kelly with tap shoes on singing in the rain.

There had been some suggestions about abortion, and adoption. 

At 18, and a "young" 18 from what I have been told,  she stood up for me and would not let anyone take me away, before birth or afterwards. As a result I was adopted by my grandparents, another courageous act by  my mother, done out of love and at the  sacrifice of her feelings. She did what was best for me, not for her. I had a great childhood, and although she went on to have three other children, as a mother myself I know it had to hurt her to see me interact with my mother, HER mother, call HER  mom, while I was told my "real" mother was my older sister. I don't care how old you are, or whether you have had other children who see you as their mother, that had to hurt.

When my mum passed away, my mother stepped in and gave me the opportunity to still have a mum, so far I have had that blessing into my early 50's. She has been a grandmother to my children and to me she has been my best friend, someone I cannot imagine living without. She has been my shelter in what has seemed to be a never ending storm in the last 15 years of my life.  I cannot imagine going a day without talking to her. 

She has not had an easy life. She has had more than her share of dark times, pain, heartache, and situations that most people would  find hopeless. She never gave up. She never lost her ability to laugh. She never lost her affinity for kindness and generosity.

Today is her 72nd birthday.

 I was watching some of the anniversary coverage and speeches, remembrances, videos made of "where are they now", widows, children who were born after the event and never met their fathers, the dogs of 9/11, and stories that emerged from the ashes of the Pentagon, World Trade Centre and Flight 93 that literally dissolved into the ground in a field far away from its intended target. Because of heroes. Like my mother.

And it was then that it occurred to me, that in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy we witnessed incredible amounts of hope, love, and courage.

 In almost every way this is a story of a miracle struggling to shine through the darkness. For many it was not a day that changed their life for the worse. Instead, things got better. The way people lived their lives, priorities changed, we appreciated each other more, people found love again, people forgave each other, estranged families were reunited, heroes were identified, and resilience seemed to be the theme that emerged from what was intended to break the spirit of innocent people.

For too long, my mother's birthday has been overshadowed by the terrorist attack. It just seemed inappropriate to be festive while the rest of the free world observes a somber anniversary.

But while we should not overlook what happened we need to remember that good was born on this day too.

My mother is one of those good things.

She also symbolizes through living her life, heroic choices, extraordinary courage, resilience hope, faith, and love.

I think she was meant to be born on September 11th, albeit 60 years before this unspeakable act, because it is totally o.k to celebrate what emerged from that day.

 My mother is the personification of all that comes from hardship, sadness, pain, and darkness. 

She is the light of my life. She is the reason I am here. She is the reason I want to keep being here. I wish I was as resilient as she has been in her life. I will never reach the gold standard she has set in her 72 years here, but I hope she has many more birthdays so I can keep on trying.

Happy Birthday to my mother.  You are my 9/11/41 hero.

I Believe in Yesterday.

We’re all going to die.

 So what are you going to do with the final days of the life you have?

 Tomorrow comes quickly and so do your lifetime of tomorrows. 

Why is it that the people who realize what is truly important in life are often the ones whose life has been cut short by terminal illness, who have had a near death experience, or who are witnessing a loved one pass on?

We make so many mistakes in our lives. When it comes to family, those seem to be the biggest ones, the ones we regret or the ones we hurry to remedy when the grim reaper comes calling.

The bitter truth is that as each day passes it is one step closer to no more hello's, no more hugs, no more I love you's, no more family dinners, no more playing, no more family arguments/ drama that we often, actually, get lessons from, no more memories.

My regret is not spending all the time I could with my parents when I was a teenager. At the time I didn't think that those years would be my last decade with my mum and dad who passed within a year of each other when I was 23 years old. If I could just get some of those years back, or have been given hindsight, but that didn't happen and I have to live having missed those opportunities to create more memories, to learn more from them, to show my appreciation for everything they had done for me. And, simply, more time to love each other.

I was an only child, and when my parents died I felt very alone. I did not have cousins or aunts and uncles or grandparents even, to provide me respite and comfort during my grief and panic and loneliness. 

When I got married I made a conscious decision to have a large family. And that I did. I wanted to bring lives into the world who would have other people close to them, to support them, to rally for them, to love them. 

The best laid plans......

My marriage ended, something I had not expected or anticipated as we loved each other tremendously. But we made mistakes and we grew apart, we got angry, we stopped communicating, the fairy tale ended. I was left, more or less, to raise my seven children, all under the age of 13. I did the best I could with the best of intentions. My children often reassured me that I was doing a good job. They often demonstrated their love for me. I thought we were o.k.

The best laid plans.....

It is one thing when you get divorced from your spouse.

It is quite another when your child divorces you.

In my case, two of my children left me.

This happened after they were married/living together and had children of their own, the lights of my life, my grandchildren. I miss them terribly. Piece by piece, I try to remember and absorb their essence deep into my soul where it cannot escape.

The reasons given were "It's complicated" by one and just sudden, unprovoked silence by the other, and when I pushed repeatedly for an explanation, a brief note saying "our family was not his primary concern anymore and there would be no contact for the foreseeable future."

What did I do wrong? I have no idea. Was I perfect? No. Did I harm my children? No. Was I a drug addict,  neglectful parent, cruel, unkind, abusive, mean, a criminal? No.

But apparently, assumptions are made, realities built, stories told and retold until they crystallize into strange structures resembling truths.

Estrangement is called a hidden epidemic, that between parent and adult child. The parent do not want to talk about it openly because they assume people will blame them for doing something terribly wrong to cause their child to cut them out of their life and the lives of their grandchildren.

Dr. Joshua Coleman, a psychologist who specializes in family estrangement and the author of When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along – has much to say on the matter. "Society has a prejudice towards forgiving and healing … therefore there is a huge amount of shame involved in estrangement," he says.

So the fearful looks whenever I tell people is perhaps because I embody what all parents dread – that their own children might also give up on forgiving and healing and take the high road. Or maybe it's suspicion. "People often assume that a person who is estranged is not telling the whole story, or the whole truth, or assume they are concealing something terrible," says Coleman.

What I cannot understand is how two people who were always so close could so suddenly be so far apart in every way. 

What a waste of everyone's life.

There is always hope. That is one certainty I continue to live in. I am not perfect; there's no such thing as a normal family.We do our best in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. 

Like bereavement, it is, after all, a loss. And it's a unique kind of loss: my son and daughter, granddaughters and grandson are breathing on the planet somewhere, I don't even know where they are.

What has helped me the most through this is the support from other mothers who go through this and we all share the same feelings of sorrow, sadness, loss, of never being able to fix it or make it right, of often not knowing what we did that was so wrong we are not wanted in the lives of our children......it is about the only way I can get through this is knowing I am not alone in the deep abyss of maternal loss.

It's been a gut-wrenching and heart-breaking walk, and the kind of gut-panic you feel when you lose sight of your child in a store or public setting for even a moment in time.  I feel like there is a large portion of my heart that has been taken abruptly. I worry for  their pain too. I know my children and I know they must have similar pain, even if it is too deep to feel right now.

I continually pray for God's grace. And I pray that before we all come to the end of our lives, we are reunited, our family, so there are no regrets, so when our last tomorrow comes, we are not left wishing for yesterday.

Fashion for Fat "ish" Females over Forty.

I have always been fat "ish" and I have always been complimented on my fashion sense. So I think perhaps I have something to offer my fellow women who dare to be over a size 12, or like me, wavering between a size 16 and 18 ever since menopause hit.


I was in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police once, a life time ago. I ran five miles, did 200 sit ups, swam so hard I didn't know when I was inhaling or exhaling until I choked on chlorinated water. I was fit. I was still fat. I went into the 6 months training at Depot Division at 166 pounds, and 6 months later came out at exactly 166 pounds. I lost inches for sure, probably a yard or more to be honest, but the weight stayed on. 








I was in a troop of 31 women. All week we had to stash away the mascara, blush, eyeliner, lipstick, and appear as plain and unattractive as possible. We all wore the same thing, brown khakis, blue and white running shoes and a grey 'ish" uniform shirt buttoned up to your sternum. Oh and let's NOT forget the polyester clip-on tie.










But on weekends, we let loose. Off we would go to the nearest hotel Friday at 5 pm, get dolled up, let our hair down, and feel female again. And guess whose closet- I mean "chiffonier" (that's para-military speak) would be raided before the young constables went out on the town?


Mine! I was the chubbiest in the troop but it didn't stop even the skinny mini's from begging me for one of my upscale, in style eye catching, totally cool ensembles. 


Even after my stint in the RCMP ended and I went through a time when I was well let's just say, POOR, I had a knack for scanning thrift store racks and eyeballing every name brand piece of clothing that was squished into the other 90% of stuff my grandmother probably wouldn't even wear.


So now that I have established my credentials, here are a few simple tips.


Fashion for us is categorized by the four F's. And it is  not the F-word you say in the change room when you try on something a tad too small and you have to do an entire aerobic work-out to get the damned thing over your head and off again.


**** Fit **** Fabulous **** Feminine **** Flimsy ****


Fit


Of course you know that things have to fit to look good. No use trying to get into a size 14 when you are an 18 and no, finding an extra long top to wear over the muffin top of too-small pants you have pogo-sticked your way into is not going to work. And let's NOT mention the camel toe. Shall we?


Also, wearing things that are too big, the garments you buy when you are feeling really depressed about your body, but not the sad depressed, the mad-sarcastic- depressed where you decide to get even with the fat Gods and go buy a pair of granny panties that pull up to your boobs - that doesn't work either. 


Size is just a number (although men will not agree with that.) The better the fit the better you look and this is no where more important than with your brassiere.


Bra sizes usually consist of a number, indicating a band size around your torso and one or more letters indicating breast size cup.


Bra sizes vary widely from one manufacturer to another and even from country to country. As a result it can be  challenging to to find a properly fitting bra. Up to 80% of women wear the wrong size bra causing most to experience pain of one kind or another




For me, I experience claustrophobia and the first thing I do when I get home from work



is take the bra off. Sometimes I make it to the bedroom but usually my sons turn away



in  horror as it comes off in the kitchen followed by me leaning my boobs into the refrigerator



to cool off. Menopause. Gotta love it.




.One study found that the label size was consistently different from the measured size. Furthermore, the shape, size, symmetry, and spacing of women's breasts vary considerably, and can differ greatly from the standard off-the-shelf bra shapes and sizes, especially if the breasts have been augmented, reduced,  are tubular shaped, or if they sag.




Bigger women are more likely than smaller women to wear an incorrect bra size. We tend to buy smaller and the flat chesties tend to buy bigger. There is just no pleasing anybody. The most common mistake made by women when selecting a bra is to choose too large a back band and too small a cup, for instance a 38C instead of a 34E, or a 34B instead of a 30D....or in my case, lol, I can admit it, a 40 D instead of a 46DD. I am so competitive.

So here is my advice,  because a proper fitting bra can take off almost 20 pounds when the girls are lifted and and your torso is allowed to be free from the downward spiral of the mammary glands. Get a professional bra fitting from the lingerie department or better yet a specialty lingerie store. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. The ladies are usually the age of your mother and really don't care about seeing your boobs - think of them as a curmudgeonly drill sargent, or likely if its a lingerie shop it will be the owner who is more concerned with getting you fit properly because plus sized bras - the good ones- cost more than a tank of gas, and this is more profit for them.  There is nothing to Wonder about, there is no reason to cross your heart, or to find something you can wear for 18 hours......you get what you pay for and your breasts deserve that.









Fabulous




This is crucial to how you feel, how you look, how you sound when walking boldly across the office floor. It is absolutely amazing just the psychology of wearing a fabulous shoe. Not fabulous runners, not fabulous flats, they have to give you height, make your calf muscle rip, and match either your handbag or an accessory. (by the way, the hand bag has to be fabulous too).

As my mentor Clinton Kelly said:




 “Sometimes comfort doesn't matter. When a shoe is freakin' fabulous, it may be worth a subsequent day of misery. Soak in Epsom salts and take comfort in the fact that you're better than everyone else.” 















Flimsy

Nobody over 25 should wear anything thinner than your excuses for not dressing well. You will be cold. They look cheap and make you look cheap. They will reveal things best left between you and God. There is only one exception to the flimsy rule and that is bedroom wear. Unless of course you are married to my ex husband whose response to the hundred dollar hot pink chiffon baby doll pajamas was "what good is that? It's coming off anyways."









Feminine


Attention fat"ish" females.......sweat pants, oversized t-shirts, runners, yoga pants, lumberjack shirts, straight legged high waisted jeans and denim skirts DO NOT MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE A GIRL!!!
And don't get all sensitive as if I am saying 'you're fat so you can't wear that." There are certain things the skinnies can't rock that we can.....(see the photos) so it all works out in the end. Remember you are a woman. Shania Twain said it best (but disregard the men's shirts and short skirts..ok?)


Oh, oh, oh, really go wild-yeah, doin' it in style
Oh, oh, oh, get in the action-feel the attraction
Color my hair-do what I dare
Oh, oh, oh, I wanna be free-yeah, to feel the way I feel
Man! I feel like a woman!

My boy Willy.

He died too soon. A teenager in dog years (3) and my shadow.

I adored him instantly. He was born from a mom who had come into my home as a rescue from a high kill shelter in California. She had cancer. She had two pups, both boys, one was born without eyes and ears, and then there was Willy. 

We put his little brother to sleep because the vet said there would very likely be other birth defects that would rear their ugly heads at some point, so Willy grew up with an exceptional amount of human contact. 

His mother, Sun,  passed away several months after his birth.

He was adopted at one of our adoption fairs by an elderly couple who lived in a senior's home and I imagined this most curious, sociable little guy would run the place in no time. Yes, I was sad to see him go, but I loved him so much I thought he deserved to be the king of the castle and boy I knew he would be.

 Sadly his mistress had a terrible stroke a month later and her elderly husband returned him to us. He was crying. Willy had touched his heart too.

And that is how I became so lucky to have the chance to know and love and be loved by this magnificent little dog.

Willy had magical powers. He was somehow able to get where I was going in the house before I got there and usually when I didn't want him to! 

Going to the bathroom was no longer a private endeavor.  Heading out in the car on a too-hot-for-dog day always resulted in Willy playing "dodge human" running from the front seat to the back seat depending on which door I was opening to try to catch him. I would threaten him in my "ventriloquist voice", you know, the one where you talk smack to someone with your teeth clenched because you think you look meaner. It did nothing! Finally I would manage to fake him  out and go to work or wherever I was heading, only to be told while I was gone, sometimes for a full 8 hours, he would lay by the front door waiting for me.

Willy was a perfect picture of hurt feelings innocence. The small remaining dollop of cool whip on his forehead (after it had "fallen' out of the fridge,) his stash in the kitchen drawer, the one whose front had fallen off so it was a great entrance to the drawer beneath it, one where he sat and waited for various morsels to fall (ok, or be tossed) his way. Yes! I cleared that drawer out a little but only to keep the dog hair off the baking supplies!  






He shared his toys, treats and even sometimes his drawer, and most of all, my attention, knowing he was
top dog in my heart. (Although I didn't tell my other dogs that.)

His favorite place was nestled under my chins and balancing on my  bosom when I was watching TV or on line. He became a comforting appendage over time and something I would miss almost the most when he wasn't here anymore.

He enjoyed the finer things in life. Bacon to "Snausages" (he would give you this look like "but...those are for dogs!" and vanilla ice cream sandwiches to the edible oil of cool whip (which he would tolerate if that's all there was.)

His guilty pleasure was dog biscuits in bed. And that would be MY bed just to clear up any misunderstandings that he slept in a crate or anywhere on the floor for that matter. He slept next to me like a husband, except his little legs would usually be splayed apart (thank GOD I did not get that treat when I was married) and sometimes he would sleep in the wrong direction, leaving a less than desirable sight for me if I dared open my eyes during the night.

I have had a very bad two years in my life. Significantly above average for sadness, grief, trauma, stress. It was Willy who was my solace. I would often cry in  bed at night, because I don't want people to see me doing that, and he would rush to my side and lick my tears and cuddle closer than normal for the duration. He would look "concerned" if that's possible. When I just needed someone to touch me, he would be there, under my chins, always there, most of the time I never noticed he had crawled up to his perch, he was just "there."

I do not know how life will ever be the same without him.

I didn't know that the last week of his life would be all our last times. 

I got up for work, it was a hot day, I played dodge human with him, went to work, and my mother called me a couple of hours later to say Willy was walking in circles.

I went home and she said he was laying in a vari-kennel and would not come out. When he heard my voice he came out, seemed to be walking ok, but when I picked him up it did not seem "right". I think that was his "green mile." He went  limp in my arms and I took him right up to the vet. There was no trauma on his body, he just wasn't moving properly.

The vet did not seem super concerned and told me he would call later that afternoon with a diagnosis.

Willy had a head injury. Hi skull was not fractured and nothing had penetrated his brain, it was just "squished" a little. Had he fallen? Had he run into something? The other dogs in the house were too small to have bitten him in the head with such force. We just didn't know.

Willy stayed overnight and was sent home to me the next day on prednisone. The vet said he would get better over time.

He was still wobbly and just wanted to lay on my chest with his ear to my heart so that is what we did. I hand fed him bacon, and tried to give him some ice cream but he did not seem interested. I thought he might be blind. And deaf. I wasn't sure. I decided I would go back to the vet the next day and pursue this further.

In the meantime I held his hands in my grip, stroked him, told him everything would be ok and my boy would be back in his kitchen drawer in no time.

I decided to have him sleep in a little vari-kennel on the night table near my bed so the other dogs would not bother him.

At 6 am precisely he was sitting up and barking so loudly I told him to be quiet. In that time between sleep and awake I had forgotten his fragile state. 

At 8 a.m. I peaked in and he was sitting up looking at me. I smiled and opened the cage and petted him. But I left him in there while I went to get dressed. At 8:30 when I went to get him out, he was dead. Cold, Stiff, He had been dead for quite some time. 

I couldn't believe it. My daughter who shares my room said she heard me tell him to be quiet. But he had already gone by that time.

He was saying good bye to me. No one will ever convince me otherwise. 

He was one of a kind.

We are so blessed to have had the chance for each of us to say our goodbyes and hold his hands, hug his neck and kiss his beautiful head in his last few hours.

I am the luckiest for having had the chance to know and love and
be loved by this magnificent creature.

I wouldn't trade my time with him for anything.

The love that once lived can never die rather, it circles around you forever, alive.

He is with me, I know it. The puzzle of what killed him doesn't matter anymore. Willy was a curious, bold, mischievous spirit, whatever happened to take him away from me is outweighed by what he left behind.

I will own dogs in the future as I have a pack now, but none will compare to my Willy-boy.

We knew how much we loved each other, and our time on earth, both human and dog is really a moment in eternity. I will see him again, likely in a kitchen drawer in paradise.
"My tears are messengers of overwhelming grief and of unspeakable love." Washington Irving



                                   

The tragedy of Marnie Frey.

 .                                                  Marnie and daughter Brittney around the same age

Sadly, the name Marnie Frey, in B.C. anyways, is synonymous with drug addiction, prostitution, "missing women" and a pig farm in Port  Coquitlam (my home town as a matter of fact) where her DNA was found, years after the police ignored her mother's pleas that her daughter was missing, years after her own mother tried to scale the fence of the pig farm after doing investigative work the police wouldn't do. 

"That night when I went there, when I was backing out of the driveway, I had a very weird feeling," Frey said. "My heart was pounding and I thought at first it was just because I was having anxiety attacks, but I guess it wasn't really an anxiety attack. It was a reality check. She was there." 

Frey said after her first visit to the farm, she returned there every time she travelled to Vancouver from Campbell River, B.C.

Why wouldn't they investigate a missing girl who grew up in Campbell River, the daughter of a well-known fisherman, a girl who loved animals, made her gruff dad have a funeral for a dead rabbit, who was known to be generous with her time and her love, a young mother with a five year old daughter? 

Well, that's easy, she was a prostitute.

I knew Marnie Frey. I was a counselor at the middle school she attended and we had many meetings where we talked about her troubles with authority, boys, school, not fitting in but mostly we talked about our shared love of animals. It was one of the few times I would see her smile. One of the few times her eyes lit up and she was clearly transported to a warm place in her soul where she belonged, where she felt love, where she felt peace. It was her respite.

I lost touch with her when she moved on to high school. She got pregnant sometime after and got in with the wrong crowd, ending up on the downtown east side and eventually addicted to heroin. She had to pay for her addiction so she did that with her body. Despite being out of it a lot of the time, as I would be too if I was in that situation, she called home regularly, she asked how her daughter was doing in the care of her parents, she was interested and engaged, calling home was not a chore for her and was for no other reason than to grasp onto the bond of family, with both hands, if even for ten minutes once a week. She never missed a call until she went missing.

What Marnie was and what Marnie did are two completely different things, but sadly, society, law enforcement, the courts, medical people, only saw the sex-selling, emaciated,, pock marked complexioned pasty looking "drug addict" and not the young mother from a small town, who, as high as she got, still had compassion and a sense of humor and cared about everybody, most notably her daughter Brittany. But to everyone other than her friends and family, she was worthless because of what she did. That overshadowed, to the narrow bigoted minds, to the professionals who were there to protect and serve, who she was.

And there were any more like Marnie, who died alone, in a gruesome, horror-movie style, at a stinky, dark, slop-filled pig butchery, cut up into pieces, by a psychopath who put her through a chipper.

In December 2007, a decade after Marnie Frey disappeared, Robert Pickton was convicted of murdering her and five other women. The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his farm.

Brittney Frey was five years old when her mum was murdered.

Brittney is suing both the serial killer and his brother, the Crown, the Vancouver police and the RCMP for her death.

Measuring the value of a human life is no easy matter. Measuring the pain and suffering of the victim's child should rest, in large part, on the circumstances of their death.

Marnie was not a stay-at-home mom, She didn't have a well paying job or much prospect of bettering herself in the future. She was messed up. But she made sure she did not take her daughter down that path. She made sure her daughter was safe, and loved.

It is possible she could have rehabilitated herself and come home to her very supportive and loving parents, Rick and Lynn, and used her daughter as the motivation to get better and do well. Many recovering addicts say it was the love for their children that put them on a better path.

We will never know where Marnie could have been today.

But Marnie's worth should not be determined by her situation at the time of her murder.

Whatever took her down the path that ultimately led to her meeting Robert Pickton should not be considered at all when the lawsuit is heard.

It is the path her daughter has been on since that counts the most.

The parent-child bond is the most fundamental of all human ties. When your mother dies, that bond is torn. When she is murdered in the most gruesome and tragic of ways, that bond is blown up into a million bloody pieces of anger, guilt, regret, terror, and profound sadness that will haunt Brittney Frey for the rest of her life.

Brittney has been bullied, her mother mocked, justice was screwed up, her missing mother was dismissed like a rat in an alley by professionals who were supposed to be there to protect and serve. The shame of that is immeasurable and there is no price anyone would accept to walk in the shoes of Brittney Frey.

Let's hope justice is served this time.