If those are my choices, I’ll stay single, thanks.

Not long after my husband, Jack, died, people consoled me: “You’ll meet someone else,” they said.

Suppressing tears, I smiled politely, and replied, “I’m a long way from thinking about that,” while my inside voice railed, “why would I want to? why would I need to?” and, “Did you go shopping for a new mother when yours died?”

Many have spent the last 28 months complaining about gathering limits, mask-wearing, vaccines, not being able to hug, limited mobility, and countless other pandemic-related beefs. COVID19 initially caused me a lot of stress and I’ve written about that along with the struggles I had emerging in summer 2021. I feel lucky though that the last two years have provided me with such richness too. I hope my Pollyanna’ishness in this piece won’t be too irritating. And I hope it can inspire you to consider the good things that have emerged for you.

Many have spent the last 28 months complaining about gathering limits, mask-wearing, vaccines, not being able to hug, limited mobility, and countless other pandemic-related beefs. COVID19 initially caused me a lot of stress and I’ve written about that along with the struggles I had emerging in summer 2021. I feel lucky though that the last two years have provided me with such richness too. I hope my Pollyanna’ishness in this piece won’t be too irritating. And I hope it can inspire you to consider the good things that have emerged for you.

It feels like the mother of all hot flashes - nausea, heart racing, stomach turning, extremities shaking. And the heat. Oh god, that heat that rises through me from the floor where I’m seated with my carryon between my legs, amid our luggage in Pearson’s Air Canada check-in line.

So I swear. A lot. I didn’t grow up in a household where this was acceptable and that was the initial allure - just one of a few tween rebellions. Having a 12 year old who let it rip like a trucker was not a welcome addition for my parents. Dad was more likely to say “blast it” when he most surely would have preferred to say “fuck it” but being “propply brought up” meant he couldn’t bring himself to. .

Jack said he drove for a living. Indeed, a great deal of his time was spent driving around Toronto. And then he’d say: “I fuckin’ love it, right from the first time I sat behind the wheel of a Fiat 110 enroute from Wrocław to Warsaw.”

By the time we met because of my broken fridge, he’d graduated to a burnt orange Honda Element. It was perfect for his repair business — a crossover with removable back seats and a boxy space for large appliances. The Element was also, maybe only in Jack’s view, a bit cool.

“What’s one thing that surprised you about grief?” well-known grief writer, Megan Devine, asks on Twitter this week.
“One thing? I could give her 100.” I scoff aloud to Bidi and Molly, as I doom-scroll.
Perhaps the most surprising is grief’s ability to still surprise me. Of course, this happens in the guise of my roommate, Grief, who now mostly spends days in her own room with the door shut, but often invades my living space, uninvited, at the hint of any holiday.

I typically have no regrets. Je ne regret rien. I mean that. I make decisions, reap whatever those decisions can reward, and then make new decisions. With one exception: I regret not functioning in Canada’s second official language. No better time to lament this than on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, Fête nationale du Québec, celebrated on June 24 by French-Canadians.

12. If you’re being funny, be dark, and even better, make it at your own expense

“Do you play violin, Peter?” people asked as he took his old violin apart, one of the few things he brought with him as an English immigrant, 30 years earlier.

“Three lessons as a kid; then the teacher died,” he replied. Dramatic pause. “Cause and effect?” he added, punctuated with an impish grin.