Trajectory: a trajectory or flight path is the path that a moving object follows through space as a function of time. The object might be a projectile or a satellite, for example. It thus includes the meaning of orbit—the path of a planet, an asteroid or a comet as it travels around a central mass. A trajectory can be described mathematically either by the geometry of the path, or as the position of the object over time.
Sometimes we use the word trajectory when referring to a story’s narrative arc. When we do that, it means we are talking about the beginning, the middle, and, of course, the end.
I don’t really remember the exact start to the story of when I first met my new friend, Kathleen Peggy O’Hara. I think I was in grade six. Her family bought the Cherry Hill corner store and lived in the back of the store. A door opened from their living room and by walking down just a few steps, you would be standing behind the store’s counter; that fact alone made her seem incredibly exotic.
Our lives quickly became as intertwined as the beaded rings we wove together to sell by the store’s cash register (next to our glossily-painted ladybug rock paperweights which were also proudly displayed on the front counter) right beside the Sen-Sen.
Plus, Kathleen had a genuine Easy-Bake oven!
Plus, she had the Fun Flower Thingmaker with genuine Plastigoop!
Plus, her family wasn’t Mennonite!
Plus, we shared a love of the big faux fur winter hats with faux fur pom pom ties!
Our orbits separated for awhile when we spent grade eight through ten in different high schools. My dad was on the school board and used his influence to move me to the ‘better’ high school in hopes that he could save me from myself (it didn’t work). But by grade eleven we were once again back in the same high school and hanging out in each other’s lives.
I bought my first townhouse when I was 19. I used the insurance money I received from a car accident I survived when I was 16-years old (see aforementioned bad high school period).
Kathleen showed up on my doorstep one night. “I’ve run away from home,” she said. I laughed. “You’re too old to run away. At this age, I think you just call it moving out.”
We lived together in that condo and then, after I sold it (making money is easy in the 80s!), we moved into the house I bought with all my profits. Later, I sold it (losing money is even easier in the 80s!).
Life went on.
She became a letter carrier, a stewardess on a multi-millionare’s yacht, a school teacher…she lived a large life that eventually included three kids. But always, whether she lived in Toronto, outside of Rome, or five minutes away on the Sunshine Coast, our lives were as tightly woven as those multi-coloured beaded rings that we’d carefully strung together over forty years ago.
How on earth has it been that long?
And then again, how on earth has it been so short?
I recently discovered a new way of using the word trajectory. It’s a term that was apparently coined in 1965, just a few years before Kathleen and I would first meet. It’s called the dying trajectory. Apparently, once the process of dying starts, it can be graphed fairly predictably.
“The cancer death trajectory is probably the most predictable and familiar. In fact, the study of dying trajectories began by looking at cancer deaths. Their dying trajectory is a series of descending plateaus. However, once the treatment phase is no longer effective and the cancer becomes advanced, there is usually a steady decline, which may take weeks to months to progress toward death. As death approaches, the decline becomes rapid.
This rapid decline sometimes comes as a surprise, but when recognized and used effectively, it gives patients and families time to say their goodbyes and get things in order.
I have done my best to recognize and use this time effectively. Doesn’t that sound neat and tidy? Doesn’t that sound like something you should be able to tick off of a colour-coded to-do list? Turns out using time ‘effectively’ is some sort of pseudo-scientific bullshit.
Let me not be so harsh. I do agree with the general sentiment. You need to know the end is coming so that you don’t waste any time with inane platitudes and instead talk about what matters.
But still, how do you effectively say goodbye to a lifetime friend?
I was on the ferry the other day. I was coming back from seeing Kathleen. The time had not felt particularly effective or perfected or well-spent, but still, I had been there.
I was sitting. I wasn’t reading or thinking or doing anything much beyond feeling numb. Nearby a baby was wailing. The kind of crying that only the very young can do. The kind of crying that ends with great gulping hiccups and then winds up again into more blood-curdling screams. It came to me then. That’s what was wrong with all my well-intentioned use of time. What I really wanted to do was join that baby and start screaming bloody murder. I realized I was jealous of that child’s freedom to howl.
But there is no place for keening and wailing in our world. It is simply not done. Or at the least, it’s done in the quiet of one’s home, though, even then, there’s not really anywhere safe to scream. Somebody is bound to call the cops.
Do stories ever truly end? I don’t suppose they do. It is said that is the gift, that we’ll always have the treasure of our memories. So I guess this story is not really finished.
But this is the end of this post.
It had a trajectory; a beginning, a middle, and now, an end.
Our earth mama beautiful Kathleen is on her journey fast. Hugs to you – you have been her great friend for a long time..remember the flames of the soul will always flicker, perhaps soon in a different place.
Dear Anita. I like thinking about the ‘flames of the soul’ as light that ‘will always flicker’. Thank you for that comforting thought.
I wish I had read this earlier. Of course I knew a dear – the dearest kind of – friend was dying. But I didn’t connect the concepts of kathleen, many friends (some new) and NOW to know it was this friend to whom everyone referred.
I was thinking this afternoon in the heart of a still forest with a raven croaking overhead that I am at an age where this happens more and more frequently, this winnowing and attrition and lightning strikes elsewhere, even if only a mere whisper away. Even when I wish I could step into the bolt and push someone else out of harm’s way.
I’ve watched my parents and many older friends emerging like lonesome trees from a falling forest, suddenly exposed to winds where there used to be shelter, and emptying sky where there used to be birds on branches, all the conversations still left to be had, the hugs, the lovely silences in togetherness, and thought, ah, well life does go on, doesn’t it? I see them pick themselves back up, a bit more soul-wearied and a bit longer to get ‘game’ again, but they always do.
And then it begins to happen to my friends, like a fire cresting a hill, just a lick here and there, and I look out at it in the horizon of those who are my beloved, and think: I’ve still got plenty of time.
Your story of Kathleen brings me up short.
Your heartbreak is my heartbreak, because you are MY friend. The veil is lifted away, a whisper of smoke, and I can feel the burning of you all there together, and I know that while you will reappear, not all of you will, for we are all both living and dying at the same time, deep embers and skyborne sparks, and we don’t get to see what’s been left to carry on until the carrying on begins.
So all of us who love you, in all the ways we love you, (near and far, because you are so divine at friend-making) will shelter you while you shelter Kathleen, and bring birds to sing to you, and skies full of rain, and a place to scream and cry, and a place to rest.
Thinking of you and Kathleen so much
Laurie. Where do I begin? This is the most eloquent piece I have read in forever. I feel like I entered a magical fairy tale forest with you. I heard the wind through the trees and saw the deep embers and skyborne sparks. Bless you for writing of all the bittersweetness that is our lives.
I have read this over and over and know I will read it many times more.
Thank you for this tale and these wonderful sheltering words. It is such a comfort.
Thank you for sharing this. Grace, love, eloquence, sadness, despair, gratitude. It’s all there.
Bless you Jane. I can definitely vouch for the sadness and despair. Glad the rest shows up in there too…
Thanks for sharing this story Colleen, it makes me feel as though I knew her a little and I am sad that she is gone from this earth. You’ve had a year of losses I know and I’m sorry for that. Sending hugs your way.
Thanks for getting to know my friend a little Sarah, but I left you with the wrong impression. Kathleen has not died but she is definitely in the process of leaving us. The woman I know has been replaced by a woman who is weakened and struggling and in the end version of her earthly trajectory.
I don’t know your friend Kathleen, we have never met. But I know how much you love her. That I’ve seen and heard often, in conversations, in your writing. I don’t know who is luckier, you to have had her as a friend, she to have a friend like you who loves her so fiercely. Maybe neither is ‘lucky’, maybe you were both on a trajectory of love that collided into and melded into a love that has burned brightly all these years.
What a beautiful thought Elinor. I like that idea of love colliding and melding into a burning light of love. Maybe we’re all like stars and that’s what we all do?
So sorry for your loss Colleen.
I, too, have a non-Mennonite best friend who I’ve known since Grade 1. After graduation, we were roommies in Kits for 3 years and moved together several times after gaining or losing in numbers. At one time, there were four at 4th & Alma, then five at 8th & Alma, and at another there were nine of us renting a house at 12th & Arbutus, but the two of us always stuck together. On more than one occasion, we were asked to leave after a really great party.
Now that she lives on the Island I don’t see her often, but we keep in touch with regular emails. For the past 6 years we’ve both become Snowbirds — us in Phoenix, them in Yuma. Last year we celebrated our 70th together in Phoenix and I’m looking forward to our time together next February.
I might have grown up dirt poor on a farm, but damn, I had an Easy Bake oven!
One thing I am regretting now is the lack of photos. Somehow I assumed she’d always be around and we don’t have that many photos in these later years, because she was just ‘there’. Treasure that friendship Martha (as I know you do), and if I had any advice, it would be to take lots of pictures. It sounds like you have a truly wonderful friend.
And how come everyone had that stupid Easy Bake oven??
Although it seems trivial, at this time, to comment on “that stupid Easy Bake oven,” I think it was invented by a male … little girls should grow up to serve her man in the kitchen. I remember being so proud that I could bake a real cake. My oven was powered with a light bulb and came with mini cake & icing mixes.
Yup, I agree, it was stupid.
I do agree Martha. It was one more cultural message to keep us in the kitchen.
That being said, I wanted one more than life itself 🙂
I know, I know. I think I campaigned for a whole year, maybe more, pointing out pictures in the Eatons and Sears catalogues. It was a prized possession, along with a doll that had eyes which would open when held upright and close when it went to sleep … utterly magic! Of course, they were not received the same year — only one gift per year and only for Christmas.
Thank you for sharing this, Colleen. So much truth in it. So grounding. My advice is to take yourself out to the middle of nowhere and howl! (And I totally get your attraction to Kathleen! I so wanted an Easy-Bake oven!) Sending you big hugs.
No kidding on the Easy-Bake oven Gwen. I must say there would have been some serious coveting going on there on my part (not to mention the Plastigoop attraction).
I think I’ll find a forest road up on the Sunshine Coast and take your advice on howling. Some days are just ridiculous.
Big Hug my friend.
Thanks Dee Dee. Hopefully we can hug in real life soon 🙂
Truly heartbreaking…I’m so sorry to hear this news. Kathleen’s life trajectory was much much too short. Your memories are something to treasure…thanks for sharing. I remember those Sen-Sens, Easy Bake ovens and pom pom hats. Fun times.
You’re right Michele, I treasure the memories.
Just the other day Kathleen looked down at my feet and said, “Wow. You still have those slippers.” I laughed so hard but I also wanted to cry. There’s not many people (besides my husband) who would know that my mocassins are pretty darned old. It’s all so stupidly hard.
It’s not just having the memories, it’s the sharing of the memories that is the wonderful thing. Now all the stories that only her and I know will only be held by me.
I am jealous of the photo, and that I could not share that special time with the three of you. I did, however, have the faux fur pompom hat and I truly loved it. Not as much as I love my friends though. That we survived our youth is truly amazing. Thanks for the memories.
It’s true that it’s a miracle we all survived our youth. And yes, those hats were the best and our memories and shared history together trumps it all. Love is what ties it all together. Thanks AnneLise.
Your post brought me to laughter and tears. I remember the Cherry Hill store, but didn’t know your friend. Death trajectories are a breath away from “tragic”. I’m so sorry that you are going through this simply awful “life experience”, or is it “death experience”. Thank you for sharing your feelings.
Sophie, I love your observation that ‘tragic’ and ‘trajectory’ are so closely linked. You’re quite right about that.
I think that sharing my stories and feelings is my way of ‘screaming’…
I came back, and I had one more year with my dad. Truth is he’d kept his condition secret from his entire family until it was too late. Bravely soldiering into the night, then. If elderly Asian men could go with the stiff upper lip, my dad could do it too. The trajectory was relatively long, I suppose, but by the end of 2013, I said to mum: “I don’t think he’s going to last the entire 2014 year.” By summer, it looked week to week, but by July leading into August, it was day to day. When his mind left and his body hung on, I mourned, quietly alone. When his body surrendered, collective mourning could begin. He may have left, but we carry on with his life’s memory and the continuing trajectory of his life story.
Henry, that sounds like a long and hard year. It is a strange sort of suspended time in a way too; such a hard hard time line.
But you and your stories, both private and public, are proof of the continuing trajectory and impact of his life story.
Thank you for sharing.