In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
– Mary Oliver
Before we ended up planning a funeral, before we began this ridiculous nine-month process called dying, there was a fiercely independent and very strong woman; a force that was called Kathleen O’Hara.
Kathleen was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on July 16th, 1961 and died in Sechelt, BC on April 4, 2015.
In between those dates she packed in several lifetimes of living; from her childhood homes in Coquitlam and Mission and then as an adult in Sumas, Washington, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Abbotsford, Toronto and Rome. Kathleen finally settled on the Sunshine Coast in 2006.
In her twenties her energy was epic. During the years she worked for Canada Post as a letter carrier, Kathleen completed two triathlons in the space of one week. She was also a licensed travel agent and, though she rarely drank, completed her bartending certificate.
She was a stewardess on a billionaire’s yacht, both in Florida and the Mediterranean. She was an accomplished cook, seamstress, quilter, gardener and knitter. She loved to windsurf, camp, cycle and canoe. In her late twenties, while still working at Canada Post, she completed her teaching degree and started teaching full-time. Kathleen’s dedication manifested in classrooms that held a special magic, replete with draped fabric ceilings and quiet corners with bean bag chairs that nurtured each of her students.
Kathleen’s truest vocation and deepest joys came with the births of her children, Nicholas, Hanna and Gabriel, who became her biggest priority in life. She became the mother bear and her love was fiercely protective. Many Christmases found her still sewing in the wee hours of the morning, making sure each of her children had new pyjamas under the tree. She believed in enriched learning and filled their home with music and endless art supplies along with constant encouragements to create and pursue their interests.
Kathleen was a familiar figure on the Sunshine Coast as she rode her bike to her various teaching jobs…through rain, sun, and even sliding sideways through a random Coastal snowstorm along the winding Coast highway.
Before her brain cancer diagnosis in July 2014, she was also very close to finishing her Masters degree.
Kathleen had a genuine and loud laugh and, when she hugged you, you knew you’d been hugged with love. She enjoyed great food and made it a budget priority, second only to music lessons. She relished walking on the beach or hiking in the forest near their home.
But most importantly, Kathleen created a sense of home for her children, no matter where they landed; whether the piano needed to be shipped to Rome, Toronto or the Sunshine Coast – she made sure it happened.
It takes a lifetime to know a friend, and lifetimes, it seems, come in different lengths. Some of our friends leave before us, and others will be the ones who are left behind to grieve for our departure. But whatever the amount of time that we are granted, if a friendship is filled with love and heart, it will give birth to something miraculous and beautiful.
These last nine months were long. It was a brutal and terrible goodbye. Many times I wished for her to die. Not only for her release, but for my own. I wanted it to be over. I thought I could not bear any more pain. I was wrong.
You don’t actually hear when a heart breaks. It is more of a slow tearing, a long bruised bleeding. But within this breaking and bruising process, we are left tender, vulnerable and open to love.
Kathleen spent nine months being birthed into something new and profound, ultimately traveling to a place that none of us are allowed to see. But for those of us who remain, we are left with the clarity of knowing the greatest realization of all…love never dies.
So, please.
Let us love one another with a fierce and protective love.
Let us love with laugher.
Let us love with tears.
Let us allow our hearts to become bruised and battered.
Let us rip ourselves open to life.
Because for now, we are the ones who are left behind.
The power of Google. I started out trying to find an old friend, Mary Ediger, ended up on your blog, and now sit here sadly reading this.
Kathleen and I worked together at her (first?) teaching job at Viscount Elementary in Coquitlam. She was a force of nature! We spent many lunch hours chatting at a small soup restaurant off the school grounds. It was only my second year teaching so we bonded over our new shared experiences. Mary was teaching in Burnaby, and I had done PDP with Mary, so we had that connection as well.
Your post about Kathleen is so beautifully written. Even though it is years since her passing, it is fresh for me right now and I appreciate reading your eulogy.
Oh Colleen. I’m so sorry. Isn’t it strange that it’s a brand new grief for you and it’s already been several years? It’s like some sort of perverse time travel.
Yes, Kathleen was definitely a force of nature; such a powerful woman. I’m so glad you got to share that time with her. You’ll be happy to know her children carry all her best bits. They’re wonderful human beings.
PS: I hope you managed to find Mary too. She lives in Nova Scotia now.
Hi Colleen,
I’ve still been thinking about these things this week. People who were important who slip away due to geography or circumstance. Something will trigger a memory and then I start wondering what they are doing and how they are. I have not found Mary yet (except some really old online stuff). Would you be able to put me in touch with her?
Hi Colleen. Yes, it’s strange how something will trigger a thought of someone who once was a part of my life, and now, I have no idea where they are.
I will send you an email with Mary’s contact info.
Colleen,
Your testimony of love for Kathleen through your beautiful writing and speech yesterday has given me a new orientation on my internal compass toward the meaning of love and friendship, life and death and the joy and pain that binds it all. Thanks.
Blessings Sarah. Joy and pain really do seem to bind everything together somehow.
I read somewhere that our strongest joys come out of our deepest sorrows. Not sure if that’s true or not, but I’m hoping so…
Your words are always so easy to connect to. I am so very sorry for your loss. When you travel a road with someone and then they don’t proceed thru the stop sign you are left looking around even though you knew it was coming. Hugs to you all. I was going thru my old photo album from a Bogie Party and have a great photo of Kathleen for you if you want.
Janet, I like your analogy of traveling down the road and being left to look around to see what happened. And you’re right, it really doesn’t seem to help to know it was coming. Thanks for sending the photo, it was used in the slideshow at the funeral reception 🙂
you made me cry…in a good way.
Dearest Dee Dee. Kevin has always found it rather oxymoronic that I could have a ‘good cry’. He’d say, “How on earth could crying be good?”
But crying IS good.
It is a way to release the pain, a way to let some of the emotion dissipate, a way to honour the dead and heal the living.
And, if crying is good and healing, I should be getting close to almost invincible.
Simply beautiful Colleen…. your love for her is very apparent.
RIP Kathleen 🙁
Thank you Ann. I’m glad my love is apparent.
I wish her peace as well. Peace is such a lovely thing to wish for any of us…
Incredibly touching and heartfelt words, Colleen, bringing tears to my eyes and an ache in my heart….for you, and for a woman I wish I would have met and known. Please know that I am sorry for your loss, and hope you will find strength in knowing you made a positive difference in Kathleen’s life.
Ah Sophie. I am so grateful for your words.
I do find strength in knowing that I did all that I could do for my friend. But at the same time, I don’t want to pretend that this was a one-way friendship. Kathleen loved me unflinchingly and unfailingly over all the years we shared. When I was in pain, she was in pain. When I was happy, so was she. Her empathy was incredible.
In many ways, my grief is quite selfish because with Kathleen, in spite of all she knew about me, she loved me completely.
So glad to run into you today and be able to give you a great big long lovey hug. There is no ‘good part’ in dying, no moment where the heaviness lifts… only the trudging weight and deep companionship that means so much in such a time. Dying brings a terrible beauty, and I know from your writing and from knowing you that each death casts a dark pearl into the jewel of your soul, where it is burnished and somehow casts a glow into the furthest reaches of who you are, and because of that is a preciousness I hope I will seize if I am offered the opportunity to love and care for someone who is dying. This is how they stay alive and truly become a part of us.
It is so easy to begin to love, isn’t it? Like the day you walked into my office needing a web site and I just fell head over heels into a snorkage-laden friendship with you. And each new friendship I make I have to remind myself that it carries the seed of the parting as well.
As I get older the hows and whys of friendship become more important as I realize how I want to be with those I love, and watching your friendship with Kathleen, your care, your staunch weathering of it all has taught me so many of those things I want and need to know.
Laurie, as usual your comments are so beautiful and true. I love how you think and love.
I agree that the older I get, the more I treasure my friendships. What else is there that truly matters than our relationships?
With Kathleen’s death I feel like my heart is once again cast into some sort of crucible…the burning and burnishing you speak of is tortuous, but somehow necessary to refine and clarify us.
Here’s another line from a Mary Oliver poem that seems fitting:
“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?”
A lovely poem with a great life lesson.
What a wonderful tribute to your dear friend Kathleen, who accomplished so much … gone too soon! She left a hole in your heart that will be hard to fill.
Hugs.
I’m so glad you enjoyed the poem too Martha. I read it over and over and find more in it with each reading.
Maybe at some level Kathleen unconsciously knew that she had to fit in so much in a shorter time than most…
I’m finding it impossible to imagine my life without her in it.
Oh my gosh I’m so saddened, we had lost touch and of course I had no idea…..but as you know I can still see her, hear her, feel her like it was yesterday….we were very close growing up, she was in my bridal party…..what a lovely tribute you gave her life Colleen, I will re-read when I’m not in shock… Please be in touch and help me with unanswered questions when you feel you can, just of course the obvious….her children, family, and any memorial/service there may be….I’m so sorry for you and all of us who had the pleasure of Kathy in our lives, she was one of a kind <3
Kelly, thanks for sharing your memories; there are so many. Kathy touched so many lives and because of that we are all connected. I am glad I could answer some of your questions by email. Big hugs to you Kelly. I know you know what this loss means to her children.
Thank you Colleen. You have expressed it as you so often do, beautifully. Good bye Kathleen, you have had a wonderful friend here on this journey.
Thanks Kathy. It means so much that you and I share this history. You know who I’m talking about. And you know too, that though you say that Kathleen had a wonderful friend in me, I had an incredible friend in her. No one else knows me (or I guess I should say, knew me), like Kathleen and in spite of knowing me, she persisted in loving me…and therein lies my sorrow.
Colleen, what an amazing tribute to your friend. And a good reminder to all of us that the phrase “life is short” is more than some off-the-cuff thing we say. It’s real. Death is real. We will leave someone behind who loved us. And being the one left behind kinda sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?
I know you struggled with so many emotions I can’t even imagine. I wish you peace and love and lots of laughs in days to come. You are one helluva friend.
Thank you so much for letting us inside your heart as you made this journey with her.
Love you, my friend.
Thank you Gwen. More than anything I wanted to honour Kathleen with this and I hope that’s what I did.
Now that she’s died, the emotional rollercoaster continues in a new way. It feels like this is the phase of the grieving where the loss of my friend really starts to sink in. There is no way around it now. It is incredible how wearying it can be. …
Love you too, Gwen.