Posts Tagged ‘Grief’
Learning to Reconcile When Hope Dies
By Trinda Jocelyn It was abnormally late when I picked up the phone. My mother’s name was lighting up the screen. I tapped the green dot, put the phone to my ear, and heard her voice say, “Your dad passed away today.” That was five years ago. I don’t remember much of the conversation after that, I do remember the feeling. Sadness and relief at the same time and then guilt for feeling the relief. My father and I were not close. He was not close to any of his daughters. He left shortly after I…
Read MoreThe Diagnosis
By Sheena Koops It started with squirrels at the end of his bed, and sometimes he would make Mom get up and see what those tall people in the corner were doing. He saw horses in a field and riders wearing tall hats with stovepipe points; he saw all this through the walls of his own home and through the houses along the streets. Not long before he passed he said, “Why is the little girl crying?” referring to the empty chair at the round kitchen table of their new home in Fort Qu’Appelle. Dad had neuropathy, a…
Read MoreMy Uncle’s Passing
By Sheena Koops I remember Christmas, must have been 1987. My Uncle Jelsing and Auntie Sheena, their three boys, and a tag-along-friend-of-the-family came to the farm for Christmas. The young man, like a brother to my cousins, was Michael Koops from Victoria, BC. This young guy, my cousin, and I walked over the prairie into the Souris Valley, sometimes knee deep in snow, pretending we were on a quest. We watched movies; we sang carols, we played games: my cousins and this tall, dark and handsome friend-of-the-family. In August of 1989, I married that guy. Three daughters later, my Uncle and Auntie consider our girls their granddaughters, because they…
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