Thank you and Good-bye

I wrote this last year just before my hysterectomy. I meant every word.

Dear Uterus,

I have wanted to say a few things to you while we have been alone but I just never seemed to have the nerve at the right time. I suppose you know what’s coming; it has been between us for some time now but I guess I should just come out with it. I’m afraid it is time for us to part. And I am sad and I am sorry but I see no other way around it.

We used to be so good together, you and me. You made me a woman, a mother, two things that are cornerstones of my very identity. Do you remember us being so young and naive when my mom brought home a cake to celebrate the onset of, what would soon be, our tumultuous and regular episodes? That was such an optimistic and exciting time wasn’t it? I’ve learned to manage our ups and downs and have never blamed you when I have been pained.  Do you know how many times you have made me crazy with speculation about your tardiness? You nearly drove me mad at times but your arrival always just made me exalt your name even more. I really thought we would go on like that forever.

Of course, how can I recount our history together without highlighting the best two things we have ever done together? Our babies. Our big, pink, happy, fat, healthy babies. I had such admiration for you during those nine months. I know you felt the same way. No one else can ever know the discomforts and reliefs we endured together. And the labours. Holy shit, Uterus, that was your time to shine! I gained so much respect for you in those moments preceding life on earth. You had help create, grow, protect, nourish and finally expel our babies into a new world. Amazing. And while you were at it, you grew a miraculous new organ each time! I smile at the memory of our doctor showing me our placenta, exclaiming it was the biggest and healthiest he had ever seen. I will never forget marveling at seeing both baby and placenta, in awe that we had done that together without exchanging a thought or word.

Alas, dear Uterus, despite all our achievements I know it will not come as a surprise to you when I say that, in the most basic terms, we are over. You have changed. You used to be so powerful, a quiet though reliable entity. And now, I am so sorry to point out, you have gone soft. And I no longer need to withstand your pains and problems. History and gratitude just are not enough to keep us together. My heart sinks when I think about us apart and yet, I am convinced that it is how it must be.

And so, before saying good-bye, I must say thank-you. I will be forever grateful to you for making me who I am and giving me what I have. I am a proud woman and a blessed mother. I could ask for little else.

I have struggled with and dreaded this final parting moment. I am, in essence, responsible for your demise and I am so very sorry it has come to this. I will always be indebted to you.

Rest peacefully my longtime friend,

Me

Growing Up, Moving On

It has always been Home. In a quiet suburb of an unremarkable town, turn left at the shaded corner and at the end of a grinning cul-de-sac, there it sits. My home. I grew up here. I have walked down this street ten thousand times. In blazing heat, in falling snow, holding hands with children, arm and arm with friends, pushing a stroller, walking a dog, riding a bike, intoxicated, in love, with family, alone. This is the most familiar place that I know and it has come time to say good-bye.

I stand at one end of my street looking toward the ordinary house at the other end, my family home. This is what I see, what I have seen for more than 35 years of unchanged memory. A backdrop of rolling mountains upholstered with golden grasses and sagebrush, dotted with accents of pine and fir. The same skyline that I have come home to my whole life. When everything else seems to be changing so quickly, this picture has remained constant, my constant. Neighbouring fields and idle pastures are now paved and built upon. Cell phone towers and city lights inflict their scars at every glance. Roads, condos and golf courses cleverly situated replace the open spaces and clay hills of my childhood. But this house, this street, this mountain have withstood the passage of time and the ambitions of man. This fact somehow makes my loss feel greater. I will miss coming home. 

The house at the end of the street, the one with the basketball hoop out front, is where I came from. The apple and plum trees that produce fruit whose flavours instill an instant nostalgia for cold autumn mornings. Christmas lights, jack o' lanterns on the front steps, snow forts, easter egg hunts, dad's vegetable garden, mom's flowers, the friendly Mountain Ash tree that rustled with, fed and shaded all kinds of creatures. I learned how to do a lay-up, ride a bike, finish my first mile, kiss a boy quietly good night in this yard, this driveway, this front step. I've mowed this lawn on sweltering August days, weeded the vast garden on buggy evenings, played every sport and made-up game imaginable with neighbourhood children, raked and burned piles of leaves on crisp fall Sundays and revelled in the vast snowy heaven of the backyard year after year. 

Inside this seemingly average family house are where most of the memories that fill my lifetime were made. Birthday parties, christmases, family get togethers, sleep overs, visitors, staff parties, a wedding. But of greatest importance are the moments that made up every day of my childhood. The sound of the basement door being slammed shut, the view down the street from the chair in the living room, the constant sound of birds outside the bathroom window, the kitchen table where we united every day for dinner, the spring smell of lilacs through the open dining room window, the evening light coming through the leaves and dancing on my bedroom wall. I remember all of this and more. It has never seemed as precious as it does in these final hours.  

With this ending I am confronted with things that I care not to think of: change, mortality, death.  I am reminded of the impermanence of it all. In just the blink of an eye, the flap of a wing, it is over and we must move on. And yet, these memories are the most important things there are, the only things that truly belong to us. How fortunate to have these memories which are constructed almost entirely of love and family, safety and laughter. How funny it is that feeling fortunate can also feel a whole lot like heartache.

There is no more time left, this is good-bye. And, a kind of a thank you,  I suppose. To my parents, my siblings, neighbours, the tree tops, gardens and mountains. To the walls of this house that have always made me sure of where I fit in this world, where I belonged. I will take it all with me, everywhere that I go.