on Wednesday the health centre phoned me to tell me they were booking my travel for my mammogram appointment in Yellowknife! I said, oh, no, sorry, I've already had it done.
Charlie, my boss, said, you should have just said, yeah, sure, and taken the trip...
Saturday, September 05, 2009
res blues
So I went to Edmonton and did the mammoth shopping task that moving Kirsten into Residence entailed. She was really good about it, made lists and stuck to them, didn't ask for a plasma tv or anything like that. Some of the folk who were moving in had way more stuff than she did. Including flat screen tvs.
So on Saturday afternoon, she was supposed to be going to a floor meeting. I dropped her off at res with her new little fridge and the hair dryer and alarm clock we'd realized she still needed (can't use my hairdryer any more, and we won't be there to wake her up in the morning either). She was a bit nervous about her floor meeting, and said goodbye and see you tomorrow, the plan was that we would get together for brunch or something.
I got back out to the car and turned on the CD player, we'd purchased an ABBA anthology, and the song was Knowing me, Knowing you.
Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes
Here is where the story ends, this is goodbye
In these old familiar rooms children would play
Now there's only emptiness, nothing to say
I know the house isn't empty, Rachel and Ian are still there, and I know it's a song about breaking up, but it hit me suddenly that all Kirsten's stuff was in that room where I left her, she doesn't officially live with me any more. And that's hard. It will never be the same again. So I was driving through Edmonton crying. In a way it feels like breaking up - after 18 years of worrying and caring about her, I have to step back...
It took me a long time to get home. I got up at 5am on Monday and went to the airport to catch my plane - gave my rental car back, got the flight to Yellowknife, but then when I was waiting for the plane to home, they announced that it had gone mechanical and we were all being switched to Canadian North.
When I went to board the Canadian North flight, they were stamping tickets as landing "subject to weather." I texted Miguel and he said it was raining pretty hard at home and foggy. The plane took off and we flew to and landed in Kugluktuk, but then we sat there waiting for the weather to change. Oh, and I should mention that they gave me a bag of pretzels for lunch - those of us who weren't real Canadian North passengers didn't get fed.
After a couple of hours, the pilot came and told us that we weren't going home, we were going back to Yellowknife. And then I realized that sitting there on the plane with all these strangers, I was going to cry. My seatmate said, "oh, you're upset", and kindly went back to watching her movie on her tiny laptop. I turned my head towards the window and it all just kind of washed over me, I'm going back home without Kirsten - I really had thought I could keep it together until I got home, but the thought of having to go back to Yellowknife and get a hotel room, and supper, and trying to convince someone to put me on another flight... I just didn't want to cope.
It actually all went very smoothly, I went to Pizza Hut for supper, found a hotel room and went to bed early, spent some time at the airport the next day but I was feeling better and was able to explain to my seatmate about my emotional day. She told me that she had taken her daughter to her first year of university in Connecticut, and cried the whole 12 hour drive home...
So on Saturday afternoon, she was supposed to be going to a floor meeting. I dropped her off at res with her new little fridge and the hair dryer and alarm clock we'd realized she still needed (can't use my hairdryer any more, and we won't be there to wake her up in the morning either). She was a bit nervous about her floor meeting, and said goodbye and see you tomorrow, the plan was that we would get together for brunch or something.
I got back out to the car and turned on the CD player, we'd purchased an ABBA anthology, and the song was Knowing me, Knowing you.
Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes
Here is where the story ends, this is goodbye
In these old familiar rooms children would play
Now there's only emptiness, nothing to say
I know the house isn't empty, Rachel and Ian are still there, and I know it's a song about breaking up, but it hit me suddenly that all Kirsten's stuff was in that room where I left her, she doesn't officially live with me any more. And that's hard. It will never be the same again. So I was driving through Edmonton crying. In a way it feels like breaking up - after 18 years of worrying and caring about her, I have to step back...
It took me a long time to get home. I got up at 5am on Monday and went to the airport to catch my plane - gave my rental car back, got the flight to Yellowknife, but then when I was waiting for the plane to home, they announced that it had gone mechanical and we were all being switched to Canadian North.
When I went to board the Canadian North flight, they were stamping tickets as landing "subject to weather." I texted Miguel and he said it was raining pretty hard at home and foggy. The plane took off and we flew to and landed in Kugluktuk, but then we sat there waiting for the weather to change. Oh, and I should mention that they gave me a bag of pretzels for lunch - those of us who weren't real Canadian North passengers didn't get fed.
After a couple of hours, the pilot came and told us that we weren't going home, we were going back to Yellowknife. And then I realized that sitting there on the plane with all these strangers, I was going to cry. My seatmate said, "oh, you're upset", and kindly went back to watching her movie on her tiny laptop. I turned my head towards the window and it all just kind of washed over me, I'm going back home without Kirsten - I really had thought I could keep it together until I got home, but the thought of having to go back to Yellowknife and get a hotel room, and supper, and trying to convince someone to put me on another flight... I just didn't want to cope.
It actually all went very smoothly, I went to Pizza Hut for supper, found a hotel room and went to bed early, spent some time at the airport the next day but I was feeling better and was able to explain to my seatmate about my emotional day. She told me that she had taken her daughter to her first year of university in Connecticut, and cried the whole 12 hour drive home...